“The comparison to HIV/AIDS is incredibly instructive – even though HIV was hugely lethal and was primarily spread by people without symptoms, we did not attempt to quarantine or restrict in any way even people we knew had it. We did not insist on mass testing even in high-risk groups. Our public health authorities DISCOURAGED rather than encouraged panic.”
Pfizer says COVID-19 pill cut hospital, death risk by 90 per cent
h/t Mauser
WASHINGTON — Thousands of intelligence officers could soon face dismissal for failing to comply with the U.S. government’s vaccine mandate, leading some Republican lawmakers to raise concerns about removing employees from agencies critical to national security.
Several intelligence agencies had at least 20% of their workforce unvaccinated as of late October, said U.S. Rep. Chris Stewart, a Utah Republican who is a member of the House Intelligence Committee. Some agencies in the 18-member intelligence community had as much as 40% of their workforce unvaccinated, Stewart said, citing information the administration has provided to the committee but not released publicly. He declined to identify the agencies because full information on vaccination rates was classified.
Ontario reports 563 new COVID-19 cases; 5 new deaths
Ontario reported 563 new COVID-19 cases and five additional deaths on Friday, with all leading indicators of transmission now pointing slightly in the wrong direction.
The seven-day rolling average of new cases now stands at 390, up from 383 yesterday and 355 one week ago.
Toronto COVID-19 infections on the rise after prolonged drop
Daily COVID-19 infections are once again on the rise — including among young children — after dropping for seven straight weeks.
Toronto’s seven-day average for new daily infections rose to 59 from 50 a week earlier, as of last Saturday according to newly updated data that reflects a provincewide uptick in new cases.
Amid a rising vaccination rate, the indicator had tumbled since early September from an average of 156 new daily cases in Toronto.
Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky demanded Dr. Anthony Fauci resign as head of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for refusing to admit his agency funded gain of function research in Wuhan prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Italians are taking to the streets and the ports to protest the country’s far-reaching vaccine passport system.
On October 15, 2021, Italy became the first country in the Western world to impose the “green pass” for workers, consequently forcing people to either get fully vaccinated or not be allowed to work. While the government said that it is not a mandatory vaccination measure because the alternative is to take a rapid test that lasts for 48 hours, it is also true that such a test costs 15 euros. Now, considering that people work 5 to 6 days a week, a worker who does not want to get vaccinated would have to spend approximately 180 euros per month.
Deliberately coughing at someone during the COVID-19 pandemic – even if nothing visible is emitted by the cougher – constitutes a criminal assault, an Alberta court has ruled in what lawyers say may be the world’s first such judicial pronouncement on the novel issue.
In the spring of 2021 during my first year at the U.S. Military Academy, I was told that my decision to reject getting the “optional” COVID-19 vaccine would not negatively affect my time as a cadet at West Point.
That quickly changed. My Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act medical privacy rights were violated when my vaccination status was released to members of the freshman class and upperclassmen who were planning our summer details, to which an officer stated, “HIPAA isn’t the be-all, end-all.”
“It is now apparent that these products in the blood stream are toxic to humans. An immediate halt to the vaccination programme is required while an independent safety analysis is undertaken to investigate the full extent of the harms, which the UK Yellow Card data suggest includes thromboembolism, multi-system inflammatory disease, immune suppression, autoimmunity and anaphylaxis, as well as Antibody Dependent Enhancement (ADE).” Tess Lawrie, Evidence-Based Medicine Consultancy
h/t Mauser98
Unmasked Karen demands the attendant move an ‘unvaxxed’ man in the seat next to hers because she 'doesn't want to breathe his oxygen'.
The LEGENDARY pilot comes in and tells her his flight DOES NOT DISCRIMINATE and tells her to leave the plane. pic.twitter.com/FmVzDmrP3h
— OntarioDoctor (@DoctorOntario) November 3, 2021
Uneven vaccine coverage and a relaxation of preventive measures have brought Europe to a “critical point” in the pandemic, the World Health Organization has said, with cases again at near-record levels and 500,000 more deaths forecast by February.
Hans Kluge, the WHO’s Europe director, said all 53 countries in the region were facing “a real threat of Covid-19 resurgence or already fighting it” and urged governments to reimpose or continue with social and public health measures.
The COVID-19 pandemic has been arguably “the most disruptive event” since 9/11 for Canadian national security agencies, according to one of the country’s top intelligence officials.
Tricia Geddes, a deputy director with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, said Wednesday the pandemic has both accelerated particular national security threats and made the work of Canadian intelligence agencies more complicated.
Geddes said CSIS “saw new threat vectors emerging immediately” at the start of the pandemic: domestic extremists harnessing COVID-19 conspiracy theories for recruitment, an increase in cyber espionage targeting Canadian research and development, and locked-down Canadians conducting sensitive corporate work from unsecured home computers.
BARRIE — The top reasons Canadians unvaccinated against COVID-19 say they have avoided getting the jab are “personal freedom” and “health concerns,” a new poll has found.
The survey, conducted by the Angus Reid Institute (ARI) and published on Wednesday, found that 58 per cent of unvaccinated Canadians said their main reason for skipping the shot was due to “personal freedom,” while an equal number of respondents cited “health concerns” as their reasoning.
Ontario reports 438 new COVID-19 cases, 5 more deaths
Ontario reported a notable day-over-day jump in COVID-19 cases on Thursday, a day after the province announced its plan for administering booster shots.
Provincial health officials logged 438 new coronavirus infections today, up from 378 on Wednesday, and from 409 a week ago.
Doctors outraged as Ontario, Quebec deny COVID-19 vaccine mandates for health workers
The decision by Quebec and Ontario to not make COVID-19 vaccines mandatory for health-care workers has drawn sharp criticism from doctors in those provinces, who say the move is not backed by science.
Both provincial governments announced Wednesday that they will not require health-care staff — hospital workers in Ontario and current health-care employees in Quebec — to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19, pointing to the negative impact of such a mandate on the health-care system.
Canadian employers are firing or putting on unpaid leave thousands of workers who refused to get COVID-19 shots, squeezing an already tight labor market and raising prospects of potentially disruptive legal challenges.
The origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes Covid-19 remains unclear, but recent revelations reinforce the likelihood that the true source was a lab leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).
A letter from Lawrence Tabak, the National Institutes of Health’s principal deputy director, to Kentucky congressman James Comer confirms that the NIH funded research at the WIV during 2018–2019 that manipulated a bat coronavirus called WIV1. Researchers at the institute grafted spike proteins from other coronaviruses onto WIV1 to see if the modified virus was capable of binding in a mouse that possessed the ACE2 receptors found in humans—the same receptor to which SARS-CoV-2 binds. The modified virus reproduced more rapidly and made infected humanized mice sicker than the unmodified virus.
