July 18, 2021 - "The consequences of government-enforced lockdowns killed more Canadians under the age of 65 than the COVID-19 virus itself, according to a report by Statistics Canada. In a report titled Provisional death counts and excess mortality, the government agency reviewed the number of deaths between January 2020 to April 2021 and concluded that 5,535 Canadians under the age of 65 died because of 'indirect consequences' due to the pandemic. Over the same time period, 1,380 Canadians in the same age group died because of COVID-19 itself.
"'Beyond deaths attributed to the disease itself, the pandemic could also have indirect consequences leading to an increase or decrease in the number of deaths due to various factors, including delayed medical procedures, increased substance use, or a decline in deaths attributable to other causes, such as influenza,' the report says.
"Statistics Canada acknowledged lockdowns had a significant impact on the number of deaths in Canada, particularly among younger people. 'Excess mortality is, in large part, related to other factors such as increases in the number [of] deaths attributed to causes associated with substance use and misuse, including unintentional (accidental) poisonings and diseases and conditions related to alcohol consumption,' read the report.
"As more Canadians were forced to stay at home and vital services and businesses were forced to close, an opioid crisis developed.... Statistics Canada confirmed that the increased usage of drugs had a significant impact on the mortality rate during the pandemic. 'There is evidence in Ontario, Alberta, and British Columbia that substance use has increased in 2020 compared with previous years, while availability and access to harm reduction programs, supervised consumption services, and in-person support services for substance use may have been disrupted during the pandemic,' the report says.
"Earlier this month, Statistics Canada also reported that most of the people who died from COVID-19 in Canada were over the age of 85 and had dementia, Alzheimer’s, chronic heart disease or other pre-existing 'cardiovascular and respiratory conditions.' Nine in 10 deaths had a secondary cause listed on the death certificate.
"Canadians have been victims of some of the strictest public health orders in the world.... The True North Provincial Freedom Score found that Nova Scotia, Manitoba and Ontario were the most locked-down provinces in the country when taking into account business closures, school openings, in-person dining and nearly a dozen other variables."
Thousands march in Montreal against mandatory vaccines for health workers, vaccination passport | CBC News - Sabrina Jones: August 28, 2021 - "Thousands of people marched in Montreal Saturday in protest of Quebec's public health measures, including the upcoming vaccination passport and mandatory vaccines for health-care workers. Protestors gathered at Maisonneuve Park around 1 p.m. and marched along Sherbrooke Street to end in front of the Quebec Order of Nurses (OIIQ) building on Molson Street. Signs reading, 'Choice, not mandate' and 'No to mandatory vaccinations,' in French could be seen among the crowd....
"Organizers behind Saturday's protest, the Canadian Frontline Nurses and Réinfo Covid Québec, say this latest demonstration, called "Professionals United", is significant. According to the groups, professionals from health-care, education and policing sectors took part in it and spoke out, despite the repercussions they may face at work." Read more: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/montreal-protest-mandatory-vaccines-vaccination-passport-1.6157031
Over 1,000 people protested against the vaccine mandate on Saturday in New York City | Daily Mail - Christopher Eberhart: August 28, 2021 - "Over 1,000 people flooded New York City streets again to protest the COVID-19 vaccine mandate and then gathered in Columbus Circle where speakers fired up the crowd. One woman said, 'This is a war call. This is a fight. Leave here and do something ... Fight for your rights'.... The protest is in reaction to the new requirement for people ages 12 and older to show proof they've received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine to get into restaurants or bars, gyms and indoor entertainment such as movies and theaters.
"Demonstrators chanted sayings like, 'My body, my choice,' on their way to Columbus Circle Saturday afternoon. They held signs saying 'Stop the medical tyranny', 'I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery' and 'Coercion is not consent', among dozens of others....
"Similar protests took place across the pond in the UK, where thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of central London in protest as they continue their campaign against mandated vaccines and COVID-19 passports. Demonstrators purportedly from The Save Our Rights UK group, armed with St George's flags, placards, banners and megaphones, spent the afternoon marching through the capital.... Pictures from the scene show crowds armed with placards bearing slogans including 'my body my choice' and 'hands off our children' as they made their way through the capital on Saturday." Read more: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9936429/Its-war-call-Thousands-flood-New-York-City-streets-protest-vaccine-mandate.html
Seventh consecutive weekly protest against France's Covid-19 health pass | France 24: August 29, 2021 - "A total of 160,000 people protested across France on Saturday, the interior ministry said, angered at the country's Covid-19 health pass system which they say unfairly restricts the unvaccinated. By early evening the authorities had logged 222 separate protest actions, including 14,500 people who turned out in Paris....
Thousands march in Berlin in second day of anti-vaccination protests | Globe & Mail - Reuters: August 29, 2021 - "Several thousand people marched through the streets of Berlin on Sunday for a second day of unauthorized protest against coronavirus vaccinations and restrictions.... Dozens of police dressed in riot gear sought to control the march through residential streets in eastern Berlin. Berlin police said on Twitter they had detained about 80 people at the demonstration, with a focus on violent people or those calling for violations of coronavirus regulations. On Saturday, police detained more than 100 people at a similar demonstration after the marchers tried to get through barricades to the government quarter in central Berlin." Read more: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-berlin-protest-against-covid-19-health-regulations-vaccines-attracts/
Italian teachers protest against Covid pass for schools | La Prensa Latina: August 30, 2021 - "Italian union members demonstrated Monday in front of Italy’s ministry of education in Rome against the requirement for a Covid health passport to enter schools. According to representatives of the Italian teachers union, the health pass imposed on citizens is an 'illegal, illegitimate, discriminatory and inadmissible instrument of blackmail, control and social exclusion.' Some 300 teachers, union representatives and anti-vaccine protesters took to the streets to demand the government to annul the new rule.... that will come into effect on 1 September." Read more: https://www.laprensalatina.com/italian-teachers-protest-against-covid-pass-for-schools/
Protest Against Mandatory Vaccination Turns Violent in Greece | Greek Reporter - Tasos Kokkinidis: August 30, 2021 - "Thousands took part in protests against mandatory vaccination in Greece on Sunday, the largest being held in Athens and Thessaloniki. In the Greek capital, police used tear gas and water cannon to disperse a group of demonstrators who threw flares and other objects at Syntagma Square opposite the Parliament building. Many demonstrators were waving Greek flags, chanting slogans and demanding the plan to make vaccinations mandatory for all health professionals starting September 1 be reversed. Dozens of people have been detained, as tensions were running high. This was the third major demonstration against compulsory vaccination in Athens in the last couple of months." Read more: https://greekreporter.com/2021/08/30/protest-mandatory-vaccination-turns-violent-greece/
August 29, 2021 - ""Herd immunity is a fascinating observation that you can trace to biological reality or statistical probability theory, whichever you prefer. It is certainly not a 'strategy' so ignore any media source that describes it that way. When you get such a virus and fight it off, your immune system encodes that information in a way that builds immunity to it. When it happens to enough people ... the virus loses its pandemic quality and becomes endemic, which is to say predictable and manageable. Each new generation incorporates that information through more exposure.
"This is what one would call virology/immunology 101. It’s what you read in every textbook. It’s been taught in 9th-grade cell biology for probably 80 years.... And the discovery of this fascinating dynamic in cell biology is a major reason why public health became so smart in the 20th century. We kept calm. We managed viruses with medical professionals: doctor/patient relationships. We avoided the Medieval tendency to run around with hair on fire but rather used rationality and intelligence.
"One day, this strange institution called the World Health Organization [WHO] – once glorious because it was mainly responsible for the eradication of smallpox – suddenly decided to delete everything I just wrote from cell biology basics. It has literally changed the science in a Soviet-like way. It has removed with the delete key any mention of natural immunities from its website. It has taken the additional step of actually mischaracterizing the structure and functioning of vaccines.
"Here is the website from June 9, 2020. You can see it here on Archive.org. You have to move down the page and click on the question about herd immunity. You see the following.
"That’s accurate overall.... However, in a screenshot dated November 13, 2020, we read the following note that somehow pretends as if human beings do not have immune systems at all....
"[T]his note at the World Health Organization ... ignored and even wiped out 100 years of medical advances in virology, immunology, and epidemiology. What’s even more strange is the claim that a vaccine protects people from a virus rather than exposing them to it. A traditional vaccine works precisely by firing up the immune system through exposure. This has been known for centuries. There is simply no way for medical science completely to replace the human immune system.... By ruling out exposure, the WHO seems even to be rejecting the methods of J&J in favor of Moderna and Pfizer, which use mRNA strategies. Talk about picking winners and losers in technology!
"Finally on January 4, 2021: WHO has changed it[s] definition yet again, to incorporate the obvious reality of natural immunity.
"This claim that vaccines for the population rather than exposure is overall better is stated here as a matter of dogma when in reality this is an empirical question. If the vaccine does not deliver immunity in a way that is long lasting and broad – and cannot do so in a way that assures the population of its safety – the dogma pushed by WHO is potentially false.
"For a year and a half, the media has been telling us that 'science' requires that we comply with their dictates that run contrary to every tenet of liberalism, every expectation we’ve developed in the modern world that we can live freely and with the certainty of rights. Then 'science' took over and our human rights were slammed. And now the “science” actually deleted its own history, airbrushing over what it used to know and replacing it with something misleading at best and patently false at worst. Let there be no mystery why public confidence in public health is at a low....
"The science has not changed; only the politics have. And that is precisely why it is so dangerous and deadly to subject virus management to the forces of politics. Eventually the science too bends to the duplicitous character of the political industry."
August 6, 2021 - "In a few weeks I will begin my 24th year as a law professor at George Mason University. Last year I volunteered to teach in person, even though I’m in my 50s. Teaching law is my job and I owe my students my best. I also knew I could do it safely. During the spring of 2020 I contracted and recovered from Covid-19, which I later confirmed through a positive antibody test. Multiple positive antibody tests have since confirmed that I continue to have a robust level of immune protection.
"But now my employer, a state institution, is requiring Covid vaccines. In my case, vaccination is unnecessary and potentially risky. My only other options are to teach remotely or to seek a medical exemption that would require me to wear a mask, remain socially distanced from faculty or students during, say, office hours, and submit to weekly testing. It would be impossible for me to perform my duties to the best of my ability under such conditions.
"The administration has threatened those who don’t submit with disciplinary action, including termination of employment. This week the public-interest lawyers at the New Civil Liberties Alliance filed suit on my behalf, challenging the university’s mandatory vaccination requirement for those with naturally acquired immunity. This coercive mandate violates my constitutional right to bodily integrity for no compelling reason.
"Clinical studies from Israel, the Cleveland Clinic, England and elsewhere have demonstrated beyond a doubt that natural immunity to SARS-CoV-2 provides robust and durable protection against reinfection comparable to or better than that provided by the most effective vaccines. Examining the evidence this May, the World Health Organization concluded: 'Current evidence points to most individuals developing strong protective immune responses following natural infection with SARS-CoV-2.' Protection from natural immunity may even exceed that of the less effective Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which according to the CDC demonstrated only 66.3% effectiveness at preventing infection in clinical trials.
"But GMU’s policy is even more bizarre than that. It allows employees to comply by receiving any vaccine approved by the World Health Organization, including low-quality Chinese vaccines such as the Sinovac vaccine, which the WHO concluded was only 51% effective at preventing symptomatic disease, and the Sinopharm vaccine, which has performed so poorly that some countries are systematically revaccinating their populations with higher-quality options. Even China is considering the same. Whatever the university’s reasoning for endorsing these low-quality vaccines while slighting natural immunity, it clearly doesn’t stand up on public-health grounds.
"It isn’t merely unnecessary for me to get the shot. It’s potentially dangerous. Covid-recovered individuals have been mostly excluded from the vaccine clinical trials, rendering any claims about the purported safety for this group largely speculative. Moreover, clinical evidence has suggested that Covid survivors suffer more-frequent and more-serious side effects from vaccination than those who have never been infected....
"If I were not already naturally immune to Covid, I would have long ago gotten vaccinated at the first opportunity. But for those of us who have acquired natural immunity, vaccination provides none of the benefits of vaccination with all of the costs."
August 26, 2021 - "The preprint of a yet-to-be-published Israeli study comparing the efficacy of the Pfizer vaccine with immunity gained through natural infection suggests that the latter may be more effective and longer-lasting.
"The team, from Maccabi Healthcare Services, looked at three groups — those double-jabbed with Pfizer who have never had Covid, unvaccinated people who have been infected, and single-jabbed people who have had the virus. They then monitored how many developed symptomatic infection, how many were hospitalised and how many died.
"Their findings were stark: double-jabbed, previously uninfected people are [from 6 to] 13 times as likely to get Covid compared with the naturally immune. Natural infection was also found to significantly reduce the risk of catching symptomatic disease and of being hospitalised with Covid — at least with the Indian or Delta variant, as the study was carried out while it was Israel’s dominant strain this summer.
"There are the usual caveats. It is a pre-published study that has not yet been peer-reviewed. And it can only tell us about the Pfizer vaccine, on which Israel’s vaccination programme is based. Nevertheless, there are important implications. It suggests that the efficacy of the Pfizer vaccine — so impressive in trials — is not strong enough to bring about the kind of herd immunity we might have gained by letting the virus pass through the population. The same is probably true of other vaccines[:]... recent studies have suggested that the efficacy of AstraZeneca declines over time, too, although not at quite the rate of the Pfizer one.
"It also suggests that we might be wasting our time trying to foist jabs on the young when they may have gained better, stronger immunity to Covid through natural infection ,,, perhaps it is better to simply allow them to be infected on the grounds they're highly unlikely to come to serious harm but are more likely to gain lasting immunity from the disease that way."
August 25, 2021 - "As businesses grapple with the tradeoffs of requiring employees and customers to get vaccinated, some Republican officials have decided to take this choice out of their hands. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), for instance, has prohibited both public and private entities from requiring proof of vaccination, creating conflict with several industries — including cruise lines — that would like to mandate vaccines. Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte (R) has done the same in his state.
"Two Republican state legislators in South Dakota have proposed a similar ban on private vaccine mandates. The COVID-19 Vaccine Freedom of Conscious Act, authored by Reps. Jon Hansen and Scott Odenbach, would effectively stop all businesses from requiring vaccination. But unlike DeSantis and Gianforte, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) is opposing the ban on private vaccine passports on grounds that the government does not and should not have the right to bully businesses.
"'I don't have the authority as governor to tell them what to do,' said Noem. 'Since the start of this pandemic, I have remained focused on what my authorities are and what they are not. Now South Dakota is in a strong position because I didn't overstep my authority. I didn't trample on the rights of our people, and I'm not going to start now.'
"Noem's stance will probably attract derision from some on the vaccine-skeptical populist right; indeed, Noem has a history of being painted as insufficiently conservative because she was unwilling to use state power to enforce a conservative cultural agenda when she thought it wouldn't hold up in court. But the governor is absolutely right to stick to her guns here — and in fact, it's the Republican officials racing to prohibit private vaccine mandates who are violating clear-cut conservative principles. Noem explained this quite aptly in a brief speech outlining her position.
"'When leaders overstep their authority, that is how we break this country, and if government starts acting unconstitutionally, even if it's doing something that we like, that's a dangerous path to walk down,' she said. 'It is not conservative to grow government and to tell businesses what to do and how to treat their employees.'
"Noem also noted that South Dakota was the only state to never order a church to close due to the pandemic. Her stance is consistent and consistently conservative: It is wrong for the government to tell individuals, private associations, and businesses what to do. If they want to require vaccination, it's really no concern of the state.
"The rise of Trump-era conservative populism (which has more disdain for economic and social libertarianism than the GOP of yesteryears), and the pandemic (which has allowed the state to claim expansive new powers for itself) have both moved the Republican and Democratic parties in a direction of increased hostility toward freedom of association.... It's increasingly rare for a political figure to loudly proclaim the principled libertarian position, which holds that such restrictions should be neither mandated nor prohibited. Good on Noem for articulating it so clearly."
The governments of Australia, New Zealand, and Vietnam have responded to the failure of their lockdown measures to contain the Delta variant of the coronavirus with more lockdown measures.
August 23, 2021 - "Vietnam’s largest metropolis, Ho Chi Minh City, went into a tightened lockdown Monday to battle its worst outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, just a day ahead of the arrival of U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris.... The city has mobilized police and army troops to enforce the lockdown and to deliver food as well as necessities to each household, city authorities announced. Under the stricter measures imposed for at least two weeks, people in 'high risk' districts are not allowed to leave their homes.
"'People must absolutely stay put, isolate from each other, from house to house, from community to community,' Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh said when the new restrictions were announced last week. On Sunday evening, just hours before the intensified lockdown went into effect, the ministry reported 737 virus deaths, its highest single-day total, increasing the death toll since the pandemic began to 8,277.... Hanoi, which is more than 1,100 kilometers (700 miles) north of Ho Chi Minh City ... is also under lockdown....
"By asking people to remain in their homes, authorities expect to flatten the current surge of cases. Ho Chi Minh City and the entire southern region of Vietnam had already been in lockdown since July when the delta variant started to spread rapidly. Public gatherings were banned, non-essential businesses closed and people were asked to leave their homes only to buy food or for urgent matters. It is hoped the new severe restrictions in Ho Chi Minh City will bring down the infection rate among its 10 million residents and ease the pressure on its overloaded hospitals....
August 23, 2021 - "New Zealand's government on Monday said it will extend a strict nationwide lockdown until at least Friday as it tries to extinguish a growing coronavirus outbreak.... First discovered last week, the outbreak has grown to 107 cases. But health authorities say they've found links among most of those cases, giving them hope they can quash the outbreak....
"Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the lockdown will continue until at least the end of the month in Auckland, where most of the cases have been found.... Ardern said modeling suggested the outbreak should peak in a few days' time, and then decline.... Ardern also announced that the government has decided to suspend regular Parliament sessions for a week, a move that drew criticism from opposition lawmakers....
"While New Zealand was maintaining its strategy of trying to wipe out the virus completely through lockdowns, neighboring Australia appeared to have conceded that lockdowns would not be able to eliminate the delta variant entirely and could only slow its spread. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said lockdowns are were 'not a sustainable way to live in this country.' He said states must open their borders once vaccination rates reach 80% of the population aged 16 years and older.
