The Dose - 4-8-22



An open thread for gentle discussions of all things Covid.

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Hey! Good Morning!

The Ongoing Covid Disaster

Nothing shows the abject failure of the Joe Biden and Kamala Harris administration like the continuing toll of covid-19 deaths in this country. A pledge to end the covid pandemic was a centerpiece of their 2020 campaign. They promised to improve upon Donald Trump’s disastrous handling of the crisis which resulted in the deaths of 385,000 people in 2020. Biden and Harris had 446,000 covid deaths as of their first anniversary in office. The total covid death toll is expected to reach 1 million by the end of March 2022. Now an Omicron subvariant, known as B.A.2, is becoming the dominant variant. The U.S. usually follows Europe in its covid rates, and on that basis scientists are predicting a new wave in the next two to three weeks.

The bad news isn’t surprising. Biden made clear where his priorities lay when he appointed Jeff Zients to be his covid response coordinator. Zients isn’t a physician, scientist, or public health expert. He is a wealthy hedge fund manager and democratic party fund raiser. Zients was an acting Director of the Office of Management and Budget in the Obama administration and a Facebook board member. His appointment made clear that Biden meant what he said when he told the U.S. oligarchs, “Nothing will fundamentally change.”

The Biden administration solution to the ongoing crisis was to push for vaccination only and now to pretend that the pandemic is over, despite the fact that the supposedly “milder” Omicron variant killed more than 120,000 people. The reason for the lie is a simple one. They don’t want to use the tools that would bring the pandemic under control. The solutions have not changed. Free access to healthcare, ongoing income support, and letting sick people stay home are all tools that have been proven useful. Instead the Biden administration Centers for Disease Control (CDC) did what corporate America wanted and decreased the number of days needed for infected people to isolate from ten days to five . The CDC is telling the public they can unmask and Biden says it is time to return to the office.

A memo from democratic polling firm Impact Research gives the game away. “Declare the crisis of covid over and push feeling and acting more normal.” In the absence of a system which cares for the people and their needs, ignoring them is the only solution possible. The bad advice continues, “The more we talk about the threat of covid and onerously restrict people’s lives because of it, the more we turn them against us and show them we’re out of touch with their daily realities.” Notice that changing government action appears nowhere in the dubious advice. Of course people are tired of covid after two long years, but it is a lie to claim that they want the government to throw up its hands and say all is well when it isn’t. Nothing says being out of touch like a climbing death rate.

Lab Leak Theory Given HUGE Boost With NEW Documents & Interviews: Ryan Grim

Biden receives second Covid booster as he pleads with Congress for funding

Joe Biden received a second booster vaccination against Covid on Wednesday and pleaded with Congress to approve more funding to fight any new wave of the virus, while asserting that although the pandemic is not over: “Covid-19 no longer controls our lives.”

Speaking at the White House, the US president launched a new government website that he called a “one-stop shop” for accurate coronavirus information, covid.gov. ...

Then Biden swiftly turned his remarks towards asking Congress for more money to continue the effort to halt the coronavirus pandemic. “Just as we’ve reached a critical turning point in this fight, Congress has to provide the funding America needs to continue to fight Covid-19,” he said.

“This isn’t partisan, it’s medicine,” he added, warning that without the $22.5bn his administration is asking for, monoclonal antibody therapies to treat Covid will begin to run out by the end of May and preventive therapies for the immunocompromised will be exhausted by the fall.

As for vaccines, he said: “If Congress fails to act we won’t have the supply we need this fall to ensure the shots are available free and easily accessible for all Americans.”

FDA Approves SECOND Booster For 50+, CDC Recommends Another Jab For J&J

Fauci Warns MASKS May Come Back, 4th Dose Efficacy SHORT-LIVED, Shanghai In EXTREME Lockdown

Covid vaccines give extra protection to previously infected, studies show

Covid-19 vaccines provide significant extra protection for people who have already been infected, according to two new studies.

The jabs have proven highly effective in protecting those who have never had Covid, but their effectiveness at preventing symptoms and severe outcomes in people who have previously been infected has, until recently, been less clear.

Now two separate pieces of research, published in the Lancet Infectious Diseases journal, confirm that Covid-19 vaccines provide additional protection for people who have already been infected with Sars-CoV-2 – especially against severe disease.

In the first study, conducted in Brazil, researchers found that four vaccines – CoronaVac, Oxford/AstraZeneca, Janssen and Pfizer/BioNTech – provide extra protection against symptomatic reinfection and severe outcomes such as hospitalisation and death in people who had previously caught coronavirus.

The second study, from Sweden, found that vaccination against Covid-19 provided additional protection to those who had had Covid before, for at least nine months.

A Poor People’s Pandemic: Report Reveals Poor Died from COVID at Twice the Rate of Wealthy in U.S.

Medical Ethics Professor FIRED Over Vaccine – Now Vindicated!

Also of interest:

Biden Wants to Give 163 Times More to US Military Than to Global Pandemic Response

How the organized Left got Covid wrong, learned to love lockdowns and lost its mind: an autopsy

German man suspected of having 90 Covid jabs to sell vaccination cards

'A Victory for the Virus': Congress Cuts New Global Covid Aid to $0


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Pluto's Republic's picture

Finally, a newsy view of the new normal in the US.

Perhaps you should make Thursday, "Covid Night" at the Evening Blues. I have a feeling that the real Covid story is going to break this year. I'd tell everyone what it is, but I don't want to spoil the surprise. I'll disclose to you if you decide to become more involved.

No one does the news like you.

I, too, noticed that the Dose was looking a little thin, so I did a longish round-up of my own to post. File this under GMTA.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Lookout's picture

Treated early this disease is fairly easy to control with minimum symptoms. Nor even more important, there's no talk of prevention with Vitamins, lifestyle, diet, and so on. My only conclusion is TPTB want us sick and scared. Profit is the goal not health.

Thanks for the Friday Dose!

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

enhydra lutris's picture

@Lookout

Profit is the goal not health.

It has been thus for a great long time, especially with pharma/nostrums.

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

I confirmed the neighbor who developed cancer, and died 3 days after her diagnosis, was fully vaccinated. She was in her 50s, had lupus. She had a biopsy, showed throat cancer, 3 days, just before she died, cts revealed lung cancer. She was a non-smoker, no family history of cancer.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

Pluto's Republic's picture

WASHINGTON – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, and Democratic Rep. Peter DeFazio of Oregon became the latest Washington figures to test positive for COVID-19. These anouncements came Thursday after two cabinet officials and several others tested positive the day before.

Pelosi, who is asymptomatic, tested positive on Thursday. She will quarantine, her spokesman announced.

“The speaker is fully vaccinated and boosted, and is thankful for the robust protection the vaccine has provided,” said spokesman Drew Hammill. 

Pelosi attended crowded and largely maskless events at the White House Tuesday and Wednesday at which Biden spoke. On Wednesday, Biden spoke at an event in a hotel ballroom packed with more than 2,000 union leaders and members, most of whom were not wearing masks.

pelosi-HC-event.jpg
President Joe Biden kisses House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif.
during an Affordable Care Act event in the East Room of the White House in Washington,
on April 5, 2022. 

.

The White House said Biden's interactions with Pelosi do not meet the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's definition of being in close contact. 

• • •

Pelosi was only one of the nine House members to test positive for Covid-19 infections so far this week.

A number of Democratic Reps attended the annual Gridiron Dinner on Saturday, which could be D.C.’s Super Spreader Event of the Year. Several House members have tested postive for Covid-19 so far this week. Two cabinet members have joined their ranks.

Democratic Rep. Peter DeFazio of Oregon announced on Twitter late Thursday that he tested positive for COVID-19, adding: "Thanks to being fully vaccinated, I am only experiencing mild cold-like symptoms and fatigue. I will follow CDC guidance and quarantine. I encourage everyone to get vaccinated!"

Earlier this week, two other high-profile attendees, Reps. Adam Schiff, D-Calif; and Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, also disclosed positive tests. Both had attended the smallpox blanket exchange at the Gridiron event, and noth said on Tuesday that they were now infected. Schiff said in a tweet that he is “feeling fine” but would quarantine based on CDC guidelines. He remindedd everone that he is a fully vaccinated and boosted success story.

Another Democratic Rep., Angie Craig of Minnesota, tested positive late Thursday afternoon. All of the Democratic House members are fully vaccinated and boosted.

Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia announced Thursday evening that he too has the virus, tweeting "Late this afternoon after a routine test, I tested positive for COVID-19. I’m so thankful to be both vaccinated & boosted, and at the advice of the Attending Physician I plan to isolate."

Following Pelosi's diagnosis, a planned trip by lawmakers to Asia that the speaker was to lead has been postponed.

Now this postponement has got to be a disappointment for Democratic participants, who are looking for ways to publicize their reelection campaigns. The pre-publicity shows them spreading their tail feathers into War Bonnets to impress patriotic Putin-hating voters. They were heading off to Asia to kick-start the US war on China.

The Democratic War Mongers have come up with an Asian strategy they hope will gain them the popularily back home to win a few elections in at the mid term. Their mission is to try to covince the Asian nations (except for China) to align their policies with NATO. If fact, they are proposing an extension of NATO’s military charter for Asia. They are promising US loans to purchase US military weapons and build bases so they can participate in crushing China economically. They are proposing an Asian trade embargo against China’s ports. They are informing non-Chinese Asia that the US Navy will be coming to re-open all the shipping channels and subdue the regional dictator, China.

Of course the shipping channels have never been closed, but the Dems figure that Asians are too dumb to know that. Certainly the Americans are that dumb.

• • •

The news stories I am attaching to this post are all sourced from one newspaper, USA Today. The stories are mostly HERE and HERE. If I’ve put it in a blockquote, this is the source. Everything else is my opinion.

Everyone is reading from the same script as they all push the vaccines. They don't think people notice this, or notice that the vaccinated are easily infected.

The Omicron BA 2 variant that has overtaken all the others in the US, causes long term organ damage in as many as 62 percent of those who become infected. It doesn't matter if they are vaccinated or not. It doesn't matter if they have no symptoms. Almost everyone who is infected will have a shortened life span.

There are plenty of studies being published that make this clear. No one dares talk about them. It's more important than ever before to guard against infection. Sadly, the BA 2 variant is probably going to take China down after two years of no Covid at all

Check back for for the rest..

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
snoopydawg's picture

@Pluto's Republic

Which will lower his immunity for a few weeks so if Nancy spread it to him then he might be getting sick shortly. Unless it’s true that asymptomatic people do not spread the infection. But if he does it will again show how the mRNA shots do not qualify as vaccines which should prevent infection and spreading like the old definition of vaccines used to say before they were changed to meet the new narrative.

And they might have put people in more danger according to the information coming out of the UK. It’s why many people warned against vaccinating with a leaky product during a hot epidemic. Chickens coming home to roost. For the damage done to the body with both Covid infection and from the jabs it’s probably caused by the spike protein.

B4B18B33-C619-4F3D-A729-610468579555.jpeg

Can’t make it fit so see article for the original. But you get the drift. He keeps getting sick.

Natural immunity vs Covid vax:

You can think of natural immunity through an illness, as a cost (health risk) paid upfront, whereas vaccination is like a high interest credit card purchase, where the initial pain is less, but the high interest payments keep accruing.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

Pluto's Republic's picture

• • •

Susan Collins Reporting In:

Meanwhile GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine tested positive just hours after she voted for Jackson's historic nomination. Last week, Senate Judiciary Chair Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., warned reporters that the confirmation wasn't a done deal until after the vote, because something like a senator testing positive for COVID and being unable to vote could disrupt the process. 

Collins attended the annual Gridiron Dinner on Saturday, which attracts a wide swath of government officials and journalists. Several lawmakers and reporters who were at the dinner have since reported that they are infected with Covid-19.

Also on Thursday night, another White House official annouced they too had tested positive for COVID-19. Michael LaRosa, press secretary for first lady Jill Biden, tested positive for the virus after attending the Gridiron gala.

Coincidently, President Biden’s sister, Valerie Biden Owens, tested positive on Wednesday after experiencing mild symptoms, her publisher said in a statement. Owens had not been in close contact with the president or first lady, the publisher said.

Owens' memoir, "Growing up Biden," comes out next Tuesday.

• • •

The Washington D.C. Super-Spreader Event of 2022

As the results continue to come in, there is no question that SARS-CoV-2 struck gold, literally, at the annual Gridiron Dinner in Washington DC. The dinner has been cancelled since the beginning of the Pandemic. Acturally since 2019. Perhaps the elites got an advanced warning, just as France and Israel did. In any event, after the festive night last Saturday, where invitees were amused with light-hearted political satire while social distancing was thrown out the window — the days that follow are causing newfound anxiety among political elites. A growing number of attendees are reporting positive COVID test results. This, after the CDC assured them, “Enough with the Pandemic. It's time to Party! Just show your proof of vaccination at the door.”

The ballroom was filled with enthusiastic, vaccinated and double-boosted guests — mouths flapping with food and laughter and loud conversations, as they beathed in each other’s droplets. Free of masks, at last! The annual Gridiron Dinner event is wildly popular with government officials and journalists. But it is increasingly being with conjunctive eyes, as an infectious hub, as the number guests testing positive for Covid-19 rises.

When informed of the Gridiron’ Dinner list of infected guests, Gridiron President Tom DeFrank said in a statement.

"All guests at the Gridiron Club dinner were required to show proof of vaccination, We understand that some of our guests have reported positive tests since the dinner. We wish them a speedy recovery."

• • •

The pool of newly infected continues to expand.

Attorney General Merrick Garland was told he had tested positive for a Covid-19 infection moments after a meeting where more sanctions that might destroy Russia’s economy were being plotted. Earlier on Wednesday, before his test results came back, Garland appeared at a briefing along with top Justice officials, including Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco and FBI Director Chris Wray.

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo was also among the highy vaccinated attending the Gridiron gab-fest at the downtown Renaissance Hotel in Washington, D.C. She announced on Thursday that she was infected.

Vice President Kamala Harris' communications director Jamal Simmons, who is listed among the attendees in the dinner's program, also tested positive on Wednesday. Harris was in close contact with Simmons and is following CDC guidance despite the past pandemic failures in the US. Harris is maintaining her public schedule. If you find yourself in the same room with her, wear a mask or hold your breath. And be sure to get a booster, because that really works.

• • •

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's leading infectious disease expert, — who would apparently attend the opening of a door if he were invired — put in an appearance at the Gridiron gala. Also attending the event was Rochelle Walensky, Director of the Griland Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The press has peppered the National Institutes of Health and the CDC for updates on their heath this week. Neither agency is responding.

• • •

Believe this stuff at your own risk:

In February, Washington, D.C. dropped many of its mandates requiring people to wear masks indoors. As cases dropped. schools in the District similarly dropped mask requirements for students and staff.

The pace of new cases in the District of Columbia more than doubled in March. But “experts” say the outbreak and increases in infections in the city aren’t cause for concern – at least not at the moment.

David Dowdy, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said in an interview that these types of super-spreader events are likely to be a more permanent fixture as people resume normal activities like dinners and large gatherings.

“There is always going to be this risk,” he said. “Every now and then events like this are going to happen, where lots of people get sick. But the hope is we have enough immunity in the population that the people who get sick are not getting so sick that they're having to go to the hospital.”

But, Dowdy added, this should serve as an example for how people should treat going back to indoor activities that were previously too risky due to COVID-19. He said it’s important to keep updated with the latest data in your community and weigh the risks, especially with large indoor events.

Dowdy noted some areas of the country are appearing to see an increase in cases, including New York, Atlanta and D.C., but it’s not necessarily indicative of another pending wave of infections and deaths. 

“We don't have to panic,” he said

@Pluto's Republic

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato

Even if it has days like yesterday where no one chimes in. At least it is here when we need it. But this is not my site and I do no work to help so I have no say in the matter.
But thanks for the good run. The Dose has been my one stop shop for all things Covid.

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@wouldsman
say it in an essay. Not much difference really.

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janis b's picture

@JtC

For many, writing and posting an essay would be very different than reading and occasionally commenting in an already open space for it.

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janis b's picture

@wouldsman

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you lose control of things when circumstances change. The "plan" was to make Trump take the hit for everyone who died during the pandemic, so they defined all deaths where the decedent had ever had covid as dying of covid. Then Trump lost the election but the pandemic continued. Now it was Biden's turn. So they had to come up with a new narrative to continue the fearmongering. I thought they would wait for the next wave and hype the "deadliness" of the latest variant, but I underestimated them. Instead dozens of prominent people are testing positive - but are asymptomatic - and will remain so "thanks to the robust immunity conferred" by most infections being asymptomatic and almost all of the rest being so mild they don't even know they're sick vaccination."
Paranoid much? Very likely, but when surrounded by people who lie about everything and have done so for at least 40 years paranoia is the only reasonable response.

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On to Biden since 1973

snoopydawg's picture

@doh1304

Seems like most of the high and mighty that have come down with the Rona only have mild symptoms because thank dawg they were multiple jabbed and they say that it’s proof that the jabs work. But then I remember that whistleblower who said that congress was taking ivermectin so there’s that. Next up will be Psakiopath telling us that Biden is safe since he just got his 4th jab last week. See? They work. Unless….

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.