Israel Records 1st Case of Patient With Both COVID-19 and Flu, Dubbed ‘Flurona’
Epoch TImes – Israel has recorded what is widely believed to be the first case of “flurona” disease, a double infection of coronavirus and seasonal flu in an unvaccinated pregnant woman, according to local reports.
The unnamed woman displayed mild symptoms of the virus at Rabin Medical Center in the city of Petah Tikva on Dec. 30, Hamodia reported. She is doing well and was expected to be discharged from the hospital later on Thursday, according to officials.
“She was diagnosed with the flu and coronavirus as soon as she arrived. Both tests came back positive, even after we checked again,” said professor Arnon Vizhnitser, an obstetrics and gynecology specialist and the director of the hospital’s Gynecology Department. “The disease is the same disease; they’re viral and cause difficulty breathing since both attack the upper respiratory tract.”
Police Use Dogs as Thousands Protest Against Dutch COVID-19 Lockdowns
Epoch Times – Thousands of people in the Netherlands capital of Amsterdam gathered Sunday to demonstrate against the Dutch government’s COVID-19 lockdown measures before police cracked down.
It came after Amsterdam mayor Femke Halsema issued an emergency ordinance giving more police to clear the central Museum Square after the protesters violated the city’s ban on public gatherings amid an increase in COVID-19 cases.
The protesters also walked along a main thoroughfare in the capital city, playing music and holding yellow umbrellas in a sign of opposition to the government restrictions.
Some participants had a banner that said: “Less repression, more care,” while a group in white masks and white overalls held up signs, reading: “It’s not about a virus, it’s about control.” Another held a “Trump 2024 flag.”
Photos and video footage uploaded online showed what appeared to be police releasing dogs on anti-mandate protesters. Netherlands authorities deployed water cannons, footage showed, as other videos appeared to show alleged Dutch Army veterans clashing with police.
Judge Blocks Vaccine Mandate in San Diego Schools
Epoch Times – A judge has ruled in favor of a parent group that filed a lawsuit against the San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) for implementing a vaccine mandate for students 16 and older.
The legal challenge was filed by the group Let Them Choose on Oct. 12 after the SDUSD school board unanimously approved the vaccine mandate for students. Let Them Choose is a group formed by Let Them Breathe, an organization against mask mandates for K–12 students. Let Them Choose was launched to advocate for choice in education, including the right to refuse the COVID-19 vaccine.
Superior Court Judge John Meyer ruled on Dec. 20 in favor of Let Them Choose, which argued the mandate contradicts state law, according to the organization’s website.
The ruling concluded that school districts don’t have the power to implement mandates that don’t allow exemptions and go against state law, especially if the mandates aren’t established by the state.
“We are thrilled that the law was upheld in our lawsuit against San Diego Unified School District’s vaccine mandate,” Sharon McKeeman, founder of Let Them Choose, said in a statement. “The decision that school districts do not have authority to require the COVID-19 vaccine echoes statewide, and it shows that parents coming together in a grassroots movement to uphold our children’s rights is powerful and effective.”
Under the vaccine mandate implemented by the school district, students 16 and older who were not fully vaccinated by Dec. 20 would be required to transition from in-person learning to an online independent study program effective on Jan. 24.
Meyer further stated in the ruling that only vaccines required by the state are necessary for students to attend school, and the COVID-19 vaccine isn’t on the list.
“We’ve been very confident this entire time that the legal issues were very clear cut,” McKeeman told The Epoch Times. “We’re thankful that the judge was fair.”
FDA approves Pfizer coronavirus vaccine boosters for children as young as 12
Fox – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced Monday that children as young as 12 can now get booster shots of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine.
The decision comes as the omicron variant is rapidly spreading around the U.S. and complicating plans for students to return to classrooms following winter breaks. Booster shots previously were recommended for everyone age 16 and older.
“Throughout the pandemic, as the virus that causes COVID-19 has continuously evolved, the need for the FDA to quickly adapt has meant using the best available science to make informed decisions with the health and safety of the American public in mind,” Acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock said in a statement.
Fauci: CDC May Add Negative COVID-19 Test to Quarantine Guidelines
Epoch Times – White House pandemic adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci said federal health officials are considering amending COVID-19 isolation guidance for people who test positive after pushback.
Fauci told ABC News on Sunday that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is now evaluating a recent rule revision that allows people who tested positive to leave if they haven’t received a negative COVID-19 test.
The CDC, in a revision last week, said that it shortened the COVID-19 isolation time from 10 days to five days for asymptomatic patients. For the next five days, the health agency now recommends that those asymptomatic people wear a mask around others at all times.
“There has been some concern about why we don’t ask people at that five-day period to get tested. That is something that is now under consideration,” Fauci said. “The CDC is very well aware that there has been some pushback about that,” he added.
Fauci added that when “looking at it again, there may be an option in that, that testing could be a part of that, and I think we’re going to be hearing more about that in the next day or so from the CDC.”
Fauci: Hospitals Are ‘Overcounting’ COVID-19 Cases in Children
Epoch Times – White House COVID-19 adviser Anthony Fauci said that hospitals are now overcounting COVID-19 cases in children because they are automatically tested when they are admitted, echoing a narrative that has been repeated by some skeptics for months.
COVID Antiviral Pills Cause Life-Threatening Reactions When Used With Many Common Meds: FDA
Epoch Times – Pfizer’s antiviral oral drug developed to treat COVID-19 can cause severe or life-threatening effects when used with common medications including some anti-coagulants, some anti-depressants, and some cholesterol-lowering statins, according to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) (pdf).
FDA does not recommend Paxlovid for those with severe kidney or liver disease.
The FDA on Dec. 22 granted emergency use authorization (EUA) to Pfizer’s COVID-19 treatment pill as treatment for mild-to-moderate cases of COVID-19 in patients from 12 years of age.
Paxlovid was the first oral medication of its kind authorized by the FDA to treat COVID-19, with the aim of reducing the need for hospitalization before patients become too ill from the infection.
“This authorization provides a new tool to combat COVID-19 at a crucial time in the pandemic as new variants emerge and promises to make antiviral treatment more accessible to patients who are at high risk for progression to severe COVID-19,” stated Patrizia Cavazzoni, director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research.
Paxlovid consists of a cocktail of two drugs, the first being nirmatrelvir, which stops the SARS-CoV-2 virus from replicating, while the second component acts to prolong the duration of nirmatrelvir.
Video: President Trump’s Deadly Embrace of Vaccines with Paul Alexander PhD
Kulldorff & Bhattacharya Respond: The Collins and Fauci Attack on Traditional Public Health
Epoch Times – On Oct. 4, 2020, with Prof. Sunetra Gupta of Oxford University, we wrote the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD). Our purpose was to express our grave concerns over the inadequate protection of the vulnerable and the devastating harms of the lockdown pandemic policy adopted by much of the world; We proposed an alternative strategy of focused protection.
The key scientific fact on which the GBD was based—a more than thousand-fold higher risk of death for the old compared to the young—meant that better protection of the old would minimize COVID deaths. At the same time, opening schools and lifting lockdowns would reduce the collateral harm to the rest of the population.
The Declaration received enormous support, ultimately attracting signatures from over 50,000 scientists and medical professionals and over 800,000 members of the public. Our hope in writing was two-fold. First, we wanted to help the public understand that—contrary to the prevailing narrative—there was no scientific consensus in favor of lockdown. In this, we succeeded.
Second, we wanted to spur a discussion among public health scientists about how to better protect the vulnerable, both those living in nursing homes (where ~40 percent of all COVID deaths have occurred) and those living in the community. We provided specific proposals for focused protection in the GBD and supporting documents to spur the discussion. Though some in public health did engage civilly in productive discussions with us, in this aim we had limited success.
Unbeknownst to us, our call for a more focused pandemic strategy posed a political problem for Dr. Francis Collins and Dr. Anthony Fauci. The former is a geneticist who, until last week, was the director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH); the latter is an immunologist who directs the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). They are the biggest funders of medical and infectious disease research worldwide.
Collins and Fauci played critical roles in designing and advocating for the pandemic lockdown strategy adopted by the United States and many other countries. In emails written four days after the Great Barrington Declaration and disclosed recently after a FOIA request, it was revealed that the two conspired to undermine the Declaration. Rather than engaging in scientific discourse, they authorized “a quick and devastating published takedown” of this proposal, which they characterized as by “three fringe epidemiologists” from Harvard, Oxford, and Stanford.
How Likely Is Reinfection Following Covid Recovery?
Epoch Times – Public-health messaging from the beginning of this pandemic has had very little to say about immunity acquired following infection. But for most people, it is a real and pressing concern, and not only because of the vaccine mandates that have little or no regard for it. People want to know whether once recovered they can be confident of not getting it again.
Must everyone live in fear forever or is there a basis for the recovered to live with confidence?
We have looked at the published evidence and can conclude based on the existing body of evidence, that reinfections are very rare, if at all and based on typically a few instances with questionable confirmation of an actual case of re-infection.
Colson et al. did publish a very interesting paper on evidence of a SARS-CoV-2 re-infection with a different genotype. They sought to show that the same patient was infected in April, cleared the virus, seroconverted, but was “re-infected four months later with a new viral variant. The two infections reflect the circulating strains in Marseille at the same time. It is the most comprehensive study as it documented seroconversion following the first infection, showed drastically different viral genomes with 34 nucleotide differences, and ruled out errors of samples by techniques commonly used for forensic identifications.”
However, A very recent study in Qatar (Lancet) found that “natural infection appears to elicit strong protection against reinfection with an efficacy ~95% for at least seven months”. Hall in Lancet reported same.
“The study in Austria also found that the frequency of re-infection from COVID-19 caused hospitalization in only five out of 14,840 (0.03%) people and death in one out of 14,840 (0.01%)”.
A very recent UK observational study by Lumley published in CID (July 2021) looked at the incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection and B.1.1.7 variant infection in healthcare workers by antibody and vaccination status. “Researchers analyzed records from Curative, a clinical laboratory based in San Dimas that specializes in COVID-19 testing and has during the pandemic been conducting routine workforce screening. None of the 254 employees who had COVID-19 and recovered became re-infected, while four of the 739 who were fully vaccinated contracted the disease…it should give confidence to people who have recovered that they are at very low risk for repeat infection and some experts including myself believe that protection is equal to vaccination”.
Texas Audit Finds Over 11,000 Potential Non Citizens Registered to Vote, Other Problems
Epoch Times – Voting irregularities—including potentially thousands of votes cast by non-citizens and the dead—were reported during the first phase of the Texas Secretary of State’s forensic audit of the 2020 general election, but critics deemed it more of a risk-limiting audit at this point.
206 Marines Kicked Out for Refusing COVID-19 Vaccines
Epoch Times – The Marine Corps has separated 206 Marines for not getting the COVID-19 vaccine, the military branch announced Thursday. Active-duty Marines had a deadline to get fully vaccinated by Nov. 28, while for reservists, the deadline was Dec. 28. By the deadline, 95 percent of all active-duty Marines had received at least one dose of the vaccine, while 86 percent of the Reserve force had received the first shot. That means around 8,000 active-duty Marines and 5,000 Marine reserve personnel may face separation for refusing to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. “The Marine Corps is still tracking 1,007 approved administrative or medical exemptions,” Capt. Andrew Wood, a Marine Corps spokesman, said in a statement to news outlets. The Marine Corps has denied 3,115 of 3,247 religious exemption applications received. The rest are still being processed, according to the statement. Some unvaccinated Marines call the discharge a “political purge.” “There’s something fundamentally wrong .
725 Arrested, 165 Pleaded Guilty to Federal Jan. 6 Charges, DOJ Says
Epoch Times – More than 725 people have been arrested in all 50 states on federal charges stemming from violence that erupted at the U.S. Capitol Jan. 6, leading some 165 people to plead guilty—mostly to misdemeanor charges—the U.S. Department of Justice said Thursday in its year-end summary.
“Under the continued leadership of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia and the FBI’s Washington Field Office, the investigation and prosecution of those responsible for the attack continues to move forward at an unprecedented speed and scale,” the DOJ said in a statement. “The Department of Justice’s resolve to hold accountable those who committed crimes on Jan. 6, 2021 has not, and will not, wane.”
The approximately 725 arrests have led 145 defendants to plead guilty to misdemeanors, while 20 pleaded guilty to felonies. Six of the felony guilty pleas involved assaults on law enforcement, the report said.
More than 225 people were charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding law-enforcement officers or other employees. About a third of those cases involve charges of using a deadly or dangerous weapon, the DOJ said. Some 140 police officers were assaulted at the Capitol on Jan. 6, including 80 from U.S. Capitol Police and 60 from the Metropolitan Police Department.
Nearly 90 percent of those arrested were charged at least in part with entering or remaining in restricted federal buildings or grounds. Seventy-five defendants were charged with entering a restricted area with a dangerous or deadly weapon.
CDC Sued for Withholding Post-Licensure ‘V-safe’ Data on COVID-19 Vaccines
Epoch Times – The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been sued by the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN), which claims that the agency is improperly withholding COVID-19 vaccine safety data from the American public.
In a Dec. 29 statement, the nonprofit announced that it filed a lawsuit (pdf) against the CDC and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to force it to provide de-identified post-licensure safety data for the COVID-19 vaccines in the CDC’s v-safe system.
According to the CDC’s website, v-safe is an “active surveillance program to monitor the safety of COVID-19 vaccines during the period when the vaccines are authorized for use under Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) and possibly early after vaccine licensure.”
Through the app, vaccine recipients can inform the agency about any side effects they’ve suffered after getting a COVID-19 vaccine. Currently, the CDC has made data from its v-safe system available to the private computer technology company Oracle in de-identified form, meaning that personal identifying information has been redacted.
This data “will be collected, managed, and housed on a secure server by Oracle,” according to the CDC (pdf).
“Through Health and Human Services (HHS), Oracle has donated IT services to any agency conducting COVID-19 related activities. … All data will be stored, processed, and transmitted in accordance with the Federal Information Security Modernization Act (FISMA) and based on NIST standards,” the agency’s website states.
However, ICAN wants the CDC to produce that same de-identified data to the general public to assure transparency regarding claims by both the CDC and the Biden administration that COVID-19 vaccines are “safe and effective.”
The Trap of the Trilemma of Cryptocurrency Regulation: Government Control Is Not the Default
CATO – Cryptocurrencies seem to be on the minds of every government official. Politicians, central bankers, and regulatory heads continue to call for new regulations. However, the design of those regulations is surrounded with uncertainty––an uncertainty that is partly due to the novel nature of cryptocurrencies themselves. If impending regulations are to avoid crushing the technology, that novel nature must be better acknowledged. To that end, government officials should be careful to recognize when they are solely trying to place cryptocurrencies under existing categories––as if regulation is the default condition––instead of addressing the question of what benefit regulation might have.
Your Ability to Access Deleted Articles Returns
Mercola – I am launching a Censored Library at Substack, where our previously deleted article archive will be restored, and new articles will be uploaded after 48 hours
Our daily newsletter will remain free of charge, but articles are “ephemeral” and only viewable for 48 hours
The Censored Library at Substack will require a paid membership
Dr. Robert Malone to Rogan: US in ‘Mass Formation Psychosis’ Over COVID-19
Epoch Times – Key mRNA contributor Dr. Robert Malone, a prominent skeptic of mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations, suggested to popular podcaster Joe Rogan—days after Malone was suspended from Twitter—during an interview that the United States is in the midst of a “mass formation psychosis.”
“Our government is out of control on this,” Malone said about vaccine mandates in the interview, which was released over the weekend. “And they are lawless. They completely disregard bioethics. They completely disregard the federal common rule. They have broken all the rules that I know of, that I’ve been trained [in] for years and years and years.”
Malone, an expert in mRNA vaccine technologies who received training at the University of California–Davis, UC–San Diego, and the Salk Institute, was banned by Twitter last week. Malone told The Epoch Times last week that Twitter offered no explanation for why his account, which had amassed 500,000 followers, was suspended.
A spokesperson for Twitter told the left-wing Daily Dot outlet that Malone’s account “was permanently suspended for repeated violations of our COVID-19 misinformation policy … per the strike system outlined here, we will permanently suspend accounts for repeated violations of this policy.”
Twitter hasn’t responded to an Epoch Times’ request for comment on Malone’s suspension.
Twitter Permanently Suspends Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Account
Epoch Times – Twitter permanently suspended the personal account of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) on Jan. 2, claiming that she was posting false information relating to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We permanently suspended Marjorie Taylor Greene for repeated violations of our COVID-19 misinformation policy,” a Twitter spokesperson said in a statement to media outlets, repeating a boilerplate message that it has offered after other recent suspensions were handed down. “We’ve been clear that, per our strike system for this policy, we will permanently suspend accounts for repeated violations of the policy.”
Representatives for Twitter and Greene’s office didn’t respond to requests for comment by press time. It’s not clear which of Greene’s posts drew the ire of Twitter on Jan. 2, and Twitter didn’t elaborate on the alleged “misinformation” that Greene had posted.
“Account suspended. Twitter suspends accounts which violate the Twitter Rules,” her page now reads.
Greene’s House of Representatives account is still online.
NYC Mayor Eric Adams Continues State of Emergency, Extends Vaccine Mandate for Many Indoor Settings
Epoch Times – New York Mayor Eric Adams signed two separate executive orders after he was sworn into his new position in Times Square on New Year’s Day.
The first order will continue the city’s state of emergency pertaining to the COVID-19 pandemic. The state of emergency was put in place by former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration.
The second order extends the city’s “Key to NYC” program (pdf), which mandates COVID-19 vaccine passports for many indoor settings, including for dining, entertainment, and fitness venues. The vaccination requirements apply to those aged 5 and older.
To access various venues as part of the Key to NYC program, children aged 5 to 11 must show proof of full vaccination by Jan. 29. Currently, they only need to present proof of one vaccine dose if they took the mRNA-based Pfizer or Moderna vaccines.
2022’s First Storm Hits New Jersey, New York, Maryland
Epoch Times – The first storm of the New Year brought snow on Monday to multiple states in the northeastern U.S. and left hundreds of thousands of people in the southeast without power.
A flurry of warnings and alerts were issued by the National Weather Service, which forecast heavy snow and high winds.
Up to seven inches of snow was forecast in parts of Maryland and up to 10 inches could accumulate in Washington and Virginia, according to the service.
The bulk of the snowfall was expected to come down before noon, though some areas may see additional accumulation in the early afternoon, forecasters said.
They warned people of slippery roads and low visibility, which would make travel difficult.
In addition, a hurricane-force wind warning was in effect, bringing gusts of up to 74 miles per hour.
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