The discovery of new drugs is vital to achieving the eradication of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) in Africa and around the world. Now, researchers have identified traditional Ghanaian medicines which work in the lab against schistosomiasis, onchocerciasis and lymphatic filariasis, three diseases endemic to Ghana.
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Multiple bouts of blood feeding by mosquitoes shorten the incubation period for malaria parasites and increase malaria transmission potential, according to a new study.
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A novel computational drug screening strategy combined with lab experiments suggest that pralatrexate, a chemotherapy medication originally developed to treat lymphoma, could potentially be repurposed to treat COVID-19.
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When using social media to nudge people toward safe and healthy behaviors, it's critical to make sure the words match the pictures, according to a new study. After looking at social media posts, parents of young children were better able to recall safety messages such as how to put a baby safely to sleep when the images in the posts aligned with the messages in the text.
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Researchers report that adding a small molecule to a chimeric antigen receptor-T (CAR-T) cell therapy can help immune system T cells to effectively attack solid tumors, such as breast cancers. The boost helps recruit more immune cells into battle at the tumor site, according to the new study.
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When fat cells in the body are stuffed with excess fat, the surrounding tissue becomes inflamed. That chronic, low-level inflammation is one of the driving factors behind many of the diseases associated with obesity. Now, scientists have discovered a type of cell responsible, at least in mice, for triggering this inflammation in fat tissue. Their findings could eventually lead to new ways to treat obesity.
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A randomized clinical trial is the largest study to-date to compare thresholds for blood transfusions in premature babies, offers guidance for health care providers.
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More attention than ever is being put on your gut health, and understandably so, considering a significant proportion of your immune system resides in your gastrointestinal tract.1 As such, optimizing your gut microbiome is a worthwhile pursuit that will have far-reaching effects on your physical health and emotional well-being.
Mounting scientific evidence also continues to suggest a large component of nutrition centers on nourishing health-promoting bacteria in your gut (and elsewhere in and on your body). In doing so, you keep harmful microbes in check and shore up your protection against chronic disease.
Disease Begins in Your Gut
ADHD, autism, learning disabilities, obesity, diabetes2 and Parkinson’s disease are but a few of the conditions found to be influenced by your gut microbiome. One 2020 scientific review3 goes so far as to say that all inflammatory disease begins in the gut. Part of the blame is laid on excessive hygiene. In other words, we’re “too clean” for our own good.
But your diet also plays a crucial role. The paper specifically addresses the role of zonulin-mediated gut permeability in the pathogenesis of chronic inflammatory diseases (CIDs). According to the author, Dr. Alessio Fasano,4 a pediatric gastroenterologist, researcher and director of the Center for Celiac Research and Treatment:5
“Apart from genetic makeup and exposure to environmental triggers, inappropriate increase in intestinal permeability (which may be influenced by the composition of the gut microbiota), a ‘hyper-belligerent’ immune system responsible for the tolerance-immune response balance, and the composition of gut microbiome and its epigenetic influence on the host genomic expression have been identified as three additional elements in causing CIDs.
During the past decade, a growing number of publications have focused on human genetics, the gut microbiome, and proteomics, suggesting that loss of mucosal barrier function, particularly in the gastrointestinal tract, may substantially affect antigen trafficking, ultimately influencing the close bidirectional interaction between gut microbiome and our immune system.
This cross-talk is highly influential in shaping the host gut immune system function and ultimately shifting genetic predisposition to clinical outcome. This observation led to a re-visitation of the possible causes of CIDs epidemics, suggesting a key pathogenic role of gut permeability.
Pre-clinical and clinical studies have shown that the zonulin family, a group of proteins modulating gut permeability, is implicated in a variety of CIDs, including autoimmune, infective, metabolic, and tumoral diseases. These data offer novel therapeutic targets for a variety of CIDs in which the zonulin pathway is implicated in their pathogenesis.”
Bacteria, Not Genes, Rule Your Health Destiny
Fasano points out that we simply do not have enough genes to account for the myriad chronic diseases that can beset us. Genes also cannot explain the timing of disease onset. To solve these mysteries, we must look to the microbiome, he says, as “it is the interplay between us as individuals and the environment in which we live that dictates our clinical destiny.”
Aside from the microbes themselves, the condition of your intestinal mucosa also plays a significant role. “Although this enormous mucosal interface (200 m2) is not apparently visible, it plays a pivotal role through its dynamic interactions with a variety of factors coming from our surrounding environment, including microorganisms, nutrients, pollutants and other materials,” Fasano explains.
While intracellular tight junctions used to be thought of as static and impermeable, we now know this is not the case. As explained by Fasano, zonulin is a powerful modulator of intestinal permeability. However, while zonulin is a biomarker of gut permeability and plays a pathogenic role in in many chronic inflammatory diseases, not all CIDs are caused by leaky gut.
Proposed Chain of Events Leading to CID
The graphic below, included in Fasano’s review but originating from an earlier paper6 titled “Zonulin, a Regulator of Epithelial and Endothelial Barrier Functions, and Its Involvement in Chronic Inflammatory Diseases,” co-written by Fasano and Craig Sturgeon, details the “proposed chain of events leading to chronic inflammatory disease.”
Under normal circumstances, a healthy homeostasis is maintained in your gut lining such that when an antigen is encountered, no excess immune reaction occurs (anergy). Under No. 2 in the graph, gut dysbiosis is setting in (i.e., an imbalance in the number and diversity of your gut microflora), causing excess production of zonulin, which in turn makes the gut lining more permeable.
According to Fasano, the two most powerful triggers of zonulin release are bacteria overgrowth and gluten. Zonulin is produced in response to bad bacteria7 — it helps flush the bacteria out by opening up the tight junctions — so bacteria overgrowth makes sense. But why does it respond to gluten?
Interestingly enough, the zonulin pathway misinterprets gluten as a potential harmful component of a microorganism. That’s why gluten triggers zonulin release. While not mentioned by Fasano, the herbicide glyphosate also triggers zonulin, and is 10 times more potent than gluten!8
The subsequent permeability allows microbiota-derived antigen and endotoxin to migrate from the lumen to the lamina propria (the connective tissue that is part of the mucous membrane lining your intestine), thereby triggering inflammation.
As the process continues to worsen (No. 3 in the graph), your adaptive immune response kicks in, triggering the production of proinflammatory cytokines, including interferon gamma (IFN-γ) and tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α). These cytokines further worsen the permeability, thus creating a vicious cycle. Eventually (No. 4), mucosal tolerance is completely broken, resulting in the onset of a chronic inflammatory disease.
Chronic Inflammatory Diseases Linked to Leaky Gut
The specific chronic inflammatory disease that ultimately emerges at the end of all this depends in part on your genetic makeup, in part on the types of exposures you’ve had, and in part on the composition of your gut microbiome. As explained by Fasano:9
“Besides genetic predisposition and exposure to environmental triggers, the pathogenesis of a variety of CIDs seems to involve mutually influenced changes in gut permeability/Ag trafficking, immune activation, and changes in composition/function of the gut microbiome.
Zonulin is a modulator of both epithelial and endothelial barrier functions … Gut dysbiosis may cause the release of zonulin leading to the passage of luminal contents across the epithelial barrier causing the release of pro-inflammatory cytokines that themselves cause increased permeability establishing a vicious loop leading to massive influx of dietary and microbial Ags triggering the activation of T cells.
Depending on the host genetic makeup, activated T cells may remain within the GI tract, causing CID of the gut … or migrate to several different organs to cause systemic CID.”
Chronic inflammatory diseases associated with dysregulation of the zonulin pathway include:
Autoimmune disorders such as Celiac disease, Type 1 diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease, multiple sclerosis and ankylosing spondylitis
Metabolic disorders such as obesity, insulin resistance, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, gestational diabetes, hyperlipidemia and Type 2 diabetes
Intestinal diseases such as irritable bowel syndrome, non-celiac gluten sensitivity and environmental enteric dysfunction (a chronic disease affecting the proximal intestine)
Neuroinflammatory diseases such as autism spectrum disorder, schizophrenia, major depressive disorder and chronic fatigue/myalgic encephalomyelitis
Brain and liver cancers
Gut Microbes Influence Genes and Can Influence Cancer Risk
While the inclusion of cancer on that list may seem odd at first glance, some researchers believe the gut microbiome may actually end up being a game-changer for cancer prevention and treatment.
Not only have gut bacteria been shown to influence gene expression,10,11 turning some genes on and others off, research12 published in 2018 found gut microbes actually control antitumor immune responses in your liver, and that antibiotics can alter the composition of immune cells in your liver, triggering tumor growth.
Certain gut bacteria also promote inflammation, which is an underlying factor in virtually all cancers, whereas other bacteria quell it.13 The presence of certain gut bacteria has even been shown to boost the patient’s response to anticancer drugs.14
One way in which gut bacteria improve the effectiveness of cancer treatment is by activating your immune system and allowing it to function more efficiently. Researchers have actually found that when these specific microbes are absent, certain anticancer drugs may not work at all.
Gut Bacteria Are Part of Your Antiviral Defense
Gut bacteria are also involved in your antiviral defense, recent research15 shows. As reported by Harvard Medical School November 18, 2020:16
“For the first time, Harvard Medical School researchers have … identified the specific population of gut microbes that modulates both localized and systemic immune response to ward off viral invaders. The work … pinpoints a group of gut microbes, and a specific species within it, that causes immune cells to release virus-repelling chemicals known as type 1 interferons.
The researchers further identified the precise molecule — shared by many gut bacteria within that group — that unlocks the immune-protective cascade. That molecule, the researchers noted, is not difficult to isolate and could become the basis for drugs that boost antiviral immunity in humans.”
While the findings still need to be replicated and confirmed, they point to the possibility that you might be able to enhance your antiviral immunity by reseeding your gut with Bacteroides fragilis and other bacteria in the Bacteroides family.17
These bacteria initiate a signaling cascade that induces the release of interferon-beta that protect against viral invasion by stimulating immune cells to attack the virus and causing virus-infected cells to self-destruct.
“Specifically, … a molecule that resides on the bacterium’s surface triggers the release of interferon-beta by activating the so-called TLR4-TRIF signaling pathway,” Harvard explains.18“This bacterial molecule stimulates an immune-signaling pathway initiated by one of the nine toll-like receptors (TLR) that are part of the innate immune system.”
The Role of Vitamin D
Recent research also highlights the role of vitamin D in gut health and systemic autoimmunity. The review article, published January 21, 2020, in Frontiers in Immunology, notes:19
“Autoimmune diseases tend to share a predisposition for vitamin D deficiency, which alters the microbiome and integrity of the gut epithelial barrier.
In this review, we summarize the influence of intestinal bacteria on the immune system, explore the microbial patterns that have emerged from studies on autoimmune diseases, and discuss how vitamin D deficiency may contribute to autoimmunity via its effects on the intestinal barrier function, microbiome composition, and/or direct effects on immune responses.”
As noted in this review, vitamin D has several direct and indirect regulatory effects on your immune system, including promoting regulatory T cells (Tregs), inhibiting differentiation of Th1 and Th17 cells, impairing development and function of B cells, reducing monocyte activation and stimulating antimicrobial peptides from immune cells.
That said, the relationship between vitamin D and autoimmunity is complicated. Aside from immunosuppression, vitamin D also appears to improve autoimmune disorders by the way it affects your microbiota composition and gut barrier.
The review cites research showing that your vitamin D status alters the composition of your gut microbiome. Generally speaking, vitamin D deficiency tends to increase Bacteriodetes and Proteobacteria while higher vitamin D intake tends to increase prevalence of Prevotella and reduce certain types of Proteobacteria and Firmicutes.
While research is still slim when it comes to vitamin D’s impact on gut bacteria, especially in patients with autoimmune disease, vitamin D deficiency and autoimmune diseases are known comorbidities and vitamin D supplementation is often recommended for these patients.
Vitamin D Required for Tight Junction Maintenance
Better known is how vitamin D supports intestinal and immune cell defenses in the gut. In fact, vitamin D is one of the crucial components required for maintaining tight junctions. As explained in this review:20
“The intestinal epithelium is in constant interaction with the external environment. Adequate barrier integrity and antimicrobial function at epithelial surfaces are critical in maintaining homeostasis and preventing invasion or overcolonization of particular microbial species.
A healthy intestinal epithelium and intact mucus layer are critical to protect against invasion by pathogenic organisms, and vitamin D helps to maintain this barrier function … Multiple studies found that vitamin D3/VDR signaling modulates tight junction protein quantity and distribution …
As a ‘leaky’ protein that allows movement of ions into the intestinal lumen, claudin-2 expression in the setting of functional vitamin D deficiency may contribute to colitis pathology …
Vitamin D upregulates antimicrobial peptide mRNA and protein expression including cathelicidin, defensins, and lysozyme … Antimicrobial peptides, primarily secreted by Paneth cells in the gut, are important mediators of microbiome composition … Defensins are secreted by epithelial cells, Paneth cells, and immune cells, and are important components of the innate immune response in the gut.”
How Vitamin D May Contribute to Autoimmune Disease
According to the authors, vitamin D deficiency may contribute to autoimmune disease by affecting the microbiome and the immune system in the following manner:
Vitamin D deficiency or supplementation changes the microbiome, and manipulation of bacterial abundance or composition impacts disease manifestation.
Lack of vitamin D signaling due to dietary deficiency can impair physical and functional barrier integrity of the gut, thereby allowing bacterial interactions to either stimulate or inhibit immune responses.
Your innate immunologic defenses may be compromised if you are deficient in vitamin D.
How to Optimize Your Gut Microbiome
All of this information should really drive home the point that optimizing your gut flora and vitamin D level is of crucial importance for good health. By reseeding your gut with beneficial bacteria, you can keep pathogenic microbes and fungi in check and prevent them from taking over, and optimizing your vitamin D will help avoid leaky gut.
Regularly eating traditionally fermented and cultured foods is the easiest, most effective and least expensive way to make a significant impact on your gut microbiome. Healthy choices include lassi (an Indian yogurt drink), cultured grass fed organic milk products such as kefir and yogurt, natto (fermented soy) and fermented vegetables of all kinds.
Although I'm not a major proponent of taking many supplements (as I believe the majority of your nutrients need to come from food), probiotics are an exception if you don’t eat fermented foods on a regular basis. Spore-based probiotics, or sporebiotics, can be particularly helpful when you’re taking antibiotics. They’re also an excellent complement to regular probiotics.
Sporebiotics, which consist of the cell wall of bacillus spores, will help boost your immune tolerance, and because they do not contain any live bacillus strains, only its spores — the protective shell around the DNA and the working mechanism of that DNA — they are unaffected by antibiotics.
Antibiotics, as you may know, indiscriminately kill your gut bacteria, both good and bad. This is why secondary infections and lowered immune function are common side effects of taking antibiotics. Chronic low-dose exposure to antibiotics through your food also takes a toll on your gut microbiome, which can result in chronic ill health and increased risk of drug resistance. Last but not least, you also need to avoid things that disrupt or kill your microbiome, and this includes:
Antibiotics, unless absolutely necessary
Conventionally-raised meats and other animal products, as these animals are routinely fed low-dose antibiotics, plus genetically engineered and/or glyphosate-treated grains
Processed foods (as the excessive sugars feed pathogenic bacteria)
Chlorinated and/or fluoridated water
Antibacterial soap and products containing triclosan
A spate of studies has called into question the effectiveness of mask mandates and other nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) — such as lockdowns, curfews and stay-at-home orders — in controlling COVID-19 and lowering death rates.
Researchers from Rational Ground, which is providing resources, including data analysis, related to COVID-19, specifically looked into mask mandates and whether or not they're effective, with results suggesting widespread mask usage has been virtually useless.1The fact is, mask mandates were rolled out despite a lack of solid evidence to support their use among the general population. On the contrary, the evidence against them continues to mount.
COVID Cases Higher With Mask Mandates Than Without
The computer scientists, actuaries and data analysts that make up Rational Ground2 looked at COVID-19 cases from May 1, 2020, to December 15, 2020, in all 50 U.S. states. They calculated how many cases per day occurred by population with and without mask mandates.3
Non-mandate data included states that had mask mandates at some point but not others, with the data including only days the mask mandates were not in place. The states without mask mandates for the entire study period included:
Alaska
Arizona
Florida
Georgia
Idaho
Iowa
Missouri
North Dakota
Nebraska
New Hampshire
Oklahoma
South Carolina
South Dakota
Tennessee
Wyoming
An important point: the researchers waited 14 days from the start of mask mandates to begin counting COVID-19 cases. This ensured cases from spread that occurred before the mandate weren't counted against them. The results found 9,605,256 confirmed COVID-19 cases over 5,907 days in the mask mandate states. Among states without a mask mandate, 5,781,716 cases were counted over 5,772 days. This works out to:4
No mask mandates — 17 cases per 100,000 people per day
Mask mandates — 27 cases per 100,000 people per day
No Evidence of Masks Reducing Virus Spread
In response to critics suggesting the cases were higher with mandates because they were implemented in areas that had higher spread to begin with, Hart posted on Twitter, "Team Apocalypse will object and say: 'well, states which put mandates in place were seeing surges in cases!' Perhaps … but our data shows that even AFTER the mandates went up … it did nothing."5
The data holds true even when population density is taken into account. Among the 12 counties with the greatest population density in Florida, eight had mask mandates at some point, during which 24 cases per 100,000 people per day were counted.
On days without mandates, which includes four counties that never had them, 17 cases per 100,000 people per day occurred.6 As noted by Daniel Horowitz, a senior editor of The Blaze:7
"We can turn the numbers upside down and inside out, but no matter how we examine them, there is no evidence of masks correlating with reduced spread. If anything, the opposite is true … It's self-evident that the virus does what it does naturally and follows a very mechanical pattern regardless of state policies …
The phony 'fact checkers' will always find ways to show that we can't prove beyond a shadow of doubt that masks will never work. But while they force us to prove 100% that they don't work, mandaters don't have to prove any efficacy at all, even as 2-year-olds are forced to have their faces covered on planes."
Rational Ground's data compilations also include charts that break down daily COVID-19 cases in a wide variety of regions, from Hawaii to Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura, and San Diego counties in California to Kansas, West Virginia, France and Peru, marking the dates mask mandates were put in place. The charts show no correlation between the implementation of mask mandates and reduced cases.
There is one chart that shows a steady decline of COVID-19 deaths after a mask mandate — New York City. But the mandate occurred as the death rate was already falling, following a similar pattern of a peak followed by a decline seen in many areas, with or without mask usage.8
Four Facts Suggest Importance of NPIs May Be Overstated
NPIs, including not only mask mandates but also travel restrictions, stay-at-home orders, quarantines and lockdowns, do not reduce COVID-19 transmission and death rates, according to a working paper released by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).9
They present four stylized facts that call into question conclusions by health agencies claiming that social distancing and other NPI mandates have been essential in lowering COVID-19 transmission rates and deaths:10
For all the countries and U.S. states studied, once the region experienced 25 cumulative COVID-19 deaths, the growth rates of daily COVID-19 deaths fell from initially high levels to close to zero within 20 to 30 days
After this initial period, growth rates of daily COVID-19 deaths have "hovered around zero or below everywhere in the world"
A cross-section standard deviation of growth rates of daily COVID-19 deaths across the studied locations "fell very rapidly in the first 10 days of the epidemic and has remained at a relatively low level since then"
"These first three facts about the growth rate of COVID deaths imply that both the effective reproduction numbers and transmission rates of COVID-19 fell from widely dispersed initial levels and the effective reproduction number has hovered around one after the first 30 days of the epidemic virtually everywhere in the world"
In other words, virus transmission and death rates appear to follow a similar pattern throughout the world, regardless of what type of NPIs were put in place. "[T]hose policies have varied in their timing and implementation across countries and states, but the trends in outcomes do not," the American Institute for Economic Research reported.11
The working paper notes that considering transmission rates for COVID-19 fell during the early days of the pandemic worldwide, "we are concerned that these studies may substantially overstate the role of government-mandated NPI's in reducing disease transmission …"12
Further, they add that since disease transmission rates have remained low worldwide even as NPIs have been lifted, "we are concerned that estimates of the effectiveness of NPI's in reducing disease transmission from the earlier period may not be relevant for forecasting the impact of the relaxation of those NPI's in the current period:"13
"Many of the regions in our sample that instated lockdown policies early on in their local epidemic, removed them later on in our estimation period, or have not relied on mandated NPI's much at all. Yet, effective reproduction numbers in all regions have continued to remain low relative to initial levels indicating that the removal of lockdown policies has had little effect on transmission rates."14
Study Praising Mask Mandates Retracted
A study that found COVID-19 hospitalizations decreased after mask mandates were put in place in 1,083 U.S. counties was withdrawn in November 2020, after changes in the number of cases caused researchers to second-guess their conclusions:
"The authors have withdrawn this manuscript because there are increased rates of SARS- CoV-2 cases in the areas that we originally analyzed in this study. New analyses in the context of the third surge in the United States are therefore needed …"15
Meanwhile, the first randomized controlled trial of more than 6,000 individuals to assess the effectiveness of surgical face masks against SARS-CoV-2 infection found masks did not statistically significantly reduce the incidence of infection.16 Among mask wearers, 1.8% ended up testing positive for SARS-CoV-2, compared to 2.1% among controls.
When they removed the people who did not adhere to proper mask use, the results remained the same — 1.8%, which suggests adherence makes no significant difference. Among those who reported wearing their face mask "exactly as instructed," 2% tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 compared to 2.1% of the controls.
The findings further call into question the effectiveness of mandated masks for preventing COVID-19, as does a case-control investigation of people with COVID-19 who visited 11 U.S. health care facilities. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report revealed factors associated with getting the disease,17 including the use of cloth face coverings or masks in the 14 days before becoming ill.
The majority of them — 70.6% — reported that they "always" wore a mask, but they still got sick. Among the interview respondents who became ill, 108, or 70.6%, said they always wore a mask, compared to six, or 3.9%, who said they "never" did, and six more, or 3.9%, who said they "rarely" did.
Taken together, this shows that, of the symptomatic adults with COVID-19, 70.6% always wore a mask and still got sick, compared to 7.8% for those who rarely or never did.18
Is Wearing Something Better Than Nothing?
Some may suggest that in the case of wearing cloth masks, even if they're not incredibly effective, "something is better than nothing." This may not be the case, however, as wearing a mask isn't innocuous.
Dr. Jim Meehan, an ophthalmologist and preventive medicine specialist who has performed more than 10,000 surgical procedures and is also a former editor of the medical journal Ocular Immunology and Inflammation, has peer-reviewed thousands of medical research studies. He used this expertise to conduct an evidence-based scientific analysis on masks, which shows that not only should healthy people not be wearing masks but they could be harmed as a result.19
Meehan suggests that the notion of mask-wearing defies common sense and reason, considering that most of the population is at very low or almost no risk of becoming severely ill from COVID-19. He also compiled 17 ways that masks can cause harm:20
Medical masks adversely affect respiratory physiology and function
Medical masks lower oxygen levels in the blood
Medical masks raise carbon dioxide levels in the blood
SAR-CoV-2 has a "furin cleavage" site that makes it more pathogenic, and the virus enters cells more easily when arterial oxygen levels decline, which means wearing a mask could increase COVID-19 severity
Medical masks trap exhaled virus in the mouth/mask, increasing viral/infectious load and increasing disease severity
SARS-CoV-2 becomes more dangerous when blood oxygen levels decline
The furin cleavage site of SARS-CoV-2 increases cellular invasion, especially during low blood oxygen levels
Cloth masks may increase the risk of contracting COVID-19 and other respiratory infections
Wearing a face mask may give a false sense of security
Masks compromise communications and reduce social distancing
Untrained and inappropriate management of face masks is common
Masks worn imperfectly are dangerous
Masks collect and colonize viruses, bacteria and mold
Wearing a face mask makes the exhaled air go into the eyes
Contact tracing studies show that asymptomatic carrier transmission is very rare
Face masks and stay at home orders prevent the development of herd immunity
Face masks are dangerous and contraindicated for a large number of people with pre-existing medical conditions and disabilities
Considering the lack of evidence for their use, and the potential harms, it's no wonder that calls for peaceful civil disobedience against mandatory masking are growing. The U.S. nonprofit Stand for Health Freedom is among those calling for civil disobedience, and has a widget you can use to contact your government representatives to let them know wearing a mask must be a personal choice.
If you live in an area without a mask mandate, remember that wearing one, or not, is a highly personal choice. For those in areas with mask mandates, keep in mind that most rules state you must wear a mask "unless you can maintain a 6-foot distance," which means in many cases you can forgo wearing a mask and still be in compliance with the mandate.
In some cases, immune cells in the lungs can contribute to worsening a virus attack. In a new study, researchers describe how different kinds of immune cells, called macrophages, develop in the lungs and which of them may be behind severe lung diseases. The study may contribute to future treatments for COVID-19, among other diseases.
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Since patients with ballistic embedded fragments are frequently denied MRI (due to indeterminate bullet composition sans shell casings), radiography and CT can be used to identify nonferromagnetic projectiles that are safe for MRI.
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When the parasite Cryptosporidium enters the body, it's cells in the intestines that first recognize the invader, triggering an early immune response, according to a new study. A leading cause of diarrheal disease in young children globally, the parasite generates an inflammatory response beginning in the intestines that exacerbates the effects of malnutrition.
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new research reports that a combination of a new drug and selected DHA derivatives is more effective in protecting brain cells and increasing recovery after stroke than a single drug.
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The introduction of computer simulation to the identification of symptoms in children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has potential to provide an additional objective tool to gauge the presence and severity of behavioral problems, researchers suggest.
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Since COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, families have been separated, businesses have been shuttered and schools have been closed down. Many people are living their lives shrouded in fear of Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 — a direct response to media coverage and health officials’ claims of its dire associated risks.
Understanding the real risks, and being able to make choices on how to live your life in response to them, is only possible, however, if you have real facts, like how many have died from the virus and what the death rate actually is. Is it a lethal virus that warrants lockdowns and panic, or is it one more akin to influenza, which can indeed be deadly but, in most cases, is not?
Early on during the pandemic, COVID-19 infection mortality rate claims varied from 2.7% to 7%, with most being in the 4% range. But according to some experts, the actual infection mortality rate may be much lower, ranging from 0.05% to 1%, with a median of about 0.25%.1
The number of COVID-19 deaths may also be skewed, as health officials may count deaths from unrelated causes — even gunshots and motorcycle accidents — as COVID-19 deaths if the person had the virus within the last 30 days.2
Are COVID-19 Deaths Being Inflated?
In Grand County, Colorado, five COVID-19 deaths were reported, but according to coroner Brenda Bock, two of them were actually deaths from gunshot wounds. Speaking to CBS4 News, Bock spoke out against the misleading classifications, as the deaths from gunshot wounds were counted as COVID-19 deaths because the victims had tested positive within 30 days.
The distinction comes down to some tricky working: deaths “among” COVID-19 cases and deaths “due to” COVID-19. Someone who died with COVID-19 may be counted as a death among COVID-19 cases, even if the virus had nothing to do with their death. When a death is said to be “due to” COVID-19, this is intended when COVID-19 caused or significantly contributed to the death.
According to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, even deaths among COVID-19 cases must be reported to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC):
“This information is required by the CDC and is crucial for public health surveillance, as it provides more information about disease transmission and can help identify risk factors among all deaths across populations.”3
But according to Bock, the inflated numbers could hurt the region’s economy, which is largely dependent on tourism:
“It’s absurd that they would even put that on there.Would you want to go to a county that has really high death numbers? Would you want to go visit that county because they are contagious? You know I might get it, and I could die if all of a sudden one county has a high death count. We don’t have it, and we don’t need those numbers inflated.”4
Hundreds of ‘COVID-19 Deaths’ Subtracted in Washington
Washington state was also accused of inflating COVID-19 deaths, by up to 13%. According to the Freedom Foundation, the state’s Department of Health was counting every death in a person who had previously tested positive for COVID-19 as related to the virus.
While the governor denied the inflation, internal emails revealed in May 2020 that the Department of Health (DOH) was, in fact, counting deaths in their official COVID death numbers that weren’t directly due to the virus.5
By December 2020, Washington’s DOH had responded by subtracting more than 200 deaths from its COVID-19 fatality count after “methodological improvements.” However, a Freedom Foundation analysis suggests their fatality counts are still too high. And if this is going on in Washington, it’s likely happening in other states and countries as well.
According to the analysis, some of the questionable examples of the DOH’s “COVID-19 deaths” include the following:6
A 64-year-old male who died of “acute combined fentanyl, heroin, methamphetamine, and methadone intoxication”
A 65-year-old male who died from “alcoholic liver disease”
A 69-year-old male with Parkinson’s disease and vascular dementia who died from malnutrition/dehydration after refusing to eat
A 73-year-old female with underlying health conditions who died after declining treatment for an intestinal abscess
A 75-year-old-male who died following a “pacemaker infection”
A 99-year-old female who died after losing her balance and falling while trying to retrieve an item from the top of her dresser
Motorcycle Death Initially Counted as COVID-19 Death
Another misleading instance occurred in Orlando, Florida, where a man in his 20s who died in a motorcycle accident was initially counted as a COVID-19 death because he had tested positive. In a significant stretch, Orange County health officer Dr. Raul Pino told FOX 35 News, “[Yo]u could actually argue that it could have been the COVID-19 that caused him to crash."7
That death was reportedly removed from the official count, but how many others weren’t? In April 2020, Dr. Ngozi Ezike, director of the Illinois Department of Public Health, also detailed the loose case definition being used for COVID-19 deaths:
"If you were in hospice and had already been given a few weeks to live, and then you also were found to have COVID, that would be counted as a COVID death. It means technically even if you died of a clear alternate cause, but you had COVID at the same time, it's still listed as a COVID death.
So, everyone who's listed as a COVID death doesn't mean that that was the cause of the death, but they had COVID at the time of the death."8
Are Total Deaths in 2020 Excessive?
Michael Yeadon, Ph.D., a former vice-president and chief scientific adviser of the drug company Pfizer and founder and CEO of the biotech company Ziarco, now owned by Novartis, said in an interview, "You cannot have a lethal pandemic stalking the land and not have excess deaths." Yet, excess deaths on the level of a lethal pandemic just aren’t occurring.
About 1,700 people die each day in the U.K. in any given year, Yeadon says — but many of these deaths are now falsely attributed to COVID-19. "I'm calling out the statistics, and even the claim that there is an ongoing pandemic, as false," he said, noting that the definition of a "coronavirus death" in the U.K. is anyone who dies, from any cause, within 28 days of a positive COVID-19 test.
In the U.S., it’s a similar story. As of December 22, 2020, the provisional total death count from all causes, according to the CDC, is 2,835,533.9 For comparison, the total number of deaths from all causes in 2018 was 2,839,20510 while in 2019 it was 2,854,838.11
Some estimates suggested that 2020 deaths may top 3.2 million when all the final figures are added up,12 but how many of those deaths are directly attributable to COVID-19?
According to Yeadon, some of the slight uptick in deaths being presorted in the U.K. — primarily people aged 45 to 65, with equal distribution between the sexes — are mainly from heart disease, stroke and cancer, which suggests they are excess deaths caused by inaccessibility of routine medical care as people are either afraid of or discouraged from going to the hospital.
These deaths may be characterized as being COVID related, but that's only because they have been falsely lumped into that category due to a positive test being recorded within 28 days of death. In the U.S., other deaths have also increased, including, according to Robert Anderson of the CDC, “an unexpected number of deaths from certain types of heart and circulatory diseases, diabetes and dementia.”13
Drug overdose deaths are also at record numbers. According to the AP, in late December 2020, “the CDC reported more than 81,000 drug overdose deaths in the 12 months ending in May, making it the highest number ever recorded in a one-year period.”14
Flu Deaths Disappear
Another curiosity in 2020 is what happened to the flu. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) tracks influenza (flu) and pneumonia deaths weekly through the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) Mortality Reporting System. But, “April 4, 2020 was the last week in-season preliminary burden estimates were provided,” the CDC wrote on its 2019-2020 U.S. flu season webpage.15
The reason the estimates stopped in April is because flu cases plummeted so low that they’re hardly worth tracking. In an update posted December 3, 2020, the CDC stated:
“The model used to generate influenza in-season preliminary burden estimates uses current season flu hospitalization data. Reported flu hospitalizations are too low at this time to generate an estimate.”16
They also added, “The number of hospitalizations estimated so far this season is lower than end-of-season total hospitalization estimates for any season since CDC began making these estimates.”17 Meanwhile, the “COVID” deaths the CDC has been reporting are actually a combination of pneumonia, flu and COVID deaths, under a new category listed as "PIC" (Pneumonia, Influenza, COVID).
Their COVIDView webpage, which provides a weekly surveillance summary of U.S. COVID-19 activity, states that levels of SARS-CoV-2 and “associated illnesses” have been increasing since September 2020, while the percentage of deaths due to pneumonia, flu and COVID-19 has been on the rise since October.18
As noted by professor William M. Briggs, a statistical consultant and policy advisor at The Heartland Institute, a free-market think tank, “CDC, up until about July 2020, counted flu and pneumonia deaths separately, been doing this forever, then just mysteriously stopped … It’s become very difficult to tell the difference between these,”19 referring to the combined tracking of deaths from “PIC.”
Selection Bias and Problems With Testing
Dr. Reid Sheftall has also suggested that COVID-19 fatality rates may be inflated, by about 40 times. In an interview with Ivor Cummins, a biochemical engineer with a background in medical device engineering,20 he said selection bias was being used in the counting of cases, and organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and CDC were drastically undercounting the number of people who were infected, which inflated the mortality rate.
Sheftall looked for data in which every case had been counted, ending up with a cruise ship, in which every person had been tested, and a small town in Germany that had also tested all residents. “When I crunched the numbers, the infection fatality rate came out to 0.14%, so I knew … there were some gross errors going on.” Sheftall cited COVID-19 survival rates by age, posted by the CDC September 10, 2020, which are as follows:21
Ages 0 to 19: 99.997%
Ages 20 to 49: 99.98%
Ages 50 to 69: 99.5%
Ages 70 and up: 94.6%
This translates into a 0.1% infection fatality rate, using the CDC’s own numbers. More than 224.5 million COVID-19 tests have been conducted in the U.S,22 which includes an unknown number of tests conducted on people with no symptoms.
The costs for such testing could be used for a more productive purpose, according to Sheftall, particularly for asymptomatic people. “The whole basis of medicine,” he says, is to test people with symptoms so you can find out what’s wrong and treat them accordingly:
“In 2017 to 2018 … between 70 and 80 million people in America got the flu … nobody noticed for the most part and no one was tested. I'm a doctor and I vaguely remember that it was a bad flu season. That was it. And yet with COVID we're testing so many people you wouldn't believe it.”23
What’s more, positive reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests have proven remarkably unreliable with high false result rates, and a positive test does not mean that an active infection is present.
Fear May Be Causing More Deaths
Taken together, what’s clear about the COVID-19 fatality rates being reported is that there’s a lot of room for error and misinterpretation. Solid analysis of any “excess” deaths being attributed to COVID-19 are needed before policy decisions are made. When this was done in England in October 2020, deaths were only 1% higher than expected, and many of them were due to heart disease, stroke and diabetes.
“Notably” fewer deaths due to respiratory conditions and acute respiratory infections were found, yet deaths occurring in homes due to non-COVID-causes increased. This may be another sad outcome of the fear being propagated in relation to COVID-19. According to the study,
“The data suggest that mortality has shifted from hospital to home, especially for deaths not associated with COVID-19. This ‘displacement’ may be due to the reluctance of individuals to receive treatment in hospital or of clinicians to admit non-covid patients … Deaths in the home remain persistently high, and yet they receive little attention.”24
In a December 9, 2020, Twitter thread,1 Michael P. Senger, an attorney and author of the September 2020 article,2 “China’s Global Lockdown Propaganda Campaign,” reviewed the largely hidden impacts of global lockdowns. Ivor Cummins’ video above also reviews data showing just how “hugely ineffective” lockdowns have been.
As one would expect, shutting down businesses for extended periods of time leads to businesses going under for impaired cash flow from lack of revenue. Back in August 2020, Bloomberg reported3 that more than half of all small business owners feared their businesses wouldn’t survive. They were right.
According to a September 2020 economic impact report4 by Yelp, 163,735 U.S. businesses had closed their doors as of August 31, 2020, and of those, 60% — a total of 97,966 businesses — were permanent closures.5 As noted by Senger:6
“That ’leaders’ across the world transformed into tyrants, believing they had a right to bankrupt their subjects, is the core evil of lockdown.”
The Greatest Wealth Transfer in History
How does shutting small businesses but allowing big box stores to stay open protect public health? There’s really no rhyme or reason for such a decision, other than to shift wealth away from small, private business owners to multinational corporations.
While working-class Americans have been forced to file for unemployment by the tens of millions, the top five richest people in the U.S. increased their wealth by 26% between March 18 and June 17, 2020.7 Since the beginning of the pandemic, the collective wealth of 651 billionaires in the U.S. rose by more than 36% ($1 trillion).8 The assets of these 651 billionaires is now nearly double that of the combined wealth of the least wealthy 165 million Americans.
As noted by Frank Clemente, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness, “Never before has America seen such an accumulation of wealth in so few hands.”9
Far from being the great equalizer, COVID-19 is the greatest wealth transfer scheme in the history of the world. Indeed, you may as well call it what it is: grand-scale asset theft from the poor and middle class. A December 14, 2020, article10 in The Defender reviews who has benefited from pandemic measures the most, from the finance and tech industries to the pharmaceutical and military-intelligence sectors.
Minority-Owned Businesses Have Taken Biggest Hit
According to an August 10, 2020, article11 by Forbes, pandemic measures had eliminated nearly half of all Black-owned small businesses in the U.S. by the end of April 2020. It cites data from a New York Fed report,12 which found that “Black-owned businesses were more than twice as likely to shutter as their white counterparts.”
While nationally representative data on small businesses showed active business ownership dropped 22% between February and April 2020, the number of businesses owned by Blacks dropped by 41%. The decline in Latin-owned businesses was 32%; Asian-owned 26%; and White-owned 17%. According to Forbes:13
“At the same time, Black-owned firms, already smarting from a Great Recession that hurt them badly, already entered the crisis with ‘weaker cash positions, weaker bank relationships, and preexisting funding gaps.’ ‘Even the healthiest Black firms were financially disadvantaged at the onset of COVID-19,’ said the report.”
Food Insecurity at Staggering Levels
Mere weeks into the pandemic, Americans were lining up at food banks. An April 12, 2020, article14 in The New York Times showed miles-long lines in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Miami, Florida and elsewhere:
“In many cities, lines outside food pantries have become glaring symbols of financial precarity, showing how quickly the pandemic has devastated working people’s finances.
In San Antonio, 10,000 families began arriving before dawn on Thursday at a now-shuttered swap meet hall to receive boxes of food. Normally, 200 to 400 families might show up during a normal food distribution.
‘It’s a wave of need,’ said Eric Cooper, president of the San Antonio Food Bank. ‘They were all let go. There’s no savings. There’s no slack in their household budget. The money’s run out. It just shows how desperate people are.’”
The situation is much the same in other countries. An April 10, 2020, report15 by the Financial Times cited survey results showing an estimated 3 million Britons had gone without food at some point in the previous three weeks. An estimated 1 million people had by then already lost all sources of income.
Anna Taylor, executive director for the Food Foundation in the U.K., told the Financial Times there’s a “food poverty problem that has not been dealt with” that is now becoming glaringly apparent — and that was mere weeks into the pandemic. We’re now nine months down the line, and governments around the world are again calling for lockdowns over the winter holidays.
Mental Health Slides as Despair Grows
That forcing people into poverty will have a detrimental effect on their mental health is also not surprising. A Canadian survey16 in early October 2020 found 22% of Canadians experienced high anxiety levels — four times higher than the prepandemic rate — and 13% reported severe depression.
In the U.S., an August 2020 survey17,18 by the American Psychological Association found Gen-Z’ers are among the hardest hit in this regard, with young adults aged 18 to 23 reporting the highest levels of stress and depression.
More than 7 out of 10 in this age group reported symptoms of depression in the two weeks before the survey. Among teens aged 13 to 17, 51% said the pandemic makes it impossible to plan for the future. Sixty-seven percent of college-aged respondents echoed this concern.
With despair comes drug-related problems, and according to the American Medical Association, the drug overdose epidemic has significantly worsened and become more complicated this year. “More than 40 states have reported increases in opioid-related mortality as well as ongoing concerns for those with a mental illness or substance use disorder,” the AMA reported in an Issue Brief19 updated December 9, 2020.
A list of national news included in the AMA’s brief20 include reports of increases in overdose-related cardiac arrests, surges in street fentanyl leading to deaths in the thousands and a “dramatic increase” in illicit opioid fatalities. Spikes and record numbers of overdose deaths have been reported in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Delaware, District of Columbia, Illinois, Florida and many other states.
Young Adults Dying in Greater Than Normal Numbers
That pandemic measures are doing more harm than good can also be seen in Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data21,22 showing that, compared to previous years, excess deaths among 25- to 44-year-olds has increased by a remarkable 26.5%, even though this age group accounts for fewer than 3% of COVID-19-related deaths.
To put it bluntly, in our misguided efforts to prevent the elderly and immune compromised from dying from COVID-19, we’re sacrificing people who are in the prime of their lives. As noted by Senger:23
“Per CDC, despite mass PCR testing and disproportionate false positives, at least 100,947 excess deaths in 2020 were not even linked to COVID-19 AT ALL. In other words, over 100,000 Americans were murdered this year by their OWN GOVERNMENT.”
Lockdowns Dramatically Increase Domestic Abuse
Rising despair is also reflected in statistics showing dramatic increases in domestic abuse, rape, child sex abuse and suicides. By July 2020, Ireland reported a 98% increase in people seeking counseling for rape and child sex abuse.24
Data from the British group Women’s Aid showed 61% of domestic abuse victims reported abuse had worsened during the lockdown.25 The number of women killed by their domestic partners also doubled during the first three weeks of lockdowns in the U.K.26
In the U.S., data27 from a Massachusetts hospital revealed a dramatic jump in patients seeking emergency care after being battered by their domestic partner in the nine weeks between March 11 and May 3, 2020, when the state had ordered schools closed.
During this time, 26 patients were treated for domestic abuse injuries that included strangulation, stabbing, burns and gunshot wounds. That’s just one shy of the number of cases seen in the same time period during 2018 and 2019 combined. In other words, domestic abuse cases were nearly double the annual norm for that hospital.
In early April 2020, United Nations secretary-general Antonio Guterres warned28 of a “horrifying” surge in global domestic abuse linked to pandemic lockdowns as calls to helplines in some countries had by then already doubled.29 The number of people looking into divorce in the U.S. was also 34% higher in March through June 2020 compared to the same time frame in 2019.30
Children Brought to Suffer in Countless Ways
Child abuse, meanwhile, is less likely to be detected and reported thanks to virtual schooling. As noted by Human Rights Watch:31
“More than 1.5 billion students are out of school. Widespread job and income loss and economic insecurity among families are likely to increase rates of child labor, sexual exploitation, teenage pregnancy, and child marriage.
Stresses on families, particularly those living under quarantines and lockdowns, are increasing the incidence of domestic violence … ‘The risks posed by the COVID-19 crisis to children are enormous,’ said Jo Becker, children’s rights advocacy director at Human Rights Watch ...
Child abuse is less likely to be detected during the COVID-19 crisis, as child protection agencies have reduced monitoring to avoid spreading the virus, and teachers are less able to detect signs of ill treatment with schools closed.”
There are signs of rising child abuse though, including a British study32 that found a shocking 1,493% rise in the incidence of abusive head trauma among children during the first month of the lockdown, compared to the same time period in the previous three years.
Children are also in danger of falling behind socially and developmentally, even if they’re not exposed to direct abuse. In November 2020, The Guardian reported that many children are regressing mentally and physically as a result of the lockdowns.33
The Washington Post reported34 scholastic achievement gaps have widened in the U.S. and early literacy among kindergarteners has seen a sharp decline this year.
According to The Economist,35 American children over the age of 10 cut physical activity by half during the lockdown, spending most of their time playing video games and eating junk food. Indeed, closing parks and beaches right along with small businesses and schools was undoubtedly among the most ignorant and destructive pandemic measures of all.
Suicide Epidemic
Preventing healthy people from working and upending everyone’s lives has also (as expected) resulted in a massive rise in suicide, and abnormal spikes became apparent within weeks of the initial lockdowns.
As noted by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in “How the Government Uses Fear to Control,” research from the 1980s found that for every 1-point rise in unemployment there were 37,000 excess deaths, 4,000 excess imprisonments and 3,300 excess admissions into mental institutions. Kennedy also cites recent data from a hospital in San Francisco that stated they saw one year’s-worth of suicides in a single month, a 1,200% increase.
In September 2020, Cook Children's Hospital in Fort Worth, Texas, admitted a record number of 37 pediatric patients who had tried to commit suicide. Dr. Kia Carter, medical director of Psychiatry at Cook Children’s told CBS:36
“September of 2020 has been the highest month ever that we've seen suicidal patients admitted to our medical center … Suicide has become the second leading cause of death for kids and adolescents in the last year, versus two years ago when it was the third leading cause of death.”
In Japan — which didn’t even implement lockdowns — government statistics reveal more people died from suicide in the month of October than have died from COVID-19 all year.37 While only 2,087 Japanese had died from COVID-19 as of November 27, 2020, the suicide toll in October alone was 2,153. Women make up the lion’s share of suicides, and hotlines are also reporting that women are confessing thoughts of killing their children out of sheer desperation.
Developing World Fares Even Worse
As horrible as all of these statistics are, they don’t even begin to compare to the tragedies taking place in developing nations. In India, millions of migrant workers were stranded early on in the pandemic without a way to make a living and unable to leave the cities due to lockdown orders.38
Food lines stretched for miles in South Africa at the end of April 202039 and in Saudi Arabia, “hundreds if not thousands” of African migrants — mostly Ethiopian men — have been left to die from lack of food and water in COVID-19 detention centers after a moratorium on deportation was issued in April, according to an August 30, 2020, report by The Telegraph.40
The United Nations estimates pandemic responses have “pushed an additional 150 million children into multidimensional poverty — deprived of education, health, housing, nutrition, sanitation or water,”41 and at the end of April 2020 warned the world was facing “famine of biblical proportions, with only a limited amount of time to act before starvation claims hundreds of millions of lives."42
“All this for a virus that caused no above-average mortality in countries without lockdowns — and which WHO estimates already infected 10% of people worldwide by October. In other words, all for absolutely nothing,” Senger writes.43
Pandemics Highlight Pre-Existing Health Inequalities
Indeed, an ever-growing number of doctors, academics and scientists are now questioning the validity of using PCR tests to diagnose “cases,” the usefulness of face masks, the questionable classification of COVID-19 deaths, and the suppression of scientifically verified methods of prevention and treatment, as well as the safety and usefulness of COVID-19 vaccines.
There are clear problems in all of these areas, yet questions and logical thinking have been, and continue to be, met with harsh resistance and denial. Those leading the charge in terms of pandemic responses have not been shy about their censoring of counter-narratives, almost without exception.
When it comes to the disease itself, we now know certain comorbidities significantly raise your risk of complications and deaths. Among the top ones are obesity, insulin resistance and vitamin D deficiency.
While these conditions are exceptionally common overall, they’re particularly prevalent in Black and indigenous communities, and when combined with inadequate access to health care, these groups also end up being disproportionally affected by COVID-19.44
COVID-19 Is a Class War
While the media and political and economic institutions claim the pandemic narrative is based on scientific consensus, this clearly isn’t the case. There’s no evidence supporting universal mask use, for example, and there’s even less scientific support for lockdowns — a strategy based on a high school project that won third place.45
James Corbett of the Corbett Report discusses this shocking revelation in the video above. Now, as many small businesses are failing thanks to months-long shutdowns and employment opportunities look bleak, world leaders are suddenly joining the World Economic Forum in calling for a Great Reset of the economy.46
This is hardly a random coincidence. This plan, which has been in the works for decades, will further empower and enrich wealthy, unelected powerbrokers while enslaving and impoverishing everyone else. The fact that the pandemic has been used to shift wealth from the poor and middle class to the ultra-wealthy is clear for anyone to see at this point. As noted by IPS News:47
“The COVID pandemic has not been the ‘Great Equalizer’ as suggested by the likes of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and members of the World Economic Forum. Rather, it has exacerbated existing inequalities along gender, race and economic class divides across the world.48”
The Global Restructuring
At this point, it should be obvious for anyone paying attention that the pandemic is being prolonged and exaggerated for a reason, and it’s not because there’s concern for life. Quite the contrary.
It’s a ploy to quite literally enslave the global population within a digital surveillance system49 — a system so unnatural and inhumane that no rational population would ever voluntarily go down that road.
“The ‘Great Reset’ seeks to … expand corporate control of natural resources and state surveillance of individuals,” IPS News writes.50“In the post-pandemic ‘Great Reset,’ there would not be much life left outside the technological-corporate nexus dominated by monolithic agribusiness, pharmaceutical, communication, defense and other inter-connected corporations, and the governments and media serving them.
The proponents of the ‘Great Reset’51 envisage a Brave New World where, ‘You will own nothing. And you will be happy. Whatever you want, you will rent, and it will be delivered by drones.’
But it is more likely that this elite-led revolution will make the vast majority of humanity a powerless appendage of technology with little consciousness and meaning in their lives.”
It should also be clear that most if not all pandemic restrictions to freedom are meant to become permanent. In other words, these past nine months have been a preview of the world the technocratic elite wants to implement as part of the new social and economic order.
It’s important to understand that now’s the time to fight back: to resist any and all unconstitutional edicts. Once the “new world order” is in place, you will no longer be able to do a thing about it.
Your life — your health, educational and work opportunities, your finances and your very identity — will be so meshed with the automated technological infrastructure that any attempt to break free will result in you being locked out or erased from the system, leaving you with no ability to learn, work, travel or engage in commerce.
It sounds far-fetched, I know, but when you follow the technocratic plan to its inevitable end, that’s basically what you end up with. The warning signs are all around us, if we’re willing to see them for what they actually are. The only question now is whether enough people are willing to resist it to make a difference.
Most important of all is the need to release the fear. It’s a fearful public that allows the technocratic elite to dictate the future and rip away our personal freedoms. It’s fear that allows tyranny to flourish. Really look at the data, so you can see for yourself that panic is unwarranted, and that the so-called “solutions” to the pandemic are in fact a path of total destruction.
This destruction — both moral and economic — is necessary for the Great Reset to occur. The technocratic elite need everything and everyone to fall apart in order to justify the implementation of their new system. Without this desperation, no one would agree to what they have planned.
For practical strategies on how you can respond in light of all the tyrannical interventions that have been imposed on us, check out James Corbett’s interview with Howard Lichtman below. I also recommend reading “Constitutional Sheriffs Are the Difference Between Freedom and Tyranny.”
Last but not least, now is also the time to take control of your own health. Make it a point to really take care of yourself. Remember, insulin resistance, obesity and vitamin D deficiency top the list of comorbidities that significantly raise your risk complications and death from COVID-19.
These are also underlying factors in a host of other chronic diseases, including mental health problems, so by addressing them, you’ll improve your chances of getting through this challenging time with your health and sanity intact. You can find tons of information about how to reverse all of these issues by searching my article archives.
The new mutant strain was first reported in the UK and has authorities worried about its higher contagiousness. It doesn't necessarily mean it's more deadly, however.
Scientists have developed a simple, high-throughput method for transferring isolated mitochondria and their associated mitochondrial DNA into mammalian cells.
from Top Health News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/38LmIFn
Observational clinical research of COVID-19 patients can help clinicians better understand how the previously unknown SARS-CoV-2 virus acts, and findings from this research can better inform treatment and vaccine design.
from Top Health News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/2KLd79J
What happens in the brain when our conscious awareness fades during general anesthesia and normal sleep? Scientists studied this question with novel experimental designs and functional brain imaging. They succeeded in separating the specific changes related to consciousness from the more widespread overall effects, and discovered that the effects of anesthesia and sleep on brain activity were surprisingly similar. These novel findings point to a common central core brain network fundamental for human consciousness.
from Top Health News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/3hrqqbb
Small studies have suggested that a group of medications called RAS inhibitors may be harmful in persons with advanced chronic kidney disease, and physicians therefore often stop the treatment in such patients. Researchers now show that although stopping the treatment is linked to a lower risk of requiring dialysis, it is also linked to a higher risk of cardiovascular events and death.
from Top Health News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/3pvjnBe
Thanks to the marine worm Platynereis dumerilii, an animal whose genes have evolved very slowly, scientists have shown that while haemoglobin appeared independently in several species, it actually descends from a single gene transmitted to all by their last common ancestor.
from Top Health News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/381FTfj
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a complex psychiatric disorder brought on by physical and/or psychological trauma. How its symptoms, including anxiety, depression and cognitive disturbances arise remains incompletely understood and unpredictable. Treatments and outcomes could potentially be improved if doctors could better predict who would develop PTSD. Now, researchers using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) have found potential brain biomarkers of PTSD in people with traumatic brain injury (TBI).
from Top Health News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/3rChPqY
Researchers have shown that Chiari 1 malformation can be caused by variations in two genes linked to brain development, and that children with large heads are at increased risk of developing the condition.
from Top Health News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/34SrG21
Results from a global trial across 148 sites in 23 countries, showing a 30 per cent improvement in survival in patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML), significantly improving survival in older patients, over the age of 55, with the disease. AML is the most acute blood cancer in adults and its incidence increases with age, with a poor prognosis.
from Top Health News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/3rBrttM
A bipartisan coalition of 46 states and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) separately filed antitrust suits against Facebook alleging the company’s anticompetitive tactics and acquisitions of rival companies intrude on your privacy.1 At the same time, Facebook is attacking Apple for limiting the information Facebook can gather from Apple devices.2
The fight is all about your information — where you shop, your interests, friends, thoughts, politics, health and more. The antitrust laws were originally developed to limit the economic power of companies and ensure adequate competition in the market to protect consumer rights.3 Specifically, three federal statutes in the Antitrust Law define and prohibit various aspects of anticompetitive conduct.
The two new lawsuits, both filed in the District of Columbia federal district court, will help to define how the Antitrust Law, developed in an era before social media, addresses the anticompetitive actions of Facebook. Wired defines antitrust simply as, “a complicated field built on a simple premise: When a company doesn’t face real competition, it will be free to do bad things.”4
In this case, “bad things” are a breach of consumer welfare standards that have hinged on demonstrating financial harm since the 1970s. In 2019, legal scholar Dina Srinivasan wrote a paper in which she essentially argued that when Facebook took over the market, they forced consumers to accept inferior privacy protection to support the growth of the social media giant. She wrote:5
“Facebook’s pattern of false statements and misleading conduct induced consumers to trust and choose Facebook, to the detriment of market competitors and consumers' own welfare.”
The change in focus from financial harm to privacy damage was a conceptual breakthrough that the FTC and state coalition believe meets the intention of the Antitrust Law. This comes at a time when Facebook is gaining financial traction using your private data to increase the company’s advertising revenue and change your opinions to match their rhetoric.
Facebook Facing Two Antitrust Suits
These two antitrust suits come on the heels of FTC penalty and privacy restrictions imposed in mid-2019.6 The FTC called it a “record-breaking $5 billion penalty,” yet as I reported in 2019 when I announced “Mercola.com Leaves Facebook Today,” Facebook stock rose after the announcement and the penalty was equal to only one month of revenue for the company.7
So although the FTC called the penalty “the largest ever imposed on any company for violating consumers’ privacy and almost 20 times greater than the largest privacy or data security penalty ever imposed worldwide,”8 it was not close to tapping the financial reserves of the largest social media platform on the planet.
Facebook has fallen far from their origins when the company promised to take privacy seriously and not use tracking cookies — and that any changes to their privacy policy would be voted on by users.9 The company's evolution from a privacy-focused start-up to the surveillance platform they've currently become has been at the heart of multiple suits, including the recent antitrust cases.
It's anticipated the two cases will be combined as the suits move forward. Interestingly, Facebook released a statement from their general counsel, which called the lawsuits “revisionist history,” but acknowledges there may be questions of “whether Facebook and its competitors are making the right decisions around things like elections, harmful content and privacy.”10
The challenge will be in demonstrating that Facebook not only built up a monopoly but that the monopoly has been harmful to the consumer. In her paper, Srinivasan argued early changes to Facebook privacy policy were met with market resistance, an indication of consumer choice. In 2007, Facebook rolled out a product to track user activity, even when they weren't on Facebook.11
There was enough backlash that within the year the program was discontinued, but later a new program took its place as Facebook currently uses pixel trackers to keep tabs on their users all around the internet. Srinivasan points to changes made again in 2011 when Facebook was fending off Google+.
Emails showed that decision-makers in the company were intent on avoiding disturbances in the market and wanted to save any potentially controversial changes until comparisons against other products died down.
The antitrust lawsuits include the acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram by Facebook. As a condition of buying WhatsApp, Facebook committed to preserving privacy. However, the WhatsApp founder quit after Facebook broke their promise.12
Decade-Long Plan Revealed in the Rise of Social Media
These gradual changes were not organic but rather appear to have been an orchestrated event that moved consumers from engagement with a new social media platform to dependence on a surveillance giant that gathers more information on users’ movements and habits than most people are willing to share with their family and friends.
According to Statistica, Facebook has 2.5 billion active users, demonstrating the massive phenomenon that social media has become.13 When you consider there are 7.7 billion people globally and nearly half are online, these numbers are huge.14 Facebook is the most popular platform by far. YouTube runs second at 1.9 billion users and Instagram and WeChat have 1 billion users apiece.
The first to reach 1 million active users was Myspace in 2004, which was the same year that Facebook was launched in Cambridge, Massachusetts.15 By 2010, Facebook had overtaken all other social media sites in number of active users each month and has continued to dominate the market.16
The changes and evolution of the social media giant over the past 15 years is a visible demonstration of the flexibility and drive behind the management team, which devised a plan to enable the company to overtake older more established media platforms. From their history, it has appeared the strategy is to acquire other social media platforms that threaten Facebook’s market share.17
For example, as Instagram and WhatsApp were gaining popularity, Facebook brought them into the fold. The company may have an aim at being all things to all people, growing their company through a large number of acquisitions, including over 75 companies beginning in 2007.18
Privacy: Apple Wants It, Facebook Doesn’t
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Apple decided to add settings on users' iPhones that will change how mobile advertising is displayed on those devices. The upgrade puts a privacy option that had always been in the apps, upfront when the user opens the app.19
The expectation is that it will have a dramatic effect on targeted advertising. The change was initially planned for fall of 2020 but was delayed, giving advertising systems a chance to comply. Each user will see a pop-up window that warns them the app may be gathering data and give them the opportunity to block it.
In response, Facebook took out advertising in major newspapers across the U.S., criticizing the upgrade and defending the use of targeted advertising, writing these changes will hurt small businesses.20 The ads appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and New York Times, as reported by Bloomberg. Facebook asserts that:21
“Without personalized ads, Facebook data show that the average small business advertiser stands to see a cut of over 60% in their sales for every dollar they spend.”
At issue is Facebook's Audience Network system.22 The platform was released in 2014 and is “an off Facebook, in-app advertising network for mobile apps.”23 Data gathering on Facebook allows advertisers to show customers who are using other mobile sites and apps their ads, which extends their reach beyond Facebook while still using Facebook’s advertising system.
Beginning in 2021, in response to Apple's move to improve privacy, the Audience Network will begin using bidding only to fill ads in the iOS network.24 Facebook anticipates that the changes to iOS 14 will decrease their ability to collect the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) information, which will then impact monetization of in-app advertising.
While this may impact targeted advertising for business, it protects your privacy. It may appear these ads are only irritating, but the underlying issue isn’t just one or two ads.
Rather it’s the massive amount of data that’s gathered and collated based on your identifying information, which reveals insight into your communication and spending habits. This in turn allows Facebook to make fairly accurate assumptions about your behavior.
The Power of Social Media
Facebook can then use this data about your behavior patterns to serve information that may change your mind about political candidates, spending practices, weight loss efforts and a variety of other choices you make each day. In other words, by simply gathering information, Facebook has the potential to change your behavior.
Facebook also uses strategies to remove information that you might find helpful. For example, in their promise to combat “fake news” censorship doesn't end at blatantly fake articles but includes removal of any information they find unfavorable to Facebook or their advertisers.
Former U.S. presidential candidate Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) is an outspoken proponent of breaking up monopolies such as Amazon, Facebook and Google and vowed to introduce “sweeping new regulation of Silicon Valley” should she have been elected president.25
However, three of Warren’s Facebook ads were removed with the message they were “against Facebook advertising policies,” a glaringly obvious example of why her proposal is so sorely needed.26
Facebook uses the same tactics to remove anything they believe contains “misinformation” about health, such as topics related to vaccines or treatments for COVID-19 that they and their advertisers do not deem beneficial to their end results.
Their draconian means of protecting their platform and rhetoric were one of the reasons Mercola.com left Facebook. Facebook uses data mining to subvert your privacy and change your behavior by meticulously tracking your hobbies, habits and preferences. In fact, their entire profit model is based on surveillance and selling your personal information.
They not only have access to the websites you visit but can also access your computer or smartphone’s microphone without your knowledge.27 If you suddenly find yourself receiving ads for products or services you only spoke out loud about, chances are that one or more of your apps are linked to your microphone and are eavesdropping.
In the current stay-at-home environment, more people are using Facebook and sharing more of their personal information, which means Facebook has more to lose. For example, a study published by Carnegie Mellon University in May 2020 found 45% of the Twitter accounts posting about the coronavirus were likely bots “aimed at sowing division in America.”28
While this example is from another social media conglomerate, it is just one method that social media platforms can use to change your mind about current events, health decisions and spending habits.
Study: Unplugging May Increase Happiness and Satisfaction
A study published in late 2019 from New York University used a randomized experiment to find that unplugging from Facebook for four weeks increased a person's offline activities, such as socializing with people, reduced their political polarization and increased their feeling of well-being.29
Psychotherapist Nancy Colier is the author of the book “The Power of Off: The Mindful Way to Stay Sane in a Virtual World.” She knows that when you have an addiction, “it gets harder and harder to derive joy from the present moment. We're in this chronic state of wanting to get our substance.”30
Research has also suggested the validation you get when someone “likes” your post may trigger a release of dopamine and oxytocin, feel-good neurotransmitters. It's important to remember that social media is designed to be addictive, to keep you on the site longer and longer. As Computer World reports:31
"Sites like Facebook, Google+ and … Twitter, tweak their algorithms, then monitor the response of users to see if those tweaks kept them on the site longer or increased their engagement. We're all lab rats in a giant, global experiment."
There are strategies you can use to break free from this addiction, such as setting a time limit, checking in once a day or quitting cold turkey. Colier has suggested using mindfulness. The Epoch Times reported:32
"Colier's approach starts with awareness. When you feel that habitual itch to check for messages, play a game, or dig for details on the latest celebrity scandal, first ask what you might be distracting yourself from. 'We flip it so the impulsive thought becomes an opportunity to check in on what's happening, rather than an opportunity to anesthetize,' Colier said."
If you're not ready to completely give up your devices, here are strategies compiled by the Center for Humane Technology that you can use to help develop an intentional relationship with technology.33 These are good starting points and worth sharing with your kids too.
Allow notifications from people only — Apps are designed to lure you back in with notifications. Visit Settings > Notifications in your cellphone to turn off notifications made by machines and allow only those made by people.
Create a tools-only home screen — If your home screen is filled with a bunch of unnecessary apps, it will only tempt you to spend time on them. Instead, limit your home screen to the handful of essential tools you need on a daily basis, like Maps, Camera, Calendar and Notes.
Launch apps by typing — Use your phone's search feature to type in the name of an app you wish to open, which makes opening the app a conscious choice.
Remove toxic apps — This includes apps that profit from your distraction and addiction as well as promote misinformation and polarization. These include Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok.
Download helpful tools — You can’t fix a problem by adding more of the same, but there are a few helpful technological tools you can use on your cellphone. These include apps that help remove blue light (Flux),34 track your habits (Moment)35 and keep you focused on your goals (Flipd).36
