Tuesday Open Thread

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SARS-2 — When did Intelligence agencies know it was almost certainly a lab leak?

When did the national leaders figure out it was probably a leak from a Chinese bioweapon laboratory?

Ebola Virus, electron micrograph

by BernbaumJG

It makes all the difference. If we had known in January 2020, the virus could have been stopped so easily. The likely bioweapon could have been left in China — just by stopping the flights and instigating a two week rigid quarantine.

Think about the effect it would have had in January 2020 if people thought Covid was a man-made experiment. The public would have clamored to stop the planes. Borders would have gone up overnight. There would have been much less of the fatalistic acceptance that it was just another inevitable pandemic “like the flu” that people had to deal with. The suppression of the “lab leak” theory served the CCP and Anthony Fauci and co. It also served Tedros Adhanom, the head of the WHO who told the world to keep the border open on February 2. But so far that suppression has cost nearly five million lives, plus the mayhem, economic damage, long illnesses and debility.

Last night Sky News aired the documentary What Really Happened in Wuhan by Sharri Markson. We find out more about who knew what when, but not quite enough.

Donald Trump blames Anthony Fauci for staying silent over Wuhan laboratory funding

Sharri Markson, The Australian

As Mr Trump’s top medical adviser on the coronavirus, Dr Fauci was in his inner sanctum and present for every meeting on the virus as it started to spread globally. Mr Trump said Dr Fauci never once told him the Wuhan Institute of Virology was genetically manipulating coronaviruses.

Donald Trump on the first signs that trouble was afoot:

Alexis Carey, News.com

Mr Trump said one of the first clues of the looming disaster – and its links to the Wuhan lab – was after he “started hearing stories … that there were lots of body bags outside of the lab”. “I heard that a long time ago and if they did in fact have body bags, that was one little indication, wasn’t it?”

For John Ratcliffe, the administration’s former director of national intelligence, the giveaway was the CCP cover up:

“The Chinese communist party would not have shut down Wuhan. It would not have silenced doctors and scientists and journalists, and disappeared some of them,” he said, adding the intelligence community first became aware of the virus in late 2019.

Personally, it was the news that the Wuhan Lab was ordered to destroy all their lab samples on Jan 1st, 2020, which I learnt from The Epoch Times documentary in mid April 2020. A month later came the news of the bizarrely unlikely genetic evolution of SARS 2  —  which was a coverup “far too far“. It reeked as a lab creation.

Why did the viral database disappear on Sept 12?

This was before the lab leak, before the Military Games, and three months before the “official first case”?

China lion statues, Taiwan.

Image by AngMoKio

Few are saying a lot about the database of 22,000 coronaviruses vanishing on Sept 12, 2019. A database that the CCP still has not shared.

Hypothetically, the Military Games in Wuhan  in mid-October would have looked like a handy superspreading event if someone was, perhaps, war-gaming scenarios for spreading germs ahead of the northern winter. If the lab leak in October was a sloppy accident that coincided with the Military Games, what are the odds that the database accidentally crashed the month before that? Maybe it did. Teams that are sloppy with viral code might be sloppy with computer code too and the WIV was certainly sloppy with their viruses. But how often do databases in Chinese agencies go missing?

While it all sounds quite suspicious, ponder that the coverup of the bizarre genetic evolution of SARS in late January 2020 was post hoc rushed and haphazard. If there was a plan to leak Covid, the Bat-woman of Wuhan herself wasn’t in it. If she was, she would have faked up the evolutionary history six months earlier and not messed up the ratio of meaningful and random mutations in the frantic race to invent RaTG13, the non-existent near relative of SARS-2 that she supposedly discovered in 2013  but forgot to mention until Jan 27th 2020.

But of course, if some other person or entity in China did leak the virus deliberately, they might not have included her in the planning. Or it could all have been an incompetent accident.

Ask yourself, if it was deliberate, would they really have released it just outside the lab that made it? You would think not, but supposing they wanted it to look like a lab-leak and they were not even going to bother hiding that, then that’s where it had to be released. If the same artificial virus, with all the genetic anomalies, appeared 500 km away from the lab, no one would be wondering if it was deliberate. We’d know.

The lab leak, the missing scientists, the cover-up

Bryant Hevesi, Sky News

On the September 12, 2019, the virus database at the Wuhan Institute of Virology was taken offline, and with it 22,000 coronavirus samples were gone.

That same day security was beefed up at the facility and a tender was issued to replace the air-conditioning system. There was later a communications blackout, with no cell-phone or signals activity.

Intelligence was received that three people working at the Wuhan Institute of Virology had fallen sick in October 2019, two months before the first official case was reported.

“What (former Secretary of State) Mike Pompeo and I put out is people became sick at the lab in October and with symptoms that became entirely consistent with what most people have experienced around the world from COVID-19,” Mr Ratcliffe said.

The Military Games in Wuhan ran from October 18th, 2019 for two weeks and athletes got a strange flu:

Miles Yu, former Principal China Advisor at the US State Department, said those athletes who returned from the Military Games had symptoms now known as coronavirus symptoms but no one was ever tested.

“All I know that people got sick, I believe the French often got sick, I believe they’re Germans, some Americans got sick too,” he said.

Intelligence agencies were aware in 2019 that something was wrong at the Military Games in Wuhan

James Morrow, Daily Telegraph

Markson also revealed that, by the second half of 2019, various spy agencies knew something was wrong.

“In late 2019 we have intelligence from both human intelligence sources and signals intelligence sources and other intelligence sources that were telling us that there was some sort of a problem in Wuhan,” Mr Ratcliffe said.

It was then that the Military World Games were being held in Wuhan, which may have become the first superspreader event.

A Chinese Whistleblower tried to warn the US of a mysterious virus in November 2019

A famous Chinese defector in the US heard on the vine that a dangerous virus was coming. He told a US politician, and a Chinese Human Rights Activist called Dimon Liu and a former CIA agent, but nothing came of it. US intelligence had other information in late 2019 but it did not “join the dots”.

Sharri Markson, The Australian

China’s most famous defector to America warned US intelligence agencies a coronavirus was spreading in Wuhan in November 2019 — six weeks before China admitted there was an outbreak.

Wei Jingsheng, the father of China’s democracy movement, reveals in the new book What Really Happened in Wuhan that he first heard of a new, mysterious virus at the time of the World Military Games in Wuhan in October 2019.

David Asher, the State Department official who spearheaded a taskforce into the origins of Covid-19, said the opportunity presented by Mr Wei’s warning was like “stopping 9/11 before it happened”.

Mr Asher said the US government had other crucial pieces of early-warning evidence in late 2019 but it failed to connect the dots. He said the US government first had intelligence about Wuhan Institute of Virology workers falling sick with Covid-like symptoms in late 2019 – a year before he discovered it during his investigation into the origins of the virus for the State Department.

In the Sky News documentary, Mr Asher said he was shocked when he found out “we actually could have had foreknowledge” of the coronavirus. “We could have known in November of 2019, that there was a disaster occurring inside Wuhan – inside their most important biological facilities related to coronavirus research,” he said.

“It was something absolutely tragic, traumatic and dramatic that was occurring and we could have reacted to it. The whole world could have been different. It would have been like stopping 9/11 before it happened.”

If the virus was roaming around the Military Games in October 2019, it fair to wonder why the pandemic didn’t take off until January 2020. It’s possible the early variant was slightly less infectious and still needed some mutation to launch at full speed. But it’s not essential.  Covid is a cluster spreading disease and only 1 in 5 or as few as 1 in 10 people are true infectious superspreaders. For example, in South Korea it was Patient #31 that set off the first mass outbreak infecting thousands.

Covid-19 usually has to “knock on the door” a few times before it arrives and stays. Small outbreaks have made it across state borders and come-to-nothing many times. So a few athletes came home but were already past their infectious period. The odd tourist visited Italy. But it took a sequence of “lucky breaks” for the virus to get a foothold to grow exponentially.

Was it deliberate or was it an accident. We still don’t know.

Door locking in Beijing

Image by Reinhold Möller.

The book What Really Happened in Wuhan by Sharri Markson is available now on Booktopia and Amazon.

h/t Bill T

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CDC Cautions Against Taking The Red Pill

Red Pill, Babylon Bee, Satire
ATLANTA, GA—The CDC has cautioned Americans against taking the red pill, as it can lead to severe side effects such as “realizing the truth about the way our society is manipulated by the elites” and “spending all your time on YouTube watching Jordan Peterson videos.”

“We’ve seen a lot of people recommend taking the red pill,” said CDC Director Rochelle Walensky. “And we just have to remind everyone that the pill is not approved by the FDA or any other governing body. It could spread ideas like that freedom is a good thing and that thinking for yourself is a healthy American value. People might start getting the wrong idea.”

Meanwhile, the FDA is rushing out an emergency approval process on a new, stronger blue pill to counteract the red pill crisis.

Jo says read the rest at The BabylonBee. See the BluePill in the proto-Beta version at the TGA site, where the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration warns that Doctors are no longer allowed to prescribe the Red Pill because people on social media are getting the doses wrong.

Informed consent means being told that if you don’t take the Blue Pill, you may get sacked.

h/t OldOzzie

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Open Sunday

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“Fossil Fuels are a strategic asset” say people watching UK and EU perfect gas storm

It’s not even winter yet but suddenly all eyes are on the gas prices

Dutch TTF Gas prices in crude oil equivalent now trading at $148/barrels.

Gas through the roof…

Thanks to fear of climate change voodoo many nations in the EU have effectively stopped exploring for gas and decided not to frack their shale deposits to get cheap gas too. (In Australia too). Vainglorious governments aimed to change the weather instead of having cheap electricity and lo, wind-towers were built everywhere.

What could possibly go wrong? Nearly everything.

Even the massive size of the European market hasn’t saved them from price rises so large that retail suppliers are collapsing, and fertilizer factories are closing.

Its a great way to give your enemies the upper hand

The wind drought in spring and summer meant that wind farms failed.  Then the Russians squeezed gas supply in to the EU looking suspiciously like they were hoping to push up prices and pressure Germany into approving the controversial Nordstream 2 pipeline.  Now the Kremlin is suggesting a quick approval will alleviate the gas shortage (they’re just trying to help). In the latest news one large interconnector between the UK and France has suffered a fire and broken down and won’t be restored til March next year.

The GWPF points out that gas prices in Europe are three times higher than in the USA “where fracking is widely used and shale gas is cheap and abundant.”

Power prices soar after key electricity cable between UK and France catches fire

UK FlagBritish electricity prices jumped by 19 per cent to £475 per megawatt hour on Wednesday. A key electricity cable between Britain and France has been shut down after a fire, sending wholesale prices soaring. The fire will reduce imports from France until the end of March 2022, the National Grid has warned.

The bad news starts to unfold. With fertilizer factories closing, there may be food shortages:

In the UK two energy suppliers have collapsed under the price surge:

Sept 8th, 2021:   The record energy market surge has claimed its first casualties after two UK suppliers collapsed, leaving almost 100,000 customers without an energy supplier. PfP Energy and MoneyPlus Energy both ceased trading as the UK’s gas market reached a fresh record high on Tuesday while electricity market prices surged to levels not seen since 2008.

Fertilizer factories have been shut due to the high gas prices:

Record energy prices have forced two fertiliser plants in the north of England to shut down and brought steel plants to a halt, in some of the clearest signs that the energy crunch engulfing Europe could deal a blow to the UK’s economic recovery.

UK’s meat industry warns CO2 shortage could hit food supplies within two weeks

LONDON – Britain’s meat industry on Friday warned that an impending shortage of carbon dioxide (CO2) could cause massive disruption to food supplies within two weeks. The gas is used to stun animals before slaughter, in the vacuum packing of food products to extend their shelf life, and to put the fizz into beer, cider and soft drinks. Britain’s food supply chain, already creaking from an acute shortage of heavy goods vehicles (HGV) drivers and the impact of Brexit and COVID-19, is heavily reliant on fertiliser producers for CO2 which is a by-product of their production process.

Energy bills are set to soar:

Energy bills will soar by hundreds of pounds within weeks after dozens of cash-strapped suppliers withdrew their cheapest deals from the market because of soaring wholesale prices. Suppliers pulled their cheapest fixed-rate offers yesterday…  So few cheap deals are available that Compare the Market, which specialises in comparing cheap deals, temporarily closed its energy comparison service last night.

Suddenly energy self sufficiency is looking appealing

Gas prices are rising in the US as well, and even the US is paying attention.

Europe’s Climate Lesson for America

UK FlagUS Flag, Flying.As wind power flags, energy prices are soaring amid fuel shortages.

Wall Street Journal

Electricity prices in the U.K. this week jumped to a record £354 ($490) per megawatt hour, a 700% increase from the 2010 to 2020 average. Germany’s electricity benchmark has doubled this year. Last month’s 12.3% increase was the largest since 1974 and contributed to the highest inflation reading since 1993.

European natural-gas spot prices have increased five-fold in the last year. Some energy providers are burning cheaper coal, but its prices have tripled.

The U.S. is the world’s largest gas producer, but it isn’t immune from turmoil in energy markets. Natural gas spot prices in the U.S. have doubled over the past year in part because producers have increased exports to Europe and Asia. Exports are up more than 40% during the first six months this year over last.

Guess who benefits if the US adopts “low carbon” anti gas policies?  Russia, Iran and China,

This underscores how fossil fuels are a U.S. economic and strategic asset. The Biden Administration’s plan to curtail oil, gas and coal production by regulation would empower adversaries, especially Russia, Iran and China, which are the world’s three largest gas producers after the U.S.

Americans are already feeling the pain of rising energy prices. Electricity and utility gas prices were up 5.2% and 21.1%, respectively, over the last 12 months in August.

Anacortes Refinery, Washington. USA

Anacortes Refinery, Washington,  by Walter Siegmund

As I said in June, the EU was already being forced back to burning coal because no one was building gas plants because the experts all said they’d be stranded assets:

God’s joke on governments that try to control the climate with their electricity grid: 

Europe talks itself out of building gas plants in order to stop global warming, then after an extra cold winter, they also run out of gas, and now they have to go back to burning coal.

Spooked investors weren’t funding many gas plants now that the glorious renewable era was here and policy makers were all wearing their Hydrogen badges, and waving their carbon capture wands. In the last year all the geniuses of the European Investment Bank, the IEA, the European Commission were saying “gas is over” and it would be a stranded asset.

 

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Weekend Unthreaded

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Uttar Pradesh, India, wipes out Covid with ivermectin

Map, India, States, Uttar Pradesh, Kerala.

Click to Enlarge | Map by Planemad

Something amazing has happened in Uttar Pradesh.

At the end of April in Uttar Pradesh, every day 35,000 people were catching Covid  and 350 people were dying. With a population of 240 million people living in high density conditions, and with only 5% vaccinated, all the odds were against it.

This week across the whole state there were only 199 active cases in toto and a trickle of new daily cases.

Ponder that Utter Pradesh has about two thirds of the population of the USA and they’re living in a high density environment with a GDP of about $1,000 per capita, which is one sixtieth as much as the average American.  To add some perspective, it was only three years ago that the government finally connected everyone up to electricity.

The richest nations in the world are failing.

 

33 districts in Uttar Pradesh are now Covid-free

Hindustan Times Sept 10th, 2021

There are no active cases of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) in 33 districts of Uttar Pradesh, the state government informed on Friday. About 67 districts have not reported a single new case of the viral infection in the last 24 hours, the government said, noting the steady improvement of the Covid-19 situation in the state.

Overall, the state has a total of 199 active cases, while the positivity rate came down to less than 0.01 per cent. The recovery rate, meanwhile, has improved to 98.7 per cent. As per the state’s health bulletin, Uttar Pradesh reported only 11 new Covid-19 cases and zero deaths in the last 24 hours.

 

Uttar Pradesh, India, Ivermectin.

It’s always hard to know if places like India are testing enough, and while they definitely weren’t at the peak, they appear to be now. Test positivity in India rose to 15% or more in late April, but by early June was as low as 0.5%.

A test positivity of 15% is not good, but it isn’t the Mexican 60% disaster. Plenty of US states have had similar days.

People may not realize that Ivermectin is not only useful in treating Covid but can also reduce viral loads and thus transmission if it is used early enough. We could be using it to ring-fence Covid — to surround current cases to limit the spread.

Given the safety of ivermectin, why aren’t we doing those trials?  What have we got to lose?

If the Minister of Health says “Trust us” on the vaccines, but isn’t acting as though our health was the most important thing. It it was, he’d be allowing doctors to prescribe it to patients and running trials. 

If ivermectin had been used in NSW with detailed contact tracing from the beginning, would they still be in lockdown?

An ivermectin success story

Uttar Pradesh is giving people ivermectin, and not only providing it to those who test positive but giving it to everyone else in their house as well to prevent or at least slow the transmission.

India’s Ivermectin Blackout – Part III: The Lesson of Kerala

Justus Hope, The Desert Review, August 23, 2021

Uttar Pradesh has a policy of treating ALL the contacts of an infected patient prophylactically with Ivermectin.  In other words, in Uttar Pradesh, everyone in the house gets Ivermectin treatment even if only one is infected. Ivermectin is known to reduce mortality in infected and dramatically lowers the viral load, thereby helping reduce the spread of the virus to others.

Uttar Pradesh government says early use of Ivermectin helped to keep positivity, deaths low

“Uttar Pradesh was the first state in the country to introduce large-scale prophylactic and therapeutic use of Ivermectin. In May-June 2020, a team at Agra led by Dr. Anshul Pareek, administered Ivermectin to all RRT team members in the district on an experimental basis. It was observed that NONE OF THEM developed COVID-19 despite being in daily contact with patients who had tested positive for the virus,” Uttar Pradesh State Surveillance Officer Vikssendu Agrawal said.

The WHO raved about the way Uttar Pradesh was handling things, but didn’t mention what was in the medicine bag. It’s just some mysterious black box, right?

We can see how comprehensive the program was beginning on May 5th:

UTTAR PRADESH Going the last mile to stop COVID-19

WHO, May 7, 2021

The Uttar Pradesh state government has initiated house-to-house active case finding of COVID-19 in rural areas to contain transmission by testing people with symptoms for rapid isolation, disease management and contact tracing.

Government teams are moving across 97,941 villages in 75 districts over five days for this activity, which began on 5 May in India’s most populous state with a population of 230 million.

Each monitoring team has two members, who visit homes in villages and remote hamlets to test everyone with symptoms of COVID-19 using Rapid Antigen Tests (RAT) kits. Those who test positive are quickly isolated and given a medicine kit with advice on disease management.

The Uttar Pradesh government certainly thinks it was ivermectin:

May 12th 2021

Uttar Pradesh government says early use of Ivermectin helped to keep positivity, deaths low

The Indian Express

“Uttar Pradesh was the first state in the country to introduce large-scale prophylactic and therapeutic use of Ivermectin. In May-June 2020, a team at Agra, led by Dr Anshul Pareek, administered Ivermectin to all RRT team members in the district on an experimental basis. It was observed that none of them developed Covid-19 despite being in daily contact with patients who had tested positive for the virus,” Uttar Pradesh State Surveillance Officer Vikssendu Agrawal said.

Claiming that timely introduction of Ivermectin since the first wave has helped the state maintain a relatively low positivity rate despite its high population density, he said, “Despite being the state with the largest population base and a high population density, we have maintained a relatively low positivity rate and cases per million of population”.

He said that apart from aggressive contact tracing and surveillance, the lower positivity and fatality rates may be attributed to the large-scale use of Ivermectin use in the state, adding that the drug has recently been introduced in the National Protocol for Covid treatment and management.

Kerala took the vaccine route and stopped ivermectin

Compare Uttar Pradesh to the small state of Kerala on the far southern edge of India. Kerala was using ivermectin, but unlike Uttar Pradesh, it increased vaccinations and decreased ivermectin.  By early August ivermectin was no longer included in treatment plans. Kerala has a population of 34 million, but currently has about two thirds of all new cases in India.

See the guidelines: Kerala treatment Guidelines April 2021 and August 2021.  There are 13 mentions of ivermectin in April, but by August, there are only 2, and they are “contraindications”.

India, Uttar Pradesh, Covid cases, Delhi, Kerala, Ivermectin, Graph.

….

See also The Gateway Pundit for more.

Spread the word. Big Pharma and Big Government won’t champion the cheap drugs — only the people will!

h/t Craig Kelly, Scott of the Pacific, and ColA on Thursday Unthreaded plus Bill in AZ

Keep reading  →

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Thursday Open Thread

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Major policy flip from Australia: out with French diesel subs and in with *nuclear ones*!?

Next thing you know we might get *one* nuclear power plant?

HMS Ambush, Nuclear Submarine

HMS Ambush

Yesterday the odds of that were “Buckleys”. Wow. Foreign readers might not appreciate how seismic this is. There are 450 nuclear power plants in the world and  Australia has none of them (just one little medical research reactor). So even getting a small nuclear plant in an underwater boat is a pretty big deal.

Australia to get nuclear-powered submarines, will scrap $90b program to build French-designed subs

ABC

In 2016, the Turnbull government announced French company Naval Group (then known as DCNS) had been selected for this country’s largest-ever defence contract, to design and build “regionally superior” conventional submarines.

A well-placed military source has told the ABC the Defence Department’s general manager of submarines, Greg Sammut, has called an urgent “clear lower decks” meeting for tomorrow morning to discuss the dramatic development.

Another senior official said “top secret” briefings have been arranged at the Defence Department on Thursday.

We’re still fixing the legacy of Malcom Turnbull’s mistakes.

Australia Goes Nuclear

Breitbart

The report goes on to state Australia, the United States and Britain are expected to jointly announce a new trilateral security partnership on Thursday, with a focus on aligning technology and regional challenges.

The new three-nation security pact – called AUKUS – will be seen by China as a bid to counter its regional influence, especially in the contested South China Sea, according to the ABC.

The nuclear submarines would likely be based in Western Australia giving easier access to the broad expanses of the Indian Ocean.

The new alliance has been called “China’s Worst Nightmare”. 

UPDATE: The irony is that the French subs were originally nuclear subs, and needed major modifications at great expense to turn them into diesel subs, and now we are saying that they’re no good because they are not nuclear. So the French have every reason to feel aggrieved.  But if we are getting US Nuclear Sub technology “for free” that explains dumping the $90b French deal.

In another irony, Jacinda Ardern popped up to say that these subs won’t be allowed in the New Zealand zone of the ocean because they are a nuclear free zone. We wish our New Zealand friends the best of luck, and wonder how well the zoning will work on Chinese subs. Like gun control, the anti-nuclear forcefield may only repel the good subs and not the enemy.

I fully expect Arden to get a stern talking too and pull back from statements like that in the future.

David Archibald was lamenting these daft submarine policy choices 3 years ago

Malcolm Turnbull has made that very difficult. He took delight in choosing French vapourware submarines over the proven Japanese offering because the latter was Tony Abbott’s choice. The French submarines are scheduled to enter service in the 2030s.  In the interim we will be spending as much keeping the sclerotic Collins class submarines going as it would have been to replace them with the Japanese Soryu class. The Collins class is cursed with one of the worst diesel engines ever put into a marine vessel.  Our submariners will be struggling with them for decades yet thanks to Prime Minister Turnbull.

As an indication of the idiocy that is guiding our French vapourware submarines, Asia Pacific Defence Reporter reports that they are going to be built with lead acid batteries instead of lithium ion batteries because the RAN does not want to be introducing this particular new technology in the 2030s. The Japanese are using lithium ion batteries now in the Soryu class. The weight difference is enormous – 300 tonnes of lead acid batteries versus 100 tonnes of lithium ion. The delta of 200 tonnes makes a big difference to a submarine. This decision on batteries by the RAN has been described as “retarded” by an experienced Australian defence observer based in Washington.

David Archibald is the author of American Gripen: The Solution to the F-35 Nightmare

 

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Shock-me-not: CO2 doesn’t cause multiple back-to-back disasters in Australia

Multiple Cyclones, Fires, Floods and Heatwaves striking Australians at same rate for last 55 years

Gissing et al looked at insurance losses and plotted all the times multiple disasters piled up on each other in a three month period in Australian history. Despite the monster headlines and three quarters of all human CO2 emissions occurring since 1966 there was no trend.

Three new studies affirm there has been no significant change in natural disasters, precipitation, or bushfire across Australia for the last several decades.

Kenneth Richard, NoTricksZone

From the paper:

“Here we utilise an Australian natural disaster database of normalised insurance losses to show compound disasters are responsible for the highest seasonal financial losses. … There has been no temporal trend in their frequency since 1966. “

The predominant and most predictable driver of climate-related disaster events is not anthropogenic global warming, or CO2 emissions, but the El Niño Southern Oscillation.

Bad things happen:

Compound natural disasters in Australia. Graph.

Global levels of CO2 rose from 320 to 405ppm and made no difference to Compound disasters.

h/t Neville and El Gordo

REFERENCE

Gissing et al (2021) Compound natural disasters in Australia: a historical analysis, Environmental Hazards, https://doi.org/10.1080/17477891.2021.1932405

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Tuesday Open Thread

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TGA bans largely safe drug because “people might not get vaxed”


The unelected, unaudited and unaccountable Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) in Australia has decided that consenting adults and fully qualified doctors should not be allowed to use a drug off label that’s so cheap and safe the discoverers won a Nobel Prize. Something like 200 million people use ivermectin each year. After 33 years and 3.7 billion doses of use, it qualifies as one of the safest drugs around.

The TGA says it hasn’t found any evidence that ivermectin is useful against Covid, but then we have to ask, has the TGA looked?

Ivmmeta.com lists 60 studies involving 25,000 people that show its useful and 3 that don’t:

So the TGA want to ban one drug to force the punters to pick the other drug?

Once upon a time the phrase would be “persuade me”. Now it’s just fines and jail if you disagree?

In the end the TGA appears to be banning it for psychological reasons, not medical ones — always a risky game to play when a group is trying to look like a medical agency, and not like a marketing team. It may have the opposite effect the TGA intends. If we want more people to stop using agricultural chemicals (and surely we do want that?) then don’t we want the punters to get treatments under supervision from their GP and Pharmacist instead?

If the TGA wants more Australians to trust them with the vaccines, they might want to explain their decisions better than this.

Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) stops GP’s prescribing ivermectin for Covid-19:

New restrictions on prescribing ivermectin for COVID-19

Sept 10, 2021

These changes have been introduced because of concerns with the prescribing of oral ivermectin for the claimed prevention or treatment of COVID-19. Ivermectin is not approved for use in COVID-19 in Australia or in other developed countries, and its use by the general public for COVID-19 is currently strongly discouraged by the National COVID Clinical Evidence Taskforce, the World Health Organisation and the US Food and Drug Administration.

And yet in less developed countries ivermectin has been used en mass with seeming success: India, Peru, Mexico, Indonesia, Slovakia and so many others.

As for The WHO — they told us there was no human to human transmission and no reason to stop the flights last February. Tedros has an obvious potential conflict of interest. Whatever the WHO says, it’s almost good national practice to do the opposite.

Firstly, there are a number of significant public health risks associated with taking ivermectin in an attempt to prevent COVID-19 infection rather than getting vaccinated. Individuals who believe that they are protected from infection by taking ivermectin may choose not to get tested or to seek medical care if they experience symptoms. Doing so has the potential to spread the risk of COVID-19 infection throughout the community.

People may get false confidence, and choose not to get tested or seek medical care, but exactly the same can be said of vaccinated people. How many vaccinated people ignore social distancing, or falsely believe they can’t catch Covid or pass it on to their friends? We could hardly blame them after months of hearing how those who get vaxed are helping the community.

If social media gets it wrong, why ban the doctors that get it right?

Secondly, the doses of ivermectin that are being advocated for use in unreliable social media posts and other sources for COVID-19 are significantly higher than those approved and found safe for scabies or parasite treatment. These higher doses can be associated with serious adverse effects, including severe nausea, vomiting, dizziness, neurological effects such as dizziness, seizures and coma.

The symptom list looks frightening, but high enough doses of anything have bad side effects. Most of these bad things will also occur if you drink too much water.

Dangers of overhydration:  headaches, nausea, vomiting, drowsiness, muscle weakness or cramping, increased blood pressure, double vision, confusion and difficulty breathing with cerebral edema, seizures, brain damage and coma.

If supplies are low, perhaps order more supplies?

Finally, there has been a 3-4-fold increased dispensing of ivermectin prescriptions in recent months, leading to national and local shortages for those who need the medicine for scabies and parasite infections. It is believed that this is due to recent prescribing and dispensing for unapproved uses, such as COVID-19.  Such shortages can disproportionately impact vulnerable people, including those in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.

We’d all understand if supplies need to be conserved for some patients. But a year after HCQ was banned to keep it available for Lupus patients, why haven’t we solved that? Trust means acting consistently…

Corona virus and DNA double helix

Doctors on the The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners  are divided:

In comments on the RACGP site some doctors are glad this takes the pressure off them when patients ask for ivermectin, but most docs are very unhappy:

RACGP survey poll Ivermectin

74% of people who bothered to do a poll at the RACGP site didn’t agree with the TGA.

Dr Anthony

The contempt we are held in by our bureaucracy is palpable.

Dr Ayodele

…If our goal is to keep Australian safe from dying, shouldn’t we give alternatives to those who for whatever reasons will rather die than take the vaccines. Two or three people died in their homes in NSW recently and they were reportedly positive posthumously. India saved their nation with Ivermectin . Do we want people to die in their homes in the name of promoting vaccination? GPs should stand up for choice. I am in no way against vaccination. please.

Dr Sandra

This is disgusting. Is medicine only about money and power now?

…how on earth can we back up advice such as it’s fine to give these experimental vaccines to pregnant women? Who has any idea what long term side effects will occur? One case of someone with some GIT side effects from taking a wrong dose of ivermectin, and meanwhile we’ve had a significant number of deaths and serious morbidity from these vaccines. Ivermectin is low risk, may be effective, doesn’t mean you have to stop administering vaccines, and should be available on prescription from GPs.

Dr Irene

…We at this moment are not treating patients and only isolate them till they worsen and went to hospital ( which is late). I am surprised to see that ivermectin was unsafe …

Dr Paul

The TGA? Are they the same people who approved a Covid vaccination for adolescent boys , a recent study from Univ of Ca has shown, has a 6 times greater chance of them being hospitalised with myocarditis after administration than being hospitalised with Covid. (which has a 99.999…% survivability in that healthy demographic)

And the TGA didn’t read the fine print in the emergency use of the vaccine in pregnant women.The study supporting its use in pregnancy lasted 3 months. When I was in school, pregnancy lasted about 9 months. Any chance of longterm cognitive, behavioural or other effects in offspring. Is informed consent even possible?? We do need an inquiry into ATAGI and TGA when all this is over.Their advice has been abysmal.

Dr Anthony

 I’m not aware of a single study where mortality increased with ivermectin therapy. so I’d love to see the data supporting the “it’s not safe” advice. The metanalysis conducted by Prof Tess Lawrie shows about a 49 – 84% reduction in mortality.

There are so many big questions going unanswered. If ivermectin is not approved, why isn’t it? If the correct study has not been done, why hasn’t it? And most of all, why is no one, apart from bloggers and people like Craig Kelly, and Malcolm Roberts asking these questions? Where is the legacy media… Where is our PM?

RELATED POSTS

REFERENCES

Andy Crump and Satoshi Omura (2011)  Ivermectin, ‘Wonder drug’ from Japan: the human use perspective , Feb 10; 87(2): 13–28. doi: 10.2183/pjab.87.13

Bryant, Andrew MSc1,*; Lawrie, Theresa A. MBBCh, PhD2; Dowswell, Therese PhD2; Fordham, Edmund J. PhD2; Mitchell, Scott MBChB, MRCS3; Hill, Sarah R. PhD1; Tham, Tony C. MD, FRCP4 (2021) Ivermectin for Prevention and Treatment of COVID-19 Infection, A Systematic Review, Meta-analysis, and Trial Sequential Analysis to Inform Clinical Guidelines, American Journal of Therapeutics: June 17, 2021 – Volume Publish Ahead of Print – Issue – doi: 10.1097/MJT.0000000000001402

9.8 out of 10 based on 86 ratings

Renewable bandaid burns money: New transmission line alone costs as much as new advanced Coal Plant

Humelink map

The Humelink transmission line does not connect a single large city.

Just another hidden renewable subsidy.

Boy O boy, that bill blew out fast:

Households could be up for $2b electricity transmission cost blowout

Peter Hannan, Sydney Morning Herald

Transgrid now expects its proposed HumeLink – a 500-kilovolt line connecting Wagga Wagga, Bannaby and Maragle – to cost $3.317 billion, up from $1.35 billion estimated in January 2020. That would make it “by far the most expensive transmission project” in Australia, said Bruce Mountain, director of the Victoria Energy Policy Centre…

NSW Households will be forced to pay $60 per year above their already-inflated-costs whether they want renewable energy or think windmills are a bird-killing, shamanistic health-hazard that won’t stop storms, floods or droughts any better than crystal shields do.

We can see why the government won’t let people choose to buy green power voluntarily.

Transgrid said the steel and materials costs more, but wow, golly, there was also a bill for “environmental offsets” through the Kosciuszko national park of an eye-watering, wait for it, $935 million. Perhaps they are transplanting the trees they cut down, and rehoming the eagles?

The new transmission line will decrease the property value of houses nearby but make it “economic” for wind and solar plants to operate. Remember costs are for consumers, profits are for the unreliables industry.

Welcome to Renewables-World where we spend $3.3b to get half a billion in benefits:

HumeLink claimed in its submission to the Australian Energy Regulator in July that the project would have a net benefit of $491 million for consumers. That sum excluded a price on carbon emissions avoided from fossil fuel plants and gains created in regional towns from the major construction.

Since cutting carbon emissions is a net loss (less fertilizer for crops) the gains in regional towns amounts to paying people to bury bottles of cash.

Keep reading  →

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Your Body, My Choice, says Biden

Your body, My Choice. Joe Biden. Babylon Bee.

Babylon Bee

Biden announced that all companies with 100 or more employees must enforce mandatory vaccination. People will have the freedom to quit their job or perhaps get tested every week, and be treated like a leper…

It’s not about health —  there is no allowance for people who have already caught Covid and survived, who likely have much better protection. Israeli research suggests people who have caught covid are 13 times less likely to get reinfected than the double vaxxed are to catch covid six months after vaccination. If the unvaxxed have to get tested, why don’t the vaxxed?

Something in this message does not add up. What could it be?

The virus is deadly, and the vaccine works, but you are too stupid to decide for yourself. Trust us, we care and respect you!

My headline above was shamelessly stolen from The Babylon Bee:

Biden Unveils ‘Your Body, My Choice’ Vaccination Program

Babylon Bee

WASHINGTON, D.C.—In a speech today, Joe Biden unveiled a brand new program to force the rest of the country to get vaccinated, entitled “Your Body, My Choice.”

Companies will be forced to comply with the mandate until the Supreme Court strikes it down in a few hours.

Is this the moment the non-Left discover their Mojo?

There comes a point when every totalitarian movement goes too far. Even people who are pro-vaccine are anti-mandatory vaccination. The RNC “Intends to Sue Biden Administration on Unconstitutional Mandate”, and Governors are too:

Governors Immediately Push Back On ‘Unconstitutional’ Biden Plan: ‘Will Fight Them To The Gates Of Hell’

Daily Wire

The pushback from governors comes after the administration said on Thursday that The Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) will force all employers with 100 or more employees “to ensure their workforce is fully vaccinated or require any workers who remain unvaccinated to produce a negative test result on at least a weekly basis before coming to work.”

Governors vowing to stop this include the Governor of Florida, Texas, Mississipi, Georgia, South Dakota, South Carolina, Arizona, Askansas, Iowa, Montana, Oklahoma, Missouri, and the list grows… Wyoming, Tenessee, Alaska,

There are some good comments under The Daily Wire.

The vaccines reduce hospitalization and deaths significantly in high risk groups. It makes sense for some people to get vaccinated, but not for all. And the long term risks aren’t known. Where is the informed consent?

If governments cared about our health they would combine vaccines with cheap antivirals to reduce the risks and the rate of spread. They’d let us choose the therapy we want with our doctors help.

If governments want us to trust them, they have to act trustworthy

@CraigKellyMP

STOP dividing our society

STOP medical segregation & apartheid

STOP trashing our fundamental human right of #InformedConsent

In Australia, appallingly, the TGA has just forbidden doctors from prescribing ivermectin. If Pfizer were actually running the TGA would the decisions have been any different?  We train doctors for six years, but expect them to act as though they are robots for government bureaus. I’ll have more to say on this soon.

We need a free market in medicines. We need a free market in doctors.

REFERENCE:

Gazit et al (2021) Comparing SARS-CoV-2 natural immunity to vaccine-induced immunity: reinfections versus breakthrough infections, doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415

9.9 out of 10 based on 97 ratings

If CO2 mattered, the UN would prefer Australian coal

Global Coal Production, Graph, Top 6 countries.

What will it solve if Australian coal stays underground?    | Graph IEA

If Australia stops digging up clean high energy coal, hands up who thinks Indonesia, Russia, India or China will cut back too? Anyone?

Australia is stopping the world from digging up more dirty coal.

To lower greenhouse gas emissions — burn more Australian coal

But it’s never been about carbon dioxide…

Abolish our coal industry? Tell ’em they’re dreaming

Greg Sheridan, The Australian

Australia is typically the second biggest exporter of coal. But we are not the dominant producer of coal. Australia produces only about 6 per cent of the world’s coal. China produces about 50 per cent of coal globally.

Most nations that use coal have some coal of their own. Australia, with such a small population of 26 million, exports most of its coal. Our biggest coal export competitors are Indonesia, Russia, Colombia and South Africa.

In the event that we were self-destructive enough to abolish our coal industry, global coal use would not decline. Our export markets would be taken by Indonesia, Russia and so on. Countries such as China and India would be forced to use more of their own coal.

But Australian coal has a significantly higher calorific value than Indonesian, Chinese or Russian coal. This means it produces more energy per tonne. You burn less coal to produce a kilowatt-hour of energy. Coal-fired power stations using Australian coal produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions per unit of energy than those using Indonesian, Chinese or most other coal.

Keep reading  →

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Weekend Unthreaded

8.6 out of 10 based on 10 ratings

Bizarre: Early samples from Wuhan patients also have bits of Influenza, Nipah, Leukemia, HIV

China sure has some explaining to do.Covid, Coronavirus, Bioweapons.

Samples of lung fluid were taken from five of the earliest people to get Covid. One team of researchers has just fished through the genetic entrails and discovered not just Covid, but a surprising “menagerie” of spare parts from other deadly viruses too. It almost looks like a grab bag sample of work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is especially significant since all 20 of those viruses were under study by the Wuhan Institute of Virology at the time.

Before anyone leaps to the obvious, the researchers point out that it might be contamination OR vaccine research. But no matter what it was, it seems to me that the WIV was working on a bunch of very deadly diseases and being Far Too Sloppy. Even if they were only trying to honorably create vaccines to this deadly array, a lab that leaky is no place for the highest risk bio-nightmare bugs to live. 

That’s the nicest possible interpretation I can make. There are nastier ones…

Some body parts of an influenza virus known as H7N9 (Avian flu) were in the  mix, as well as parts of Nipah virus. Avian flu has a mortality rate of about 40% , and Nipah virus is deadlier than Ebola, killing of nearly 9 out of ten. There were as many as 20 different parts-of-viruses present including HIV, Hepatitis, as well as monkey and mouse viruses,  and leukemia viruses. Seriously?

Another clue that this is not very natural, is that the Bird flu Influenza body part comes packaged with a gene vector too, called PVax1, which, you guessed it, is normally used to create vaccines. As far as anyone knows, bird flu doesn’t spread from human to human. The CDC tells us that since 2017 the total global caseload of known human H7N9 victims is all of three people. So odds are “pretty good” that  all five of the earliest victims of SARS 2 in late 2019 were not also suffering a natural H7N9 infection too.

So these genetic fingerprints glow like plutonium, but the only thing we can say for sure is that we need  full and transparent investigation, and we probably shouldn’t be posting BSL Level 4 pathogens to Wuhan.

Early Coronavirus Samples Uploaded From China Had ‘Genetic Manipulation of the Nipah Virus’: Expert

Neil Campbell, VisionTimes.

A recent study by a U.S. scientist found early samples taken from Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients in mainland China were contaminated with Nipah Virus, an H7N9 influenza vaccine, and 19 other virological elements.

Ebola micrograph

Ebola

On July 3, Dr. Steven Quay and three other researchers published a paper examining sequencing data found in five early COVID-19 patients in China. In a press release for the preprint publication of the study, the researchers said their findings, “Reveal[s] that the laboratory at the Wuhan ERInstitute of Virology (WIV) was contaminated with a wide range of viruses, including Nipah virus genes in a cloning vector.”

The data examined was originally sequenced by the WIV itself in 2019 and were part of a study published by coronavirus gain of function research champion Shi “Batwoman” Zhengli.

In the press release for Quay’s paper, he states, “It was surprising to find a menagerie of deadly viruses, strange pathogens, and even honeysuckle, plant genes in patient specimens sequenced at the WIV in December 2019, especially since this patient sequencing data has been publicly available to the entire scientific community inside of the US NIH GenBank database since February 2020.”

The Epoch Times points out that some Henipah viruses were sent from a Canadian lab in mid 2019 by naughty researchers who got fired. Perhaps they weren’t the same viruses, but then, perhaps they were?

Exclusive: Samples From Early Wuhan COVID Patients Had Genetically Modified Henipah, 1 of 2 Types of Viruses Sent From Canadia

Omid Ghoreishi. TheEpoch Times

Henipah was one of the two types of viruses sent to China by Chinese-born scientists from a Canadian laboratory at the center of a controversy over the firing of the scientists and collaboration with Chinese military researchers. It’s not clear whether the virus found in the Chinese samples is related to the virus samples sent by the Canadian lab, which were shipped in late March 2019.

Keep reading  →

9.6 out of 10 based on 79 ratings

Portland State Uni supports vilification, disruption, intimidation to enforce ideological conformity

Peter Boghossian has taught philosophy at Portland State University for ten years and he has just quit in protest.

Peter Boghossian, Portland University

Peter Boghossian

He fought against Woke ideology. He helped write hoax papers to expose how meaningless peer review is and exposed students to politically incorrect speakers to hone their powers of reasoning. For that he has been subject to extraordinary vilification, inquisitions, and a campaign of disruption. His students were interviewed to find instances of “discrimination” and the investigators even asked them if they knew anything about him “beating his wife and children”, fueling rumors that he was a violent misogynist. He was given no right of reply. It’s character assassination by any means possible. The University did nothing to stop it.

Even petty methods were used to silence and intimidate him. Fire alarms interrupted an interview, bags of faeces were delivered, and speaker wires were pulled out during a live panel discussion.  This reminds me of stories of how the Chinese Communist Party targets dissidents overseas with petty disruptions like having minions bang pots and pans in alleys to wake them in the dead of night.

It’s almost like the CCP runs the universities of the West.

My University Sacrificed Ideas for Ideology. So Today I Quit.

Bari Weiss

…brick by brick, the university has made this kind of intellectual exploration impossible. It has transformed a bastion of free inquiry into a Social Justice factory whose only inputs were race, gender, and victimhood and whose only outputs were grievance and division.

Students at Portland State are not being taught to think. Rather, they are being trained to mimic the moral certainty of ideologues. Faculty and administrators have abdicated the university’s truth-seeking mission and instead drive intolerance of divergent beliefs and opinions. This has created a culture of offense where students are now afraid to speak openly and honestly.

Fear and silence is the motto of higher education:

The more I spoke out about these issues, the more retaliation I faced. 

Early in the 2016-17 academic year, a former student complained about me and the university initiated a Title IX investigation.  (Title IX investigations are a part of federal law designed to protect “people from discrimination based on sex in education programs or activities that receive federal financial assistance.”) My accuser, a white male, made a slew of baseless accusations against me, which university confidentiality rules unfortunately prohibit me from discussing further. What I can share is that students of mine who were interviewed during the process told me the Title IX investigator asked them if they knew anything about me beating my wife and children. This horrifying accusation soon became a widespread rumor.

With Title IX investigations there is no due process, so I didn’t have access to the particular accusations, the ability to confront my accuser, and I had no opportunity to defend myself.

The investigation found only that there was “insufficient” evidence and recommended he “get coaching”. But the process is the punishment. Who wants that kind of acidic work environment?

The university supports vilification.

… in 2017, I co-published an intentionally garbled peer-reviewed paper that took aim at the new orthodoxy. Its title: “The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct.”

Shortly thereafter, swastikas in the bathroom with my name under them began appearing in two bathrooms near the philosophy department. They also occasionally showed up on my office door, in one instance accompanied by bags of feces. Our university remained silent. When it acted, it was against me, not the perpetrators.

The university supports disruption:

Meanwhile, ideological intolerance continued to grow at Portland State. In March 2018, a tenured professor disrupted a public discussion I was holding with author Christina Hoff Sommers and evolutionary biologists Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying. In June 2018, someone triggered the fire alarm during my conversation with popular cultural critic Carl Benjamin. In October 2018, an activist pulled out the speaker wires to interrupt a panel with former Google engineer James Damore. The university did nothing to stop or address this behavior. No one was punished or disciplined.

Read it all. 

Is there any better reason to just cut academic funding from any institution that doesn’t endorse free speech?

Civilizations need civility.

10 out of 10 based on 91 ratings

Thursday Open Thread

9.3 out of 10 based on 8 ratings

Nine o’clock horror: Climate change causes shape shifting animals

Cockatoo, parrot, Australia.

A postmodern coal-powered Cockatoo is larger, meaner and nastier than any bird photographed in the paleolithic.      | Photo by Photoholgic on Unsplash

It’s a new horror to scare the kiddies:

Animals ‘shape-shifting’ as climate warms: study

Paris: Some animals are “shape-shifting” and have developed bigger tails, beaks and ears to regulate their body temperatures as the planet warms, according to a new study.

The Australian parrot, for example, had shown an average 4-10 per cent increase in the size of its bill since 1871 and the authors said this positively correlated with the summer temperature each year.

For one, do bird-bills cool birds? For two, how many parrot bills were measured in 1871 in Australia and do we think we would know if their bills got 10% bigger? For three, there is no “Australian parrot”, there are 56 different species. And fourthly, even if they had got bigger, and we could measure that, which we probably can’t, how do we know it’s not due to “something else” that changed in the last 150 years, like all the orchards, crops, trees and other things we planted? According to some botanists, there are more foreign plants in Australian than native ones. Maybe that matters?

Though not, apparently, when there is an ARC Grant for climate scares.

Gang Gang, parrot, bird.

A Gang Gang parrot suffering from a deficiency of carbon credits.             | Photo by Steve Franklin

Never ever before in Australia have parrot beaks changed by 4% in 150 years!

Researchers say the damnedest things, things that don’t even make sense:

Climate change is heaping “a whole lot of pressure” on animals, said Sara Ryding of Deakin University in Australia, who led the study, in a press release. “It’s high time we recognised that animals also have to adapt to these changes, but this is occurring over a far shorter timescale than would have occurred through most of evolutionary time,” she said.

We know this is unprecedented, yeah,  because back in 2,456,000 BC we know what the size of parrot beaks were in Australia, and how they changed by 2,455,850 BC?  Indeed, for every 150 year period going back to the beginning-of-parrots, 59 million years ago, we have a representative sample of fossilized beaks. That’s 393,000 consecutive sample periods for 56 species spread over 7 million square kilometers.

It takes a lot of data to know that this has never happened before.

Looks like the real danger in modern Australia is that the nation is sinking under the weight of 2 billion fossilized beaks. Either that or the nation is being crushed by incompetent, poorly trained experts in the bloated carcass of Australia’s academic sector.

 

9.8 out of 10 based on 93 ratings