Two Good Follow-up Reads On Recent Topics

The two recent topics are Covid and Government Schools.

1. Re Covid, American Thinker has a very interesting article today, Why are vaccines so favored over treatments? You've probably heard numerous vax doubters state this principle--if there's an effective treatment, vaccines should not be used. The principle is actually enshrined in US law, which is why the government medical establishment kept insisting that HCQ and Ivermectin and other medications with known anti-viral properties were "ineffective"--if the government hadn't made such false pronouncements Big Pharma wouldn't have been allowed to put us under the current vax regime.

The article goes through some of the various effective medications, including a new one that is being backed by Merck:

On March 17, 2021, Emory's non-profit drug development company DRIVE announced its discovery of a new antiviral drug, called molnupiravir (formerly EIDD-2801), which can be administered to outpatients in pill form, and which

appears safe and reduces SARS-CoV-2 to undetectable levels in COVID-19 patients after five days of administration, according to data from a Phase II clinical trial in the United States[.] ... Although remdesivir and antiviral monoclonal antibodies have received Emergency Use Authorizations from the FDA, they must be given intravenously or by injection. In addition, drugs like molnupiravir could flexibly tackle SARS-CoV-2 variants, which have emerged as a concern in recent months.

Additionally, "EIDD-2801 has broad spectrum activity against a number of diseases of public health concern, including influenza, SARS-CoV-1, MERS, chikungunya, Ebola and equine encephalitis."

Ridgeback Biotherapeutics and Merck are involved with the licensing, testing, and manufacturing of this drug.  Merck recently announced a non-exclusive licensing agreement with five generic Indian drug companies to manufacture and distribute it in India.

However, things get really interesting toward the end of the article, when the author gets into the hot new topic of "self-spreading vaccines." Haven't heard that one? It's not a joke:

Moderna and Pfizer are blazing ahead with vaccine trials for children as young as six months.  A two-year-old girl recently died after being injected with the second Pfizer shot (she had been hospitalized since after the first shot and was unfortunately given the second shot while she was still suffering).

 

Cool for a company to be guaranteed no liability, isn't it? Especially while the government is pressuring one and all to take the experimental treatment you're dispensing.

Johns Hopkins released a 71-page document that describes a future where A.I. robots and drones deliver what they're calling self-spreading vaccines:

Self-spreading vaccines are genetically engineered to move through populations like communicable diseases, but rather than causing disease, they confer protection. The vision is that a small number of individuals in a target population could be vaccinated, and the vaccine strain would then circulate in the population much like a pathogenic virus, resulting in rapid, widespread immunity.

Uh, that's if everything goes according to plan, right?

 

The report claims that "[b]acteria can be genetically engineered to produce antigens in a human host, acting as a vaccine, which triggers immunity to pathogens of concern," presumably to be administered by pills or, for that matter, food or fruit drinks.  Molecular 3D printers could conceivably crank out spike proteins that could be deployed with aerosols.

A minority of doctors and scientists have issued cautions about unknown but possible long-term adverse effects of these vaccines, such as dementia, mad cow disease, and antibody dependent enhancement (ADE): "The ADE of virus infection is a phenomenon in which virus-specific antibodies enhance the entry of virus, and in some cases the replication of virus[.]"

See any possible problems with this idea? I'm with that minority of doctors and scientists, who are willing to buck Big Pharma, Big Science, and--above all--Big Government. Read it all.

2. The second update has to do with Government Schools, and appears in Reason--Teachers Unions Use Political Clout To Keep Classrooms Closed. The author uses what's been going on under the Covid regime of lockdowns to illustrate the reality of government run, well, anything--but here we're talking about schools. Read it all, because the author has some good things to say. In the meantime, a few excerpts:

As it turns out, the late teachers' union president, Al Shanker, probably didn't utter the revealing quotation often attributed to him: "When schoolchildren start paying union dues, that's when I'll start representing the interests of schoolchildren." Nevertheless, it's doubtful the likely misquotation will vanish completely because it captures the essence of union-controlled public-school systems.

We know it's true. Students are not the priority but serve as a prop by which district officials and teachers' unions arm-twist taxpayers for money. Nothing has illuminated this better than the unions' foot-dragging response to school closings. They absolutely, positively want schools to reopen—but only after officials agree to a laundry list of demands that have little to do with "the children."

...

I've been reading teachers' union statements and it's hard to see where the disputed Shanker quotation got anything wrong. "...

... Peel away the blather and it all comes down to this simple statement: "CTA believes all schools will need additional funding."

...

The public funds government monopolies regardless of how well they perform (and generally provides even more money when they fail), so public schools had few incentives to master pandemic challenges. After the shift to distance learning, students had far more failing grades and school districts essentially blamed the students.

...

The public school system is a travesty that does not—and cannot—put students first. The only answer is competition, so that parents and students can take their business elsewhere. Yet Newsom signed a package of union-backed legislation that makes it harder for charter schools to start up and expand. Why? When schoolchildren make campaign contributions, you'll have your answer.