Prof. Yaakov Jerris, director of Ichilov Hospital’s coronavirus ward, told Channel 13 News that the majority of serious cases were vaccinated patients.
“Right now, most of our severe cases are vaccinated,” Jerris said on Channel 13 News. “They had at least three injections. Between seventy and eighty percent of the serious cases are vaccinated. So, the vaccine has no significance regarding severe illness, which is why just twenty to twenty-five percent of our patients are unvaccinated.”
Professor Jerris also related to an issue in reporting that has been revealed to be prevalent in reporting data. Speaking at a cabinet meeting on Sunday, he told ministers, “Defining a serious patient is problematic. For example, a patient with a chronic lung disease always had a low level of oxygen, but now he has a positive coronavirus test result which technically makes him a ‘serious coronavirus patient,’ but that’s not accurate. The patient is only in a difficult condition because he has a serious underlying illness.”
Jerris’s statements are consistent with a German government report that found that found more than 78.6% of reported cases of the omicron COVID-19 variant in the country were in vaccinated individuals. Four thousand and twenty people who reported contracting Omicron in the study – which equates to 95.6 percent of total cases – had received at least two doses of COVID-19 vaccines, meaning the vaccinated were 3.7 times more likely to contract the variant.
Quick note: Tech giants are shutting us down. You know this. Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Adsense, Pinterest permanently banned us. Facebook, Google search et al have shadow-banned, suspended and deleted us from your news feeds. They are disappearing us. But we are here. We will not waver. We will not tire. We will not falter, and we will not fail. Freedom will prevail.
Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here — it’s free and it’s critical NOW when informed decision making and opinion is essential to America’s survival. Share our posts on your social channels and with your email contacts. Fight the great fight.
Remember, YOU make the work possible. If you can, please contribute to Geller Report.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2022-02-05 06:39:422022-02-05 07:11:06Israeli Coronavirus Expert: 70-80% of Most Severe Cases Vaccinated at Least Three Times
Denmark took the lead in Europe this week, scrapping virtually all pandemic restrictions as the Scandinavian country of 5 million announced it no longer considers COVID-19 “a socially critical disease.”
Denmark’s move came the same week that health ministers in the United Kingdom announced plans to terminate an order forcing all NHS staff to get vaccinated against COVID, a move The Guardiansaid is designed to “prevent an exodus of thousands of frontline health workers.” The move came days after the UK scrapped its school mask mandate.
Not to be outdone, Finland’s Prime Minister Sanna Marin recently told reporters the country would be retiring COVID passports and, according to Reuters, aims “to remove all restrictions at the start of next month.”
Meanwhile, public health officials in Norway also said the country would be lifting nearly all of its COVID restrictions, including COVID tests at the border. Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere told reporters that even though COVID infections remain high, hospitalizations have stabilized and most citizens have some protection from the virus because of previous infections and vaccination.
“Even if many more people are becoming infected, there are fewer who are hospitalised,” Stoere explained. “We’re well protected by vaccines. This means that we can relax many measures even as infections are rising rapidly.”
The Czech Republic, meanwhile, recently scrapped its vaccine mandate, while several provinces in Spain also ditched virtually all COVID restrictions after a study conducted by the Public Health Observatory of Cantabria found vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals transmit the virus at similar rates.
IT'S HAPPENING!
Finland has announced they will be REMOVING all restrictions later this month.
Not all European nations have scrapped their COVID policies, however. In fact, some appear intent to move in the opposite direction.
Austria, for example, is becoming the first European country to make COVID vaccination compulsory for all adults. Greece, meanwhile, has announced it will fine adults over 60 who do not comply with vaccination; and Germany’s incoming chancellor, Social Democrat Olaf Scholz, has indicated he will support a COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
In Belgium, authorities have only grudgingly begun to rollback COVID restrictions, despite protests in Brussels of some 50,000 who gathered to oppose the state’s mandates.
“I’m angry about the blackmail that the government is doing,” protester Caroline van Landuyt told Reuters.
The rally in Brussels ended with police using tear gas and a water cannon to disperse those who’d assembled in protest, culminating in 60 people being arrested and 12 protesters being taken to hospital (as well as three police officers).
Why are many European nations dismantling their COVID restrictions while others are ramping up new mandates? While many are loath to admit it, it’s becoming increasingly clear that state attempts to control the virus have failed miserably.
A new Johns Hopkins metaanalysis, for instance, found that the lockdowns many countries embraced were a massive failure, resulting in “little to no effect” on COVID mortality, even though they came with immense collateral damage. A United Nations report published last year noted that COVID disruptions resulted in some 239,000 “maternal and child deaths” in South Asia alone, while the US saw a record number of drug overdoses, a surge in youth suicide, and an unprecedented drop in cancer screenings that will be felt for years to come.
While the vaccines have helped reduce COVID deaths and hospitalizations, they have done little to slow the spread of COVID, in large part because of the nature of Omicron, which is highly transmissible.
A committee of scientists who advised the regional government of Catalonia pointed out that Omicron, which has a high rate of transmission even before carriers experience an onset of symptoms, has rendered vaccine passports largely ineffective at reducing transmission because vaccinated individuals spread the virus at similar rates to unvaccinated ones.
“The effectiveness of the compulsory use of the Covid certificate is reduced as an extra level of security,” the scientists noted.
In other words, vaccines can protect individuals because they can reduce the likelihood of hospitalization or death from COVID, but they do little to slow or stop transmission. This makes vaccines primarily a matter of personal health, not public health.
BREAKING : Sweden is expected to announce tomorrow that they will be REMOVING all restrictions on the 9th of February.
It takes incredible arrogance for lawmakers and bureaucrats to assume they know what is best for individuals. But that quality—arrogance—is precisely what we’ve seen since the very beginning of this pandemic.
“To think one can [suppress] a very contagious respiratory virus is stupid and arrogant,” Harvard epidemologist Martin Kulldorff recently noted on Twitter. “We need leaders that are smart and humble.”
To think one can supress a very contagious respiratory virus is stupid and arrogant. We need leaders that are smart and humble.
In his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize entitled The Pretense of Knowledge, the economist F.A. Hayek warned that a lack of humility could lead modern man “to do more harm than good in his efforts to improve the social order.” With the power of the state at his fingertips, combined with his command of the sciences, Hayek feared modern man would fail to realize that there are limits to his knowledge and to his ability to shape society effectively.
“There is danger in the exuberant feeling of ever growing power which the advance of the physical sciences has engendered and which tempts man to try, ‘dizzy with success’, to use a characteristic phrase of early communism, to subject not only our natural but also our human environment to the control of a human will,” Hayek noted.
Hayek concluded his remarks with a warning. The student of society should learn “a lesson of humility” by recognizing “the insuperable limits to his knowledge.” If he failed this test of humility, the fatal striving to control society stood to make man “a tyrant over his fellows…[and] the destroyer of a civilization which no brain has designed but which has grown from the free efforts of millions of individuals.”
Hayek’s fear, one presumes, was of socialism. The COVID state, however, was born of the same hubris—the belief that central planners could use the power of the state to suppress and vanquish a highly contagious respiratory virus, something never tried before in human history.
Regrettably, yet predictably, the COVID state failed, and its mad experiment caused grave damage to society and science. Many European countries are finally accepting this reality, at least tacitly. But as for the Biden administration, it’s still unclear whether they understand the crux of the problem.
On Wednesday, the US Army announced soldiers who refuse vaccination for COVID-19 will be discharged—regardless of whether they’ve already had COVID (which the CDC admits offers powerful protection from the virus).
Many US Army soldiers will be left with a bitter choice, just like Katharina Teufel-Lieli, an Austrian musician who is one of tens of thousands in that country who have joined demonstrations to resist making the COVID vaccine compulsory.
Austrians face fines up to $4,100 if they don’t comply with the government’s order, but Teufel-Lieli says she’ll not bow to the pressure.
“I have the right to decide over my body… to simply say ‘no,'” the harpist recently told Agence France-Presse at her home near Salzburg.
Fortunately, more and more people in Europe and beyond are beginning to agree with her.
Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune. Bylines: Newsweek, The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFoundation for Economic Education (FEE)2022-02-05 06:25:032022-02-05 06:31:47European Nations Are Dismantling the COVID State Before Our Eyes. Will the U.S. Follow?
Thursday on MSNBC’s propaganda outlet The ReidOut, guest legal analyst Brittany Packnett Cunningham told racist host Joy Reid that the slogan Make America Great Again, associated with former President Trump and his supporters, reflects a desire to return to “days when you could lynch or murder black folks.”
Discussing a proposed Missouri self-defense law, demagogue Reid claimed that “Mark McCloskey, who is running for the open Missouri Senate seat, praised the bill. Because it means that he essentially, and his wife, could have been in their slippers and shoot every single Black Lives Matter person that walked by, legally, and they would not even be detained.”
What an utterly absurd lie. No one in conservative media would ever get away with making such an outrageously stupid claim, but no one in the mainstream (i.e. leftist) media will even bat an eye over it.
Packnett Cunningham replied, “This was, of course, the couple that was made famous by stepping outside of their restricted Covenant mansion in St. Louis, Glocks in tow, pulling their guns out on unarmed black protestors. But of course, to people like the McCloskeys, black skin is weapon enough, and this is precisely the problem. This is exactly what this bill is designed to do. It is to legitimize seeing blackness as a weapon in and of itself and then justify our murders.”
The McCloskeys did not display their weapons because of racism, but because their neighborhood was being threatened by rioters and looters. Moreover, the proposed Missouri self-defense law has nothing to do with race. It would apply to every legal citizen, blacks included — and blacks statistically benefit more from self-defense laws and 2nd Amendment rights than whites do.
She added, “So when folks talk about making America great again, that’s the kind of Missouri grand ol’ tradition that they want to return to. They want to return to days when you could lynch or murder black folks, and there would be absolutely no retribution for it. That’s not hyperbole. I’m telling you as a black Missourian, and as a protestor, that is reality.”
That’s not hyperbole? Of course it is. It’s beyond hyperbole. It’s a hate-mongering lie that bears no relation whatsoever to reality. But that’s how MSNBC and Joy Reid roll.
Reid Says That “Selfish” White Christian Conservatives Believe That America Was “Built for Them”
During the January 3, 2022 airing of her MSNBC program The ReidOut, Reid said:
“They’re white so-called Christian conservatives who feel like this country was built by them for them, and so everyone but them needs to suck it up and let them have their way or else. Their party, the Republicans, have gone from pretending to be the party of personal responsibility to unmasking themselves as the party of selfish people that cannot play well with others. And they even have their own cable networks plus something called GETTR [a social media platform and microblogging site founded in July 2021 by former Donald Trump aide Jason Miller], which kind of sounds like porn. Moving on. So the special citizen says, ‘I don’t want to wear a mask [against coronavirus], and if you try to attack me, I’ll attack the low-waged clerks at the store or at the Burger King. I don’t want to get the [COVID-19] vaccine either. If people get sick from me, oh well, not my problem. Joe Rogan said it’s fine. My kids aren’t going to mask up to protect those other kids. F those other kids, their parents are probably commies anyway.’ Which usually means people who want rights for other people and who give a damn what happens to them. So this midterm election year, we’re going to find out which brand of citizenship is stronger, and the answer will tell us whether our democracy is strong enough to survive.”
#NYC Mayor Eric Adams brags about targeting White people when he was a police officer: “Every day in the police department I kicked those crackers ass” pic.twitter.com/k76790LxAd
— ELMER⚔️FUDD ⚔️✝️pureblood✝️⚔️ (@Elmr_Fudd_again) February 4, 2022
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Discover The Networkshttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDiscover The Networks2022-02-05 06:03:292022-02-05 07:42:17Reid Guest: MAGA Means Going Back to ‘Days When You Could Lynch or Murder Black Folks’
In a review of all the political news in 2021, it would be hard to deny the impact of parents engaging the system. Politicians are responding to the undeniable force of concerned parents advocating for and protecting children. With state legislatures in full swing, we see many examples of legislation that reflect this much-needed pressure from parents: bills opposing the teaching of critical race theory (CRT), protecting students from gender identity ideology, providing oversight of libraries, and encouraging school curricula transparency.
Critical Theory
Post-modernism’s impact on K-12 education can be clearly seen in the introduction of teaching “critical theories” like CRT and queer theory. Organizations like the highly-partisan and left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center have pushed ideologies such as these in schools for decades, virtually unopposed. When parents finally stood up against this divisive material, politicians responded. In just the past month, 56 state-level bills opposing CRT have been proposed across the country. Virginia’s newly-elected governor, Glenn Youngkin (R), issued an executive order regarding “divisive concepts” as part of his Day One Agenda, fulfilling a campaign promise. He also set up a hotlinefor parents to report curricula that are harmful to children and compromise learning. Left-wing organizations that dominate public institutions will predictably decry these efforts. And the legislative process is complex, producing bills that are less than perfect in some cases. But the important achievement is that public officials are responding to the voices of parents who demand intellectual protections for children, in some cases for the first time.
Gender Identity Ideology
Parents are fighting back against efforts to indoctrinate children in gender identity ideology. Whether it’s activist teachers overstepping their authority to encourage children to “transition” or school systems promoting dangerous policies that can lead to medical procedures that harm children, thanks to parental engagement, political leaders are finally stepping in to offer legislation to protect children and families from harmful agendas. From bills regulating medical treatment of minors to bills protecting opportunities for girls to compete on a level playing field in sports, the very real concerns of parents are finally being addressed.
Sexually-Explicit Content
Virtual learning during the pandemic was the ultimate in curricula transparency. When parents got a long look at what their children were learning, the great awakening of parents began. Now that in-person classes are resuming in schools across the country, parents want to maintain their oversight of a system that has taken too many ideological liberties with children’s minds. Proposed legislation to mandate that schools post information about curriculum on their websites will go a long way toward keeping parents informed about the content of their children’s education — and keeping politics out of the classroom.
An example of a parent who was tireless in her efforts to protect children comes recently from Virginia. When this mom heard from her son about the disturbing sexual content in his class reading assignments, she became an advocate for parental notification. After discussing the situation with her son’s teachers and the school administration, she decided to meet with her school board member and other school officials about establishing a county-wide policy notifying parents that a class assignment contained sexually-explicit reading material and offering parents the chance to select an alternative assignment for their child. These protections already existed in other classes, like Biology, where students with religious objections are not required to dissect insects or animals and are provided an alternative assignment.
With a county policy for parental notification in place, this mom focused her efforts on the state legislature so that every family in Virginia would enjoy the same protections she had worked for in her school system. This effort came to both statewide and national attention in the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial race. On the debate stage, the former governor who had twice vetoed bipartisan legislation allowing parental notification of sexually-explicit or sexually-violent content in class assignments proudly proclaimed that parents should not have a say in their children’s education. Parental rights in education became a major theme of his opponent Glenn Youngkin’s campaign and propelled him to victory.
Now, even a few Democratic Party legislators have gotten the message. A version of this parental notification legislation passed out of committee with bipartisan support. It’s expected to pass through the Democrat-controlled state senate. Other pro-parent measures have failed, but it’s great to see at least one signature campaign issue gaining hard-earned and much-deserved support. Please pray for this effort and efforts like it across the country that benefit families and children.
Whether it’s lobbying state legislators, engaging with local governing bodies, deciding to run for office, or simply talking to your children or grandchildren about what’s happening in their school day, parental engagement is the key to protecting faith, family, and freedom.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Family Research Councilhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFamily Research Council2022-02-05 05:44:162022-02-05 09:28:23The Evidence Is Clear: When Parents Are Engaged, Politicians Respond
SAN ANTONIO, TX /PRNewswire/ — U.S. Term Limits is calling out Rep. Henry Cuellar (TX-28) for refusing to sign the U.S. Term Limits pledge that promises to co-sponsor the U.S. Term Limits amendment for congressional term limits in a series of billboards in his district. The introduced amendment calls for 6 years total in the U.S. House of Representatives and 12 years maximum in the U.S. Senate. The billboards are meant to educate the voters of the district about Cuellar’s adamant refusal to support congressional term limits. Recent polling by RMG Research shows 84% of likely Democratic voters in his district favor congressional term limits. Cuellar’s Democratic opponent in the primary, Jessica Cisneros has signed the pledge. The polling also shows that when Democratic primary voters are made aware that Cisneros supports congressional term limits and Cuellar does not, she surges to a lead over Cuellar who has consistently refused to sign the term limits pledge.
House Joint Resolution 12 (HJR12) has 77 House members on board. Support is expected to exceed 100 members in the next session of Congress. The U.S. Term Limits amendment has been introduced in Congress calling for six years total in the U.S. House of Representatives and twelve years maximum in the U.S. Senate. Senate Joint Resolution 3 (SJR3) has 16 sponsors and cosponsors.
“Since entering office in 2005, Henry Cuellar has refused to sign the term limits pledge despite the fact that his constituents favor congressional term limits,” said Nicolas Tomboulides, Executive Director of U.S. Term Limits. “These billboards are meant to educate voters of the 28th District that Representative Cuellar does not support congressional term limits.
“Congressional term limits is not a Democratic or Republican issue, it is an American issue,” concluded Tomboulides. “In this polarized political environment, the need for congressional term limits is the one issue all Americans agree on except for Henry Cuellar.”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00U.S. Term Limitshttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngU.S. Term Limits2022-02-05 05:31:342022-02-05 05:31:34Billboards Call Out Cuellar for Refusing to Sign Term Limits Pledge
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-Lubyanka) is furious with Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Arizona) for daring to stand against the far-Left’s plans for socialism and election-rigging, and she is demanding that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-Sinister) take action, and take action now. She wants him to “make their lives as difficult as possible.” This is the kind of rhetoric that destroys free republics, and AOC should be remembered for it.
AOC was responding to a tweet from Bloomberg congressional reporter Zach C. Cohen: “Sen. Kyrsten Sinema confronted Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on the Senate floor last night about the chamber’s slow voting process, per @StevenTDennis. ‘Could we have some discipline in the votes, ever? You’re in charge!’”
This apparently enraged AOC, who tweeted: “Actually he should continue to make their lives as difficult as possible and treat them the way they treat, say, public housing residents. Or parents who rely on CTC. When they improve, maybe process can improve too. Why should we make the lives of obstructionists easier?” She added: “Cancel vacation. Vote on weekends. Vote for hours. Vote last minute. Call votes when Senators are courting billionaires at fundraisers. They may get apoplectic, but it’s nothing compared to the people they’re forcing to sleep without heat in winter, or losing the right to vote.”
Actually he should continue to make their lives as difficult as possible and treat them the way they treat, say, public housing residents. Or parents who rely on CTC. When they improve, maybe process can improve too.
AOC’s hysterical and fact-free claims about public housing residents going without heat and people losing the right to vote aside, holding Senate votes at inconvenient times isn’t really very high on the scale of what can be done to make someone’s life difficult. If all that Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin have to put up with are weekend votes, their lives could be a good deal worse. However, AOC called for making Sinema’s life as difficult as possible four months after Leftist activists followed her into a bathroom at Arizona State University in order to harass her for her opposition to Biden’s handlers’ socialist Build Back Better agenda. Around the same time, Leftists in kayaks harassed Manchin while he was on his boat.
Old Joe Biden dismissed those incidents are “part of the process.” But they weren’t. Intimidating people into being afraid to oppose a political agenda is a hallmark of totalitarian regimes and has never (with some notable exceptions) been a feature of American public life until recently when authoritarians such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her Squad colleagues gained ascendancy on the Left.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2022-02-05 05:09:402022-02-05 05:13:59AOC Calls on Schumer to Make the Lives of Sinema and Other ‘Obstructionists’ As ‘Difficult As Possible’
Sarah Palin’s libel trial against the New York Times resumed yesterday after being delayed by her positive COVID test. A jury was selected and heard opening arguments. It must have come as quite a shock to people who live in a blue bubble that you can’t just dump all over us and expect we won’t fight back. Sarah Palin is still fighting back ten years after the New York Times, as it later admitted, “incorrectly stated that a link existed between political rhetoric and the 2011 shooting” of Gabby Giffords.
Others on the political Right are fighting back against the Left in court, as well.
A Michigan high school student sued after his school suspended him for privately talking about his Christian beliefs. A student in Indiana sued her school after teachers called her a “bigot” for starting a pro-life club. A former prison guard sued the Colorado Department of Corrections for creating a hostile work environment by mandating Woke training that labeled him automatically a racist just because he’s white. A Louisville police officer sued after he was suspended for praying at an abortion clinic while off duty. The city just paid him a $75,000 settlement. A father in Florida sued an elementary school for secretly badgering his daughter into becoming transgender and she attempted suicide. Seven hundred parents sued 140 schools in Illinois over mask mandates. California schools gave up those stupid Aztec prayers for human sacrifice to settle a lawsuit. Women for America First sent a cease and desist letter to Rolling Stone magazine demanding a retraction of the false allegation the organizers of the January 6th rally in Washington used burner phones to communicate with the White House. The letter warns Rolling Stone to preserve records for litigation.
Others on the political Right are fighting back outside the courtroom.
Tennessee’s Governor successfully pressured the University of Memphis to abandon a program to pay professors $3,000 to insert social justice and Woke ideology into their courses. Tennessee and North Dakota restricted the power of state medical boards to punish doctors for disseminating supposed ‘misinformation’ about COVID. Similar restrictions are now pending in 10 other states. The University of North Carolina med school removed statements supporting a CRT activist and gender fluidity after they were criticized by a physician. A Republican lawmaker in Virginia blasted Democrat legislators for calling Republicans racist, sexist, bigoted, and worse every time they have a policy disagreement. The video went viral.
But the prize goes to the Governor of West Virginia who, after Bette Midler called the people of his state “poor, illiterate, and strung out”, took his dog to the floor of the state legislature and told Bette Midler to kiss his dog’s hinny, which he displayed to the audience. A-plus for creativity! Go, Guv!
So, I say to those of you who live in blue bubbles, you can abuse us, but not for free. There’s a price to pay, and we will make you pay and pay and pay. You abuse us, and it will come back to bite you. It will boomerang. Just ask Nick Sandmann. You want to live in a blue bubble, fine. But abuse us and we will come after you, with lawyers.
You’re the ones who took the Left turn. You’re the ones who hate America and want “fundamental transformation”. You’re the ones trying to throw out the very best ideas in all of political theory – popular sovereignty and individual rights, classic American values. You’re the ones trying to destroy the Republic and replace it with mobocracy where political minorities have no rights.
First, we were the Deplorables. Then we were the smelly Walmart people. Then we were white supremacists, even the ones of us who are black. Then we were a threat to democracy. Now we’re trying to start a civil war. Sure, and we eat babies, too. You got nuthin’. You keep calling us names because you’ve got nothing else. We’re not going away, because we know we’re right and we know you’re wrong every time you open your mouth. We’re here to stay, so get over it!
The politically outspoken former star reposted a tweet from writer and podcaster Danny Haiphong, which showed a photo of the massive turnout of officers in Manhattan last week. The hashtag #abolishthepolice was added over the image.
“I’m gonna tell my kids this is what fascism looks like,” the original tweet stated. Sarandon added her own caption that read, “So, if all these cops weren’t needed for CRIME that day, doesn’t that mean they aren’t needed ANY day?”
“Of all the days for @SusanSarandon to share her true feelings towards police,” the National Fraternal Order of Police tweeted in response, “she picks the day we bury our fallen brother to make such inflammatory & brainless comments. When you spend more time hating on cops than you do your own career, it’s no wonder why you’re a D-list actor.”
The Police Benevolent Association of the City of New York also pushed back, writing, “This is what privilege looks like: a wealthy actress, safe in her bubble, mocking heroes & making light of the crisis that cops are battling alongside our communities. NYC is uniting to stop the violence — @SusanSarandon is living on a different planet.”
In 2010-11, Sarandon was a member of Actors and Artists United for the Freedom of the Cuban Five (AAUFCF)—a reference to five constituents of a brutal, KGB-trained Castro spy ring who were serving long prison terms in the U.S. for their convictions on a number of serious crimes. In April 2011, Sarandon and other AAUFCF members sent a letter to former president Jimmy Carter, praising him for speaking out in support of freedom for the Cuban 5. Other signers included Ed Asner, Danny Glover, Mike Farrell, Bonnie Raitt, Pete Seeger, Martin Sheen, and Oliver Stone.[14]
In the fall of 2011 Sarandon supported the anti-capitalist Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement. “It never changes from the top, it only changes from the bottom, and this is great,” she told an OWS contingent in New York City that September. The following month, Sarandon lauded OWS for striving “to shift the paradigm to something that’s addressing the huge gap between the rich and the poor.”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Discover The Networkshttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDiscover The Networks2022-02-04 08:47:262022-02-04 08:48:02Sarandon Shares Post Calling Funeral for NYPD Detective Jason Rivera’s Turnout ‘Fascism’
In 2020, researchers from the University of Cambridge started testing out some of the ways people might adjust face masks to make them fit better on their faces. Their findings were finally released as a peer-reviewed study this week in the journal PLoS ONE.[Emphasis added]
At first we thought this was political satire but after reading the article we decided to add VICE, the University of Cambridge, the journal PLoS ONE and pantyhose masks to our growing list of Sissy Watch USA members.
Fit hacks can be used to effectively improve the fit of surgical and KN95 masks, enhancing the protection provided to the wearer. However, many of the most effective hacks are very uncomfortable and unlikely to be tolerated for extended periods of time. The development of effective fit-improvement solutions remains a critical issue in need of further development. [Emphasis added]
QUESTION: Fit hacks? Pantyhose Masks Really?
Perhaps Samantha got it right when she ended here column with,
If someone can figure out how to combine the fetish market for crotch-scented masks with the improved safety of a better fit, they would have a real seller on their hands.
Are Masks and Mask Mandates Effective?
James D. Agresti, the president and cofounder of Just Facts, a think tank dedicated to publishing rigorously documented facts about public policy issues, in a column titled “Coming to grips with the facts about masks” wrote:
Allegations that “masks work” and “don’t cause harm” have been enforced by governments and corporations around the world for more than 18 months through arrests, firings, censorship, fines, and denial of access to schools, supermarkets, hospitals, streets, and other public spaces. This has made it virtually impossible for many people to live without complying with mask mandates.
But scientific research shows that masks and mask mandates don’t work at all.
Dr. Vinay Prasad—an associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco—has written an article that examines the scientific evidence for masking children and concludes that:
“most of the masks worn by most kids for most of the pandemic have likely done nothing to change the velocity or trajectory of the virus.”
“there are downsides to face coverings for pupils and students, including detrimental impacts on communication in the classroom.”
“masking is now little more than an appealing delusion.”
decisions to mask schoolchildren are “ignorant, cruel, fearful, and cowardly.”
Dr. Chad Roy, who specializes in airborne infectious diseases and is a professor of microbiology and immunology at Tulane University School of Medicine, has told the Washington Examiner that:
“cloth and surgical masks do absolutely nothing for protection from ambient virus.”
“all this song and dance of wearing cloth masks with some presumption that you’re being protected from ambient virus is completely and positively 100% counter to how masks and respirators work.”
Anew study published in the The Southern Medical Journal (SMJ) found that a county-wide mask order in Bexar County, Texas, did not lead to a reduction in COVID-19 hospitalization rates or deaths.
The study, which was peer reviewed, analyzed data before and after mandates were imposed at both the state level (July 3, 2020) and in Bexar County (July 5, 2020), Texas’s fourth largest county.
“We defined the control period as June 2 to July 2 and the postmask order period as July 8, 2020–August 12, 2020, with a 5-day gap to account for the median incubation period for cases; longer periods of 7 and 10 days were used for hospitalization and ICU admission/death, respectively,” the study authors wrote. “Data were reported on a per-100,000 population basis using respective US Census Bureau–reported populations.”
Authors of the study, which was reviewed by the US Army Institute of Surgical Research, analyzed the daily average number of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, ICU visits, patients on ventilators, and deaths, and concluded the policy did not reduce any of these metrics.
“All of the measured outcomes were higher on average in the postmask period as were covariables included in the adjusted model,” the researchers said. “There was no reduction in per-population daily mortality, hospital bed, ICU bed, or ventilator occupancy of COVID-19-positive patients attributable to the implementation of a mask-wearing mandate.”
The Bottom Line
Masks don’t work to stop a virus like Covid. Period.
Results: The Fluid Resistant Surgical Mask gave no protection to inhaled smoke particles. Modifications with tape and three mask layers gave slight benefit but were not considered practical. FFP3 gave complete protection to inhaled smoke but strap tension needs to be ‘just right’ to prevent facial trauma. Facial barrier creams are an infection risk.
Conclusions: Surgical masks give no protection to respirable particles. Emerging evidence on cough clouds and health care worker deaths suggests the implementation of a precautionary policy of FFP3 for all locations exposed to symptomatic or diagnosed COVID-19 patients. PPE fit testing and usage policy need to improve to include daily buddy checks for FFP3 users.
So there you have it. But, if you have a fetish for crotch scented masks then go for it. Otherwise, just wash your hands frequently.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Dr. Rich Swierhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Rich Swier2022-02-04 07:04:282022-02-07 07:31:14SISSY WATCH USA: VICE, University of Cambridge, PLoS ONE and Pantyhose Masks
Public health advice has not caught up with the latest research.
Allegations that “masks work” and “don’t cause harm” have been enforced by governments and corporations around the world for more than 18 months through arrests, firings, censorship, fines, and denial of access to schools, supermarkets, hospitals, streets, and other public spaces. This has made it virtually impossible for many people to live without complying with mask mandates.
In recent weeks, however, more medical scholars and media outlets are coming to grips with facts about masks that Just Facts has been documenting for more than a year and painstakingly compiled in a September 2021 article sourced with more than 50 peer-reviewed science journals. Here’s a sample of people who are speaking up about the facts and their implications:
Dr. Vinay Prasad—an associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco—has written an article that examines the scientific evidence for masking children and concludes that:
“most of the masks worn by most kids for most of the pandemic have likely done nothing to change the velocity or trajectory of the virus.”
“there are downsides to face coverings for pupils and students, including detrimental impacts on communication in the classroom.”
“masking is now little more than an appealing delusion.”
decisions to mask schoolchildren are “ignorant, cruel, fearful, and cowardly.”
Dr. Chad Roy, who specializes in airborne infectious diseases and is a professor of microbiology and immunology at Tulane University School of Medicine, has told the Washington Examiner that:
“cloth and surgical masks do absolutely nothing for protection from ambient virus.”
“all this song and dance of wearing cloth masks with some presumption that you’re being protected from ambient virus is completely and positively 100% counter to how masks and respirators work.”
The Atlantic has published an analysis of school masking policies by three medical scholars—including Dr. Margery Smelkinson, a specialist in infectious diseases at the National Institutes of Health—in which they wrote:
“We reviewed a variety of studies—some conducted by the CDC itself, some cited by the CDC as evidence of masking effectiveness in a school setting, and others touted by media to the same end—to try to find evidence that would justify the CDC’s no-end-in-sight mask guidance for the very-low-risk pediatric population, particularly post-vaccination. We came up empty-handed.”
The “overall takeaway from these studies—that schools with mask mandates have lower Covid-19 transmission rates than schools without mask mandates—is not justified by the data that have been gathered.”
“As with our existing school-mask policies, no real-world data indicate that these [N95] masks decrease transmission in school settings—data that matter greatly, as these masks require a very tight fit to function effectively, and that may not be possible for many kids.”
“Over the past 21 months, slowly and with much resistance, the layers of mythology around Covid-19 mitigation in schools have been peeled away, each time without producing the much-ballyhooed increases in Covid-19. Schools did not become hot spots when they reopened, nor when they reduced physical distancing, nor when they eliminated deep-cleaning protocols. These layers were peeled away because the evidence supporting them was weak, and they all had substantial downsides for children’s education and health.”
“Covid-19 hospitalizations have “remained extremely low among children, on par with pediatric flu hospitalizations during a typical season.”
“Imposing on millions of children an intervention that provides little discernible benefit, on the grounds that we have not yet gathered solid evidence of its negative effects, violates the most basic tenet of medicine: First, do no harm.”
In an article published on Christmas Eve, CNN Medical Analyst Dr. Leana Wen confessed that “cloth masks are little more than facial decorations” and “this is what scientists and public health officials have been saying for months, many months, in fact.” Yet, she fails to tell the entire truth and instructs people to wear N95 masks without conveying their harms or the fact that gold standard studies have only found inconsistent benefits from N95s in healthcare settings, much less community settings.
Fox News has published an article about how YouTube suspended Rand Paul for questioning the effectiveness of cloth masks and that the CDC is edging closer to Paul’s view. The article then links to Just Facts’ research on masks to document the fact that “several studies have shown” cloth masks “are not effective in stopping the spread of viruses like the coronavirus.”
Still leading people astray
Some of the most powerful proponents of masking continue to spread destructive fictions and withhold genuine facts from people. For a prime example, Google-owned YouTube recently censored a video from Just Facts about the dangers of N95 masks. Even though every fact in the video is documented with data from peer-reviewed science journals, OSHA, and the CDC—YouTube purged it with callous disregard for the health of people, especially children.
Likewise, the New York Times recently reported that Google-owned YouTube suspended conservative talk show host Dan Bongino “after he posted a video saying cloth and surgical masks were useless in stopping the spread of Covid—a false claim that violated the company’s misinformation policy.”
James D. Agresti is the president and cofounder of Just Facts, a think tank dedicated to publishing rigorously documented facts about public policy issues. More by James D. Agresti
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00MercatorNet - Navigating Modern Complexitieshttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMercatorNet - Navigating Modern Complexities2022-02-04 06:12:322022-02-04 06:13:22Coming to grips with the facts about masks
Only time will tell if Rogan’s critics have the last laugh and see him gone completely.
Comedian Joe Rogan is the biggest name in podcasting. His show, the Joe Rogan Experience, attracts an estimated 11 million listeners per episode. Since 2020, Spotify has enjoyed an exclusive deal with JRE for an estimated US$100 million. With three to four episodes per week, each of which run for hours at a time, he has a lot of influence — and a lot to lose.
And don’t his detractors know it!
“I want you to let Spotify know immediately TODAY that I want all my music off their platform,” Neil Young wrote to his management team and record label last week. “They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.” Spotify sided with Rogan — and then removed Young’s catalogue from their service.
Young’s decision followed the release of an open letter, penned by a 270-strong “coalition of scientists, medical professionals, professors, and science communicators,” who called Rogan out for “misinformation” and “promoting baseless conspiracy theories”. They were particularly referring to his recent interviews with Drs Robert Malone and Peter McCullough.
(As it turns out, fewer than 100 of the signees were medical doctors, most of whom work at universities and do not practice medicine. The remainder included teachers, psychologists, engineers, podcasters, a dentist, and a vet.)
Others have since followed the lead of Rogan’s frontrunner critics. Singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell soon announced she would remove her music from Spotify, followed by guitarist Nils Lofgren.
According to the Los Angeles Times, there are rumours that the Foo Fighters, Barry Manilow, and Prince Harry and Meghan Markle “will be the next to walk”. Indeed, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex released a statement denouncing a “global misinformation crisis” and telling of their heroic efforts to hold Spotify accountable.
More recently, even the White House has urged Spotify to tighten the screws of censorship, first amendment be damned.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki calls on Spotify, a Swedish company, to do more to censor Joe Rogan, an American citizen, with regard to COVID.
While Joe Rogan is a giant, he is certainly not uncancellable. And Spotify is no charitable organisation. Shareholders and company executives factor profits into any major decision — which may be why Spotify has already quietly cancelled over 40 past JRE episodes. They have also announced their decision to add a content advisory label to any podcasts that discuss Covid-19.
It may not end there. Only time will tell if Rogan’s critics have the last laugh and see him gone completely.
Just what is so threatening about this former UFC commentator and psychedelics enthusiast?
Decorated journalist Glenn Greenwald — whose centre-left libertarian outlook closely aligns with Rogan’s — minces no words on the controversy:
“Censorship — once the province of the American Right during the heyday of the Moral Majority of the 1980s — now occurs in isolated instances in that faction. In modern-day American liberalism, however, censorship is a virtual religion. They simply cannot abide the idea that anyone who thinks differently or sees the world differently than they should be heard.“
Warns Greenwald: the woke’s focus until recently was to “expand and distort the concept of ‘hate speech’ to mean ‘views that make us uncomfortable,’ and then demand that such ‘hateful’ views be prohibited on that basis.” Now, he says, their target is “misinformation” or “disinformation” — terms that “have no clear or concise meaning”. And the lack of definition is deliberate. “Like the term ‘terrorism,’ it is their elasticity that makes them so useful,” he writes.
“Corporate outlets beloved by liberals are free to spout serious falsehoods without being deemed guilty of disinformation,” Greenwald notes, “and, because of that, do so routinely.”
It’s not Rogan’s alleged “misinformation” that worries these outlets. It’s their loss of control over the narrative being believed by the masses. They too have much to lose — and they are losing. Rogan’s stats dwarf the viewership of America’s popular cable news channels, even in primetime.
For further proof that “misinformation” is not Joe Rogan’s crime, consider that Neil Young previously released an entire album, The Monsanto Years (2015), which sowed major popular distrust towards genetically modified cropping.
Young released a short anti-GMO documentary, and he went on tour “amplifying misinformation about GMOs to large mainstream audiences”. He was also interviewed by Steven Colbert on The Late Show, where he warned of “the terrible diseases and all of the things that are happening” to people who eat genetically modified products.
To Joe Rogan’s credit, he released a nine-minute video via Spotify in which he graciously addresses his critics, admits various failings, and clarifies that he is no expert but enjoys hearing from experts across the ideological divide. His message would disarm all but the most dedicated censorship enthusiasts.
In the video, Rogan addresses the hot potato that is ‘misinformation’, and makes a good case for why his show deserves to stay up:
“The problem I have with the term ‘misinformation’ — especially today — is that many of the things that we thought of as misinformation just a short while ago are now accepted as fact.
“Like for instance, eight months ago if you said, ‘If you get vaccinated you can still catch covid and you can still spread covid,’ you would be removed from social media. They would ban you from certain platforms. Now, that’s accepted as fact.
“If you said, ‘I don’t think cloth masks work,’ you would be banned from social media. Now that’s openly and repeatedly stated on CNN.
“If you said, ‘I think it’s possible that Covid-19 came from a lab,’ you would be banned from many social media platforms. Now that’s on the cover of Newsweek.”
Precisely. “Misinformation” is whatever the cultural imperialists decide it is at any given moment, until they change their mind or the truth catches up with them.
Rather than censoring him, Rogan’s critics would do well to listen to his podcast. By doing so, they may even learn what their future opinions will be.
Kurt Mahlburg is a writer and author, and an emerging Australian voice on culture and the Christian faith. He has a passion for both the philosophical and the personal, drawing on his background as a graduate… More by Kurt Mahlburg
RELATED TWEET:
After I was beaten by antifa & hospitalized for a brain bleed in 2019, @joerogan offered to give me a voice even though I was unknown. The pile on against him now is because he’s willing to speak with those overlooked by the establishment. Thank you, Joe. https://t.co/oqaSvrbgWfpic.twitter.com/uKfcrbcBbu
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00MercatorNet - Navigating Modern Complexitieshttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMercatorNet - Navigating Modern Complexities2022-02-04 05:53:452022-02-04 07:31:39The Joe Rogan affair is not about ‘misinformation’ but narrative control
If you want to be healthy and happy, should you live in an Amish community or in New York City?
In the 1400s the printing press revolutionized Europe, enabling mass distribution of printed material fast. The Reformation roiled Europe in the 1500s, in no small measure due to Gutenberg’s invention. In the wake of Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli came a variety of sects, including the radical Anabaptists, who believed in adult baptism and strict separation of church and state. In 1693 the Anabaptists splintered into three sects, including the followers of one Jakob Ammann. They called themselves Amish.
About the Amish
Amish organize into districts governed by an Ordnung (set of rules) that governs personal attire, domestic life, and work. Today the Ordnung forbids use of electricity, automobiles, telephones and a range of modern labor-saving devices. The Ordnung must be strictly obeyed under penalty of shunning or even excommunication. Implementation of the Ordnung may vary in different communities. It is intended to promote the virtues of hard work, humility, rural life, and separation from the world. Their inspiration comes from James 1:27: “To keep oneself from being polluted by the world” (NIV).
Weary of persecution and the world around them, in the mid-1700s about 500 Amish arrived in the New World, settling mostly in Pennsylvania. In the 1800s about 1500 more came, settling in the Midwest. Most Amish are descended from about 200 families who crossed the Atlantic.
Population and fertility
“Over the last century the Amish population has doubled on average every 19.63 years,” according to the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Pennsylvania’s Elizabethtown College, which further states:
“The North American Amish population grew by an estimated 183,565 since 2000, increasing from approximately 177,910 in 2000 to 361,475 in 2021, an increase of 103.2 percent.”
In 1992 there were 125,000 Amish in the US. By 2020 there were 350,000, an almost 180 percent increase. The US population increased approximately 29 percent during that period, thus the Amish population growth rate was six times that of the US (including immigration). That is exponential population growth, though it begins from a very low base.
Today there are 375,000 Amish in America.
Amish live in districts, each comprising roughly 30 families. When a district surpasses that, a new district is formed. A new district is founded every 3.5 weeks. Associated districts form settlements. From 2000 to 2021, the Amish gained 290 new settlements. Present in 31 US states, they have recently established districts in four Canadian provinces and single districts in Argentina and Bolivia.
At home the Amish speak a form of German known as Pennsylvania Dutch. Due to their rural customs, personal privacy (Amish do not keep photographs as they are believed to cultivate vanity) and lack of technology, surveys of the Amish are an inexact science. Several groups may be considered a variant of Amish, but with fertility research the accepted criteria for Amish is that they speak Pennsylvania Dutch and have no household phones. That group consistently averages close to seven births per female.
Were the Amish a separate country, they would be right up there with Niger (6.9) contending for the world’s highest fertility rate. Amish fertility was the basis for demographer Lyman Stone’s 2018 paper “How Long Until We’re All Amish?”
I occasionally encounter Amish in my travels, and once visited a workshop where a father and his four sons made buggy wheels. They were back-ordered for months.
Reasons for population growth
Like other Christians, Amish see children as a gift from God.
Their lifestyle incentivizes having children. Without the efficiency and productivity of technology, children are essential to work the farm, do the chores and look after their parents in old age. (Amish do not participate in Social Security.) Simply put, they value familial cooperation through labour over efficiency and productivity. Requiring more labour (children) engenders cooperation and close familial bonds without the worldly distractions of university, cinema, social media, bars, etc. There is no social atomization among the Amish. They believe that labour-saving technology would breed idleness. Amish are exempt from schooling past the eighth grade by the US Supreme Court’s ruling in Wisconsin v. Jonas Yoder, 406 U.S. 205 (1972).
Another growth factor is that Amish have the highest retention rate of any religion or denomination in America at almost 90 percent. In adolescence Amish youth are allowed to leave their communities virtually free of constraints in a rite of passage called Rumspringa (jumping or hopping about). Baptism comes after they return.
Conclusion
There is evidence of some very slight decline in Amish fertility, though similar declines have been previously observed. Provided the current Amish growth rate holds, in 215 years their population is projected to be larger than the current US population of 327 million. It would be interesting to stick around and see if that pans out.
Amish farms and businesses are usually quite profitable. They pay cash for farms. Amish have the lowest rates of depression, anxiety, and schizophrenia of any American demographic.
The Amish are not without critics. Some regard them as a cult. Like any population, they are not immune from occasional criminal or deviant behavior. Conformity is expected or demanded, depending on your point of view. Those who stray from the Ordnung are shunned (a traumatic ordeal) or even excommunicated. They keep to themselves and do not proselytize or encourage outsiders to join. They are pacifist and do not serve in the military. A small number leave Amish communities as adults.
After observing life among the Amish, Business Insider published an article headlined, “If you want to be happier, should you be a billionaire or be Amish?”
The Amish are obviously doing something right. Their faith and largely pre-modern lifestyle works for them.
Louis T. March has a background in government, business and philanthropy. A former talk show host, author and public speaker, he is a dedicated student of history and genealogy. Louis lives with his family… More by Louis T. March
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00MercatorNet - Navigating Modern Complexitieshttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMercatorNet - Navigating Modern Complexities2022-02-04 05:41:162022-02-04 05:42:32One group of Americans has the highest fertility in the world. It doubles every 20 years.
An American sociologist crunched the numbers and came up with surprising conclusions.
Fifty-five-year-old Chris Butler told the BBC yesterday that he had suffered years of trauma after “gay conversion therapy” when he was 19. Church elders handed him over to men who pinned him to the floor, placed a huge Bible on his head, and performed an exorcism.
Mr Butler says that it took him 12 years to recover from the ordeal.
Stories like these are flooding the zone in the English and Scottish press at the moment because Westminster, in London, and Holyrood, in Edinburgh, are both determined to legislate for comprehensive bans on “conversion therapy”.
“We are committed to building a society in which conversion therapy no longer takes place,” says the UK Minister for Women and Equalities, Liz Truss.
World-wide popularity
Whether or not “conversion therapy” bans are necessary, there’s no denying that for legislators around the world, they are catnip.
The United Nations called for a global ban on conversion therapy in 2020 because it is “inherently degrading and discriminatory” and “inflict[s] severe pain and suffering, resulting in long-lasting psychological and physical damage”.
The French National Assembly unanimously passed a ban last month. Canada’s lower house passed a ban in December, also unanimously. Other countries with bans include Brazil, Ecuador, Malta, Albania and Germany. In Australia, the jurisdictions of Queensland, the ACT and Victoria have passed bans. In the United States, 28 states have effectively banned it.
Where is the evidence of harm?
Just two small problems.
First, in 2022, what is “conversion therapy”? The kind of abusive violence that Chris Butler experienced 35 years ago no longer happens – at least in the countries which are banning it. And the historic abuse which is being used to justify “conversion therapy” of any kind, even “talking therapy”, is hardly relevant to the situation of trans teenagers nowadays.
The UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission, which lobbies for gays, lesbians, and bisexuals, is very sceptical about the government’s plans. “You can’t legislate without definitions or evidence. And why should anyone want to try?” was the scathing response of Bev Jackson, a founding member of the Gay Liberation Front.
Second, where is the peer-reviewed expert proof that “talking conversion therapy” is harmful? The UK government declares in its report that it plans to criminalise this for people under 18.
A lot is at stake. The terms of the various laws vary, but some of them would prevent psychologists, pastors, or even parents from dissuading children from a belief that they are gay or lesbian or trans. “We are witnessing the criminalisation of parental love,” wrote UK journalist Brendan O’Neill in Spiked. “ And even The Economist, which normally supports the demolition of moral taboos, is strongly opposed to the UK government’s plans. “For some trans-identified patients, drugs and hormone treatments will be the right outcome. But for many others, perhaps most, they may not. That is why talking therapies must be available in treatment.”
So where is the evidence that “conversion therapy” — or to use a less emotive term, sexual orientation change efforts (SOCE) — is harmful?
Extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence
An article published this week in a leading peer-reviewed journal, Frontiers in Psychology, claims that there is none. American sociologist Paul Sullins states bluntly that “even for persons for whom SOCE has had no efficacy, there is no discernible psychosocial risk”.
Sullins analysed data from the Generations study gathered by the Williams Institute, an LGBT thinktank in California. This is the first long-term, five-year study to examine the health and well-being across three generations of American lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals.
He compared SOCE alumni — people who have undergone “conversion therapy” — with non-SOCE LGB persons. Astonishingly, for anyone informed only by the overheated media coverage, he found no difference between the two groups for several measures of behavioural harm, including suicidal morbidity, psychological distress, self-harm (cutting), and substance abuse.
True, SOCE alumni probably did experience stress and stigma over their lifetimes – but they did not fare worse than the non-SOCE group. Even in measures like internalised homophobia and the number of days of poor mental health in the past month there was no difference. There was at least one difference — they were more likely to be out about their sexuality.
How widespread is “conversion therapy”? The government won’t say:
“it is difficult to estimate the true prevalence of conversion therapy among LGBT people in the general population.” Does it harm people? There is “a growing body of quantitative evidence” – in other words, there’s not much. Can we trust the qualitative evidence? — “the evidence base for conversion therapy is predominantly based on self-reporting and care needs to be taken when examining the impact of conversion therapy.”
A fresh look at the data
Most people believe that “conversion therapy” is always and everywhere wrong , so the no-harm theory requires some unpacking.
From a policy perspective, the real question is not whether a gay or lesbian person has memories of a stressful experience, but whether its effects were truly long-lasting. It’s important to bear in mind that someone who seeks out therapy is already troubled.
Sullins found that: “Those who had undergone SOCE were no more likely to experience psychological distress or poor mental health, to engage in substance or alcohol abuse, to intentionally harm themselves, or to think about, plan, intend or attempt suicide, than were those who had not undergone SOCE.”
Sullins acknowledges that several studies have reported harm following SOCE, particularly increased suicidal behaviour. But only four of these used a random sample and all four failed to distinguish suicidal behaviour before and after SOCE. Sullins’s study, on the other hand, is based on 1,518 people who self-identified as LGB in a Gallup survey of 350,000 American adults.
He found that suicidal behaviour is much higher before SOCE (which probably prompted request for therapy) but not afterward. In fact, in a forthcoming critique of an influential study by gay suicide expert John Blosnich, Sullins argues that people who have experienced SOCE are less inclined to commit suicide:
“Experiencing SOCE therapy does not encourage higher suicidality, as they claim; rather, experiencing higher suicidality appears to encourage recourse to SOCE, which in turn strongly reduces suicidality, particularly initial suicide attempts. Restrictions on SOCE deprive sexual minorities of an important resource for reducing suicidality, putting them at substantially increased suicide risk.”
Let that sink in. If Sullins is right, depriving LGB people of the possibility of seeking therapy could lead to more suicides, not fewer.
Science without evidence is bunk
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. It is extraordinary that the UK government is contemplating the criminalisation of talking therapies. Common sense suggests that people need to talk about their sexual anxieties. Where is the extraordinary evidence that common sense is wrong?
“A habit of basing convictions upon evidence, and of giving to them only that degree or certainty which the evidence warrants, would, if it became general, cure most of the ills from which the world suffers,” said Bertrand Russell.
Unfortunately, virtue signalling is higher on the list of Liz Truss’s priorities than gathering evidence. She says bluntly: “it is the view of the government that one incident of conversion therapy is too many.”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00MercatorNet - Navigating Modern Complexitieshttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMercatorNet - Navigating Modern Complexities2022-02-04 05:28:272022-02-04 07:37:08Where is the evidence that ‘conversion therapy’ is harmful?
The Defend Florida Press Conference has delivered the Truth about what our grassroots organization found through our canvassing efforts and using the latest data from the Florida Department of State, Division of Elections.
Make sure EVERYONE hears this message. Send the Press Conference recording link to friends, and post on ALL social media channels: Getter, MeWe, Clouthub, Twitter, Facebook, we mean all.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Defend Floridahttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDefend Florida2022-02-03 16:03:002022-02-03 16:03:00Watch The Defend Florida Press Conference on Counting the Vote in 2022
In 1990 I went to Tripler Army Medical Center to pick up my medical records and those of my wife and son. I was told by staff that due to HIPAA rules I couldn’t take their medical records, only they could pick them up. In 1990 personal privacy was the #1 priority when it came to medical records.
Fast forward to 2022. Today my medical records are digitized and shared not only between my doctors but also with healthcare information management companies and government agencies, who may be able to access them either in part or in whole.
Your Heath Records
A 2020 court case involving Ciox Health, a healthcare information management company that handles tens of millions of medical requests, has potentially altered the HHS rules.
The Privacy Rule gives you, with few exceptions, the right to inspect, review, and receive a copy of your medical records and billing records that are held by health plans and health care providers covered by the Privacy Rule.
Digitizing Healthcare Records
Confidential medical records are now digitized and federalized. What was a private matter between a doctor and the patient has became a public matter between the doctor, health plans, healthcare information management companies and multiple government agencies.
Many doctors felt they lost control when they were required to digitize their patients medical records. In 1972, the first electronic medical record system was developed by the Regenstrief Institute. Initially, this effort did not take off. However, under President Clinton this changed dramatically.
In 1991, the Institute of Medicine made the case that by the year 2000, each physician’s office should be using computers in their practice in order to improve patient care. Although it was not turned into law, the Institute did provide a variety of recommendations to achieve that goal. As the emergence of EMR’s continued, there were also adjustments made to the rules and regulations surrounding privacy and confidentially of medical records. In 1996 the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was introduced in response to growing issues facing healthcare coverage, privacy and security in the United States. To follow disclosure and confidentiality regulations included in HIPPA, organizations have begun to shift to electronic systems to comply with these laws.
[ … ]
During President George W. Bush’s time in the Oval Office, the budget for healthcare IT projects was doubled; a new sub-cabinet position of National Health Information Coordinator was created, as well as the call for an industry-wide adoption of electronic health record systems by 2014. This mandate has been supported by President Obama as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), a piece of legislation aimed at directing additional funding and incentives to healthcare professionals who adopt these electronic medical systems and follow the concept of “meaningful use” by the year 2014.
QUESTION: What has happened to doctor patient privacy?
Federalizing Healthcare
Now doctors and hospitals are not practicing medicine rather they’re just chasing profits and enforcing government mandates.
Hospitals and doctors used to focus solely on their patients, today they are focused primarily on profiting from government largess and sharing personal information with health plans and other heath care providers.
WATCH: The Chief Medical Officer for United Healthcare of Louisiana (Medicaid) opined in a recorded phone conversation that the Medicaid rate for reimbursement of COVID patients, which is faster and significantly higher, could be the motivation for the improper “primary diagnosis” codes.
QUESTION: How did this all begin?
It began when the government first digitized and then federalized healthcare and transferred power from doctors and hospitals to health insurance providers and government agencies like: OSHA, DHS, HHS and Congress.
More recently this power increased under the idea that government must control all aspects of our lives in order to stop Covid from spreading. The idea of “two weeks to flatten the Covid curve” is now entering its second year. Draconian policies have been instituted by politicians at every level, further taking away the important doctor patient relationship and replacing it with a doctor government relationship.
QUESTION: Why aren’t doctors standing up for Shamgar Connors and DJ Ferguson?
ANSWER: Follow the money.
A just released Johns Hopkins University study proved that lockdowns do not work and lockdowns have no (i.e. 0.2%) impact on Covid death rates. So why are hospitals demanding their staff get vaxxed and some hospitals have shut down in response to federal Covid mandates?
Today doctors are chasing profits and not patients. This began with the passage of Obamacare. When the U.S. Supreme Court gave legal sanctioning of Obamacare as a “tax” the transition shifted from doctor/patient to doctor/government.
Today Covid is the driving force behind the government’s take over of our healthcare. If you don’t believe me then go to your doctor and ask for a prescription for Ivermectin.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Dr. Rich Swierhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Rich Swier2022-02-03 08:10:512022-02-03 08:53:48CHASING PROFITS NOT PATIENTS: Doctors and Hospitals Are No Longer Practicing Medicine
