Coronavirus: we separate myths from facts and give advice

[Anthea]

KRG releases latest vaccination figures

According to the figures, at least 1,439,392 residents of the autonomous region received their first vaccine dosage and 1,140,044 also received the second dosage. A comparatively paltry 25,405 received the third

The region has also issued 400,000 vaccination cards to residents so far.

On Thursday, the Kurdistan Region’s Ministry of Health announced that it had recorded 54 COVID-19 cases in the previous 24 hours.

Since the pandemic began in early 2020, the Kurdistan Region has recorded 436,610 cases of COVID-19. The vast majority, 428,514, recovered, while 7,439 lost their lives.

The KRG and the Government of Iraq frequently release the latest numbers of recorded COVID-19 cases. However, these figures come from public labs and do not include cases recorded by private clinics.

Anyone over 12-years-old can receive COVID-19 vaccinations in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region.

https://www.kurdistan24.net/en/story/27 ... tan-Region

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US Department of Defense and Covid-19

The world first started to hear about a novel coronavirus in early January 2020, with reports of an alleged new pneumonia like illness spreading across Wuhan, China. However, the world did not actually know of Covid-19 until February 2020, because it was not until the 11th of that month that the World Health Organisation officially named the novel coronavirus disease as Covid-19

So with this being the official truth, why does United States Government data show that the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) awarded a contract on the 12th November 2019 to Labyrinth Global Health INC. for ‘COVID-19 Research’, at least one month before the alleged emergence of the novel coronavirus, and three months before it was officially dubbed Covid-19?

The shocking findings however, do not end there. The contract awarded in November 2019 for ‘COVID-19 Research’ was not only instructed to take place in Ukraine, it was in fact part of a much larger contract for a ‘Biological threat reduction program in Ukraine’.

Perhaps explaining why Labyrinth Global Health has been collaborating with Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance, and Ernest Wolfe’s Metabiota since its formation in 2017.

(…) But there is one Sub-Award that stands out among the rest, and it is was awarded to Labyrinth Global Health INC for “SME Manuscript Documentation and COVID-19 Research”.

An award for Covid-19 research isn’t exactly shocking when the world is allegedly in the grip of a Covid-19 pandemic, but considering the fact the sub-contract was awarded 12th November 2019, at least one month before the alleged emergence of the novel coronavirus, and three months before it was officially dubbed Covid-19, the award for Covid-19 research should come as a shock to everyone.

But the shock doesn’t end there, because the place the contact for Covid-19 research was instructed to take place was Ukraine, as was the entire contract awarded by the DOD to Black & Veatch Special Projects Corp.

Read the full article: https://dailyexpose.uk/2022/04/13/us-do ... -nov-2019/

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What Happened to Paxlovid?

The COVID antiviral arrived too late for the Omicron wave, but it remains a powerful weapon

Paxlovid, the COVID antiviral developed by Pfizer, was hailed as a miracle drug against COVID-19 when it was approved for use by the FDA in December. But it was nowhere to be found during the Omicron wave that followed and now is little discussed and underused, with doses reportedly piling up on pharmacy shelves.

Has Paxlovid failed to live up to the hype as a pandemic game changer, or is it another effective defense against COVID that’s been unjustly snubbed by a misinformed public?

For a frontline view I turned to my brother-in-law, John Emy, a doctor of internal medicine who practices with CareMount Medical in Manhattan and has been prescribing Paxlovid to his patients with COVID. He said he’s a fan — with qualifications. “I think it’s a great drug. It’s certainly very effective. It starts working pretty quickly,” he told me over the phone while walking to work. “Usually within 24 hours, the symptoms start to improve.”

He wondered how badly it was really needed, though. “It’s probably wasted on the mildly ill,” he said. “Before we had Paxlovid, plenty of people who had mild symptoms would get over it and they were fine.”

Five hours later, he texted me that he’d thought of another argument for taking Paxlovid. “By reducing viral load quickly it could reduce contagiousness,” he wrote, before dropping the lede: “I woke up feeling not great, but then much worse on the subway after I spoke with you. I have COVID.”

He was on the fence about taking Paxlovid. His symptoms were mild. He felt feverish and mentally fuzzy but his temperature was normal. As an extremely healthy marathon-runner who’s fully vaxxed, he wasn’t particularly worried about getting seriously ill.

On the other hand, he’s got asthma, which is a risk factor for severe COVID. In the end, a talk with a colleague helped push him toward a decision. “I think I’d be fine without an antiviral,” he texted, “but I’m going to take it with the hope of getting back to work more quickly.”

The story of Paxlovid starts back in 2003, when the first SARS outbreak took place in Asia. Looking to develop a medication that could stop its spread, Pfizer started researching drugs that could block the action of a viral protein called a protease, which is necessary for the virus to replicate itself inside the host cell.

One advantage of a medication like this, compared to a vaccine, is that it attacks a vulnerability of the virus that doesn’t mutate in the same way that the spike proteins targeted by vaccines do. That means it’s likely to be equally effective against all variants.

Pfizer’s preliminary research didn’t get too far before SARS petered out. But when SARS-CoV-2 popped up, they put the idea back on the fast track, ultimately trying out more than 600 candidate compounds in test tubes. The most promising were then tested in animals before being winnowed down once more for human trials.

Pfizer started testing Paxlovid in September 2021, enrolling patients who were suffering from mild to moderate symptoms — meaning they hadn’t been hospitalized yet — and were at high risk of their symptoms turning severe, either due to being over 65 or having comorbidities like obesity or diabetes.

Pfizer expected the study to last into 2022, but was able to end the trial early because the results were so spectacular. It reduced hospitalizations in those who caught COVID by 90 percent and eliminated deaths entirely.

Among the thousand or so trial participants who took the drug, none died, versus seven people in the control group

Pfizer applied for emergency-use authorization in November and was approved five weeks later. At a time when vaccination rates had stalled out and Omicron infections were soaring, it seemed Paxlovid could prevent the deaths of a lot of Americans.

“This anti-COVID pill has all the features of a breakthrough intervention at the time when we absolutely need it,” wrote Scripps’ Eric Topol in The Guardian.

But as the Omicron wave hit in the weeks that followed, there were very few doses of Paxlovid available, and by the time production ramped up enough to produce significant quantities, caseloads had fallen dramatically. Public demand was low.

To help things along, the Biden administration last month launched a program called “Test to Treat,” under which patients with COVID symptoms can go to a participating pharmacy, get a test, and immediately receive a five-day course of Paxlovid.

The one-stop-shopping approach is designed to cut down on the time between the patient’s first symptoms and the time they take their first dose, because Paxlovid is meant to be taken within the first five days.

Judging by a website used to track the distribution and uptake of the drug, however, not many people are taking advantage of the offer. Of the 50 or so available sites listed in Manhattan, about half showed that their stocks are apparently untouched — even as case rates in the borough have risen some 400 percent since March 1.

There’s an obvious reason for that lack of interest, says epidemiologist Saad Omer, director of the Yale Institute for Global Health: Not enough people know that the program exists. “We need to have some meat-and-potatoes public-health information,” he says. “Any successful test-to-treat program is dependent on accurate, complete, timely information.”

It will also help if access to the program is expanded. For now, the emergency-use application only allows the drug to be prescribed to those with an increased risk of severe COVID, because that’s who took part in the trial.

Other trials are currently underway to see if Paxlovid is safe and effective for children and for patients at a standard risk of severe symptoms — that is to say, the rest of the public.

Pfizer is also testing Paxlovid on people who’ve potentially been exposed to COVID but haven’t yet tested positive. The latter study could yield results within the next few months, says Pfizer spokesman Kit Longley, while the other two “could have results by the end of the year.”

Another burning question is whether Paxlovid might be effective against long COVID. Last month, a team of researchers at Stanford published a preprint reporting the case of a previously healthy, double-dosed 47-year-old woman who came down with COVID and suffered symptoms for two days, then mostly felt better, but continued to feel fatigued and achy, with insomnia and cognitive difficulties — symptoms consistence with “Post-Acute Sequelae of SARS-CoV-2,” a.k.a. long COVID.

Six months later, she was potentially exposed to COVID again, began experiencing symptoms, and was put on a course of Paxlovid. Soon after, “she reported being back to her normal, pre-COVID health status and function including working full-time and exercising rigorously.”

That’s encouraging, but not dispositive. “We have to be careful about reading too much into individual cases like this — they can’t by themselves prove anything, but they can suggest avenues for further research,” says Linda Geng, a professor of medicine at Stanford and the paper’s lead author.

“There are some interesting hypotheses about how Paxlovid may be useful in the treatment of long COVID, but we’d need further investigation and clinical trials before coming to any conclusions.” To that, two Paxlovid trials are currently underway that will include a six-month follow of those taking part.

Regardless of how widely Paxlovid is rolled out, and how eagerly it’s taken up by the public, the most important thing to remember is that the best defense against COVID is to be fully vaxxed and boosted.

For his part, my brother-in-law, after deciding to take Paxlovid, wound up feeling much better the next morning. He gives most of the credit for that, though, to the mRNA jabs he’d gotten. “Thank God for the vaccines,” he texted. “I would probably have been much sicker had I not been vaccinated.”

What Happened to Paxlovid?

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/04 ... -drug.html

[Anthea]

Johnson & Johnson Blood Clot Risk

On Thursday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) limited the use of the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine, which has generated 60 cases of thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS)

This condition, which produces life-threatening blood clots combined with low platelet count, appeared approximately one to two weeks after immunization with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and was most often in premenopausal women.

"This vaccine's use limitation demonstrates the strength of our safety surveillance systems and our commitment to ensuring that science and data guide our decisions," FDA scientist Peter Marks said.

Although the TTS has caused the death of nine Johnson & Johnson-vaccinated people, Marks recalled that it is unnecessary to be alarmed by this disease, whose incidence rate has not exceeded 3.23 cases per million doses of that vaccine.

Vermont has one of the highest vaccination rates in the world — 94% of the population has had at least one dose and over 60% have had a booster

So why is it leading the United States in case rate? pic.twitter.com/hTYLgBJ0B5
— Ian Miller (@ianmSC) May 5, 2022

"The restriction on the authorization of this vaccine shall apply to persons over 18 years of age for whom no other vaccines are available or are medically appropriate, or who do not wish to receive another vaccine," he stressed.

As of May 4, the U.S. had administrated about 18 million Johnson & Johnson vaccines, representing only 7,7 percent of citizens fully immunized against COVID-19.

So far, this country has reported 83,437,113 coronavirus cases and 1,023,908 related deaths, 225 of which occurred in the last 24 hours.

Antigua and Barbuda's ambassador to the United States, Ronald Sanders, revealed that the Caribbean Community countries would consider absenting themselves from the Summit of the Americas if the exclusion of #Cuba #Venezuela and #Nicaragua from the summit was implemented. #VIDEO pic.twitter.com/iAEeusO4Zm
— teleSUR English (@telesurenglish) May 6, 2022

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/US- ... -0021.html

[Anthea]

Vancouver Times

VP of Pfizer arrested

VP of Pfizer arrested after #pfizerdocuments get released

Twitter has started censoring this article. To fight back against censorship, send a report to Twitter, and tell them this link is safe

Rady Johnson, the executive Vice President of Pfizer, has been arrested at his home and charged with multiple counts of fraud by federal agents. He was taken into custody and is awaiting a bail hearing. This comes as 1,000s of classified documents from Pfizer were released, showing the true risks of the experimental vaccine.

As a result of Rady’s arrest, the hashtag #pfizerdocuments has started trending on Twitter. Multiple celebrities are now calling for other employees at Pfizer to be arrested. Twitter has begun the process of censoring the hashtag, and this publication. Other social media platforms have followed suit.

Since joining Pfizer in 1994, Rady held multiple high level positions in the company. Rady previously lead the Regulatory Law practice group as well as the Corporate Regulatory and Healthcare Law Audit functions. Despite Rady’s high-level position at Pfizer, his ethics have fallen into question.

Rady Johnson, the executive Vice President of Pfizer, has been arrested at his home and charged with multiple counts of fraud by federal agents… 1,000s of classified documents from Pfizer were released, showing the true risks of the experimental vaccine.https://t.co/1UHfD5lNaj
— Angel Luis (@AngelLu28572185) May 6, 2022

Keean Bexte, an independent journalist formerly employed by Rebel News, pointed out how 1,223 people died within the first 28 days after taking the Pfizer jab. There are reports that the vaccine killed all the animals during the trial. Many people are angry the vaccine was allowed onto the market despite all the risks.

Following the release of the Pfizer documents, it’s now confirmed that 1,223 people died within the first 28 days after being inoculated with the BioNTech Pfizer vaccine during trials — and it was still approved for use. https://t.co/BPxXvjUTsa
— Keean Bexte (@TheRealKeean) May 5, 2022

A judge has granted a media blackout on request of Rady’s lawyers, and Google is suppressing search results. Fact-checkers and Big Tech censors are working overtime to censor this article. Rady faces life in prison if convicted.

Pfizer and the CDC committed fraud for willfully withholding critical data from the public resulting in harm and death to thousands. The CDC is spreading medical misinformation. What they have done is obscene. We are completely vindicated.

Thread 1 of 3 pic.twitter.com/311Ie9IcdH
— Truth Justice (@LakovosJustice_) May 4, 2022

The mainstream media and big tech want to hide the truth. Beat them at their own game by sharing this article!

If Twitter won’t let you share this article, copy and paste this link into Twitter:

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https://vancouvertimes.org/vp-of-pfizer ... ment-dump/

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topinfoguide.com:

Why was Rady Johnson, Pfizer CEO Arrested?

Federal officials arrested Rady Johnson, Pfizer’s senior vice president, at his residence and charged him with numerous counts of fraud

He was arrested and is currently awaiting a bail hearing. This comes after Pfizer disclosed thousands of confidential documents revealing the exact hazards of the experimental vaccine.

Besides, he has held many high-level positions at Pfizer since joining the business in 1994. Rady formerly served as the head of the Regulatory Law practice group, as well as the Corporate Regulatory and Healthcare Law Audit departments.

At Rady’s lawyers’ request, a court has approved a media blackout, and Google is concealing search results. If convicted, Rady risks a life sentence in jail.

Will Rady Johnson go to Jail? Why Was he Arrested?

Rady Johnson’s arrest for fraud has sparked a lot of discussion on Twitter. People are skeptical if the report of his arrest is genuine or not.

Furthermore, others believed the news to be fraudulent since, back then, there was a story in some tabloid called the “Beaver” that Bourla (the Pfizer CEO) had been detained as well, but it was Pure Propaganda.

In the first 28 days after receiving the Pfizer vaccine, 1,223 individuals died, according to Keean Bexte, a freelance journalist who previously worked for Rebel News. According to accounts, the vaccination killed all the animals in the testing.

Pfizer’s Chief Compliance, Quality, and Risk Officer, Rady Johnson, is an Executive Vice President.

He is in control of the company’s worldwide compliance framework, regulatory quality control department, global security activities, and Ombuds Office.

In 2015, Rady was named a Solicitor Who Matters by the Ethisphere Institute for his efforts to “pioneer a corporate and industry-wide lineage of ethics and morals.”

https://www.topinfoguide.com/wiki/was-r ... biography/

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Covid from US Biolab

Head of Lancet Covid-19 board: Coronavirus might have come from US lab. Jeffrey Sachs believes that there is "enough evidence" that made him reach this conclusion, which "should be looked into."

Economist and author Jeffrey Sachs, speaking at a conference hosted by Spanish think tank GATE center, divulged that COVID-19 did not come from a natural reservoir, but rather "out of US lab biotechnology" by accident.

Sachs, who also chairs the COVID-19 commission at a renowned medical journal, The Lancet, said that he was in the loop: "It’s a blunder, in my view, of biotech, not an accident of a natural spillover.”

He said that while he does not know for sure if this was the case, there is "enough evidence" that could make this conclusion, which "should be looked into."

The renowned economist expressed disappointment that the narrative is not being looked into, "not in the United States, not anywhere."

Neil Harrison, a Columbia University professor of molecular pharmacology and therapeutics, along with Sachs, wrote an article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, where they suggested that COVID-19 originated in a laboratory. The two academics demanded greater transparency from US federal agencies and research facilities, including universities, as a lot of evidence was not provided.

The origin of the pandemic can be traced through Virus databases, biological samples, viral sequences, email communications, and laboratory notebooks - however, all of these sources have been subjected to “independent, transparent, and scientific scrutiny."

According to the authors, a sequence of eight amino acids on the virus' spike protein is similar to an amino acid sequence found in cells that line human airways.

US biolabs, very recently, have been exposed to be spread throughout the world, with Ukraine being a hotspot for over 30 US-funded biological weapon laboratories, which have been working on deadly specimens of African swine fever and anthrax.

In March, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said, "Documentation was received from employees of Ukrainian biological laboratories on the emergency destruction of especially dangerous pathogens of plague, anthrax, tularemia, cholera, and other deadly diseases on February 24.

The emergency destruction of especially dangerous pathogens on February 24 was required to prevent the disclosure of facts of violations by Ukraine and the United States of Article I of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC)."

https://english.almayadeen.net/news/hea ... ave-come-f

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UN’s Children Agency delivers aid

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The United Nations Children's Agency, known as UNICEF, on Monday delivered around 300 tons of medical Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) to Kurdish healthcare workers

In a presser jointly attended by Kurdistan Region Minister of Health Saman Barzinji and the UNICEF Iraq Representative Sheema Sen Gupta, the $2.5 million-worth medical batch was officially handed over to the ministry.

The aid includes medical gowns, goggles, masks, and other protective equipment that can help protect health care workers at hospitals and intensive care units, Barzinji said, appreciating the international organization’s assistance, which he described as a “big support”.

“This is to protect the healthcare workers because as we know we still have COVID-19. They also protect health workers from other diseases,” Gupta told Kurdistan 24 following the announcement.

The organization has similarly provided another medical batch worth $1.3 million earlier this year, she added.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the restrictions that were imposed to stem the spread of the disease had hampered the immunization process of children in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region, according to officials.

After easing the restrictions, the ministry along with UNICEF launched vaccination campaigns, which had so far immunized 300,000 children since early 2022, Barzinji noted.

The vaccination rate for diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis (DTaP), and measles is at 90 percent, the UNICEF chief said.

“It has never been so high in the last twenty years,” she said, adding her organization would continue working with the Kurdish ministry in that regard.

The organization also helps the ministry to digitalize its medical services, including birth registration and data analysis, as part of strengthening the health system, according to Gupta.

Over 466,000 infections have been recorded by public health workers since the start of the pandemic in early 2020. The figures do not include those infections recorded by the private sector.

More than 7,400 people have died due to the infections during the same period.

https://www.kurdistan24.net/en/story/30 ... tan-Region

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Omicron subvariant XBB.1.5

The new Omicron subvariant XBB.1.5, is being warned against by New York City health officials, as it is feared that it may potentially infect individuals who have already been vaccinated or infected previously with Covid-19

The NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene posted a tweet on Friday: "Omicron subvariant XBB.1.5 now accounts for 73% of all sequenced COVID-19 cases in NYC," adding that the "XBB.1.5 is the most transmissible form of COVID-19 that we know of to date and may be more likely to infect people who have been vaccinated or already had COVID-19." 

Omicron subvariant XBB.1.5 now accounts for 73% of all sequenced COVID-19 cases in NYC. XBB.1.5 is the most transmissible form of COVID-19 that we know of to date and may be more likely to infect people who have been vaccinated or already had COVID-19. pic.twitter.com/1Ux8LNHwUu
— nychealthy (@nycHealthy) January 13, 2023

Getting vaccinated against the virus which was first detected in October and dubbed the "Kraken", is the best way to avoid hospitalization and possible death even from other variants as well, according to the department.

Data from the CDC states that the XBB.1.5 accounts for 43% of cases in the US, when in just January it accounted for 30%.

Circulation will increase its evolution

The World Health Organization (WHO) warned earlier this week that case rates may increase and warned further that it will definitely keep evolving into new variants. 

Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s technical lead on COVID-19, expressed that the concern is mainly "how transmissible it is," continuing that "the more this virus circulates, the more chances it will have to change," 

However, no data currently exists to prove that the subvariant leads to more severe diseases, but the WHO is formulating a new risk assessment which should be released soon. 

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) said on Friday as well, that "the XBB.1.5 subvariant of COVID-19's most prolific variant to date,"

The United States accounts for more than 82% of all XBB.1.5 infections worldwide, followed by the United Kingdom (8.1%) and Denmark (2.2%). 

https://english.almayadeen.net/news/hea ... cinated-pe

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Affect of Covid vaccine

Pfizer CEO escaped questions at Davos about effect of Covid vaccine

In the Swiss resort hosting the World Economic Forum known as Davos, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla was forced to escape a swarm of journalists who threw uncomfortable questions regarding Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine, which the company kept revising.

An indemnity bond from India would entail exempting Pfizer from legal claims when it comes to side effects as a result of using the vaccine.

A video of Bourla surfaced of him being bombarded by questions regarding why Pfizer kept revising the effectiveness rate of its vaccine, which kept decreasing. The video was shared on social media by India's minister of state for technology, Rajeev Chandrasekhar. "Just to remind all Indians, that Pfizer tried to bully Govt of India into accepting conditions of indemnity," the minister said.

Bourla, who has been the CEO of Pfizer since 2019, evaded questions such as whether Pfizer intends to assume liability for the "ineffective vaccine's" side effects and whether he would issue refunds to countries that purchased it. The CEO merely replied with the phrases "Thank you very much" and "Have a nice day."

It was reported that the medical company made a massive amount of money off COVID-19 vaccines in 2021.

According to the Hindustan Times, Pfizer sought an indemnity bond from India when it began to roll out in the country, which is actually the world's biggest vaccine manufacturer. The indemnity bond would entail exempting Pfizer from legal claims when it comes to side effects as a result of using the vaccine.

https://english.almayadeen.net/news/hea ... t-of-covid

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US COVID-19 censorship

According to Twitter Files, under the pretext of containing the spread of covid-related fake news, the US actively censored Covid-related information regardless of its truth value

The US government has reportedly cooperated with Big Tech firms and other third parties to censor covid-related data online, according to journalist Matt Taibbi citing the latest release of Twitter Files.

Taibi said this enterprise was part of the Virality Project which was conducted by federal agencies in cooperation with state-funded non-governmental organizations and Stanford University. The proclaimed objective of the Virality Project was to monitor alleged disinformation related to COVID-19.

The project was first pitched to Twitter by Stanford in February 2021, shortly after US President Joe Biden took office, Taibbi revealed.

“On February 5, 2021, just after Joe Biden took office, Stanford wrote to Twitter to discuss the Virality Project. By the 17th, Twitter agreed to join and got its first weekly report on ‘anti-vax disinformation’ which contained numerous true stories” Taibbi explained in a Twitter thread.

"We’ve since learned the Virality Project in 2021 worked with the government to launch a pan-industry monitoring plan for COVID-related content," Taibbi tweeted. "Government, academia, and an oligopoly of would-be corporate competitors organized quickly behind a secret, unified effort to control political messaging."

According to Taibbi, the Virality Project was vetting covid-related content on a large scale for Twitter, Google, Medium, and TikTok. Taibbi claimed that while the project did vet out disinformation, it also vetted information legitimate information and political opinions.

Taibbi explained that the gauge for vetting out disinformation since July 2020 was through assessing the information to be “demonstrably false” or an “assertion of fact”. However, true stories that were asserted to “fuel hesitancy” were assessed as misinformation, Taibbi added.

Taibbi cited an email from the Virality Project sent to Twitter assessing information about the adverse effects of the vaccine or news of countries prohibiting particular vaccines as misinformation.

"The Virality Project was specifically not based on ‘assertions of fact,’ but public submission to authority, acceptance of narrative, and pronouncements by figures like [former chief presidential medical advisor] Anthony Fauci," Taibbi said.

In a report released on April 26, 2022, the Virality Project urged the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to set up a center specializing in misinformation and disinformation. The Disinformation Governance Board was established the following day, according to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, but it was eventually discontinued following the harsh criticism that the board and its chair were subjected to.

The Office of the Surgeon General and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention were other federal partners in the Virality Project, Taibbi added.

During a hearing in Congress last week, Taibbi described the network of tech companies, government agencies, and private organizations involved in vetting information on social media as the "Censorship-Industrial Complex."

Posts found to contain misinformation, such as those about the history of COVID-19 or the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, would be flagged by the network. Twitter files have shown that the US government cooperates with Twitter to manufacture psyops.

Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter, is the mastermind behind the so-called Twitter Files. He has stated that he wants to demonstrate "what really happened" about behind-the-scenes content moderation choices at the social media business before he acquired it in October

Three journalists, Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, and Michael Shellenberger, have been delving into internal documents and conversations to highlight the company's decision-making process surrounding some high-profile actions, such as banning former President Donald Trump in January 2020. The Twitter Files have been released in bits and pieces throughout December.

https://english.almayadeen.net/news/pol ... o-covid-19

[Anthea]

US compensation scheme
Intended for healthcare professionals

Feature Vaccine Injury BMJ 2022; 377 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.o919 (Published 19 April 2022) Cite this as: BMJ 2022;377:o919

Patients and lawyers say that America’s system for covid vaccine injury claims is costly, opaque, and yet to issue a single payout. Maryanne Demasi reports

“My toes move constantly, 24 hours a day, uncontrollably back and forth,” says Chris Dreisbach, a 44 year old attorney who was admitted to hospital with debilitating neurological symptoms after a second dose of Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine in March 2021. “I often spend at least four hours a day in my bathtub, because a hot bath is the only way I can turn down this electrical sensation that pulses through me. The cognitive issues are worse. I used to pride myself on being able to get up in a courtroom and think on my feet. Now, I have this brain fog. It’s embarrassing.”

From his hospital bed Dreisbach began researching compensation schemes, only to discover that the US’s national Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) was not available to people injured by covid-19 vaccines. Instead he was forced to lodge a claim with a more costly, opaque, and less generous system that has yet to pay out on a single claim for covid vaccines. Senators, lawyers, doctors, and others such as Dreisbach are questioning why patients injured by vaccines are being routed into a scheme they view as inferior.

Two different schemes

The VICP was established as the result of a federal law known as the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, designed to provide compensation in the rare instances where an injury results from vaccination, while also shielding manufacturers from liability so that they continue to make the products. Funded by a $0.75 excise tax on each dose, this law is thought to have contributed to historically high levels of vaccine uptake in the US.1 It covers the majority of vaccines including routine childhood immunisations, but it is not available to people injured by covid vaccines.

When the US secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services declared a public health emergency in early 20202 this triggered the 2005 Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act, meaning that any injuries arising from covid countermeasures—including ventilators, antivirals, and vaccines—would instead have to be filed with the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP).

Critics say that the CICP is inferior to the VICP in terms of its payouts and the way claims are assessed. Only the most serious injuries and death are compensated, claims have to be made within a year after vaccination, and it has a higher burden of proof than the VICP. Loss of income under the CICP is limited to $50 000 (£38 250; €45 900) a year, and no compensation is included for pain or emotional distress. Under the VICP, payouts for lost wages are not capped, and compensation for pain and suffering is awarded up to $250 000.3

Since 1988 compensation has been awarded in 36% of the 24 909 claims filed under the VICP, with around $4.7bn paid out.4 In contrast, compensation has been awarded for just 0.4% of the 7547 claims filed under the CICP, with around $6m paid out.5 The vast majority (93%) of the claims handled by the CICP have been filed during the covid pandemic, of which 4097 relate to injuries or deaths from covid vaccines and 2959 relate to other covid countermeasures.

To date, only one of the covid claims has been deemed compensable,5 although no money has been paid yet. In contrast, Thailand’s National Health Security Office reports compensating over 14 000 people around $50m to settle covid vaccine injury claims through a process that promises quick financial assistance.6

Critics also say that the CICP is less transparent. The CICP is a “horrible programme,” says Peter Meyers, emeritus professor at George Washington University Law School in Washington, DC. “You basically submit your application for compensation, it’s then dealt with secretly, and you don’t have a right to have a lawyer paid for by the programme. You don’t have a right to a hearing. We have no idea how these cases are being processed . . . There is such a lack of transparency in this programme that it’s frightening.”

Unlike CICP claims, which are resolved by an administrative process, VICP claims are resolved by a judicial process. Meyers says, “Those are open proceedings: you have a right to a hearing before an independent special master [adjudicator], the court will pay for your lawyer, the court will pay for an expert witness to support you, and if you don’t like the result of that decision you can appeal to a court with judges—none of which you can do in the CICP.”

The CICP also has a higher burden of proof than the VICP. There must be “compelling, reliable, valid, medical and scientific evidence” that the vaccine directly caused the injury. As an attorney, Dreisbach knows that meeting this standard is virtually unattainable, especially as he has not received a definitive diagnosis. “If we don’t know what my medical condition exactly is, there is no possible way that I can prove that vaccination caused an unknown,” he says.

While Pfizer and Moderna’s covid vaccines are now both fully approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act governing the CICP does not distinguish between the vaccines that are fully approved and those authorised only for emergency use, says Katharine Van Tassel, professor of law at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. Covid vaccine injury claims will be considered under the VICP only after the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services declares an end to the public health emergency—and by then it will be too late for many people, she says.

Structural racism is built into the system, Van Tassel adds. “The majority of essential workers, who had to be vaccinated quickly, were individuals with low income, people of colour, your most vulnerable populations—and they are the very people who will not have access to the VICP,” she says.

The BMJ contacted the US Department of Health and Human Services and the Health Resources Administration for a response to these criticisms, but neither has responded.

Campaign for reform

A small group of US senators has been working towards reforming the CICP. On 11 March 2022 Senator Mike Lee introduced the Countermeasure Injury Compensation Amendment Bill co-sponsored by Senators Mike Braun, Ron Johnson, and Cindy Hyde-Smith. It suggests reforming the CICP so that its processes and payouts are comparable to the VICP. It also proposes creating a commission to identify injuries caused directly by a covid countermeasure and to allow previously rejected claims to be resubmitted.7

However, Van Tassel believes that a simpler solution exists: to route all covid vaccine injury claims through the existing VICP system. Meyers agrees, having called for a reform of the CICP for over a decade.

“It’s a mess, in my opinion,” he says. “I think the best thing that could happen is to transfer all the covid-19 cases out of the CICP and put them in the vaccine court [VICP], which is far superior, and add to the number of special masters who are deciding these cases to deal with the inevitable backlog of cases.”

Even with a move to the VICP, some argue that it will take considerable time for the system to function smoothly. Cody Meissner, professor of Paediatrics at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston and former chair of the federal advisory committee that provides oversight of the VICP, calls it a “wonderful programme” but is concerned that it may become clogged with claims that ultimately are not vaccine related.

“Poorly understood but unrelated adverse events may occur after any vaccine administration,” he explains. “Many post-vaccine events are not related to the vaccine and occur simply by coincidence.”

Usually, when vaccines are added to the VICP it relies on a body of literature about known adverse events to decide on compensation, says Meissner, adding, “I don’t know that we’re there yet with covid-19 vaccines.”

He also worries that lawyers with conflicts of interest are behind the push to move covid vaccine claims to the VICP, for their fees can be paid under the programme even if the claim is denied.

Still, Dreisbach is hoping for change. He is campaigning as a board member of React 19, a non-profit organisation creating a network of patients, doctors, and scientists to research the underlying causes of vaccine injury and advocate for legislative changes to achieve fair compensation for vaccine injury.8

“The covid vaccines have been fully approved by the FDA, recommended for children as young as 5 by the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention], and mandated by employers across the country,” he says. “It’s past time for our elected lawmakers to support the covid vaccine injured, just as they have those injured by other routine vaccinations covered by the VICP.”

“The system is broken”

After being vaccinated with the Johnson & Johnson covid vaccine on 14 March 2021 Michelle Zimmerman (fig 1), from Seattle, developed severe pain, loss of movement in her left arm, and problems with her cognition, memory, speech, and eyesight. Different specialists gave a primary diagnosis of a “severe vaccine reaction” (fig 2).

Unable to return to work as a high school leader, teacher, and education researcher and aided by parents who were taking care of her, she submitted medical reports to her insurance company. The insurer granted her claim, agreeing that the evidence proved that her disability began on the day she was vaccinated.

Zimmerman then prepared to apply for compensation through the CICP. Before submitting, she called administrators for clarity on what standards of proof were needed to show that her injuries were vaccine related. The CICP was unable to provide an answer, she tells The BMJ. “So, that was the first part that really concerned me,” she says. “If you don’t have a high level education or, like me, are going through severe cognitive vision problems, it’s incredibly excruciating and difficult to try to even get through the instructions of how you would establish proof—what would count and what doesn’t count.”

Zimmerman submitted her application on 1 October 2021 and received an automatic confirmation email. She then emailed administrators to get written confirmation of her submission, but she says that she was then left in limbo because the CICP does not provide a timeline for when claimants should expect to hear a response. After calling repeatedly to check the status of her claim, in November she received a phone call from a CICP administrator who told her that there was no record of her application.

She was horrified. As a researcher and author, she knew the importance of good governance around people’s medical records. “You don’t just lose things like that,” she says. She was told that it was not possible to talk to any supervisors and that the only route available was to resubmit her application.

But the CICP has a time limit: it accepts claims only if filed within a year of receiving a covid vaccine. “Had I not called and written so often, I would not have known that they lost all record of me until it was too late to resubmit,” she says. She has still not received a case number or written confirmation of her submission.

The experience has left her with little confidence in the system and with concern for others, especially disadvantaged groups. “If I can’t navigate the system with a PhD, what hope is there for someone else?” she asks. “You have no resources for attorney support. You have no one who has expertise who can go through medical journals for you. If I didn’t have disability insurance, I don’t know what I would do.”

Zimmerman believes that the system is “broken” and is calling for covid vaccines to be added to the VICP. She says, “So many of us who are injured received vaccines to protect others, for civic duty, and to decrease load on medical professionals, and now we are being called collateral damage because the CICP is not a functioning safeguard.”

[Anthea]

WHO pandemic treaty

Andrew Bridgen speaks in the debate on the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) pandemic prevention and preparedness treaty and accompanying amendments to the international health regulations, to raise his objections to signing up to treaties that would empower the WHO’s director-general to impose sweeping, legally binding directives on member states overriding UK sovereignty.

I welcome the opportunity to debate this topic. I have been calling for such a debate for some months and thank the 156,000 electors who have allowed us to have it.

The pandemic treaty must be viewed in conjunction with the proposed amendments to the international health regulations. As George Santayana said, those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them. I have some severe worries that the lessons of the last pandemic have not been learned by the WHO itself, and that we are in danger of giving it more powers to enable it to overreach itself and repeat those catastrophic mistakes.

I will start by talking about the WHO itself. As my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher) pointed out, it was founded in 1948 as a specialised agency of the United Nations responsible for international public health. It consists of 194 member states—basically the whole of the UN membership excluding Lichtenstein and the Holy See. It was based originally on a WHO constitution that is still there today, but that will be fundamentally changed by the two instruments that are in the pipeline following the covid-19 pandemic.

The WHO is domiciled in Geneva and so has special status. Its employees are exempt from tax and they and their families all have diplomatic immunity. It is indeed a supranational body, unelected and unaccountable. I think my constituents would fear that.

How is the WHO set up? Well, it has something called the World Health Assembly, which meets yearly in Geneva. The WHA is the legislative and supreme decision-making body of the WHO. It elects the secretary general and the executive board and votes on the policy of the WHO. The current chairperson of the World Health Assembly of the WHO is a gentleman by the name of Harsh Vardhan. In 2021, the Indian Medical Association—the Indian version of the BMA, and the largest association of doctors in India—issued a statement objecting to Vardhan, who was endorsing Coronil, a product that was being made in India.

The IMA questioned the ethics of the Health Minister—Dr Vardhan was the Health Minister of India at that time—in the release of a fabricated and unscientific product on to the people of India. He has since gone on to become chairperson of the WHA, which will preside over this new treaty, which will sit before every Government in the world. Given that he resigned from the Cabinet in India over that controversy, whyever has he been trusted with greater responsibility? It seems that he has failed upwards, like many at the WHO and the WHA.

The original ideals of the WHO were completely laudable. The WHO is to serve the health of the people, governed by its member states, which will implement health policy in the interests of their people. Under article 3 of the international health regulations—before they are amended—state sovereignty and the rule of law will be respected. People’s self-determination will be fully respected. All human rights, conventions and other Acts that countries have joined up to will be respected. That is protected under article 54 of the original regulations on human rights.

Who is funding the WHO now? It is funded like many of our regulators in the UK: the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency is 86% funded by industry sources, and the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, in its members’ personal declarations, declared more than £1 billion of interests in big pharma, the thing it was set up to regulate. That undermines public confidence. The WHO is no longer anything like majority-funded by its member states—the ones it is seeking to control. It is 86% funded by external sources.

I am not sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) is correct. The UK is not the second-largest donor, but the third-largest. The second-largest donor after Germany is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and I think Gavi is the fifth, so if we add those together, they are the biggest donors to the WHO. We have to ask: why are they doing this? They are also the biggest investors in pharmaceuticals and the experimental mRNA technology that proved so profitable for those who proposed and produced it during the last pandemic. Indeed, the WHO said that the contributions of member states to WHO funds

“have been capped and today account for only 16% of WHO’s total budget”,

“an increasing share of funding to WHO coming as voluntary contributions where donors direct funding according to their priorities.”

Well, their priorities might well not be the priorities of my constituents in North West Leicestershire, or the electorate in the UK, but he who pays the piper calls the tune.

The WHO is promoting the influence of private-public partnerships. It promotes that on its websites to the point where it is pay to play. Anyone can buy influence at the WHO; it will just cost them money. When it comes to consulting, the WHO’s own internal report—its survey evaluation in its final report on 23 May 2022—said that the various interest groups have more input to WHO policy than the member states. The WHO’s own figures say that the member states only participation was 40% of the input, whereas 60% came from non-member states and 276 stakeholders.

It is clear that there is a strong external influence on the policy of the WHO, an entity whose amendments to the International Health Regulations and the pandemic treaty will come to pass by May 2024 if this House does nothing and does not vote. Doing nothing is not an option: it will not go away.

The WHO’s intermediate study says that the WHO is an international organisation created as a sub-agency of the United Nations for the objective of obtaining the “highest possible level of health” for all people, but at what cost? What cost democracy? What cost to individual freedoms? It is now 80% funded by non-member states, and it is heavily influenced. During the pandemic, it took extra powers, such as the fact that it could define information. It took on a position—and this will be enacted in law, and binding, in those two new instruments —that the WHO has the ability to say what is disinformation.

When anybody says that the science is settled on any issue, I suggest that this House would smell a rat straight away. The science is never settled: it is always open for modification and for new things to be discovered and theses to be refined. The WHO is saying that it will be the arbiter of what the science is, and that cannot be right. It is a bit like someone saying that the market has changed—well, in my experience it never has. That is a huge grab of power. The two instruments—the pandemic treaty and the amendments to the international health regulations—are progressing in parallel.

I am really worried whether colleagues have actually read the treaty, because clearly when we take out the words “not binding” through an amendment, it becomes binding. These are binding treaties: if we do nothing, they are binding—legally binding across all the nations. They bring in an idea called “One Health”, which extends the ability of the director-general of the WHO to call a public health emergency of international concern—which, incidentally, is abbreviated to FAKE. It says that he can bring in these powers on the suspicion or risk of an international incident. It does not even have to be a pathogen affecting humans; it can affect animals. It could be because of the environment or an increase in the levels of carbon dioxide.

I suggest that right hon. and hon. Members read the treaty. It is a massive extension of powers. At the drop of a hat, one man—Mr Tedros—can call for massive powers for the WHO. Not only will he call for them; when he takes the powers, he will decide when the pandemic or emergency is over and when he will give the powers back to this House, where elected representatives are supposed to be representing the interests of our constituents. All that will be suspended.

While we are talking about Mr Tedros, I remind the House that this gentleman will be deciding the fate of the world, because it will be in his gift to declare emergencies. Look at the conduct of the WHO during the recent Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where 83 individuals who were working for the WHO sexually abused local women, including the sexual assault of a 13-year-old girl. It was all covered up. There was a leaked document from the WHO, which would have been in front of Mr Tedros’s committee.

A confidential UN report submitted to the WHO last month concluded that the managers’ handling of a case did not violate WHO sexual exploitation policies because the woman concerned was not a beneficiary of WHO aid, as she did not receive any humanitarian support. That is completely unacceptable, if those are the rules of an organisation that will be deciding whether my constituents are locked down for six months or three months, and whether they can go and see their grannies. I do not think it is acceptable.

The proposed new treaties would compress the mandatory reporting time for Governments to report a possible risk to public health to the WHO to 72 hours, and Mr Tedros will make a decision. That is far too little time for any meaningful research to be done on what the real risk is, and it would potentially lead to lots of false alarms and unnecessary disruption.

The two proposed instruments seek to take huge powers away from this Parliament and every other Parliament around the world, and they need to be considered very carefully. Sticking our heads in the sand will not do it, and it will not do for my constituents. If we have learned anything from the vote that we had in 2016, it is that people in this country do not want to be ruled by unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats, and there is no one more unaccountable and unelected than people in the WHO. They do not pay tax, and they and their families have immunity from prosecution because they have diplomatic immunity. They are also under the huge financial interests of whoever wishes to fund them.

Many experts are now saying that the two proposed instruments would fundamentally reset the relationship between citizens and sovereign states—not just in this country, but around the whole world. The WHO is an unelected, unaccountable and top-down supranational body, and the treaties would empower its director-general to impose sweeping, legally binding directions on member states. The WHO would have the power to force companies in this country or any other country to manufacture certain medical treatments and to export them to other countries. It would have the power to shut down any business in this country, regardless of what local people think or even what this Parliament thinks.

The proposed treaties would take away all the protections that being in a democracy offers, and they would take away article 3 of the original WHO constitution, which is about respect for human rights and dignity. That would be replaced by a bland statement saying that there will be equity, which means that everyone would be treated equally. It also means that there would be only one solution to any international problem around the world, which would lead to an all-or-nothing situation whereby if the WHO got it right—if I had time, I would go into everything it got wrong in the last pandemic—maybe we would be okay. But if the WHO got it wrong, the whole of humanity would get it wrong. There would be no competition. If there was only one car manufacturer and only one solution, I am not sure it would be the best car that we could ever have. Competition between nations for solutions is a good thing.

I have grave concerns about the two proposed instruments, and about who is running and controlling the WHO. It would be foolish not to see that pharmaceutical giants have huge influence over the direction of the WHO, with their lobbying power. Like many multinational corporations, their size and scale supersedes national Governments, with over 80% of the WHO budget now specified funding, and they have the ability to direct policy. I think it is fair to say that we are drifting away from the WHO’s original and noble ethos of promoting a democratic, holistic approach and co-operation on public health.

The WHO let us down over covid in its response. In January 2020, as has been pointed out, it was still telling us that there was no person-to-person transmission of the virus. That was wrong. It then prescribed lockdowns and mass vaccination during the pandemic, which drove mutations. The pandemic response of the WHO and national Governments should be a cautionary tale about the impact on citizens of handing power to the state. It should certainly not be a template for going further and faster in signing away rights and liberties.

The pandemic response brutally illustrated that the profit-optimised version of the greater good pursued by the WHO often clashes with children’s health. Before I spoke out on 13 December on the risks of the experimental mRNA vaccines, the MHRA was looking to authorise the vaccination of children down to the age of six months in this country. I am very grateful that the Government listened and that we did not do that. Indeed, it was pushed back to people over 50 and, after my speech on 17 March, I am delighted that the Government put it back to only those over 75. In a few months, that is a huge difference from trying to vaccinate everybody. If we were all under one rule, we would be doing exactly the opposite of what this country has individually decided to do.

While we are on the subject of opaque, undemocratic organisations, it is interesting to see what the EU is doing. The EU thinks that we need to strengthen all this. Not only will the WHO be allowed to have a department of misinformation, which will be the arbiter of what the truth is during an emergency, but the EU will adopt exactly the same policy and have its own such department, so that in a pandemic there will be only one version of the truth. That is not very good for science, is it?

The One Health approach is a whole-society approach. The WHO will have the ability to mobilise every aspect of our society. Once it calls those emergencies, it will be able to keep them going. It will have control over absolutely every aspect of our citizens’ lives. This is absolutely massive. There is no more important treaty. Of course, were we to give away such powers—I would never vote to do so—we should have a referendum, because sovereignty belongs to the people. It is not ours to give away; we know that from the referendum in 2016. I hope that the House listens very carefully and reads these documents.

Hansard

Andrew’s interventions in the same debate
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Ind)

The hon. Gentleman is right that he is elected by his constituents to speak on their behalf. But when it comes to the matter of sovereignty, surely it lies with the people? Like me, the hon. Gentleman is only a custodian of that sovereignty for a brief period of time, after which it must be returned intact to the people who elected him so that they can elect someone else if necessary. When it comes to giving sovereignty away, that has to go back to the people and it requires a referendum. The people will decide whether they wish to give their sovereignty away.
Nick Fletcher (Don Valley) (Con)

I thank the hon. Gentleman and I will now come on to his point. Is holding a referendum the right tool for now? We had one in Scotland; this was widely accepted on all sides to be a once-in-a-generation referendum. Those who lost have ever since pushed for another referendum. The same happened over Brexit; it consumed the nation. Referendums are divisive; they polarise positions and leave a lasting legacy of division. Whether a referendum is appropriate is for the Government to decide, and if they think it is, they must make all the facts known. I suggest that petitioners, while playing their part in the education process, must do so in a sensible manner. I have no time for conspiracy theories.

Hansard
Andrew Bridgen

Has the right hon. Gentleman read the pandemic treaty proposed by the WHO, and has he read the amendments to the international health regulations that have to be looked at alongside that very important document?
John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)

The request was for a treaty to be drawn up—it has not been finalised yet—under the previous Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson). Is that what we are talking about? This is going into fantasy land. Unfortunately, as we saw during the pandemic, the ability to get coherence across countries, even to move vaccines, is difficult and there is a need to move at speed. This was a covid pandemic, but it could equally have been an avian influenza pandemic. Indeed, there are a huge number of similarities.
Andrew Bridgen

The right hon. Gentleman says there is a need to move at speed. Does he agree that Pfizer moved at the speed of science, to the effect that it never even tested whether the vaccine actually stopped transmission or contraction of the virus? This House mandated people to lose their jobs for not taking a vaccine that was unproven and unsafe, and that was actually never going to stop them transmitting the virus.
John Spellar

It certainly was not unproven or unsafe, and it had a huge beneficial impact across the world. Unfortunately, we have some people—a very limited number, but we all get letters on this issue—who wallow in the realm of conspiracy theories. Indeed, we have just had another example.

Hansard
Andrew Bridgen

My right hon. Friend is making a great and informed speech. Are she and the Chamber aware that WHO has extended the public health emergency of international concern every six months since January 2020? As far as WHO is concerned, we are still in an emergency? Once the treaties are in place, it would decide when an emergency is over and it would return those powers to us.
Esther McVey (Tatton) (Con)

I thank my hon. Friend for saying those words on the Floor of the House, so that they can be documented in Hansard.

Hansard
Andrew Bridgen

My hon. Friend is a stalwart for those who have been vaccine harmed and vaccine bereaved, and he is making a great contribution. Does he agree that the WHO has let us all down very badly with its unilateral decision not to investigate where the virus originated? If we could find the labs in which it was developed, and if we could find those who authorised it and funded it and bring them criminally to account, that would surely be the best way of dissuading anyone from again carrying out this sort of action, which has caused so much harm around the world.
Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, which is a question that I was going to pose and seek to answer. One of the issues is that China has a lot to cover up. If it is not covering it up, why is it not allowing people to investigate exactly what happened at Wuhan? Why is it not co-operating with the World Health Organisation? The answer is that, in a sense, the World Health Organisation is now subservient to China.

Hansard
Andrew Bridgen

Without wishing to be accused of being a conspiracy theorist, can I just spin a scenario to my hon. Friend? Imagine a nightmare situation in which the House ignored the two new instruments from the WHO, and then some time in the next 12 months before they are ratified in May 2024 there happens to be another release from a lab—another pandemic—and then both Houses of Parliament were given no time to debate the two instruments before ratification. Should we not avoid that nightmare situation by having that debate now?
Sir Christopher Chope

I agree with my hon. Friend, as I almost always do. Prevention is better than cure. Why would we want to give up control over all these issues by signing up to this treaty?

Hansard
Andrew Bridgen

My right hon. Friend says that amendments are being brought forward on the basis of lessons learnt, but does she not agree that WHO has refused to have an investigation into how it handled itself or into its recommendations during the pandemic? How can we have knowledge where it went right or wrong if it will not have a review of its own performance?
The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Anne-Marie Trevelyan)

I think we have all looked closely at that. My hon. Friend highlights a question, but the whole point of the negotiations and discussions is that all member states bring their expertise and experiences to the party. As I said, the UK is at the heart of those negotiations and will look to ensure that, if a text is found that can be agreed by all member states, it is one that will meet some of those challenges and the lessons learnt that we have all identified as individual states and working together in many ways as an international community, as we have done. Importantly, once those amendments are identified, accepting them would require changes to our domestic law through legislation in the usual way. As has been discussed at some length, we are of course a sovereign state in control of whether we enter into international agreements.

Hansard

https://www.andrewbridgen.com/parliamen ... mic-treaty

[Anthea]

MP expelled by Tories

The Conservative Party has expelled MP Andrew Bridgen after he compared Covid-19 vaccines to the Holocaust and was found to have breached lobbying rules

The member for North West Leicestershire had already lost the party whip, meaning he was sitting as an independent.

But the Tories have now stripped him of his party membership as well.

Mr Bridgen said his expulsion "confirms the culture of corruption, collusion and cover-ups".

A Conservative Party spokesman said Mr Bridgen was expelled "following the recommendation of a disciplinary panel".

He has 28 days, from the date of his expulsion on 12 April, to appeal.

Mr Bridgen's vaccine comments were condemned by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak

Mr Bridgen said he intended to stand again at the next election.

"My expulsion from the Conservative Party under false pretences only confirms the culture of corruption, collusion and cover-ups which plagues our political system," he said in a statement.

"I have been a vocal critic of the vaccine rollout and the party have been sure to make an example of me.

"I am grateful for my newfound freedom and will continue to fight for justice for all those harmed, injured and bereaved due to governmental incompetence.

"I will continue to serve my constituents as I was elected to do and intend to stand again at the next election."

'Careless and cavalier'

In December he called in Parliament for a "complete suspension" of the vaccines based on what he described as, "robust data of significant harms and little ongoing benefit".

He lost the whip in January after posting a tweet describing the Covid vaccine roll-out as "the biggest crime against humanity since the Holocaust".

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak condemned the comments as "utterly unacceptable".

Earlier that month, he was handed a five-day suspension for breaking the MPs' code of conduct banning lobbying.

The cross-party Commons Standards Committee found Mr Bridgen had breached rules by failing to declare his financial interests in Mere Plantations when writing to ministers about the company.

The Cheshire-based firm had donated money to Mr Bridgen's local party and funded a trip to Ghana.

Following an investigation, the committee concluded the MP had shown a "careless and cavalier" attitude to the rules.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-l ... e-65402195

[Anthea]

Changes in Brain Function

Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) published in the journal Neurology an study showing that those patients who experience Long COVID have been found to have abnormal brain activity

Long COVID sufferers who experience brain fog, memory issues or other neuropsychiatric symptoms for months after a COVID-19 diagnosis have abnormal brain activity during memory tests on functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

The UMSOM researches hold that Long COVID accompanied with neurological symptoms was associated with less activity in certain brain regions normally used for memory tasks but more activity in other areas of the brain.

"The greater activity occurred outside of the normal working memory brain network. We often see such changes in patients with a brain injury: Deficits in the default mode network of the brain leads to an increase in activity in other regions to help maintain brain function," said study leader Linda Chang, professor of diagnostic radiology and nuclear medicine at UMSOM.

Just to be clear, the WHO thinks we’re heading for a mass disabling event.

“An estimated one in 10 infections results in post-Covid conditions suggesting that hundreds of millions of people will need longer term care”#SARSCoV2 #LongCovid pic.twitter.com/ujnza1KCrD
— Gina (@Saffiya_Khan1) April 27, 2023

"While our study doesn't prove that COVID caused these brain changes, there appears to be a strong association with these changes and lingering neuropsychiatric symptoms," she said, adding that the research team performed functional MRI scans on 29 patients who had COVID-19 an average of seven months earlier.

Nine of them were hospitalized for their illness. Each patient had at least one ongoing neuropsychiatric symptom like memory loss, depression, or anxiety. The study group was matched with a control group of 21 people with no known history of COVID infection.

The Long COVID group did have poorer scores on tests of dexterity and motor endurance than the non-COVID group. They also reported more negative feelings, such as anger and sadness, and higher levels of stress, and they had lower scores for life satisfaction compared to those who never had COVID.

In addition, they had higher scores for depression, anxiety, fatigue and pain than the control group, according to the study.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Lon ... -0010.html