Briefly Noted: Tripling The Breakthrough

Very briefly--lots more at the link:

COVID hospitalizations, deaths for the vaccinated more than triple in one month, CDC reports

A total of 10,262 SARS-CoV-2 vaccine 'breakthrough infections' – defined as coronavirus infections in fully vaccinated people – were reported to the CDC from 46 U.S. states and territories between January 1 and April 30, 2021.

June 7, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – Deaths and hospitalizations for COVID-19 infection have tripled among the fully vaccinated in the U.S. in the past month. 

Deaths from COVID in those who have been fully vaccinated against the disease increased from 160 as of April 30 to 535 as of June 1, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

...

CDC no longer counting post-vaccine cases

“Despite the high level of vaccine efficacy, a small percentage of fully vaccinated persons (i.e. received all recommended doses of an FDA-authorized COVID-19 vaccine) will develop symptomatic or asymptomatic infections with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19,” the CDC said in May.

The health oversight agency added that it would only be counting COVID-19 cases and infections after vaccination that resulted in patients being hospitalized or dying from May 1 onward – discounting almost 90% of cases of vaccine failure. 

The policy leaves a gaping hole in data collection on vaccine effectiveness. What’s more, since only 27% of the reported cases were asymptomatic, it also leaves a bulk of vaccinated people who are symptomatic – more than 60% of reported cases are actually ill with COVID symptoms – who are perhaps unwittingly spreading the disease because they do not suspect themselves of having a COVID infection because they have received their shots. But the CDC is no longer counting them.

The CDC did not respond to questions about how discounting the majority COVID breakthrough infections might affect analysis of data efficacy.

Given that the CDC definition of “breakthrough infection” is in “fully vaccinated” individuals, the agency is also discounting cases of COVID infection among those who have only received one dose of vaccine in its statistics.

...

Of course the big question is, are these cases true "breakthrough" cases or are they cases involving antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE)?

What Did DoD Know, And When Did They Know It?

One of the most disturbing revelations in recent days regarding US funding of Gain Of Function research at China's Wuhan labs is the fact that some of the funding may have come from the US military. The UK Daily Mail reported last Friday--and for some reason refers to the non-profit EcoHealth Alliance as a "charity":

The Pentagon gave $39 million to a charity that funded controversial coronavirus research at a Chinese lab accused of being the source for Covid-19, federal data reveals.

The news comes as the charity's chief, British-born scientist Dr. Peter Daszak, was exposed in an alleged conflict of interest and back-room campaign to discredit lab leak theories.

The charity, EcoHealth Alliance (EHA), has come under intense scrutiny after it emerged that it had been using federal grants to fund research into coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.

The U.S. nonprofit, set up to research new diseases, has also partly funded deeply controversial 'gain of function' experiments, where dangerous viruses are made more infectious to study their effect on human cells.

A political storm broke when former president Donald Trump canceled a $3.7 million grant to the charity last year amid claims that Covid-19 was created in, or leaked from, the Wuhan lab funded by EHA.

But federal grant data assembled by independent researchers shows that the charity has received more than $123 million from the government – from 2017 to 2020 - and that one of its biggest funders is the Department of Defense, funneling almost $39 million to the organization since 2013.

Exactly how much of that money went toward research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology is unknown.

Fair enough. We can't be absolutely, 100% positive, that a single dime of that $39 million worth of DoD money went towards GOF research in Wuhan. If I were a betting man, however, my bet would be that a considerable portion of that money did go to Wuhan--possibly all of it.

Briefly Noted: Joel Kallman Dies "From Covid-19"

This is really interesting.

Joel Robert Kallman--just 54 years old, a husband of ten years and father of three daughters--was a software developer. In fact, he developed the CDC's Covid vaccine app:

Creator of CDC COVID vaccine app dies two months after taking jab. Company mourns his passing ‘from Covid-19’

Joel Robert Kallman is one of thousands of cases of 'breakthrough' COVID infection – if that is indeed what he died of, and not complications of the vaccine itself – in people who have received a COVID vaccine.

Kallman tweeted on March 26th that he had just had the first experimental injection. On May 29th it was announced that he had died "from Covid-19".

Any questions? Sorry--no further details are available. However, I think we can assume that Kallman was a guy who would have received excellent medical care. The real question becomes: Was it Covid or the vax that did him in? And, no, I see no particular reason why I should not be asking that question--not after all we've learned about our medical and scientific establishments over the past more than a year. I'm certainly not passing any judgment on Kallman, who sounds like he was an admirable person:

No description of Kallman’s condition between his vaccine and his death was provided by his company or his obituary, which asked that donations be given in lieu of flowers to the National Right to Life Committee. 

The article describes Kallman's work and his considerable charitable activities in detail. Read it.

However, in the latter part of the article there are comments from an immunologist whom we have featured in the past--Complications. Those comments focus, once again, on the issue of the safety of subjecting persons who have previously been exposed to Covid to experimental Covid injections. Many other physicians and scientists have also raised concerns in this area:

Briefly Noted: Another 9-0 SCOTUS Case

This terms there has been a string of unanimous or near unanimous cases. Court watchers have noticed and speculate that a message is being sent. I won't discuss the merits of this case--there are plenty of competent lawyers who are doing that right now--but:

BREAKING: KAGAN Writes 9-0 Supreme Court Opinion Rejecting Liz Warren's Subversion of Immigration Law
PJ Media ^ | June 7, 2021 | Tyler O'Neil

On Monday, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected an illegal immigrant’s attempt to twist immigration law and create a loophole that would allow thousands of illegal immigrants to become lawful permanent residents. Democratic senators and attorneys general advocated for this loophole, but a liberal justice wrote the opinion for a unanimous Court.

What has become very obvious from this string of cases is that, if a message is being sent, that message is being sent to liberals and progs. Dems. What is that message?

This is strictly speculation, but is it possible that the liberal justices have come to the realization that decades of "living constitution" excesses have led much of the American ruling class to view the SCOTUS as no more than a convenient vehicle for enacting social transformation that would be difficult to enact by normal means? I know that's not a startling insight, but it just might be for the liberal justices, and especially because such a realization would hit them exactly where they live--in a co-equal and supposedly independent branch of a constitutional republic.

Such a realization--and I'm far from the first to suggest this--may have come about as a result of the various Court packing schemes the Dems have been floating. It's become increasingly clear that the prog agenda of the Zhou regime isn't going anywhere--at least not in Congress, thanks to Manchin and Sinema (and possibly a few more). Moreover, cases like this one make it appear increasingly likely that the regime's prog agenda may not be going very far by other (regulatory) means, either. It will certainly encourage challenges to prog interpretations of existing laws and regs.

If so, the message being sent could be a counterpart to the Roberts Strategy we've speculated about previously. Not only is the SCOTUS seeking to get out of the election law business to the extent possible, by laying down rulings (soon to come in the AZ case??) that encourage state legislatures to exercise their constitutional authority (as certain states are showing a will to do), but the liberal justices may be signaling a disinclination to remain in the social transformation business--Election 2020 may have awakened them to the dangers involved. Not least among those dangers would be the prospect of a constitutional demotion or degradation (even a defenestration) of the institution they inhabit--that is clearly part of the prog agenda.

This is, of course, speculation. Nor do I expect unanimity to continue indefinitely. I'm simply suggesting that the SCOTUS may have received a wake up call and may be trying to come to grips with realities that the liberal justices may not have anticipated. It's something to keep an eye on.

Miranda Devine On The Real Covid Conspiracy

Let me just say up front that my working assumption--until disproven--is that Tony Fauci was acting at the direction of powerful influencers. To me, that means that those directing Fauci's policies were in or had pretty direct connections to the political realm.

With that proviso, Miranda Devine presents some succinct facts about the real Covid conspiracy in Scientists were pushing real COVID-19 conspiracy. I realize that for many the idea that scientists engaged in deliberate, um, deception will not come as a total surprise. Nevertheless, it's important to understand and internalize this fact, because in our world science has a privileged position. That cannot be allowed to continue--not without the possibility of serious oversight and pointed challenges to supposed orthodoxies. 

Simply put, scientists can be bought off, just like other "experts." Experts they may be, but all experts must be presumed to also have interests of their own and should be challenged on that understanding. If they pass the test, well and good. But passing that test requires transparency to the public, which has been systematically suppressed under the sorry Covid regime. This approach works under our accepted and time tested legal principles and, significantly, it also is the basis for sound scientific research. Duh! Which means that some--possibly many--"scientists" are in fact engaged in something somewhat other than actual science. Just as some prosecutors, investigators, judges, and defense attorneys engage in something other than the disinterested pursuit of justice. We need to understand this.

Here is what to me is the core of Devine's article, Devine comes to this after leading us through Peter Daszak's money driven manipulation of other "scientists" to publicly denounce "conspiracy theories", i.e., the public presentation of inconvenient facts. In this excerpt I've inserted words in brackets in a few spots to make what Devine is saying absolutely clear:

Rant: America A Serious Country? You're Joking Me!

Peter D'Abrosca engages in a bit of a rant this morning at American Greatness, but it's hard to dispute his major points. Because it really is this simple:

A Serious Country Would Jail Anthony Fauci

A false narrative was carefully crafted by the press to humanize a man who was, at the time, committing crimes against humanity for the apparent purpose of helping Democrats win an election. 

As usual with these types of rants, it's amusing but also profoundly sad in what it says about modern America:

Indigenous Matriarch Warrior Gets 6 Months In Jail

Mirabile dictu, a bureaucratic leaker at the Treasury Department was forced to plead to a felony charge and received actual jail time. This is connected to the leaks of bank transaction reports in the Paul Manafort case. American Greatness has the story:

Former Treasury Official Sentenced to Prison for Leaking Russia, Manafort Docs

You can also read about it at the Wikipedia Natalie Edwards page. Edwards was a "senior official" at Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).  She expressed no remorse--far from it--and got close to the max, according to the sentencing guidelines. 

It turns out that her journalist handler, Jason Leopold, engaged in journalistic malpractice. I haven't heard what the consequences were for him. It seems clear enough that he thought this story would be his ticket to super stardom, so some license would slip past the watchdogs. Prosecutors, investigators, national security officials, journalists, scientists--the list goes on and on. The Trump era has been one long series of revelations of corruption not only in high official positions but in entire professions or categories of government employment.

[Edwards] was arrested on October 16, 2018, for disclosing over 2000 suspicious activity reports (SARs) and other confidential information from October 2017 to October 2018 detailing Russia's involvement in the 2016 presidential election to a reporter with BuzzFeed News, which published the series "The Money Trail". The SARs included money transfers and information about Maria Butina, Rick Gates, Paul Manafort, the Russian Embassy in the United States, and a Russian firm, Prevezon Alexander, LLC., involved with money laundering.

The Wall Street Journal identified the BuzzFeed News reporter as Jason Leopold. Edwards allegedly sent Leopold internal FinCEN emails, investigative memos and intelligence assessments, and the two were in regular contact. The New York Times characterized Edwards' case as procedurally different from that of James Wolfe, even though both cases involved leaking to reporters. Leopold sent story drafts to Edwards; this is prohibited by BuzzFeed News. The Columbia Journalism Review remarked that "it’s important to remember that sources are not editors."

As noted, Edwards remained defiant to the last:

Edwards, in an eight-minute statement to the court, said she “could not stand by aimlessly” in the face of misconduct she saw at Treasury. Edwards also disclosed her Native American roots. “I am an indigenous, matriarch warrior whose spirit cannot be broken,” she said.

 

MAJOR UPDATE: Totally Hilarious

Last time we spoke about virologist Kristian Andersen, who has a lab in La Jolla--aren't government grants cool?--we were talking about how very early on in the Covid Panic, January 31, 2020, he emailed Tony Fauci: "Hey, Tony baby, I thought I should tell you: 'Eddie, Bob, Mike, and myself all find the [Covid] genome inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory.' 'Some of the features look (potentially) engineered.'" But then he had a change of heart and shortly thereafter wrote a paper saying, Totally Not Engineered! Totally Natural Origins! Death To Conspiracy Theorists, Especially Racist Ones!

Boy, that sure looked like somebody got to him. Something like: Hey, Kristian, about those government grants you've been getting?

What's he up to now? He's deleting tweets, and you can read all about it at ZeroHedge: Virologist Who Told Fauci SARS-CoV-2 'Potentially Engineered' Just Deleted 5,000 Tweets.

Lots of humorous tweets in the ZeroHedge post. I won't spoil the fun, but here's one I liked. FYI, Billy Bostickson is PR Secretary for RAGE UNIVERSITY and helps coordinate DRASTIC at http://drasticresearch.org. DRASTIC is the group of indie researchers who uncovered so much about Covid origins:

That little shit Andersen has just deleted 5000 Tweets
says @lab_leak and @vid_colin saw he deleted all his tweets before 07th March 2021 and suggests saving them via Google Cache (see 3rd image below)

What's the Natural Origin Pope trying to hide? https://t.co/wk1JPOVwAF pic.twitter.com/vbocJN5pp3

— Billy Bostickson 🏴👁&👁 🆓 (@BillyBostickson) June 6, 2021

Andersen wants people to believe this was the result of some auto-delete cleanup function. Yeah, right--the rest of the world is really that stupid! Fauci lied, people died, Kristian deleted his tweets. Something like that.

No doubt the Natural Origin Pope has lots to hide. But he's not alone. Things are getting (even more) interesting.

Wheels Coming Off?

The Dems cheated like hell in Election 2020, but to what effect? The great statesmen in the 50-50 Senate--Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema (but perhaps fronting for a few more)--are blocking the Dem agenda. Latest:

Dem Meltdown Incoming: Joe Manchin Announces Decision on Voting Bill

But it's worse than that, as the article goes on to detail Manchin's plans to block repeal of the filibuster and to block a pure-Dem "infrastructure" bill.

Meanwhile the audits continue--and look to spread. And the bad Fauci/Covid hoaxes continue to metastasize while Election 2022 draws nearer. Leftist craziness grows unabated, the murder pandemic in Blue cities shows no signs of going away, and inflation burgeons. 

More bad news stories:

Fauci crony Peter Daszak got Covid stimulus money--and lots of it:

Why Did Peter Daszak's EcoHealth Alliance Receive Over $1 Million In COVID Relief Funding?

It seems Daszak wasn't really doing much in the way of research--he was the fixer who arranged the government grant money and then spread the largess around:

Ted Cruz: Facebook Could Face Legal Jeopardy

Ted Cruz is a politician, yes, but he's also a very smart lawyer with plenty of government law experience. Therefore, when he suggests that the Fauci emails may have revealed Facebook acting as an agent of the US government, it behooves us to sit up and take notice. Here is and extended excerpt from Cruz's interview with Maria Bartiromo this morning:

Maria: Did Fauci just commit perjury there?

Senator Ted Cruz: It sure looks like it. He looked at Rand Paul's eyes and told a flat out falsehood. And unfortunately this has been a pattern with Dr. Fauci, that what he says on Monday somehow isn't the same as what he says on Tuesday but, don't worry, what he says on Wednesday is almost certain to be different.

And I gotta say that this email dump that came out, it makes clear that this is not just [Fauci] being sloppy. It is systematic and it is systematically an effort to mislead the American people. And as you noted he wasn’t doing it alone but he was doing it with much of the US government behind him and with Facebook and Big Tech operating as an extension of the US government in order to silence any views that disagreed--not with the science, because he wasn’t looking for the science, he was suppressing the science. But rather trying to silence anything that disagreed with the political narrative that was convenient that he was pushing at that moment…

Maria: [Long rant about social media collusion in political hoaxes and censorship of dissenting views: Russia Hoax, Fake Impeachment, Covid, etc. Displays timeline of collusive emails between Fauci and Zuckerberg. Wants to know when there will be consequences.] 

Cruz: Well they [social media] certainly should be [held to account]. Unfortunately I don't expect the Baiden administration will do anything to hold them to account. But these breakthroughs have real consequence, because it now is clear that Facebook was operating at the direction of and in the direct benefit of the federal government. And operating as the government censor, utilizing their monopoly position to censor on behalf of the government. Maria, that's a very dangerous admission that's out there now for Facebook, because it means that anybody in the country, or anybody in the world, whose statements, whose speech, was censored by Facebook. ... If you went out and posted the facts that led, a year ago, to the very strong likelihood that the Covid virus escaped from a Chinese government lab in Wuhan, China. If you posted that a year ago and they took it down, I think there is a very good argument you have a cause of action against Facebook. And, Facebook would ordinarily say, “We’re a private company. We’re not liable.” Well, you know, when they act at the behest of the government. When they contact Fauci. When they say, “Should we censor this and Fauci says, “Yes.” And they censor it for the federal government. And then magically when the government changes its mind and says, “Oh, all those facts that were there a year ago, now you’re allowed to talk about it.” They stop censoring it with the flip of a switch. That lays a very strong argument that Facebook is operating as a state agency and that opens very significant legal liability.

Thomas Lifson has posted the relevant emails that Maria shows on the video, with commentary, so you can see what they're talking about, where the redactions turn up: Why was Mark Zuckerberg’s ‘even bigger deal’ offer to Fauci redacted from the FOIA emails just released? It sure looks like a smoking gun.

Follow The Politics

The American Thinker this morning has two articles that tie together a number of aspects of Fauci and, of course, his emails that have come under repeated discussion here.

Let's start with Clarice Feldman's  The End of the Wuhan Scamarama.

One aspect of Fauci the person that I've hammered at--as have various commenters--is simply this. While Fauci has for decades occupied high paying government positions for which a relevant science degree, if not exactly necessary, would be very helpful, he is in fact NOT a scientist (no matter what Wikipedia's hagiographical entry tries to suggest). Fauci is no more than an MD--who is said to have "an interest" in immunology. Great. I have an interest in nuclear physics. Unlike most of the physicians who have weighed in on Covid and the Covid regime, in the decades since gaining his MD Fauci has done nothing in the academic field to enhance his resume. Certainly not in terms of advanced degrees in any scientific field that would be in any way relevant to Covid, its treatment, its vaccines. He's a bureaucrat or, if you want to be charitable, an administrator.

With that in mind, Feldman cites Dr. Jeffrey Satinover who notes several remarkable features that can be gleaned from Fauci's emails (sorry, no link available):

1. Almost ALL of the emails are from others to Fauci with his reply. There are very few, if any (I will have to review) initiated by him. It is very unlikely this represents his full correspondence using his official NIH address.

2. The rough per-day number of emails in Jan and Feb, then May, greatly exceeds March and April. 

3. A very large proportion of text with what looks to me likely to be scientific detail, in others’ comments to Fauci, has been blocked [redacted, likely by Fauci himself]. 

4. The largest proportion consists of requests to Fauci to speak either at scientific conferences or on major media television programs. Strikingly:

(a) Fauci refuses almost every invite in a medical or scientific setting

(b) Fauci accepts almost every invite to go on TV

5. The most striking feature by far, so far, is this: Fauci’s responses are utterly devoid of either scientific curiosity or depth. He shows no evidence in these pages at least, of anything but the most superficial familiarity with viral illnesses. Whenever someone proposes a helpful idea, he hands it off to a deputy to respond. He is temperate to the point of vacuity.

There's a man who knows his own limitations! The only question is, What's he doing at the top of NIAID at this critical juncture in time?

The Great Truth: Accountability, Yes Or No?

Jeffrey Tucker has an entertaining article today--or it would be entertaining if it weren't so sad. It's about the Fauci emails and, especially, about the lockdowns. Read it all--you won't regret it:

Believe Your Own Eyes About Fauci E-Mails, Not the Fact Checkers

He starts out by stating the Great Truth up front--this is what everything should be about at this point. This is it in one sentence:

... Fauci was the US architect of the lockdowns that smashed all that we believed was true in the good ‘ol US of A; namely that we had rights and freedoms and a system of government that protected both.

He proceeds through the continuing MSM effort to protect Fauci. I enjoyed his making fun of Fauci--although it speaks so poorly of 21st century America:

• His nonstop reveling in his personal fame and power, basking in praise from anyone ready to offer it;
• The way the media sucked up and became his echo chamber, thanking him daily for his glorious leadership even though this consisted mostly of going on TV and pontificating ambiguities 

But toward the end he returns to the Great Truth:

So, yes, these emails do provide tremendous insight, despite what you are reading today from the mainstream press, which continues to defend him no matter what. Even so, the great truth cannot be forever ignored. What is that? To my mind, it is the elephant in the room: there is zero evidence that lockdowns actually worked to mitigate severe outcomes from the disease. 

Even Vox has started asking the real question: “After a year of debates over mask mandates, lockdowns, and school closures, that mixed evidence might suggest a certain fatalism: Did none of these state policies really matter? Or was the virus going to spread no matter what states did? Was it all for nothing?... If you look at a list of states by their number of Covid-19 deaths per capita, it’s hard to discern much of a pattern.”

... 

Right now, Covid infections and deaths are at the lowest point in the US since March 2020. While commentators credit the vaccines, it’s not entirely obvious since low-vaccine states have the same trends as high ones. ... 

Looking at the curves of this thing here and abroad – while adjusting for climate, geography, demographics, and population immunity profiles – they all look suspiciously the same, regardless of policy. 

Vox at least asks the right question: “Was it all for nothing?”

Sadly, the answer is probably yes. ...

But then the question becomes: Who will be held to account? Anyone who thinks Fauci did this all on his own is smoking stuff that didn't used to be legal.