Upcoming ReAwaken tour with Clay Clark – Friday, January 14, 2022
Dream City Church – Phoenix, Arizona
View more here: https://www.thrivetimeshow.com/reawaken-america-tour/
Sweden tightens COVID restrictions as virus surges
Sweden to introduce mandatory vaccine passes for indoor public gatherings of more than 50 people starting Wednesday.
Al Jazeera – Sweden has announced a slew of new virus curbs, including early closings for bars and restaurants and a cap of 500 people at public gatherings, as the country registers record numbers of cases fuelled by the Omicron coronavirus variant.
People in Italy who have not been vaccinated against COVID-19 are barred from restaurants or taking domestic flights under new regulations.
Uganda Reopens Schools After World’s Longest Covid Shutdown
NY TImes – Schools have reopened in Uganda after being closed for nearly two years, ending the world’s longest education disruption due to the Covid pandemic.
The reopening caused traffic congestion in some parts of the capital, Kampala, and students could be seen carrying their mattresses in the streets, a back-to-boarding school phenomenon.
Many countries have closed classrooms on and off, but Uganda had kept more than 10 million students at home since March 2020. Critics say it took a heavy toll.
19 Dead, Including 9 Children, After Fire Rips Through NYC Apartment Building
Epoch Times – At least 19 people have died in a high-rise apartment fire in the Bronx on Sunday, New York City officials said.
“This is going to be one of the worst fires we have witnessed here in modern times in the City of New York,” Mayor Eric Adams said during a news conference on Sunday.
The death toll of 19 was confirmed by Stefan Ringel, a senior adviser to Adams. Ringel later confirmed to The Associated Press that nine children died, noting that they were aged 16 and younger.
Thirty-two people were transported to five hospitals, with the majority of the victims suffering from severe smoke inhalation, FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro said.
Firefighters “found victims on every floor and were taking them out in cardiac and respiratory arrest,” he said. “That is unprecedented in our city. We expect there to be numerous fatalities.”
Nigro compared the severity of the fire to the Happy Land social club fire, which killed 87 people in 1990 when a man set fire to the building after getting into an argument with his former girlfriend and being thrown out of the club.
American comic Bob Saget found dead in Florida hotel
WND – Stand-up comedian Bob Saget, known for his roles on “Full House” and “America’s Funniest Home Videos” was found dead Sunday in a Florida hotel room. He was 65.
“Earlier today, deputies were called to the Ritz-Carlton Orlando, Grande Lakes for a call about an unresponsive man in a hotel room,” the Orange County Sheriff’s Office tweeted.
“The man was identified as Robert Saget & pronounced deceased on scene. Detectives found no signs of foul play or drug use in this case.”
Earlier today, deputies were called to the Ritz-Carlton Orlando, Grande Lakes for a call about an unresponsive man in a hotel room. The man was identified as Robert Saget & pronounced deceased on scene. Detectives found no signs of foul play or drug use in this case.
USDA Alert: Thousands of Pounds of Ground Beef Recalled in 7 States Over E. Coli Concerns
Epoch Times – At least 28,000 pounds of ground beef was recalled in seven U.S. states over E. coli concerns, said the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Food and Safety Inspection Service in a release on Thursday.
Interstate Meat Dist. Inc., of Clackamas, Oregon, said it is recalling some 28,356 pounds of ground beef products that might be contaminated with the bacteria. The items were produced on Dec. 20, 2021, and the items’ details and labels can be accessed at the USDA’s website.
The recalled products were shipped to retail locations in Arizona, California, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming, according to the release. They have the number “EST. 965” in the USDA mark of inspection.
“The issue was reported to FSIS after a retail package of ground beef was purchased and submitted to a third-party laboratory for microbiological analysis and the sample tested positive for E. coli O157:H7. FSIS conducted an assessment of the third-party laboratory’s accreditation and methodologies and determined the results were actionable,” the agency wrote.
The alert is being sent out because the USDA “is concerned that some product may be in consumers’ refrigerators or freezers,” the agency said. “Consumers who have purchased these products are urged not to consume them. These products should be thrown away or returned to the place of purchase.”
Tent City Pops Up In Front Of DC’s Union Station Amid “Severe Homeless Crisis”
ZeroHedge – Down the street from the US Capitol Building, right in front of Union Station, more than a dozen tents have been erected, highlighting the homeless problem in the nation’s capital.
The area outside the train station is a 16-minute walk from the Capitol Building. Lawmakers who take the train to work have to pass by this area and gaze upon the homeless who have been knocked out of the workforce and unable to afford shelter, food, and energy because of inflationary conditions produced by unorthodox monetary and fiscal policies.
RT News’s Rachel Blevins first reported on the homeless encampment outside the train station on Christmas Eve. She tweeted, “while the Mayor of DC puts an additional burden on businesses by requiring vaccine checks that divide the public into two classes of people… This is the scene outside Union Station. Dozens of tents are serving as a reminder of how bad the homeless crisis has gotten in this city.”
Almost Half of New York COVID-19 Hospitalizations Not Due to COVID-19
Epoch Times – Nearly half of the patients currently in New York hospitals with COVID-19 were admitted for reasons other than the disease, the state said on Jan. 7.
Forty-three percent of the 11,548 hospitalized patients didn’t have COVID-19 listed as one of the reasons for admission, Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office said.
Hochul, a Democrat, told a press conference that she wanted to drill down on the hospitalization numbers to see how many patients are actually being treated for COVID-19 versus merely having the disease, which often causes no or mild symptoms.
Some of the patients test positive for COVID-19 “but they’re in there for other reasons,” Hochul said. “Think of all the other reasons people end up at a hospital; it’s an overdose, it’s a car accident, a heart attack.”
Hochul had announced on Jan. 3 that the state would be separating out hospitalizations for COVID-19 versus those with the disease, which is caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.
She said that it’s important to know the percentage of patients in each category as the number of hospitalizations rise.
“I just want to always be honest with New Yorkers about how bad this is,” she said. “Yes, the sheer numbers of people infected are high, but I want to see whether or not the hospitalizations correlate with that. And I’m anticipating to see that at least a certain percentage overall are not related to being treated for COVID. But we’re still going to watch hospital capacity.”
Most people admitted for non-COVID reasons who have COVID-19 are in New York City, with approximately half the hospitalizations there meeting that criteria, the data show. In some other areas, the percentage is much lower.
Vaccinated People Who Had Severe COVID-19 Outcomes Had at Least One Risk Factor, Study Suggests
Epoch TImes – The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published a study on Jan. 7 which found that every one of the 189 vaccinated people who experienced a severe outcome after contracting COVID-19 had at least one risk factor, like being 65 or older.
Scientists affiliated with the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases studied approximately 1,228,664 persons aged 18 and over who completed primary vaccination from December 2020 to October 2021, receiving either Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, or an “unspecified mRNA vaccine.”
Among these, 2,246 contracted COVID-19, including 327 who were hospitalized, while 189 had a severe COVID-19 outcome. Thirty-six people had a COVID-19-related death, including nine persons discharged to hospice, the study found.
The study defined serious COVID-19 outcomes as hospitalization with a diagnosis of acute respiratory failure, the need for noninvasive ventilation, intensive care unit (ICU) admission, including requiring invasive mechanical ventilation, and death.
Among those who acquired COVID-19 after primary vaccination, 36 died, 24 survived and were admitted to an ICU, and 129 survived but were diagnosed with acute respiratory failure or required non-invasive ventilation but were not admitted to an ICU.
The study said that severe outcomes associated with getting the vaccine are rare, with 0.015 percent of those who were studied having severe outcomes and 0.0033 percent of the people studied dying.
Those who suffered serious outcomes had risk factors which included being aged 65 and older, being immunocompromised, or having underlying conditions involving pulmonary disease, liver disease, chronic kidney disease, neurologic disease, diabetes, or cardiac disease.
All those with severe outcomes had at least one of these risk factors, and 77.8 percent of those who died had four or more risk factors, the CDC said.
“Vaccinated persons who are older, immunosuppressed, or have other underlying conditions should receive targeted interventions including chronic disease management, precautions to reduce exposure, additional primary and booster vaccine doses, and effective pharmaceutical therapy to mitigate risk for severe outcomes,” the CDC said. “Increasing vaccination coverage is a critical public health priority.”
People Injured by COVID-19 Vaccine Are Left in the Dark: Agricultural Pilot
Epoch Times – People injured by the COVID-19 vaccine have no meaningful way to get compensated and have been ignored by the federal government, according to an agricultural pilot who has been seriously injured by taking the COVID-19 vaccine.
“At this point, the government has totally abandoned us,” Cody Flint, a vaccine-injured pilot, told NTD’s “The Nation Speaks” program in an interview broadcast on Jan. 1.
“The PREP Act stated that vaccine injuries were given an outlet to go seek compensation and financial help in the name of the Countermeasure Injury Compensation Program—the CICP—it’s an absolute joke,” Flint said. “We are totally left in the dark.”
Common cold could protect you from Covid – study
RT – Researchers hope the findings could provide a roadmap to longer-lasting immunity against Covid variants
Higher levels of T cells caused by the common cold make it less likely that a person will catch Covid, according to an “important discovery” outlined in a new peer-reviewed study.
The study, released on Monday by researchers at Imperial College London, is the “first evidence of a protective role for these T cells,” finding that their presence in high levels after a common cold can help to protect against Covid infection.
“Our study provides the clearest evidence to date that T cells induced by common cold coronaviruses play a protective role against SARS-CoV-2 infection,” Professor Ajit Lalvani, senior author of the study, wrote. He said the cells “provide protection by attacking proteins within the virus, rather than the spike protein on its surface.”
The study began in September 2020, at a time when most UK citizens had not been infected with Covid, taking blood samples from participants within six days of them being exposed to the virus. It explored the levels of T cells created by the common cold that cross-recognized the Covid proteins.
In individuals who did not become infected with Covid, the levels of cross-reactive T cells were substantially higher than in those who caught the virus, showing that T cells target the internal proteins in Covid.
Bed Bath and Beyond to Close 37 US Store Locations in 2022
Epoch Times – Bed Bath & Beyond (BBBY), the home goods retailer, announced on Jan. 7 that it is kicking off 2022 by permanently closing 37 stores in 19 states across the United States by the end of February.
The store closings are part of a plan that it announced back in 2020 to shut 200 redundant locations over the next two years as part of a broader turnaround effort after several years of declining sales.
The retailer previously closed a round of stores in February 2021 and February 2020.
The home goods retailer said it has closed roughly 170 locations thus far and is still on track to hit its 200-store goal by year’s end.
Liquidation sales have already begun at the 37 locations, which account for 21 percent of the remaining Bed Bath & Beyond stores.
In this latest round of store closures, New York will lose seven stores, California will close five, and Washington, four.
Arizona, Georgia, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Texas will lose two stores apiece.
Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi, New Jersey, Ohio, Virginia, Wisconsin, and West Virginia are losing one store each.
The retailer will remodel its remaining locations to reduce clutter with brighter signage and new brands.
Censored mRNA Platform Inventor Tells All on Rogan Show
Mercola – December 30, 2021, Joe Rogan interviewed Dr. Robert Malone, the inventor of the mRNA gene transfer technology. YouTube and Twitter promptly deleted the interview
Google has also been caught red-handed manipulating search results such that Malone’s Rogan interview won’t show up when searching for “mass formation psychosis”
Malone was permanently banned from Twitter December 29, 2021, likely triggered by a post that included a video by the Canadian COVID Care Alliance, which reviewed Pfizer data showing the COVID jab causes more illness than it prevents, and that the Pfizer trial was flawed both in design and construction
Alternatively, Malone may have been banned due to a post showing how the World Economic Forum controls the global media narrative
A Physicians Declaration by the International Alliance of Physicians and Medical Scientists, signed by more than 16,000 doctors and scientists, states that “healthy children shall not be subjected to forced vaccination” as their clinical risk from SARS-CoV-2 infection is negligible and long term safety of the shots cannot be determined prior to such policies being enacted
Biden Administration Cuts Florida’s Weekly Monoclonal Shipment in Half
Epoch Times – The federal government slashed in half the number of doses of the monoclonal antibodies therapy shipped to Florida from 30,000 to 15,000 this week, according to Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).
DeSantis said the 15,000 dozen received would be “immediately utilized to support new monoclonal antibody sites.”
“But for the federal government’s decision to restrict supply of monoclonal antibody treatment to Florida, my administration would have already opened additional monoclonal antibody treatment sites throughout the state,” DeSantis said in a press release.
The governor said that before the Biden administration “seized control of the monoclonal supply” Florida was administering 30,000 doses per week to infected patients. The treatment saved “countless lives,” he said.
“The Biden Administration is still obstructing the state of Florida’s ability to manage our own supply of monoclonal antibodies and I will continue to seek additional doses for Floridians,” he said.
More Than 584,000 Foreigners Overstayed Their Visas: DHS
Epoch Times – A total of 584,885 foreigners overstayed their U.S. visas in fiscal year 2020, according to a newly released report from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
DHS recently released the report, but made it appear as if it had been released in September 2021 after being pressured by Republican senators for defying the law and not releasing it.
The Entry-Exit Overstay Report (pdf) found 584,885 foreign nationals who were legally allowed to enter the United States for a period of time, but failed to abide by their visas and stayed longer than permitted.
That was higher than the 497,272 foreigners who overstayed visas in fiscal year 2019.
Fiscal year 2020 ran from Oct. 1, 2019, to Sept. 30, 2020.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas called the increase “an anomaly when compared with the prevailing trend” and attributed it to the COVID-19 pandemic.
About 1.2 percent of foreigners who entered the United States legally via air or sea are believed to have overstayed their visas in 2020, according to the report.
Former Border Commissioner: ‘We Have Lost Control of the Southwest Border’
Epoch Times – The southwest border during President Joe Biden’s first year in office reached historic levels of illegal crossings, pulling agents off the front line and leaving large swaths of the border unpatrolled. Drugs, especially fentanyl, flowed in, and overdose deaths are at an all-time high.
“What we’re experiencing now on the southwest border is a complete, utter catastrophe,” Mark Morgan, former acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which oversees Border Patrol, told The Epoch Times on Jan. 7.
“We have lost control of the southwest border.”
During the 2021 calendar year, Border Patrol agents apprehended close to 2 million illegal immigrants from 150 different countries along the southwest border—more than double 2019, the last pre-pandemic year, according to CBP data.
Last year, Border Patrol agents detected, but didn’t catch, an additional 600,000 illegal border crossers, known as “gotaways,” Morgan said.
“That’s the equivalent to the size of the state of Vermont,” he said. “Think about the bad people that are in that 600,000 that got away.”
Border Patrol Reports 1,066 Percent Increase in Fentanyl Seized in South Texas
Epoch Times – U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has reported a 1,066 percent increase in fentanyl seized in south Texas ports during fiscal year 2021.
Border agents at eight ports of entry extending from Brownsville to Del Rio said that between Oct. 1, 2020, and Sept. 30, 2021, they seized 87,652 pounds of narcotics that would have commanded a combined estimated street value of $786 million, CBP reported on Jan. 5.
Of this, 41,713 pounds was marijuana, 8,592 pounds was cocaine, 33,777 pounds was methamphetamine, 1,215 pounds was heroin, and 588 pounds was fentanyl. That’s a 1,066 percent increase in fentanyl seizures, as well as a 98 percent increase in cocaine seizures, from the year prior.
They also reported having seized $10.4 million in unreported currency, 463 weapons—up 21 percent from FY 2020—and 84,863 rounds of ammunition.
The eight ports of entry comprise the Laredo Field Office. The CBP officers at these ports of entry also noted that in FY 2021, more than 20,701 non-U.S. citizens were inadmissible to the United States due to violations of immigration law.
Randy J. Howe, the Laredo Field Office’s director of field operations, said in a statement that despite significantly less traffic due to travel restrictions amid the COVID-19 pandemic, “the drug and contraband threat remained the same.”
“Our significant gains in fentanyl and cocaine seizures underscore the deadly nature of the contraband we encounter, the need to utilize Personal Protective Equipment to protect our officers and our continued resolve to carry out our vital border security mission,” he said.
Fentanyl is a highly addictive and deadly drug that’s about 100 times more potent than morphine and 50 times more potent than heroin. Just a 2-milligram dose of the synthetic opioid can be deadly.
South African Study: Omicron May Signal End of Acute Pandemic Phase
Epoch Times – A South African study led by researchers at the Steve Biko Academic Hospital found that the Omicron outbreak may be signaling the end of the acute pandemic phase of COVID-19, with the endemic phase following suit.
The December 2021 study, funded by the South African Medical Research Council, compared 466 hospital admissions from the Omicron spread to 3976 admissions from May 2020, four months before the Omicron outbreak.
The study found a significant decline in in-hospital deaths in the current infection wave, at 4.5 percent.
ICU admissions had also dropped from 4.3 percent to 1 percent, while the length of stay in hospital fell from 8.8 days to 4.0 days.
“The wave increased at a faster rate than previous waves, completely displacing the Delta variant within weeks and began its decline in both cases and hospital admissions in the fifth week following its commencement,” the researchers concluded, adding that there are “clear signs that case and admission rates in South Africa may decline further over the next few weeks.
“If this pattern continues and is repeated globally, we are likely to see a complete decoupling of case and death rates suggesting that Omicron may be a harbinger of the end of the epidemic phase of the COVID pandemic ushering in its endemic phase,” the researchers added.
The endemic phase of a pandemic is when the number of infections becomes relatively constant, allowing for occasional flare-ups, according to Jennie Lavine, an infectious-disease researcher at Emory University in an interview with Nature.
The study also found that only 45 percent of patients in COVID-19 wards needed oxygen support compared to 99.5 percent in the first wave.
Furthermore, a snap-shot of patients in the COVID-19 wards on Dec. 14–15 revealed that 63 percent of them were incidental, meaning that they were asymptomatic for COVID-19 and were admitted for medical, surgical, reproductive or psychiatric reasons.
“This phenomenon of ‘incidental COVID’ is not a phenomenon observed before in South Africa and most likely reflects high levels of asymptomatic disease in the community with Omicron infection,” researchers explained.
The Real Reason They Want to Give COVID Jabs to Kids
Mercola – The reason our children are being targeted by COVID mandates is because vaccine makers want to get the shots onto the childhood vaccination schedule
Once a vaccine is added to the childhood schedule, the vaccine maker is shielded from financial liability for injuries, unless the manufacturer knows about vaccine safety issues and withholds that information
Products must satisfy four criteria in order to get emergency use authorization: There must be an emergency; a vaccine must be at least 30% to 50% effective; the known and potential benefits of the product must outweigh the known and potential risks of the product; and there can be no adequate, approved and available alternative treatments (drugs or vaccines). Unless all four criteria are met, EUA cannot be granted or maintained
According to a U.S. federal court decision, the Pfizer shot and BioNTech’s Comirnaty are not interchangeable
Comirnaty is not fully approved and licensed. It’s only “ready for approval.” Comirnaty is licensed to be manufactured, introduced into state commerce and marketed, but it’s not licensed to be given to anyone, and it’s not yet available in the United States. They’re waiting for it to be added to the childhood vaccination schedule, to get the liability shield
‘Think Twice Before You Vaccinate Your Kids,’ Dr. Robert Malone Warns Parents on COVID-19 Shots
Epoch Times – Dr. Robert Malone, a virologist and immunologist who has contributed significantly to the technology of mRNA vaccines, issued a strong caution for those who seek to have their children vaccinated against COVID-19.
“Think twice before you vaccinate your kids. Because if something bad happens, you can’t go back and say, ‘whoops, I want a do-over,’” Malone told EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” program in an interview, Part 1 of which premiered on Sunday.
He also said, “It is clear that parents should think twice about vaccinating their child,” adding that serious adverse events can occur and can be “so severe that it puts your child in the hospital.”
Malone noted that with regard to myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart, “there’s a good chance that if your child takes the vaccine, they won’t be damaged, they won’t show clinical symptoms—[but] they may have subclinical damage.”
“But the question is, do you want to take that chance with your child? Because if you draw the short straw and your child was damaged, most of these things, if not all of them, are irreversible. There is no way to fix it,” he said. “And I get these emails all the time: ‘Doctor, doctor, what can we do? This has happened.’ And that once it’s happened, there’s … you can’t go back you can’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again.”
He pointed to information compiled on his website, which includes a list of peer-reviewed studies related to COVID-19 vaccine adverse events in children, the main one being myocarditis. The website also includes a collection of adverse events reports as well as death reports in the pediatric community, submitted to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).
Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor ‘Fact-Checked’ Over False COVID-19 Claim
Epoch Times – Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor inaccurately claimed that “over 100,000 children” are “in serious condition” because of COVID-19, sparking a rare fact-check of the Obama-appointed judge as some have accused her of spreading misinformation.
Sotomayor made the remarks on Jan. 7 while hearing lawsuits that were filed against the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine-or-test mandate that would force private businesses with 100 or more workers to require them to be tested weekly or get the vaccine.
“We have hospitals that are almost at full capacity with people severely ill on ventilators. We have over 100,000 children, which we’ve never had before, in serious condition, many on ventilators,” she said.
However, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, when Sotomayor made those comments, fewer than 83,000 children aged 17 and younger had been hospitalized for COVID-19 since August 2020.
Currently, about 3,342 children are hospitalized with COVID-19, federal data show. Some officials, including White House COVID-19 adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci, recently said that it’s important to note that many children are hospitalized with COVID-19, not because of COVID-19.
“Even though hospitalization among children is much, much lower on a percentage basis than hospitalizations for adults, particularly elderly individuals, when you have such a large volume of infections among children, even with a low level of rate of infection, you’re going to still see a lot more children who get hospitalized,” Fauci said in a Dec. 29 interview.
“If you look at the children who are hospitalized, many of them are hospitalized with COVID as opposed to because of COVID.”
In a fact-check against Sotomayor, Politifact wrote that “the pediatric hospitalization rate has remained much lower than that of other age groups,” noting that data show children have by far the lowest hospitalization and death rates among all age groups. The data show that generally, individuals older than the age of 70 are considered to be the most vulnerable to the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which causes COVID-19.
Epoch Times – Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr. Rochelle Walenksy disputed Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s claim that 100,000 children are hospitalized or seriously ill with COVID-19 during arguments made before the court on Jan. 7.
During an interview with “Fox News Sunday” on Jan. 9, Walensky confirmed that there are about 3,500 children in the hospital who have tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.
When asked about there being 3,500 children hospitalized as opposed to 100,000, Walensky said, “Yes, there are, and in fact what I will say is while pediatric hospitalizations are rising, they’re still about 15-fold less than hospitalizations of our older age demographics.”
The CDC director said she’s not sure how many children are on ventilators.
“In some hospitals that we’ve talked to, up to 40 percent of the patients who are coming in with COVID are coming in not because they’re sick with COVID, but because they’re coming in with something else and have had COVID or the Omicron variant detected,” Walensky said.
During the interview, she said that eligible Americans should get vaccinated.
The CDC director also reaffirmed that children have the lowest chance among all age groups of hospitalization or death from COVID-19.
“I want to remind people that in the fall of this year, we had a Delta surge, and we were able to safely keep our children in school before pediatric vaccination,” she said.
Walensky made the comment in reference to a statement made by Sotomayor amid oral arguments over the legality of the White House’s rule for private businesses with 100 or more workers that requires employees to either get the vaccine or submit to regular testing.
“We have hospitals that are almost at full capacity with people severely ill on ventilators,” Sotomayor said, according to a transcript provided by the Supreme Court. “We have over 100,000 children, which we’ve never had before, in serious condition and many on ventilators.”
Over the weekend, Politifact made a post on Twitter and published an article declaring her assertion to be false. It cited CDC data as showing that about 3,500 children are hospitalized.
Sen. Ron Johnson Reveals Why He’s Running for Reelection After Suggesting He Wouldn’t
Epoch TImes – Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) on Sunday announced he will run for reelection in 2022, opting against his 2016 suggestion that he would only serve two terms in office.
In an article for the Wall Street Journal, the Wisconsin senator made note of the two-term promise.
“During the 2016 campaign, I said it would be my last campaign and final term,” Johnson said Sunday. “That was my strong preference, and my wife’s– we both looked forward to a normal private life.”
But Johnson, a key ally of former President Donald Trump while he was in office, said that neither he nor his wife had “anticipated the Democrats’ complete takeover of government and the disastrous policies they have already inflicted on America and the world, to say nothing of those they threaten to enact in the future.
“Nor did we anticipate the pandemic, the government’s failed response to it, the loss of freedom that has resulted, and the tyrannical approach taken by the elites who have created and maintained a state of fear that allows them to exercise control over Americans’ lives,” Johnson continued. “Instead of everyone working to achieve the goal President Biden stated during his inaugural address–unifying and healing America–it feels as if our nation is being torn apart.”
Because “America is in peril,” Johnson announced that “I will continue to fight for freedom in the public realm by running for reelection. It is a decision I haven’t made lightly.”
California Says COVID-Positive Health Workers Can Get Back to Work Amid Shortages
Epoch Times – The California Department of Public Health issued guidance that allows health care networks to enable COVID-19-positive employees to keep working if they don’t show any symptoms.
“The department is providing temporary flexibility to help hospitals and emergency services providers respond to an unprecedented surge and staffing shortages. Hospitals have to exhaust all other options before resorting to this temporary tool. Facilities and providers using this tool, should have asymptomatic COVID-19 positive workers interact only with COVID-19 positive patients to the extent possible,” the Department of Public Health said in a statement to news outlets over the weekend.
The Epoch Times has contacted the agency for comment.
Health care workers in the state now don’t have to isolate or show a negative COVID-19 test, the guidance said, before coming back to work if they are asymptomatic. The guidance, which remains in effect until Feb. 1, stipulates that staff wear N95 respirator masks while on the job.
After the guidance was handed down, several unions that represent nurses and other hospital staff expressed alarm.
“Healthcare workers and patients need the protection of clear rules guided by strong science. Allowing employers to bring back workers who may still be infectious is one of the worst ideas I have heard during this pandemic, and that’s really saying something,” Bob Schoonover, the head of union SEIU California, told CBS Sacramento.
Schoonover added that while his union supports “supplemental paid sick leave,” the latest guidance imperils a “critical piece of the protection that workers and the public need.”
The president of the California Nurses Association, Sandy Reding, told local media that the California health department’s guidance will put patients at risk.
“We are very concerned,” she told KNTV news. “If you have health care workers who are COVID positive care for vulnerable populations, we can spread the COVID virus inside the hospital as well.”
Union officials did not mention the rampant staffing issues that have plagued hospitals across the United States and California in recent days.
Mandates that were put into effect last year by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, required health care workers to get COVID-19 vaccines or face termination—despite studies showing that natural immunity conferred by a previous COVID-19 infection shows lasting immunity to the virus. Critics of vaccine mandates have questioned why governments and businesses would impose vaccinate or fire policies for “essential workers”—such as nurses and doctors—in the midst of staff shortages during a viral pandemic.
Health giant Kaiser Permanente suspended more than 2,000 employees who were not vaccinated in October. Other California systems such as Santa Clara Valley Medical Center and Sutter Health also terminated or suspended their employees who weren’t vaccinated in the fall of 2021.
Dr. Peter McCullough: Healthy Children Do Not Need to Be Vaccinated Against COVID-19
Epoch Times – Dr. Peter McCullough believes that healthy children should not be given the COVID-19 vaccine because the percentage of those children that die from the virus is minuscule, but the adverse effects of the vaccine in the same group are of great concern.
McCullough, a leading cardiologist and epidemiologist, told The Epoch Times that in 2021, 600 children died after infection from the COVID-19 virus (the previous year about 600 died from other respiratory viruses like respiratory syncytial virus or influenza), but were also known to have other severe illnesses like cystic fibrosis, lung disease, congenital heart-lung disease, or cancer.
He cited a study by Dr. Marty Makary from Johns Hopkins University who carried out an analysis. “They think, maybe they can find one child who actually died of COVID-19 who was previously healthy,” said McCullough.
Makary wrote in MedPage Today: “My research team at Johns Hopkins partnered with FAIR health to study pediatric COVID-19 deaths using approximately half of the nation’s health insurance data. We found that 100% of pediatric COVID-19 deaths were in children with a pre-existing condition.”
“And so, for those reasons, good doctors would never, ever consider vaccination of a child,” McCullough said.
He believes it makes sense to vaccinate for “horrible” diseases like polio, or widely contagious ones like chickenpox or mumps and measles, but not for a virus like SARS-CoV2 that does little to no harm to children. “We would never vaccinate against the common cold,” he said. But he does recommend vaccinating children against COVID-19 who have other severe illnesses.
McCullough said we don’t have enough data on the long-term and adverse effects of the vaccines on healthy children, and the data that is available show more harm than good comes from giving the vaccines to young people.
“In this case, we would never expose children to a vaccine that didn’t have a long-standing safety profile. FDA standards for just an antigen-based vaccine has to be two years of safety profile. We need a lot of assurances that it doesn’t cause defects and growth, that it causes a potential long-term risk for autoimmune or cancer,” he said. Especially for gene transfer technology, the safety profile is five years, he said.
McCullough said the COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials that were done with children aged 12–17 did not provide data that supported vaccinating healthy children. Dr. Ron Kostoff published a study in PubMed that suggests vaccinating children is not worth the risk.
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