Author Archives: stuartbramhall

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About stuartbramhall

Retired child and adolescent psychiatrist and American expatriate in New Zealand. In 2002, I made the difficult decision to close my 25-year Seattle practice after 15 years of covert FBI harassment. I describe the unrelenting phone harassment, illegal break-ins and six attempts on my life in my 2010 book The Most Revolutionary Act: Memoir of an American Refugee.

Trans Lobbyists Angry UK NHS Has BANNED Puberty Blockers For Kids

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England halts puberty blockers for children, adolescents - Rebel News

Steve Watson

Transgender lobbyists are upset that the National Health Service in the UK has announced that children will no longer be given puberty blocker prescriptions following conclusions by health experts that there are serious safety concerns.

The NHS commissioned the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) to review the published evidence on Gonadotrophin Releasing Hormone Analogues (GnRHa), AKA puberty blockers, which prevent the body from making sex hormones.

An NHS England policy document published Tuesday noted “NHS England has carefully considered the evidence review conducted by NICE (2020) and has identified and reviewed any further published evidence available to date.”

“We have concluded that there is not enough evidence to support the safety or clinical effectiveness of PSH (puberty suppressing hormones) to make the treatment routinely available at this time,” the document further noted.

Gender dysphoria treatment will continue on the government run health service in the UK, however puberty blockers will now only be used in clinical trials by following the decision.

The investigation was undertaken after the number of children being referred to Gender Identity Development Service in the UK, which prescribes puberty blockers, shot up from 250 kids in 2012 to more than 5,000 in 2022.

As we highlighted last year, The number of children placed on puberty blockers for ‘gender affirming care’ doubled in the UK in a year despite the NHS saying it would stop the practice.

At least 100 children, some as young as 12, have been given the drugs since July 2022 regardless of the NHS’ decision that month to stop doing so based on a damning review by Dr Hilary Cass, former president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health.

Dr Cass warned that puberty blockers could permanently disrupt the brain development of adolescents, and irreversibly rewire neural circuits.

Cass also charged that Tavistock clinic, where the ‘treatment’ is carried out, operates an “affirmative, non-exploratory approach”, diagnosing children with gender dysphoria without proper oversight.

Other critics have charged that the NHS was practising ‘gay conversion therapy’ by using the drugs on children.

Commenting on the NHS decision to ban the drugs, health minister Maria Caulfield said “We welcome this landmark decision by the NHS to end the routine prescription of puberty blockers and this guidance which recognises that care must be based on evidence, expert clinical opinion and in the best interests of the child.”

“The NHS must ensure its Gender Identity Services protect, support and act in the best interests of children and we will continue to work with NHS England to protect children in this area,” she added.

Former prime minister Liz Truss urged that the ban should also be applied to private practices, calling on the government to back her amendment to the Health and Equality Acts Bill to make the prescription of puberty blockers to children completely illegal in the UK.

“I welcome NHS England’s decision to end the routine prescription of puberty blockers to children for gender dysphoria,” she said, adding “I urge the Government to back my Bill on Friday which will reinforce this in law and also prevent these drugs being supplied privately.”

Transgender activists criticised the NHS move, with advocacy group Stonewall stating “All trans young people deserve access to high quality, timely healthcare.”

The group went on to falsely claim that puberty blockers are reversible, stating “For some, an important part of this care comes in the form of puberty blockers, a reversible treatment that delays the onset of puberty, prescribed by expert endocrinologists, giving the young person extra time to evaluate their next steps. We are concerned that NHS England will be putting new prescriptions on hold until a research protocol is up and running at the end of 2024.”

Trans activists also took to social media to complain that confused children will no longer have puberty blockers prescribed to them on the NHS, encouraging people to sue the ‘far right’ health service and go private instead, and claiming that “cis kids” will still get puberty blockers prescribed to them.

[…]

Via https://modernity.news/2024/03/13/trans-lobbyists-angry-that-uk-nhs-has-banned-puberty-blockers-for-kids/

CDC Pushes Seniors to Take More Covid Booster Shots Every Four Months

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SLOW EUTHANASIA: CDC pushing more COVID “booster” shots on people 65 and older: “every four months”

Dr Eddy Betterman

There is another new Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) “vaccine” they are calling a “booster,” 2023-2024 edition, that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) wants all seniors over the age of 65 to get this year.

The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) panel says older adults need immediate protection from “the increased risk of severe disease from COVID-19,” and that they can achieve this by getting jabbed with the latest chemical shots from the pharmaceutical industry.

In a February 28 press release, the CDC says its new recommendation is based on “the currently available data on vaccine effectiveness,” which allegedly points to the newest boosters providing solid protection for the elderly against the latest Chinese Virus strains.

“Adults 65 years and older are disproportionately impacted by COVID-19, with more than half of COVID-19 hospitalizations during October 2023 to December 2023 occurring in this age group,” the CDC claims.

“Data continues to show the importance of vaccination to protect those most at risk for severe outcomes of COVID-19. An additional dose of the updated COVID-19 vaccine may restore protection that has waned since a fall vaccine dose, providing increased protection to adults ages 65 years and older.”

(Related: No matter how much you’ve been injured by COVID jabs, the CDC still wants you to keep getting jabbed with every new “booster.”)

CDC fearmongering yet again

Some members of the CDC advisory panel were unhappy with the initial recommendation, not because it went too far and is based on pseudoscience but rather because, in their opinion, it did not go far enough in scaring old people to take the latest booster.

The first proposed guidance was merely a recommendation that elderly folks may want to get the newest boosters. Some CDC panel members argued that the recommendation needed stronger language instructing people 65 and older that they should get the latest boosters, otherwise they might get sick and die.

In the end, the panel voted 11-1 to use stronger, scarier-sounding wording after CDC Director Dr. Mandy Cohen decided it sounded best, arguing that it would light a fire under the feet of old people to better scare them into taking the new injections, no questions asked.

“Most COVID-19 deaths and hospitalizations last year were among people 65 years and older,” Cohen claimed about why she supported the stronger recommendation. “An additional vaccine dose can provide added protection that may have decreased over time for those at highest risk.”

What Cohen conveniently failed to bring up is a new study out of Japan that warns about the dangers of the newest boosters. That study determined that there is insufficient evidence to back pushing these new shots on older adults.

“The real driver behind all this decision making is generating and following the money,” wrote one skeptical commenter about why the CDC continues to lie to the public about the deadly shots.

“If you can’t earn it, then get yourself into a niche where you can make it legal to steal it from those who do earn it while eliminating the rest. That’s where we’re at now.”

“Actually, this is also about population control,” responded another. “The CDC is guilty of crimes against humanity. I wonder if anyone will ever do something about it … I seriously doubt it.”

“They don’t even care anymore that we know they’re trying to kill us,” said another. “I guess they didn’t reach their elderly death goal the first time around, so now they’re pushing yet another round of these poison shots.”

[…]

Via https://dreddymd.com/2024/03/13/cdc-pushing-covid-booster-shots-elderly-65/

Canada, Sweden Restore UNRWA Funds as Report Accuses Israel of Torturing Agency Staff

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UNRWA -funded school detroyed in Gaza
(Photo by Said Khatib/AFP via Getty Images)

 

Jon Queally

“The work that UNWRA does cannot be overstated,” said Canadian lawmaker Salma Zahid. “It will save lives as we have seen the visuals of children dying of hunger in Gaza. The need for immediate aid is non-negotiable.”

The governments of Canada and Sweden have announced they will resume funding for the United Nation’s agency that provides humanitarian aide and protection to Palestinians living in Gaza and elsewhere—a move that other powerful nations, including Israel’s most powerful ally the United States, continue to refuse.

Calling the lack of humanitarian relief inside Gaza “catastrophic,” Canadian Minister of International Development Ahmed Hussen said Friday his nation would restore funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in order to help address the “dire” situation on the ground living.

Sweden made its announcement Saturday and said a $20 million disbursement would be made to help UNRWA regain its financial footing.

The restoration of funds follows weeks of global criticism and protest for the decision by many Western nations to withhold UNRWA funds after Israel claimed, without presenting evidence, that a few members of the agency—the largest employer in the Gaza Strip—had participated in the Hamas-led attacks of October 7.

As a result, UNRWA has said it’s ability to provide aid and services to Gaza—where over 100,000 people have been killed or wounded in five months of constant bombardment and blockade by the Israeli military—has been pushed to the “breaking point” as malnutrition and starvation has been documented among the displaced population of over 2 million people.

“Canada is resuming its funding to UNRWA so more can be done to respond to the urgent needs of Palestinian civilians,” Hussen said. “Canada will continue to take the allegations against some of UNRWA’s staff extremely seriously and we will remain closely engaged with UNRWA and the UN to pursue accountability and reforms.”

“I welcome Canada lifting the pause on funding for UNWRA,” said Canadian MP Salma Zahid, a member of the Liberal party representing Scarborough Centre in the House of Commons. “The work that UNWRA does cannot be overstated. It will save lives as we have seen the visuals of children dying of hunger in Gaza. The need for immediate aid is non-negotiable.”

Earlier this week, UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini told a special meeting of the U.N. General Assembly the agency was “facing a deliberate and concerted campaign” by Israel “to undermine its operations, and ultimately end them.”

On Friday, Reutersreported on an internal UNRWA report that included testimony of employees who said they were tortured by Israeli officers while in detention to make false admissions about involvement in the October 7 attack.

According to the reporting:

UNRWA communications director Juliette Touma said the agency planned to hand the information in the 11-page, unpublished report to agencies inside and outside the U.N. specialised in documenting potential human rights abuses.

“When the war comes to an end there needs to be a series of inquiries to look into all violations of human rights,” she said.

The document said several UNRWA Palestinian staffers had been detained by the Israeli army, and added that the ill-treatment and abuse they said they had experienced included severe physical beatings, waterboarding, and threats of harm to family members.

Michael Bueckert vice president of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, said the new report was “more evidence that Canada’s political decision to suspend UNRWA funding was based on false allegations obtained through torture.”

“While the resumption of UNRWA aid is certainly welcome,” said Bueckert, “there needs to be accountability for the harm that Canada’s actions have caused.”

[…]

Via https://www.commondreams.org/news/unrwa-funding-2667469058

How Raw Milk Went From a Whole Foods Staple to a Conservative Signal

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State Sen. Jason Schultz, right, mingles during recess inside the Iowa Senate chamber.

State Sen. Jason Schultz was a driving force in getting raw milk legalized in Iowa. | Meg McLaughlin/The Register

By Marc Novicoff

The poles of American politics have become scrambled. Just look at unpasteurized milk.

In 2008, as he was running for the Iowa House of Representatives, Jason Schultz was stunned to learn dairy farmers could get in trouble for selling milk.

A local farmer had shown him the cease-and-desist letter he had received from the Iowa Department of Agriculture for selling milk straight from his cows to his friends and neighbors without pasteurizing it — heating it to kill bacteria — first.

So one of the first things Schultz, a Republican, did upon winning was introduce a bill to legalize the sale of so-called raw milk. The bill went nowhere, which wasn’t much of a surprise in a Legislature controlled by the opposite party, though almost no one in either party was interested in fighting a small army of big dairy lobbyists and public health officials who lectured about the dangers of potentially fatal bacteria. Moreover, the state had a long-standing prohibition on the sale of raw milk; indeed, in 1980, Iowa jailed 37-year old dairy farmer Delbert Banowetz for 30 days for the offense.

But Schultz wouldn’t give up, pushing the bill year after year. Very slowly over time he attracted supporters like Esther Arkfeld, a homeschooling mom and dairy owner turned grassroots leader who argued raw milk had health benefits and could help small farmers, too. Last May, Schultz’s bill finally passed, legalizing the sale of raw milk directly from farm to consumer. The vote — 37 to 13 in the Senate and 64 to 35 in the House — wasn’t particularly close.

What changed since 2008 is a vivid example of a larger upheaval in American politics. The Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still say raw milk is dangerous and the state dairy lobby sent lobbyists to the Iowa Capitol to defeat Schultz’s bill. But Iowa has flipped — it’s a Republican state now, from the presidential vote to the governor’s office to the near-supermajority Legislature — and that flip has occurred alongside even larger shifts in national politics, spurred on by the rise of Donald Trump. With Trump has come a new GOP electorate, one more rural, more working class, less ideological and generally more distrustful of lobbyists, big business and “the experts.” And that has been a big help for a cause that is bucking just about every one of those groups.

Long a fringe health food for new-age hippies and fad-chasing liberal foodies, raw milk has won over the hearts and minds of GOP legislators and regulators in the last few years. (The Iowa vote broke almost perfectly along party lines with nearly all Republicans in favor and only a handful of Democrats defecting to their side.) And it’s not just in Iowa. Montana, North Dakota, Alaska, Georgia and Wyoming all have passed laws (or changed regulations) since 2020 legalizing the sale of raw milk on farms or in stores.

Before the late 19th century, there was only raw milk. But as the turn of the century approached, scientists began heating milk to eliminate dangerous bacteria, just as Louis Pasteur had demonstrated you could do with wine.

It couldn’t have come soon enough in America. By the 1920 census, America had become a majority-urban country. People moving to cities still wanted to drink milk, and the market provided — with smelly, bacteria-infested urban dairies. Many of these dairies were attached to distilleries, where cows could eat the waste left over from making whiskey and other alcohol. The so-called swill milk that was produced teemed with so much bacteria it was estimated to have killed 8,000 infants in New York City in a single year.

Progressivism was also on the rise at the turn of the 20th century, with the widespread belief that science would help build a safer and healthier country. Naturally, when milk pasteurization was proven to be effective, city officials rushed to adopt it. New York City was first to mandate pasteurization in 1910. Other cities quickly followed suit, and states began to ban the sale of raw milk as well. At first, the added cost of pasteurization would have frustrated the dairy industry, but eventually the additional standards came to be appreciated by the industry’s biggest players. After all, pasteurization gave them an edge over smaller dairies that couldn’t afford pasteurization machinery, while simultaneously allowing them to have low cleanliness standards without risking harm to the consumer. The final and biggest blow to raw milk came nearly 80 years later when a federal judge ruled in favor of the Ralph Nader-founded advocacy group, Public Citizen, and banned all interstate sales of raw milk.

But raw milk never disappeared, and in the early 2000s, it started to make a comeback.

It wasn’t hard to understand why. After decades of highly processed foods, skyrocketing obesity rates and a glut of ingredients impossible to pronounce, some consumers began to seek out food they understood to be natural, healthy and better for the planet. By 2001, the organic food market in the United States was valued at $8 billion; it’s now $63 billion. Raw milk, its enthusiasts claim, contains probiotics, enzymes, and vitamins that are reduced, damaged, or made inactive by the pasteurization process. (The FDA disagrees, in a 10,000-word post on its website.) Some other raw milk drinkers just prefer the creamier, sweeter taste.

In the 2000s, there was never any question what slice of the political spectrum this organic food revolution belonged to: liberals, of course.

[…]

Whole Foods, the expensive natural-vibe grocery store that sold raw milk at the time, was an unquestionable winner of the era. (The chain was so popular with Democrats that Dave Wasserman, an election analyst at the Cook Political Report, came up with an easy way of predicting an election: the counties with a Whole Foods voted for the Democrat and the counties with a Cracker Barrel voted for the Republican.) The New York Times wrote an article in 2010 about raw milk (one of many sympathetic articles from that time period) that put raw milk consumption alongside other “food movements picking up steam in America — organic, buy local, vegan, vegetarian, and the like.”

David Gumpert, a former BusinessWeek columnist and Wall Street Journal reporter, wrote extensively about raw milk during this era. His book, Raw Milk Revolution, chronicled the battle between state regulators and farmers who were willing to break the law to give “health-conscious consumers” what they want at a price far higher than they could fetch from a dairy distributor. Gumpert was, and is, an advocate for drinking raw milk, and his writings lambasting over-regulation of the product were published in unquestionably left-leaning outlets like The Nation and Grist.

So how did raw milk go from the darling of the organic liberals, deserving of sympathetic coverage in the New York Times, the Washington Post and the New Yorker, to the conservative culture war signal that is a sweetheart of deep-red state legislatures?

Two things happened at once.

First, liberal elites gave up on it. Iowa Democrats overwhelmingly voted against the raw milk bill; it no longer gets sympathetic coverage in the New York Times, Washington Post, the New Yorker, Grist or The Nation. Whole Foods no longer sells it (although Erewhon now does), and perhaps fittingly, Whole Foods is now owned by Amazon, the trillion-dollar retailer whose employees donated overwhelmingly to Joe Biden over Donald Trump. Covid is sure to have played a role here, the era where many liberals internalized that trusting the experts distinguished them from Trump and those they considered anti-science (or worse, anti-vax). One study found that whether a school planned to reopen in the fall of 2020 was much more related to its county’s support for Trump in 2016 than it was to local Covid numbers.

At the same time, conservatives discovered that raw milk fit neatly inside a worldview that was increasingly skeptical of credentialed expertise. Though in some ways, it had always been a natural fit. As conservative writer Rod Dreher put it in a 2002 essay called “Crunchy Cons” about his love for the organic despite its liberal tinge (and the predictable sneering of his Republican colleagues), conservatism is in part defined by the belief that “generally speaking, Small and Local and Particular and Old are better.” Much more recently, Carmel Richardson wrote for The American Conservative after Iowa’s raw milk law went into effect that the law evoked “the ghost” of a “rugged ethos” present in American culture and history.

Raw milk legalization is also deregulatory, as I was reminded by Alexia Kulwiec, the executive director of the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund, which seeks to protect farmers’ rights to sell raw milk, among other products: “The environment [in red states] has been more friendly to the concept of less regulation of consumer choice and letting consumers decide for themselves if they want access to this local food.”

But there’s an element far more important than a deregulatory environment or traditional aesthetics: trust. Symbolically, whether you vote for the Democratic Party today can often be defined by a single question: Do you trust the experts?

As Suzy Weiss explained for The Free Press last January, drinking raw milk is often a giant middle-finger to the experts — the same ones who say Joe Biden isn’t cognitively impaired, that Donald Trump is the worst president in the history of America, and that drinking raw milk is “like playing Russian roulette with your health,” as the director of the FDA Division of Dairy and Egg Safety once said. To be clear, the CDC’s own study says raw milk is estimated to have caused three deaths from 1998-2018 while oysters cause 100 deaths every year. Weiss writes “for new consumers, raw milk is a symbol. … To drink (and especially to produce) raw milk is a way of breaking with convention and raging against the machine — the United States Department of Agriculture, the Centers for Disease Control, the FDA, doctors, PhDs, state regulators, and Big Dairy.”

[…]

It’s not just vaccines. Conservatives, on average, trust everything less, from experts to politicians to media to other people in general. The latter — Republicans’ disproportionate general distrust of other people — has even skewed polling, since Republican voters are now less likely to answer polls, according to Democratic pollster David Shor.

This new trust polarization — where the trusting vote Democrat, and the distrustful vote Republican — began to take off during Trump’s 2016 campaign, which he ran in opposition to (and shared mutual disrespect with) America’s elites and experts. But trust polarization, especially as it relates to raw milk and other unprocessed foods, seems to have accelerated rapidly in recent years thanks to the Covid pandemic, when Republicans mobilized in opposition to lockdowns and mandates, and Democrats mobilized in favor, since it was what the experts recommended.

[…]

But one state seems poised to defy this growing partisan divide.

In Colorado, a new bill, SB24-043, seeks to legalize the sale of raw milk directly to consumers from registered dairy farmers who follow certain rules around labeling, storage and transportation.

It was introduced by a Democrat.

State Sen. Dylan Outerbridge Roberts, the Democrat who introduced the bill, told me he’s been paying attention to the issue for years thanks to some dairy farmers in his district who told him raw milk sales would help their small-town economies. Turns out he’s not the only Democrat who supports it. “I’ve been looking into it for a few years and then actually over the summer, our governor, Jared Polis, was interviewed about this issue and made a very strong statement that he supports changing the law,” Roberts told me.

[…]

Via https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/03/10/the-alt-right-rebrand-of-raw-milk-00145625

French Revolution: Napoleon Becomes First Consul for Life

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Episode 39 Building Power – General and First Consul

Living the French Revolution and Age of Napoleon

Dr Suzanne M Desan

Film Review

By 1799 France, which was still at war with Britain and Austria, had lost nearly all their territory in northern Italy and Austria. In the spring of 1800, First Council and General Napoleon led 93,000 troops across the Alps to attack the Austrians’ rear flank in Milan and cut off their supply lines.

Despite losing to the Austrians in the Siege of Genoa in June, two French generals (Desaix and Kellermann) turned the tide and forced the Austrians to agree to an armistice and withdraw their troops from Genoa and Lombardy.

In his role as First Council, between 1800 and 1804 Napoleon negotiated peace treaties with Bavaria, Naples, Spain, Portugal, Russia, the Ottoman Empire, the US, Great Britain and Austria. The treaties restored French hegemony over northern Italy, Belgium and the left bani of the Rhine. It also recognized France’s satellite republics in Netherlands, Switzerland and Northern Italy. The “Cisalpine Republic” became the  “Italian Republic” with Bonaparte as president. Peace lasted roughly one year.

Although First Consul Bonaparte moved into Louis XVI’s Tuilleries palace, he deliberately dressed as commoner. He also moved the Council of State (created in December 1799 to draft new laws and resolve administrative disputes) into the palace. One of the first measures passed was to shut down all political clubs and to ban most political newspapers. In 1799, the number declined from 73 to 13 and by 1804 it was down to four.

The first serious threat to Napoleon’s rule occurred on December 24, 1800, when a bomb exploded near his carriage. Although his chief of police Joseph Fouche used horseshoe prints to trace the plot to two known royalists, Napoleon insisted anarchists (Jacobins) were involved. He eventually ordered 11 men to be guillotined – two guilty royalists and 9 innocent Jacobins.

Repression deepened as he

  • rounded up and deported dozens of Jacobins and established military tribunals in southern and western France.
  • granted full amnesty to emigres who wished to return to France.
  • crushed the resurgent Vendee Revolt* and recruited some of its leaders to serve in his government.

Following eight months of secret negotiations with Pius VII in 1800, Napoleon issued the Concordat of 1801 (which remained in force until 1905), stipulating that the French government would continued to pay priests, protestant clergy (and eventually rabbis); that Napoleon would appoint bishops and the pope merely consecrate them; and that the Catholic church forswear all claims to church lands that had been nationalized and sold. Although France remained a secular state, on Easter Sunday 1802 French church bells rang out for the first time since the Revolution.

In August 1802, a plebiscite approved a new constitution that made Napoleon First Consul for life, omitted any declaration of rights and centralized power in a strong executive consisting of Napoleon and two other Consuls (who had 10-year terms). The Consuls appointed members of the two legislative chambers: a Trabinaire, which could debate legislation but not vote, on it and a Council of State which could vote on legislation but not debate it. The constitution also allowed for a 60-member senate the Consuls appointed for life that would judge whether laws were constitutional and gave Consults the power to appoint local officials (who ceased to be elected by local residents).

This 1802 constitution was approved with a 20% turnout. The 1799 constitution had ended the secret ballot. All adult males were eligible to vote, but they had to sign their ballots.

*See 1793: The French Revolution Faces Counterrevolution

Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/149323/149397

CDC: Influenza Vaccines Only 42% Effective This Year

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By Marco Cáceres

The influenza vaccines currently being administered in the United States are estimated by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to be 42 percent effective in adults. This is an interim estimate for the 2023-2024 “flu season” published in the agency’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) on Feb. 29, 2024.1 2 3

By “effective,” the CDC is referring to reducing the risk of influenza-related hospitalizations or “medically attended influenza virus infection, not actually preventing influenza infections—notably influenza A (H1N1) and B (Victoria lineage).1 In its report, the agency stated:

These findings indicate that the 2023–24 seasonal influenza vaccine is effective at reducing the risk of influenza-associated outpatient visits and hospitalization.1

Less Than 25 Percent of Suspected ILI Cases are Influenza

Most influenza-like-illness (ILI) which occurs during the “flu season” is not actually caused by  type A or type B influenza. Studies show that less than 25 percent of suspected ILI cases turn out to be influenza after lab testing. There are many other respiratory infections that look like influenza but are caused by other types of viruses and bacteria.2.4

According to Sascha Ellington, PhD, leader of the CDC’s influenza prevention and control team, the 42 percent influenza vaccine effectiveness rate falls within the “range” that the CDC “typically” sees when the vaccine is a “good match with the [influenza] viruses that are circulating.” This season’s rate thus far lags behind the estimated 54 percent effectiveness rate for the flu shot in 2022-2023, but it is better than the 36 percent rate for 2021-2022.1 2 3 5 6

Influenza Vaccine Effectiveness Rate Under 50 Percent for Most Years

The 42 percent influenza vaccine effectiveness rate this year is roughly comparable to most annual rates during the past two decades. Since the 2004-2005 flu season, the CDC has estimated the flu shot to be more than 50 percent effective only five times—52 percent in 2006-2007, 56 percent in 2009-2010, 60 percent in 2010-2011, 52 percent in 2013-2014 and 54 percent in 2022-2023. In other words, the influenza vaccine the CDC recommends children and adults get every year has been more than 50 percent ineffective in preventing type A or type B influenza infections nearly three out of every four years.6 7

Influenza activity in the U.S. tends to peak in February and can last as late as May, although the CDC has noted that since the start of the COVID pandemic, the “timing and duration of influenza infection activity has been less predictable.” The CDC usually provides an estimate in June for the effectiveness of the influenza vaccine for the second half of the “flu season,” as well as an effectiveness estimate for the entire season.3 8

[…]

Via https://thevaccinereaction.org/2024/03/influenza-vaccines-only-42-percent-effective-in-adults-this-year/

Net zero costs to hit poorest households hardest

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image

Not a Lot of People Know That

The costs of hitting net zero could hit the poorest households hardest, [British] regulator OFGEM has warned, as it launched a consultation into affordability across the energy market. 

OFGEM raised concerns on Monday about how energy bills are being used to shoulder the cost of going green, particularly as the Government ramps up the roll-out of renewables such as wind and solar.

In a statement on Monday, OFGEM said the short-term costs of net zero “could disproportionately hit lower-income consumers” who are unable to invest in new technologies or change their behaviour.

Fears over the cost of net zero falling disproportionately on lower-income households come amid warnings that customer debts have increased by 50% OFGEM said that it remained “very concerned that struggling households have a limited ability to cope with future price shocks”.

It said: “The cost of recovering bad debts, and the high number of consumers who are locked into debt and repayment plans, could have serious consequences for the retail energy sector”.

Financial challenges had led to customers choosing to ration their energy usage, OFGEM said, which has created “harms associated with living in a cold, damp home” and fuelling mental illness.

From https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/03/11/net-zero-costs-hit-poorest-households-hardest-warns-ofgem/

They might have also added the crippling costs of heat pumps and EVs.

Anybody with half a braincell could have forecast all of this years ago. A much bigger proportion of poorer households’ incomes goes on basics, such as energy, than richer ones, who also benefit from generous subsidies for solar panels and Teslas.

Quite why OFGEM have left it so long to realise this is a mystery.

[…]

Via https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2024/03/12/net-zero-costs-to-hit-poorest-households-hardest-warns-ofgem/

Nord Stream Sues Insurance Companies in London Court

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MOSCOW (Sputnik) – The operator of Nord Stream gas pipelines has sued its insurers in a London court for 400 million euros ($436 million) for their refusal to cover damages following the explosions, the Financial Times reported, citing court documents.
The operator reportedly sued Lloyd’s of London and Arch Insurance companies in February.

The Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines, built to deliver gas under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany, were hit by explosions in September 2022. Nord Stream’s operator, Nord Stream AG, said that the damage was unprecedented, and it was impossible to estimate the time repairs might take.

Russia considers the explosions of the two pipelines an act of international terrorism. There are no official results of the investigation yet, but Pulitzer Prize-winning US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published a report in February 2023, alleging that the explosions had been organized by the United States with the support of Norway. Washington has denied any involvement in the incident. See https://sputnikglobe.com/nord-stream-leaks/
To date, none of the Western countries involved in the subsequent investigation – Sweden, Denmark, and Germany – have presented explanations of what happened or named a culprit. Moreover, Sweden announced on February 7 that it would drop its investigation into explosions.
[…]

How Five Months of War Has Paralyzed Israel’s Economy

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By Press TV Website Staff

Last month, in what economic pundits saw as a death knell for the already-beleaguered Israeli economy,  a US credit rating agency downgraded the regime’s rating and outlook.

The downgrade from “stable” to “negative”, according to Moody’s, is the direct consequence of the Israeli regime’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip and political instability inside the occupied territories marked by growing discontent and simmering protests.

A few weeks ago, the Israeli regime’s Central Bureau of Statistics released another damning report, according to which Tel Aviv’s economy shrank by nearly one-fifth in the last quarter of 2023.

Amid depleting consumer spending, trade and investment since October 7, Israel’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) recorded a 19.4 percent drop in its annual rate in the last three months of 2023.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s regime launched a devastating war on the coastal Palestinian territory on October 7, stung by the unprecedented Al-Aqsa Storm Operation led by Hamas.

In the last 156 days, more than 31,000 Palestinians, including over 14,000 children and nearly 9,000 women have been killed in Gaza. It has also spawned the worst humanitarian crisis in the territory.

According to observers, the indiscriminate bombings on Gaza have badly backfired on the regime amid both internal and external turmoil for the Netanyahu regime.

Hundreds of thousands of Israeli reservists have in recent months been forced to abandon their jobs while many more have fled in panic, due to which major industries have come to a grinding halt.

The labor shortage is acute as over 350,000 reservists have been pressed into military service, as per the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which says the law has caused a “pronounced slowdown” of the Israeli economy, which had grown about 3 percent before October 7.

Foreign investments have also virtually ended as investors are not willing to put their money on tinderbox – both due to the war in Gaza as well as the internal turmoil for the Netanyahu regime.

According to the data from the Israeli labor ministry in December, about 950,000 jobs were lost in the first three months of the war, which has increased manifolds now as the situation remains precarious and the war rages on – now into its sixth month.

Multi-national brands linked to the Israeli regime have also faced blanket boycotts in recent months, suffering enormous losses. Many companies have tried to distance themselves from the regime.

Domestic economy in tatters

Every sector of the Israeli economy – from high-tech to agriculture to tourism to various industries – has been irreparably dented by the raging war on Gaza, a problem exacerbated by the shortage of workforce and precarious situation.

Many businesses have suspended their operations while others have been forced to shut down their operations. Some workers have been forced to join military duty while many others have fled.

A Bloomberg survey last month said the Israeli economy suffered one of its worst-ever slumps after it launched the genocidal war on Palestinians in Gaza, with businesses coming to a screeching halt.

The regime’s GDP plummeted by 19.4 percent in the last quarter of 2023, which the report said was worse than every estimate in its survey of analysts.

“The release highlights the degree to which the Israeli economy has been affected by the conflict, particularly on the private activity side,” Goldman Sachs economists Tadas Gedminas and Kevin Daly were quoted as saying in the report.

Israeli newspaper Maariv, in a report earlier this week, also said the continuation of the Israeli war on Gaza has contributed to massive losses for the regime in both political and economic spheres.

It followed another report published by the Israeli website Walla, which cited the Director of the Israeli Tax Authority Shai Aharonovitz as saying that the damage caused by the Gaza war is “six times greater” than the Second Lebanon War (2006), and about half a million compensation claims have been filed by those who have suffered due to it.

According to analysts, the Israeli war on Gaza, which has failed in all its stated objectives, has resulted in a steep drop in the regime’s tax revenues, skyrocketing debt and economic recession.

The regime’s GDP has also taken a serious blow, as attested by Moody’s report in February, which cut the regime’s rating to ‘A2’ and described its credit outlook as ‘negative’.

It was the first time ever that the regime’s economic outlook was downgraded, pointing to the staggering costs of the war that is increasingly turning out to be an exercise in futility.

The war, according to analysts, has discouraged potential investors and disrupted the labor market, especially with hundreds of thousands of workers summoned for mandatory military duty.

In a report in November, the Bank of Israel said the absence of thousands of workers from their jobs was costing the Israeli economy an estimated $600 million a week, or about 6 percent of the weekly GDP.

That number, according to economic analysts, has surged dramatically in the past three months, to the tune of a few billion dollars every week.

The regime’s tourism industry has also been affected. Monthly figures announced by Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics revealed that in January only 500 single-day visits to the occupied territories were registered, compared to 14,000 in January 2023, marking a drastic decrease of 96 percent.

The travel industry used to make up nearly 3 percent of the regime’s GDP in 2019, before the pandemic. The figure fell to 1.1 percent in 2021 and has been virtually paralyzed since October 7.

The Israeli newspaper Calcalist reported in January that about 900,000 tourists were expected to visit the occupied territories in the three months after the start of the war. The number dropped to 190,000 because many of them opted out. That number has also sharply come down now.

[…]

Via https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2024/03/11/721674/down-out-how-5-months-israeli-war-paralyzed-its-economy

Doctors’ Offices to Be Replaced With Smart Home Digital Medical Prisons

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by Brian Shilhavy
Editor, Health Impact News

It has been well-reported in the corporate media that hundreds of thousands of medical professionals have quit or retired since COVID, and those that remain are over-worked and unhappy, with many planning on retiring within the next few years.

Millions of people in the U.S. have died or been disabled since the COVID scam started in 2020, further burdening the medical system as patients increase, while medical professionals and services have decreased.

The corporate media blames this on the fake COVID “virus”, but many in the alternative media know better, and like myself, have documented how most of these deaths and injuries are actually due to the COVID shots and other COVID protocols that were implemented starting in 2020, showing how it was the medical system itself that caused most of these casualties.

The entire medical system is in the process of collapsing, as it is unsustainable in its current form.

The future of the medical system that the Globalists on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley are now investing in, is home medical care, and “telehealth.” They are rapidly investing in technology to convert homes into “Smart Homes” where patients can be treated right in their own homes using the Internet and “smart” devices.

They are, of course, selling this to the public as something positive, as after all, who wouldn’t want to receive medical care in the comfort of one’s home?

However, as has always been the case, when the Globalists promise their consumers slaves things like “comfort”, “safety,” “convenience”, etc. – these products and services ALWAYS come at a cost, mainly the cost of giving up your privacy and allowing the system to have total control over you.

And if that system of “comfort, safety, and convenience” fails, they will take no responsibility for the consequences.

When a person’s home becomes a “Medical Smart Home” replacing hospitals and doctors’ offices where everything that runs that home is dependent upon the technology, what is going to happen when the Internet goes down, or the power grid becomes unstable and you don’t have reliable electricity any more?

Goal: Your Home is Your Prison

An article published today by Heather Landi at Fierce Healthcare reported where the “Hospital-at-Home” industry is today, and what they feel is necessary to increase this business (government funding).

Momentum behind hospital-at-home continues to grow, but proponents say Congress needs to act to fuel more investment

Hospital-at-home programs got a big boost in 2020 when the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) launched the Acute Hospital Care at Home Waiver during the COVID-19 pandemic.

CMS allowed certain Medicare-certified hospitals to treat patients with inpatient-level care at home using Section 1135 waivers of the Social Security Act. CMS waived specific hospital Conditions of Participation that require 24-hour onsite nursing for patients.

As of March 1, 315 hospitals across 131 systems in 37 states have been approved to participate in the Acute Hospital Care at Home program. Before the waiver, 20 of these programs existed across the U.S.

However, that CMS waiver is set to expire at the end of this year and legislative action is needed to extend the waiver or make the program permanent.

Healthcare heavyweights, the American Medical Association and the American Telemedicine Association joined major health systems like Geisinger and Mass General Brigham along with tech-enabled companies to pen a letter to Congressional leaders calling for at least a five-year extension to the CMS waiver.

Home-based services for lower-acuity patients help hospitals address critical capacity issues by freeing up hospital beds for the sickest patients without increasing health system costs, proponents of the programs say.

[…]

McKinsey & Company estimates that up to $265 billion worth of care services, representing up to 25% of the total cost of care, for Medicare fee-for-service and Medicare Advantage beneficiaries could shift from traditional facilities to the home by 2025 without a reduction in quality or access.

(Full article.)

[…]

The investment into technology that the Technocrats foolishly believe will replace medical professionals is advancing about as fast as the Government-funded push into electronic vehicles (EVs) that has been rapidly advancing the past few years, and if this goes far enough, the results could be far more devastating than the collapsing EV market that is currently happening.

We now live in a generation that believes our lives are dependent upon technology, being fooled into believing that science fiction technology fantasy lands can turn into reality if they just invest enough money to make all this a reality (non-virtual)

Look at this article published by the technology publication The Information late last year, where Silicon Valley investors believe they can replace doctors and clinics through an “AI Doctor-in-a-Box CarePod” that they are placing in malls and office buildings.

Healthcare Without Health Workers: A Unicorn Pivots to an AI Doctor-in-a-Box

If Adrian Aoun has his way, the next time you visit the doctor’s office, you won’t see a single medical professional. In fact, he said, “I don’t even believe a doctor’s office should exist.”

Instead, the outspoken founder and CEO of primary care startup Forward wants you to entrust your health to a landmark new product, the CarePod—a whirring, purring autonomous module that looks like an airport lactation room crossed with a space capsule. Aoun hopes the compartments will soon be found inside malls and office buildings around the U.S. “What we really need is healthcare to be a product, not a service,” he said. “I just want to take every single thing that doctors and nurses are doing and migrate it over to hardware and software.”

Today’s unveiling of the CarePod comes alongside a $100 million Series E round that will help Forward build and deploy the devices. The new funding includes equity financing of more than $50 million as well as debt financing; Aoun declined to disclose the valuation. Preexisting backers Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures, Kleiner Perkins chair John Doerr, Tencent and Uber co-founder Garrett Camp, and new investors Samsung Next and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority participated in the round.

The Forward CarePod is a single-occupancy compartment lit from within by violet LED lights and a chest-high touchscreen. An ambient electric hum reverberates around the vestibule while a calming yet eerily robotic voice—like Siri’s phlebotomist sister—instructs you on where to stand, how much to disrobe and when to sit back in a leather chair and strap on a blood-pressure monitor.

Patients can choose from a variety of apps that guide them through basic health exams ranging from biometric body scans and mental health surveys to blood-pressure monitoring and Covid-19 tests. Eventually CarePod users will be able to draw their own blood, which will then be tested in a miniaturized lab concealed inside the shell of the pod. That service isn’t ready yet, but Aoun demonstrated the process for The Information, suctioning a small amount of blood from his upper arm using a painless capillary-vacuum device that he likened to a mechanical leech. After the demo, blood began oozing out of Aoun’s arm as he struggled to bandage the injection point.

The autonomous medical station represents a major pivot for Forward, which runs 19 high-end health tech clinics located in urban areas across the U.S. The company, which charges $149 per month for subscription concierge care, is embarking on its post-pandemic era, which deemphasizes one-on-one time with doctors. It plans to roll out CarePods in major cities, including San Francisco, New York, Chicago and Philadelphia, through the end of the year and into the first quarter of 2024. Access to CarePods will cost $99 per month, with no discounts or bundles for existing Forward subscribers.

(Full article – Subscription needed.)

[…]

Solution: Just Say NO to (Pharmaceutical) Drugs!

The solution to not allowing yourself to become a prisoner of the Medical Mafia is actually very simple (although difficult to implement): Just stop using their products!

I am a testimony of how a person can live successfully in this world without using pharmaceutical products, as I have not purchased prescription drugs or visited a hospital for many years now. Pharmaceutical products and services are NOT essential to life. The human population has survived for thousands of years without modern pharmaceutical drugs and the allopathic medical system which started in the 1800s.

[…]

Via https://healthimpactnews.com/2024/doctors-offices-to-be-replaced-with-smart-home-digital-medical-prisons/