Whether it’s a restaurant in Quebec or a hotel in Portugal, you will now need to furnish a Covid-19 vaccine passport verifying vaccination status prior to entering these spaces. Proponents of the vaccine passports argue that these health passes allow businesses to re-open in key economic sectors while encouraging vaccination that will benefit public health. Critics of these passports – which are often utilized in the form of a digital health pass – argue that there are considerable ethical, technical, and scientific challenges that render Covid-19 vaccine passports both impracticable and unequitable.
Covid-19 vaccine passports raise serious questions about the commitment society has for fundamental rights surrounding bodily autonomy and integrity: the concept that each human being has autonomy and self-determination over their own body.
While it is true that vaccine mandates have been around for quite some time, and have been administered as requirements for children to attend public school and are sometimes required to travel to parts of the world where viruses like diphtheria and yellow fever are prevalent, mandating Covid-19 vaccines as a universal requirement for travel, employment and/or access to broader public services and benefits is breaking new ground with regards to removing choice by compelling one to take a vaccine in order to participate in the broader economy and access opportunity.
Regardless of one’s personal view on the Covid-19 vaccines (I personally chose to get vaccinated to mitigate the chance of infection and transmission to more vulnerable populations), this is an area where our principles are challenged. Do we really stand for the concept of “my body; my choice” – or do we only rally for this principle when it appeals to our politics/personal beliefs?
Ironically, many who do not recognize the right for a woman to exercise autonomy over her reproductive choices are now claiming the right to exercise bodily autonomy to make their own medical decisions. Conversely, many pro-choice activists are now mocking those who refuse the vaccine by claiming that they don’t have the right to bodily autonomy in this instance because their decision affects other people — which is exactly the argument pro-life activists rely upon (claiming that a pregnant woman is making a decision that affects the unborn) in their attempts to deny a woman’s right to choose.
While the more efficacious vaccines have proven to be instrumental in both mitigating infection rates as well as severe disease should a breakthrough infection occur, not all vaccines are created equal. The current Covid-19 vaccines in use around the world vary significantly with regards to efficacy, durability, and their respective capacity to protect against emergent strains.
Presumably, a passenger from the United States vaccinated with the Moderna vaccine and a second passenger from Chile vaccinated with the Sinopharm vaccine may be considered “fully vaccinated” – depending on one’s definition – despite the fact that the latter vaccine features efficacy that is but a fraction of the former’s.
Access to the more efficacious vaccines remains scarce and is driven by economic, political, and geographic factors creating a special luxury travel class for vaccinated travelers hailing from high-income countries, while disadvantaging travelers from low-income countries and/or regions with little or no access to effective vaccines. This creates a glaring disparity that limits one’s ability to move about the world, access opportunity, and visit loved ones, exacerbating global inequities that disproportionately affect communities that have already been ravaged by the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns, particularly in the Global South.
Before any vaccine passport system can be equitably rolled out, the problem of universal access must be solved. Even in high-income countries where an inordinate amount of resources have been thrown at vaccine rollout efforts to ensure wide access, alarming health disparities based on race continues to persist. In the US, Black and Brown communities continue to have lower SARS-CoV-2 vaccine rates compared to the overall population, and their historic (and often well-founded) distrust of the for-profit health system should not prevent them from enjoying basic rights, accessing opportunity, and engaging in much needed social activity after over a year of isolation and lockdowns that have taken a toll on our collective physical/mental health and well-being.
Additionally, vaccine passports pose significant privacy concerns and raise a myriad of complex problems and moral conundrums as it pertains to civil liberties, surveillance, and mobility that aren’t easily resolved. From Verizon’s attempt to deploy thermal cameras to detect fevers in football stadiums to New York’s IBM “Excelsior Pass” app that leverages blockchain technology to prove that you’ve been vaccinated, tech companies are scrambling to cash out on innovative ways to peer into our private lives while undermining our civil liberties. Without a strong commitment to legal protections for privacy, the data that will be collected by big tech companies every time our vaccine passport credentials are shared will inevitably be sold for commercial purposes and even shared with law enforcement, which would lead to further burdens on over-policed communities. The prospect of being tracked in this manner would not only further isolate communities that should be encouraged to access public benefits and spaces, but could also presumably further undermine public confidence in even getting the vaccine to begin with.
There is historical precedent for how a crisis has been used to curtail civil liberties and basic freedoms. Just weeks after the 9/11 attacks, Congress took advantage of the widespread fear and panic to pass the Patriot Act, expanding its authority to spy on its own citizens. Despite the Patriot Act being touted as an essential tool to combat terrorism, the Department of Justice itself admitted (in 2015) that the Patriot Act failed to help solve any major terrorism cases whatsoever. Despite this, it has taken immense efforts to try and salvage even a fraction of the civil liberties that the Patriot Act sought to undermine. Once such liberties are curtailed, it can become exceedingly difficult to reclaim them.
Without famed whistleblower Edward Snowden’s 2013 disclosures revealing the scope and scale of mass government surveillance, we may still be in the dark about how these immense government powers have been abused. Now, Snowden (along with many other civil liberties experts) warn that pandemic powers seized during this global health health crisis will be used to build a new “architecture of oppression” that could see liberal democracies transformed into autocratic countries imposing social credit scores, widescale restrictions on movement, and draconian censorship on free speech and expression.
When we ponder the real-world utility of implementing a Covid-19 Vaccine Passport — the question must be asked: Who will benefit most from this immensely complicated and inequitable proposition? Will it be the public health and civil liberty of the global population? Will it be Big Tech companies leveraging new surveillance technology? Will it be governments infringing upon data privacy rights? There are always unintended (and intended) consequences to such measures that must be thoroughly scrutinized, debated, and considered prior to enactment.
Particularly in the United States, vaccination status has become yet another tribal rift in a society replete with identity divisions and divergent opinion as it pertains to just about everything. Regardless of one’s view on how best to achieve the expeditious end to this global pandemic, perhaps a universal rallying call delivering a message to world governments to respect civil liberties and address global inequities would be a unique area where the tapestry of humanity can coalesce to stand for both the rights of the individual and the collective, rebuking those over-reaching forces that aim to exploit a crisis by curtailing hard-fought civil liberty gains at every turn.
Vaccine purchasers must “indemnify, defend and hold harmless Pfizer … from and against any and all suits, claims, actions, demands, losses, damages, liabilities, settlements, penalties, fines, costs and expenses … arising out of, relating to, or resulting from the vaccine.”
A leaked document broken down by Twitter user Ehden reveals the shocking terms of Pfizer’s international COVID-19 vaccine agreements.
Countries that purchase Pfizer’s COVID-19 shot must acknowledge that “Pfizer’s efforts to develop and manufacture the product” are “subject to significant risks and uncertainties.”
In the event that a drug or other treatment comes out that can prevent, treat or cure COVID-19, the agreement stands, and the country must follow through with their vaccine order.
While COVID-19 vaccines are “free” to receive in the U.S., they’re being paid for by taxpayer dollars at a rate of $19.50 per dose — Albania, the leaked contract revealed, paid $12 per dose.
The purchaser of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine must also acknowledge two facts that have largely been brushed under the rug: both their efficacy and risks are unknown.
Purchasers must also “indemnify, defend and hold harmless Pfizer … from and against any and all suits, claims, actions, demands, losses, damages, liabilities, settlements, penalties, fines, costs and expenses … arising out of, relating to, or resulting from the Vaccine.”
The full extent of their COVID-19 vaccine indemnification agreements with countries, however, is a closely guarded secret, one that has remained highly confidential — until now. A leaked document broken down by Twitter user Ehden reveals the shocking terms of Pfizer’s international COVID-19 vaccine agreements.
PFIZERLEAK: EXPOSING THE PFIZER MANUFACTURING AND SUPPLY AGREEMENT.
(thread)
Background: Pfizer has been extremely aggressive in trying to protect the details of their international COVID19 vaccine agreements.
— Ehden (#PfizerLeak/#MonkeyBusiness/#COptiGate) 🌟 (@eh_den) July 26, 2021
“These agreements are confidential, but luckily one country did not protect the contract document well enough, so I managed to get a hold of a copy,” he wrote. “As you are about to see, there is a good reason why Pfizer was fighting to hide the details of these contracts.”
An ironclad agreement, all on Pfizer’s terms
The alleged indemnification agreement, reportedly between Pfizer and Albania, was originally posted in snippets on Twitter, but Twitter now has them marked as “unavailable.” Copies of the tweets are available on Treadreader, however.
The Albania agreement appears very similar to another contract, published online, between Pfizer and the Dominican Republic. It covers not only COVID-19 vaccines, but any product that enhances the use or effects of such vaccines.
Countries that purchase Pfizer’s COVID-19 shot must acknowledge that “Pfizer’s efforts to develop and manufacture the Product” are “subject to significant risks and uncertainties.”
And in the event that a drug or other treatment comes out that can prevent, treat or cure COVID-19, the agreement stands, and the country must follow through with their order. Ivermectin, for instance, is not only safe, inexpensive and widely available but has been found to reduce COVID-19 mortality by 81%. Yet, it continues to be ignored in favor of more expensive, and less effective, treatments and mass experimental vaccination.
“If you were wondering why #Ivermectin was suppressed,” Ehden wrote, “well, it is because the agreement that countries had with Pfizer does not allow them to escape their contract, which states that even if a drug will be found to treat COVID19 the contract cannot be voided.”
Even if Pfizer fails to deliver vaccine doses within their estimated delivery period, the purchaser may not cancel the order. Further, Pfizer can make adjustments to the number of contracted doses and their delivery schedule, “based on principles to be determined by Pfizer,” and the country buying the vaccines must “agree to any revision.”
It doesn’t matter if the vaccines are delivered severely late, even at a point when they’re no longer needed, as it’s made clear that “Under no circumstances will Pfizer be subject to or liable for any late delivery penalties.” As you might suspect, the contract also forbids returns “under any circumstances.”
The big secret: Pfizer charged U.S. More Than Other Countries
While COVID-19 vaccines are “free” to receive in the U.S., they’re being paid for by taxpayer dollars at a rate of $19.5011 per dose. Albania, the leaked contract revealed, paid $12 per dose, while the EU paid $14.70 per shot. While charging different prices to different purchases is common in the drug industry, it’s often frowned upon.
In the case of the price disparity between the U.S. and the EU, Pfizer is said to have given a price break to the EU because it financially supported the development of their COVID-19 vaccine. Still, Ehden noted, “U.S. taxpayers got screwed by Pfizer, probably also Israel.” Also, Pfizer makes a point to note that countries have no right to withhold payment to the company for any reason.
Apparently, this includes in the case of receiving damaged goods. Purchasers of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccines are not entitled to reject them “based on service complaints,” unless they do not conform to specifications or the FDA’s Current Good Manufacturing Practice regulations. And, Ehden adds, “This agreement is above any local law of the state.”
While the purchaser has virtually no way of canceling the contract, Pfizer can terminate the agreement in the event of a “material breach” of any term in their contract.
Safety and efficacy ‘not currently known’
The purchaser of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine must also acknowledge two facts that have largely been brushed under the rug: Both their efficacy and risks are unknown. According to section 5.5 of the contract:
“Purchaser acknowledges that the Vaccine and materials related to the Vaccine, and their components and constituent materials are being rapidly developed due to the emergency circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic and will continue to be studied after provision of the Vaccine to Purchaser under this Agreement.
“Purchaser further acknowledges that the long-term effects and efficacy of the Vaccine are not currently known and that there may be adverse effects of the Vaccine that are not currently known.”
Indemnification by the purchaser is also explicitly required by the contract, which states, under section 8.1:
“Purchaser hereby agrees to indemnify, defend and hold harmless Pfizer, BioNTech, each of their Affiliates, contractors, sub-contractors, licensors, licensees, sub-licensees, distributors, contract manufacturers, services providers, clinical trial researchers, third parties to whom Pfizer or BioNTech or any of their respective Affiliates may directly or indirectly owe an indemnity based on the research …
“from and against any and all suits, claims, actions, demands, losses, damages, liabilities, settlements, penalties, fines, costs and expenses (including, without limitation, reasonable attorneys’ fees and other expenses of an investigation or litigation … arising out of, relating to, or resulting from the Vaccine …”
Not only does Pfizer have total indemnification, but there’s also a section in the contract titled, “Assumption of Defense by Purchaser,” which states that in the event Pfizer suffers losses for which it is seeking indemnification, the purchaser “shall promptly assume conduct and control of the defense of such Indemnified Claims on behalf of the Indemnitee with counsel acceptable to Indemnitee(s), whether or not the Indemnified Claim is rightfully brought.” Ehden notes:
“Pfizer is making sure the country will pay for everything: ‘Costs and expenses, including … fees and disbursements of counsel, incurred by the Indemnitee(s) in connection with any Indemnified Claim shall be reimbursed on a quarterly basis by Purchaser.’”
Buried in the March 17, 2020, Federal Register — the daily journal of the U.S. government — in a document titled, “Declaration Under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act for Medical Countermeasures Against COVID-19,” is language that establishes a new COVID-19 vaccine court — similar to the federal vaccine court that already exists.
In the U.S., vaccine makers already enjoy full indemnity against injuries occurring from this or any other pandemic vaccine under the PREP Act. If you’re injured by a COVID vaccine (or a select group of other vaccines designated under the act), you’d have to file a compensation claim with the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP), which is funded by U.S. taxpayers via Congressional appropriation to the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS).
While similar to the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP), which applies to nonpandemic vaccines, the CICP is even less generous when it comes to compensation. As reported by Dr. Meryl Nass,25 the maximum payout you can receive — even in cases of permanent disability or death — is $250,000 per person; however, you’d have to exhaust your private insurance policy before the CICP gives you a dime.
The CICP also has a one-year statute of limitations, so you have to act quickly, which is also difficult since it’s unknown if long-term effects could occur more than a year later.
Pfizer accused of abuse of power
As is apparent in Pfizer’s confidential contract with Albania, the drug giant wants governments to guarantee the company will be compensated for any expenses resulting from injury lawsuits against it. Pfizer has also demanded that countries put up sovereign assets, including bank reserves, military bases and embassy buildings, as collateral for expected vaccine injury lawsuits resulting from its COVID-19 inoculation.
New Delhi-based World Is One News (WION) reported in February 2021 that Brazil rejected Pfizer’s demands, calling them “abusive.” The demands included that Brazil:
“Waives sovereignty of its assets abroad in favor of Pfizer.”
Not apply its domestic laws to the company.
Not penalize Pfizer for vaccine delivery delays.
Exempt Pfizer from all civil liability for side effects.
STAT News also referred to concerns by legal experts, who also suggested Pfizer’s demands were an abuse of power. Mark Eccleston-Turner, a lecturer in global health law at Keele University in England, told STAT:
“[Pfizer] is trying to eke out as much profit and minimize its risk at every juncture with this vaccine development then this vaccine rollout. Now, the vaccine development has been heavily subsidized already. So there’s very minimal risk for the manufacturer involved there.”
Signs of COVID vaccine failure, adverse effects rise
Pfizer continues to sign lucrative secret vaccine deals across the globe. In June 2021, they signed one of their biggest contracts to date — with the Philippine government for 40 million doses.
Meanwhile, COVID-19 “breakthrough cases,” which used to be called vaccine failures, are on the rise. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as of July 19, 5,914 people who had been fully vaccinated for COVID-19 were hospitalized or died from COVID-19.
In the U.K., as of July 15, 87.5% of the adult population had received one dose of COVID-19 vaccine and 67.1% had received two. Yet, symptomatic cases among partially and fully vaccinatedare on the rise, with an average of 15,537 new infections a day being detected, a 40% increase from the week before.
In a July 19 report from the CDC, the agency also reported that the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) had received 12,313 reports of death among people who received a COVID-19 vaccine — more than doubling from the 6,079 reports of death from the week before.
Soon after the report, however, they reverted the number to the 6,079 from the week before, indicating by default that no deaths from the vaccine had occurred that week,34 raising serious questions about transparency and vaccine safety.
The CDC revised downward its official number of deaths reported to VAERS following COVID vaccines, but an analysis of VAERS data shows the CDC arrived at the new, lower number, by excluding reports of deaths from outside the U.S.https://t.co/HA2n8lkuMw
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) July 22, 2021
Many other adverse events are also appearing, ranging from risks from the biologically active SARS-CoV-2 spike protein used in the vaccine to blood clots, reproductive toxicity and myocarditis(heart inflammation). As you can see in the confidential indemnification agreements, however, even if the vaccine turns out to be a dismal failure — and a risk to short- and long-term health — countries have no recourse, nor does anyone who received the experimental shots.
One question that we should all be asking is this: If the COVID-19 vaccines are, in fact, as safe and effective as the manufacturers claim, why do they require this level of indemnification?
Toxic mass-jabbing fraudster/profiteer Fauci operates in cahoots with US dark forces and Pharma for self-enrichment and other diabolical aims.
Throughout his public life, he’s been indifferent toward public health, welfare and safety.
More con artist than medical professional, his agenda since flu was deceptively renamed covid is all about harming public health, not protecting and preserving it.
A modern-day angel of death Josef Mengele, he wants billions of unwanted people eliminated with health destroying flu/covid jabs.
As National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) director since 1984, he overseas a multi-billion dollar annual budget.
When clinical studies reach a certain point, he sells or transfers drugs to Pharma, cashing in big by splitting royalties.
The extent of his profiteering is unrevealed publicly.
He likely made tens of millions of dollars — perhaps stashing his hidden wealth in overseas tax havens to give none of it back to the IRS.
Instead of serving the public interest by combatting infectious diseases and allergies, he prioritizes self-enrichment — along with scamming the public about all things flu/covid.
On his watch at NIAID, Americans use more drugs than others abroad.
They pay twice as much or more for them than consumers in other developed countries.
Robert F. Kennedy called Fauci “a mix between (con man) Bernie Madoff, (defender of powerful interests at the expense of ordinary people) J. Edgar Hoover,” and a mafia crime boss — instead of defender of public health.
Analyst Helen Buyniski called him “avatar of medical totalitarianism.”
Cashing in from years of NIAID funding in cahoots with Fauci, Baylor College of Medicine’s Professor of Pediatrics and Molecular Virology and Microbiology Peter Hotez defends him indefensibly.
Promoting toxic mass-jabbing, he earlier called for “confront(ing) anti-vax aggression (sic),” saying:
“(A)nti-vaccine (proponents) ha(ve) hundreds of websites and perhaps 58 million followers on social media.”
“The bad guys (sic) are winning, in part because health agencies either underestimate or deny the reach of anti-science forces (sic), and are ill-equipped to counter it (sic).”
“Russian intelligence organizations seek to discredit Western (covid) vaccines (sic).”
“Global anti-vaccine messaging…means that more people will die and the pandemic will be prolonged (sic).”
He called for a UN “counteroffensive” against anti-flu/covid jabbing truth-tellers — opponents of health-destroying jabs.
He wants critics of Fauci and other toxic mass-jabbing proponents prosecuted for hate crimes.
On July 28, his Plos Biology paper, titled “Mounting Antiscience Aggression in the United States (sic)” slammed congressional members and other critics of Fauci and likeminded fraudsters of “disinformation (sic) designed to portray (them) as enemies.”
Calling legitimate criticism “antiscience intimidation (and) aggression,” he wants individuals involved criminalized and prosecuted for “science” defying “hate crimes.”
Law Professor Jonathan Turley explained the following:
“(F)ederal hate crime laws focus on basis of a person’s characteristics of race, religion, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity.”
Turley opposes adding law enforcement personnel to the above because it would have “a direct and inimical impact on free speech…”
“(I)t would create a slippery slope as other professions (would likely) demand inclusion from reporters to ministers to physicians.”
“Hate crimes would quickly apply to a wide array of people due to their occupations.”
If supporters of medical tyranny like Hotez get their way, toxic flu/covid mass-jabbing could be mandated in the US and West.
It would endanger the health and well-being of everyone wanting what’s most precious of all protected and preserved.
Refuseniks could be denied their Nuremberg Code and constitutional right to reject toxic jabs.
Turley slammed Hotez’s “lack of analytical balance.”
He ignored state-sponsored/conventional and social media suppression of truth-telling about all things flu/covid — endorsing the fabricated official narrative that pushes destruction of public health.
Hotez and likeminded toxic mass-jabbing proponents either support maximum harm to maximum numbers of people or turned a blind eye to what’s going on.
Either way, truth-telling on this most important cutting-edge issue of our time is vital to challenge and stop medical tyranny before it’s too late to matter.
Why the Delta scare? As a virus mutates, it becomes more contagious and less lethal. And then eventually it mostly disappears. Many voices claim that Delta will be with us for a very long time, but we should be so lucky. It’s way more likely that it will soon be followed by a next variant that will in turn become dominant. And more contagious and less lethal.
And no, that’s not because of unvaccinated people, or at least there’s no logic in that. If most people are not vaccinated, the virus has no reason to mutate. If many people are, it does. So this CNN piece is suspect. Vaccinated people are potential variant factories, just as much, if and when the vaccines used don’t stop them from being infectious, as the present vaccines don’t, far as we know.
Unvaccinated people do more than merely risk their own health. They’re also a risk to everyone if they become infected with coronavirus, infectious disease specialists say. That’s because the only source of new coronavirus variants is the body of an infected person. “Unvaccinated people are potential variant factories,” Dr. William Schaffner, a professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, told CNN Friday. “The more unvaccinated people there are, the more opportunities for the virus to multiply,” Schaffner, a professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, said. “When it does, it mutates, and it could throw off a variant mutation that is even more serious down the road.”
“Even more serious”? Well, yes, it can become more contagious, but then it loses lethality. Maybe that’s what we want. Maybe we want a virus that everyone can be infected by, and build resistance to, without serious consequences. Maybe that’s even what we should aim for. And also, maybe that’s what we already have, with survival rates of 99.99% among most people.
And maybe, just maybe, a one-dimensional “solution” in the shape of an experimental vaccine is the worst response of all. Because it doesn’t protect from anything other than more severe disease, while unleashing potential adverse effects for decades to come in the inoculated. Maybe one dimension simply doesn’t cut it. Maybe we should not refuse to prevent people from becoming infected, or to treat them in the early stages of the disease.
Maybe the traumatic effects of lockdowns and facemasks should be part of “benefits and risks” models. And maybe we should start trying vitamin D, ivermectin and HCQ on a very large scale. No research, you say? There’s more research for those approaches than for the vaccines. But it’s largely been halted in the west to maintain the viability of the one-dimension “solution”; the medical Siamese twin of the Trusted News Initiative, one might say. Of which The Atlantic is also a valued member, look at this gem:
2. The variants are pummeling unvaccinated people.
Vaccinated people are safer than ever despite the variants. But unvaccinated people are in more danger than ever because of the variants. Even though they’ll gain some protection from the immunity of others, they also tend to cluster socially and geographically, seeding outbreaks even within highly vaccinated communities.
The U.K., where half the population is fully vaccinated, “can be a cautionary tale,” Hanage told me. Since Delta’s ascendancy, the country’s cases have increased sixfold. Long-COVID cases will likely follow. Hospitalizations have almost doubled. That’s not a sign that the vaccines are failing. It is a sign that even highly vaccinated countries host plenty of vulnerable people.
[..] And new variants are still emerging. Lambda, the latest to be recognized by the WHO, is dominant in Peru and spreading rapidly in South America. Many nations that excelled at protecting their citizens are now facing a triple threat: They controlled COVID-19 so well that they have little natural immunity; they don’t have access to vaccines; and they’re besieged by Delta.
First, the vaccines don’t confer immunity on the jabbed, there is no evidence of that. Second, a large majority of healthy people have an immune system strong enough to fight off the infection, even without ever being infected. So to suggest that unvaccinated people might “gain some protection from the immunity of” the vaccinated is simply nonsense.
As for “Delta’s ascendancy”, yes, cases are rising in the UK and Israel, two highly vaccinated countries. Not that anyone would acknowledge a possible connection there: it’s all despite the vaccines, not because of them. But as the graph below shows, while cases there are up a lot, hospitalization and deaths are not over the past month. They barely register.
On January 20, the UK had 1,823 deaths. Today, they had 15.
I even enlarged the hospitalizations a bit, or you wouldn’t see anything.
“Hospitalizations have almost doubled”, says The Atlantic. Yeah, but they’re still very low, as are deaths. And perhaps that’s not all that surprising, because the Delta variant doesn’t appear to be the big killer that everyone wants to close their borders and restaurants for again. There’s no conclusive evidence, it’s too early, but this is what we know today.
Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul is telling Twitter followers to not let the ‘fearmongers’ win, amid growing concerns about the newest delta variant of the coronavirus. Paul, who is a doctor with a degree in medicine from Duke University, cited a study of the strain that shows only a 0.08% death rate among unvaccinated people. “Don’t let the fearmongers win. New public England study of delta variant shows 44 deaths out of 53,822 (.08%) in unvaccinated group. Hmmm,” he tweeted Tuesday to his 3.2 million followers. The variant, which has caused virus outbreaks in Australia and other countries, has resulted in officials reimposing recently lifted health-safety orders including mask-wearing.
In another graph, the Delta variant Case Fatality Rate in the UK even appears 8 times higher among the fully vaccinated than the unvaccinated. Maybe the press should pay a little more attention to that, instead of the Great Big Delta Scare. All they do today is sell fear and vaccines, but that will backfire, promise.
And what goes for the press is also valid for politicians and their “experts”: there will come a day that people realize you could have focused on prophylactics and early treatment, but chose not to. And that this cost a lot of lives and other misery. What are you going to do then? Apologize?
Let’s not miss this from the past week: strong immune systems kill the virus before antibodies are formed. Which means an antibody test won’t show anything, but a PCR test will come back positive because there are dead virus bits. And everyone will cry: vaccinate! vaccinate!
Maybe it’s finally time for some real science, instead of clickbait and fear and gene therapy.
Individuals with likely exposure to the highly infectious SARS-CoV-2 do not necessarily develop PCR or antibody positivity, suggesting some may clear sub-clinical infection before seroconversion. T cells can contribute to the rapid clearance of SARS-CoV-2 and other coronavirus infections1–5 . We hypothesised that pre-existing memory T cell responses, with cross-protective potential against SARS-CoV-26–12, would expand in vivo to mediate rapid viral control, potentially aborting infection.
We studied T cells against the replication transcription complex (RTC) of SARS-CoV-2 since this is transcribed first in the viral life cycle13–15 and should be highly conserved. We measured SARS-CoV-2-reactive T cells in a cohort of intensively monitored healthcare workers (HCW) who remained repeatedly negative by PCR, antibody binding, and neutralisation for SARS-CoV-2 (exposed seronegative, ES).
16-weeks postrecruitment, ES had memory T cells that were stronger and more multispecific than an unexposed pre-pandemic cohort, and more frequently directed against the RTC than the structural protein-dominated responses seen post-detectable infection (matched concurrent cohort). The postulate that HCW with the strongest RTC-specific T cells had an abortive infection was supported by a low-level increase in IFI27 transcript, a robust early innate signature of SARS-CoV-2 infection16.
We showed that the RNA-polymerase within RTC was the largest region of high sequence conservation across human seasonal coronaviruses (HCoV) and was preferentially targeted by T cells from UK and Singapore pre-pandemic cohorts and from ES. RTC epitope-specific T cells capable of cross-recognising HCoV variants were identified in ES. Longitudinal samples from ES and an additional validation cohort, showed pre-existing RNA-polymerase-specific T cells expanded in vivo following SARS-CoV-2 exposure, becoming enriched in the memory response of those with abortive compared to overt infection. In summary, we provide evidence of abortive seronegative SARS-CoV-2 infection with expansion of cross-reactive RTC-specific T cells, highlighting these highly conserved proteins as targets for future vaccines against endemic and emerging Coronaviridae.
After fifteen months of assiduous reading, study, observation, and research, I have come to some conclusions about what is called COVID-19. I would like to emphasize that I have done this work obsessively since it seemed so important. I have consulted information and arguments across all media, corporate and alternative, academic, medical, books, etc. I have consulted with researchers around the world. I have read the websites of the CDC, the World Health Organization, and government and non-government health organizations. In other words, I have left no stone unturned, despite the overt or covert political leanings of the sources. I have done this as a sociologist and writer, not as a medical doctor, although many of my sources have been medical doctors and medical studies.
My succinct conclusions follow without links to sources since I am not trying to persuade anyone of anything but just stating for the public record what I have concluded. Life is short. I am going to say it now.
I know that vast numbers of people have been hypnotized by fear, threats, and bribes to accept the corporate mainstream media’s version of COVID-19. I have concluded that many millions are moving in a trance state and do not know this. They have been induced into this state by a well-organized, very sophisticated propaganda campaign that has drawn on the human fear of death and disease. Those behind this have no doubt studied the high incidence of hypochondriasis in the general population and the fear of an invisible “virus” in societies where belief in God and the spiritual invisible has been replaced by faith in science. Knowing their audience well, they have concocted a campaign of fear and confusion to induce obedience.
I do not know but suspect that those who have been so hypnotized tend to be mainly members of the middle to the upper classes, those who have invested so much belief in the system. This includes the highly schooled.
I know that to lockdown hundreds of millions of healthy people, to insist they wear useless masks, to tell them to avoid human contacts, to destroy the economic lives of regular people have created vast suffering that was meant to teach people a lesson about who was in control and that they better revise their understanding of human relations to adjust to the new digital unreality that the producers of this masquerade are trying to put in place of flesh and blood, face to face human reality.
I know that the PCR test invented by Kary Mullis cannot test for the alleged virus or any virus and therefore all the numbers of cases and deaths are based on nothing. They are conjured out of thin air in a massive act of magic. I know that the belief that it can so test began with the unscientific PCR Corona protocol created by Christian Drosten in Germany in January 2020 that became the standard method for testing for SARS-CoV-2 worldwide. I am sure this was preplanned and part of a high-level conspiracy. This protocol set the cycle threshold (amplification) at 45 which could only result in false positive results. These were then called cases: An act of fraud on a massive scale.
I do not know if the alleged virus has ever been isolated in the sense of being purified or detached from everything else aside from being cultured in a lab. Therefore I do not know if the virus exists.
I know that the experimental mRNA “vaccines” that are being pushed on everyone are not traditional vaccines but dangerous experiments whose long-term consequences are unknown. And I know that Moderna says its messenger RNA (mRNA) non-vaccine “vaccine” functions “like an operating system on a computer” and that Dr. Robert Malone, inventor of mRNA vaccine technology, says that the lipid nanoparticles from the injections travel throughout the body and settle in large quantities in multiple organs where the spike protein, being biologically active, can cause massive damage and that the FDA has known this. Additionally, I know that tens of thousands of people have suffered adverse effects from these injections and many thousands have died from them and that these figures are greatly underestimated due to the reporting systems. I know that with this number of casualties in the past these experimental shots would have been stopped long ago or never started. That they have not, therefore, convinces me that a radically evil agenda is under way whose goal is harm not health because those in charge know what I know and much more.
I do not know where this alleged virus originated, if it exists.
I know that from the start of this crisis, there was a concerted effort across the world to deny access to proven effective treatments such as hydroxychloroquine, steroids, ivermectin in a planned effort to vaccinate as many people as possible. This alone reveals an agenda centered not on health but on getting as many people as possible to submit to being vaccinated and controlled. Social control is the name of this deadly game.
I know that those pushing these vaccines – The World Economic Forum, the World Health Organization, the Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, etc. – have a long history of wanting to drastically reduce the world’s population and that their promotion of eugenics under various names is very well known. I am convinced that the totally untested mRNA-type “gene therapy” is the key to their plan for population reduction.
I do not know if they will succeed.
I know they must be resisted.
I do not know why so many good people cannot see through this evil. I can only attribute it to having been seduced by a massive hypnotic propaganda campaign that has appealed to their deepest fears and will result in those fears being realized because they thought they were free. It is a great tragedy.
I know that all the statistics about cases and deaths “from” COVID-19 have been manipulated to create a fake pandemic. One of the most obvious proofs of this is the alleged disappearance of the flu and deaths from influenza. Only someone in a trance could fail to understand the absurd logic in the argument that this was the result of mask wearing when at the same time the air-born COVID-19 spread like wildfire until that stopped precipitously in January 2021 when a tiny number of people had been vaccinated.
I know there has been barely any excess mortality throughout all this.
I do not know where it will all end but hope against hope the growing opposition to this fraud will grow and defeat it despite the organized censorship that is underway against dissenting opinions. I know that when organized censorship on this scale takes place those behind it are afraid of the revelation of the truth. A simple understanding of history confirms this.
I know that the temporary reprieve the authorities have granted to their subjects will be followed by further restrictions on fundamental freedoms, the corona virus lockdowns will likely return, “vaccine” boosters will be promoted, and the World Economic Forum’s push for a Great Reset with a Fourth Industrial Revolution will lead to the marriage of artificial intelligence, cyborgs, digital technology, and biology with the USA and other countries continuing to slip into a new form of fascist control unless people across the world stand up and resist in great numbers. I am heartened by signs that this resistance is growing.
Finally, I know if the authoritarian forces win the immediate battle, someone will write a book with a title like that of Milton Mayer’s classic, They Thought They Were Free. It will be censored. Perhaps it will first be shared via samizdat. But in the end, after much suffering and death, the truth about this evil agenda will prevail and there will be much weeping and gnashing of teeth.
We are in a spiritual war for the soul of the world.
“From the beginning Covid has been a conspiracy against health and life. Covid is a profit-making agenda and an agenda for increasing arbitrary government power over people. There should be massive law suits and massive arrests of those who block effective Covid cures and impose a deadly vaccine.” – Paul Craig Roberts, Former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under President Ronald Reagan
The Spike Protein is a “uniquely dangerous” transmembrane fusion protein that is an integral part of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. “The S protein plays a crucial role in penetrating host cells and initiating infection.” It also damages the cells in the lining of the blood vessel walls which leads to blood clots, bleeding, massive inflammation and death.
To say that the spike protein is merely “dangerous”, is a vast understatement. It is a potentially-lethal pathogen that has already killed tens of thousands of people.
So, why did the vaccine manufacturers settle on the spike protein as an antigen that would induce an immune response in the body?
That’s the million-dollar question, after all, for all practical purposes, the spike protein is a poison. We know that now due to research that was conducted at the Salk Institute. Here’s a summary of what they found:
“Salk researchers and collaborators show how the protein damages cells, confirming COVID-19 as a primarily vascular disease…. SARS-CoV-2 virus damages and attacks the vascular system (aka–The circulatory system) on a cellular level… scientists studying other coronaviruses have long suspected that the spike protein contributed to damaging vascular endothelial cells, but this is the first time the process has been documented….
… the spike protein alone was enough to cause disease. Tissue samples showed inflammation in endothelial cells lining the pulmonary artery walls. The team then replicated this process in the lab, exposing healthy endothelial cells (which line arteries) to the spike protein. They showed that the spike protein damaged the cells by binding ACE2…“If you remove the replicating capabilities of the virus, it still has a major damaging effect on the vascular cells, simply by virtue of its ability to bind to this ACE2 receptor, the S protein receptor, now famous thanks to COVID.” (“COVID-19 Is a Vascular Disease: Coronavirus’ Spike Protein Attacks Vascular System on a Cellular Level”, scitechdaily.com
Remember how everyone laughed at Trump when he said injecting household bleach would cure Covid? How is this any different?
It’s not different, and whatever modest protection the vaccines provide as far as immunity, it pales in comparison to the risks they pose to personal health and survival.
And did you notice what the author said about stripping-out the virus and leaving the spike protein alone?’
He said “it still has a major damaging effect” implying ‘blood clots, bleeding and severe inflammation.’ In other words, the spike protein is deadly even absent the virus. Here’s how Dr. Byram Bridle (who is a viral immunologist and associate professor at University of Guelph, Ontario) summed it up:
“We made a big mistake. We didn’t realize it until now… We thought the spike protein was a great target antigen, we never knew the spike protein itself was a toxin and was a pathogenic protein. So, by vaccinating people we are inadvertently inoculating them with a toxin.” (“Vaccine scientist: ‘We’ve made a big mistake’”, Conservative Woman)
Think about that for a minute. This is a very big deal, in fact, this is the critical piece of the puzzle that has been missing for the last 15 months. Just as the respiratory virus concealed the real killing-agent in Covid, (the spike protein) so too, the relentless hype surrounding mass-vaccination has concealed the glaring problem with the vaccines themselves, which is, they generate a substance that is “capable of causing disease.”
That is the literal definition of pathogenic. The spike protein is a disease-producing toxin that poses a serious and identifiable threat to the health of anyone who chooses to get vaccinated. Could it be any clearer?It’s worth noting, that Bridle is a vaccine researcher who was awarded a $230,000 government grant last year for research on COVID vaccine development. He understands the science and chooses his words carefully. The term “pathogenic” is not meant to whip people into a frenzy, but to accurately describe how vaccine-generated proteins interact in the bloodstream. And the way they interact, is by inflicting serious damage to cells in the lining of the blood vessels which can result in illness or death. Here’s more from the same article:
“As many will know by now, the problem lies within a structure that enables the virus, originally from bats, not only to enter human cells but to deliver a toxin called the spike protein. Most Covid vaccines instruct our body cells to produce the same protein. This is in the hope that antibodies developed against it will prevent the most damaging effects of the actual virus. There is evidence that this is the case for some.
But there’s also a problem, spelled out most recently by Canadian researcher Dr Byram Bridle, who was awarded a $230,000 Ontario government grant last year for research on Covid vaccine development. This is that the spike protein produced by the vaccine does not just act locally, at the site of the jab (the shoulder muscle), but gets into the bloodstream and is carried through the circulation to many other sites in the body.
Previously confidential animal studies using radioactive tracing show it to go just about everywhere, including the adrenal glands, heart, liver, kidneys, lungs, ovaries, pancreas, pituitary gland, prostate, salivary glands, intestines, spinal cord, spleen, stomach, testes, thymus, and uterus.
The quantities are small and usually disappear within days. But the questions arise, is this mechanism involved in the thousands of deaths and injuries reported soon after Covid vaccination, and might it set some people up for the same long-term consequences as in severe cases of the disease itself?” (‘We’ve made a big mistake’“, Conservative Woman)
This is the most important question: What will the long-term impact of these vaccines be on the population at large? Here’s more from the same article:
“Some researchers say the risk from the vaccine may be greater than that from the actual virus in healthy people. This would be especially true for the young, whose immune systems deal with the virus successfully. In contrast, the vaccine has a device that protects the spike protein mechanism against immediate destruction by the body, in order to promote the immune response.”(Conservative Woman)
Repeat: ” the vaccine has a device that protects the spike protein mechanism against immediate destruction by the body, in order to promote the immune response.”
What does that mean? Does it mean that the spike protein created by the vaccine lingers on indefinitely risking a potential flare-up sometime in the future if another virus emerges or if the immune system is compromised? Will the people who have been vaccinated have the Sword of Damocles hanging over their heads until the day they die?
Dr Judy Mikovits thinks so. “Mikovits thinks the COVID-19 vaccine is a bioweapon designed to destroy your innate immunity and set you up for rapid onset of debilitating illness and premature death. She too suspects many will die rather rapidly. “It’s not going to be ‘live and suffer forever,” she says. “It’s going to be suffer five years and die.” (Mercola.com)
Is that possible? Could we see an unprecedented surge in fatalities in the next few years directly linked to these experimental vaccines?
Let’s hope not, but without any long-term safety data, there’s no way to know for sure. It’s all a big guessing game, which is one of the reasons that so many people are refusing to get vaccinated. Here’s more from Bridle:
‘I’m very much pro-vaccine, (said Dr Bridle) but … the story I’m about to tell is a bit of a scary one. This is cutting edge science. There’s a couple of key pieces of scientific information that we’ve been privy to, in the past few days, that has made the final link, so we understand now – myself and some key international collaborators – we understand exactly why these problems [with the vaccine] are happening.’
One of these ‘is that the spike protein, on its own, is almost entirely responsible for the damage to the cardiovascular system, if it gets into circulation. Indeed, if you inject the purified spike protein into the blood of research animals they get all kinds of damage to the cardiovascular system, and it can cross the blood-brain barrier and cause damage to the brain.
‘At first glance that doesn’t seem too concerning because we’re injecting these vaccines into the shoulder muscle. The assumption, up until now, has been that these vaccines behave like all of our traditional vaccines: they don’t go anywhere other than the injection site, so they stay in our shoulder. Some of the protein will go to the local draining lymph node in order to activate the immune system.
‘However – this is where the cutting edge science has come in, and this is where it gets scary – through a request for information from the Japanese regulatory agency, myself and several international collaborators have been able to get access to what’s called the biodistribution study. It’s the first time ever that scientists have been privy to seeing where the messenger RNA vaccines go after vaccination; in other words, is it a safe assumption that it stays in the shoulder muscle? The short answer is, absolutely not. It’s very disconcerting. The spike protein gets into the blood and circulates over several days post-vaccination.’”(Vaccine scientist: ‘We’ve made a big mistake’“, Conservative Woman)
They got the biodistribution study from the Japanese? Are you kidding me? You mean, the FDA waved these experimental “new technology” vaccines into service before they had the slightest inkling of where the substance in the vaccine would end up in the body. If that isn’t criminal negligence, then what is? Do you want proof that our regulators are controlled by the industries they are supposed to monitor? Here it is!
Here’s more from an article at Children’s Health Defense on the same topic:
“… in key studies — called biodistribution studies, which are designed to test where an injected compound travels in the body, and which tissues or organs it accumulates in — Pfizer did not use the commercial vaccine (BNT162b2) but instead relied on a “surrogate” mRNA that produced the luciferase protein….
Regulatory documents also show Pfizer did not follow industry-standard quality management practices during preclinical toxicology studies of its vaccine,as key studies did not meet good laboratory practice (GLP)….
“The implications of these findings are that Pfizer was trying to accelerate the vaccine development timeline based on the pressures of the pandemic,” said TrialSite founder and CEO Daniel O’Connor. “The challenge is that the processes, such as Good Laboratory Practices, are of paramount importance for quality and ultimately for patient safety. If such important steps are skipped, the risk-benefit analysis would need to be compelling.”….(“Pfizer Skipped Critical Testing and Cut Corners on Quality Standards, Documents Reveal“, Children’s Health Defense)
Let’s see if I got this right: The Covid vaccine was approved even though “Pfizer did not follow industry-standard quality management practices” and even though “key studies did not meet good laboratory practice?”
Do you still think these vaccines are safe? And, it gets worse, too. Check it out:
“... documents obtained by scientists through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) revealed pre-clinical studies showing the active part of the vaccine (mRNA-lipid nanoparticles) — which produce the spike protein — did not stay at the injection site and surrounding lymphoid tissue as scientists originally theorized, but spread widely throughout the body and accumulated in various organs, including the ovaries and spleen.” (“Pfizer Skipped Critical Testing and Cut Corners on Quality Standards, Documents Reveal”, Children’s Health Defense)
Like we said earlier, the vaccine was supposed to be “localized”, that is, remain in the area where it was injected. But that theory proved to be wrong, just like the theory that the spike protein would be a good antigen was wrong. There are literally thousands of fatalities and other injuries that attest to the “wrongness” of that theory, and there will be many more before this campaign is terminated. Here’s more:
“Research suggests this could lead to the production of spike protein in unintended places, including the brain, ovaries and spleen, which may cause the immune system to attack organs and tissues resulting in damage, and raises serious questions about genotoxicity and reproductive toxicity risks associated with the vaccine.” (“Pfizer Skipped Critical Testing and Cut Corners on Quality Standards, Documents Reveal“, Children’s Health Defense)
So, it goes everywhere. Wherever blood flows, there too goes the spike proteins. Do young women really want these lethal proteins in their ovaries? Do you think that will improve their prospects for getting pregnant or safely delivering their babies? This is madness on a scale that is, frankly, unimaginable. Here’s more:
“Studies indicate that the protein is able to gain access to cells in the testicles, and may disrupt male reproduction…..
Furthermore, the genetic code the virus carries contains inserts that make it ‘extremely plausible’ that the protein could misfold into a prion (such as held responsible for mad cow disease in the 1980s), causing widespread damage to brain cells and increasing the risk of conditions including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease….” (“Covid vaccines: Concerns that make more research essential“, The Conservative Woman
We hope that readers are beginning to understand how risky these vaccines really are. It’s literally a matter of life and death. As Bridle opines:
“‘We have known for a long time that the spike protein is pathogenic…. It is a toxin. It can cause damage in our body if it’s in circulation. Now, we have clear-cut evidence that . . . the vaccine itself, plus the protein, gets into blood circulation.’”
Once that happens, the spike protein can combine with receptors on blood platelets and with cells that line our blood vessels. This is why, paradoxically, it can cause both blood clotting and bleeding.‘And of course the heart is involved, as part of the cardiovascular system,’ Bridle said. ‘That’s why we’re seeing heart problems. The protein can also cross the blood-brain barrier and cause neurological damage.…
‘In short,… we made a big mistake. We didn’t realize it until now. We didn’t realize that by vaccinating people we are inadvertently inoculating them with a toxin.” (Conservative Woman)
“Mistake?” He calls it a “mistake”? That’s got to be the understatement of the century!
Let’s cut to the chase: These aren’t vaccines; they’re a spike-protein delivery-system. Regrettably, 140 million Americans have already been injected with them which means we can expect a dramatic uptick in debilitating medical conditions including blood clotting, bleeding, autoimmune disease, thrombosis in the brain, stroke and heart attack. The vast human wreckage we are now facing is incalculable.
Has there ever been a greater threat to humanity than the Covid vaccine?
Michael Whitney, renowned geopolitical and social analyst based in Washington State. He initiated his career as an independent citizen-journalist in 2002 with a commitment to honest journalism, social justice and World peace.
He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization
Last week CE published this piece that demonstrated the obvious spin The Washington Post used to mislead their readers about the status of the unvaccinated, claiming that their rates of infection, death and hospitalization are significantly higher than vaccinated individuals when in fact they never measured these rates. In this article I will once again focus on the Washington Post and their lack of journalistic integrity. This time their propaganda is more egregious because they are targeting the largest pool of unvaccinated individuals: children.
The Washington Post urges the vaccination of adolescents
On May 10, 2021 the Washington Post published this article titled “FDA authorizes Pfizer Coronavirus vaccine for adolescents 12 to 15 years old”. The article begins with a quote from Kawsar R. Talaat, an assistant professor of international health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who says, “A vaccine gives them an extra layer of protection and allows them to go back to being kids.”
This is a fascinating statement. Obviously kids were never not kids during the pandemic. Dr. Talaat is essentially saying that in order to be allowed to enjoy their youth kids must be vaccinated. However the restrictions that have been imposed upon their activity were never based on sound data. Asymptomatic spread could never be quantified or even confirmed. Mask mandates have been empirically demonstrated to have no effect on transmissibility or incidence of infection. The only things preventing kids from going back to being kids are the mandates that remain unsupported by any evidentiary arguments–not their vaccination status.
This statement was then further supported in the article:
”Robert W. Frenck Jr., the researcher who led [an] adolescent trial at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, who said the study was designed to test whether it triggered immune responses, not whether it prevented disease. But because of the number of children who became ill in the placebo arm of the trial, it also became evident the vaccine offered robust protection. He finishes by stating ‘That really points out how much covid there is in the adolescent community.’”
Dr. Frenck admits that the study he conducted was not designed to tell whether the vaccine prevented disease but whether children in the study developed antibodies. The point he is trying to make is that there is a lot of disease in the adolescent community. How much? In his study 16 out of approximately 1150 unvaccinated kids got Covid, all of whom recovered. That is an absolute risk of 1.4%. Compare that to the risk of getting the flu in a flu season: 8%.
The article goes on to claim that the mortality of COVID is greater than the flu in children. The Post correctly states that of the 581,000 deaths from Covid only 300 adolescents have perished from the disease, an admittedly extremely small percentage but tragic nonetheless. However they state that this number is greater than the number of adolescents that die from the flu which justifies universal vaccinations. The article cites this paper from the CDC that they claim confirms this statistic. In it the CDC states that 188 children died from the flu in the 2017-18 season, indeed less than 300. However the paper then states that “CDC estimates the actual number was closer to 600”. We have caught the Post in what can be fairly called a lie that is being used to make their case that the threat of the disease justifies prevention through vaccination.
Vaccination Risks and what we know about the “Spike Protein”
Every medical intervention has a risk/benefit relationship that must be examined closely. The Washington Post never once addresses the potential risk of the vaccine in children. Despite mainstream media’s dogged refusal to pursue any research into potential harm of the Covid vaccines, some very troubling information has recently surfaced if one is willing to look beyond headlines and CDC reports. Unlike the Washington Post, I will also examine the risk aspect of the vaccine with a look at the role of the infamous “spike” protein.
As is well known, the Spike protein on the SARS-COV2 virus is what allows it to enter a human cell and infect it. It is also the target protein of the mRNA “vaccines” that use a novel approach to teach our immune systems to recognize it by stimulating our own cells to produce this protein ourselves, hopefully triggering our immune system to produce antibodies against it.
The vaccine manufacturers and the FDA who grant them authorization to deploy their product have made an enormous assumption: the virus is dangerous, but the spike protein is not. It is becoming clear that this assumption does not hold true. In this short article published on April 30, 2021 (11 days before the WP published their article) Salk News summarizes one of several scientific publications that demonstrate the danger of the spike protein:
“The paper, published on April 30, 2021, in Circulation Research, also shows conclusively that COVID-19 is a vascular disease, demonstrating exactly how the SARS-CoV-2 virus damages and attacks the vascular system on a cellular level. The findings help explain COVID-19’s wide variety of seemingly unconnected complications, and could open the door for new research into more effective therapies.
‘A lot of people think of it as a respiratory disease, but it’s really a vascular disease,” says Assistant Research Professor Uri Manor, who is co-senior author of the study. “That could explain why some people have strokes, and why some people have issues in other parts of the body. The commonality between them is that they all have vascular underpinnings.’”
The takeaway from these statements is that Covid-19 is a vascular disease more than just a respiratory illness. This was suspected very early on in the pandemic when many people were injured by bleeding, clots, strokes and organ failure. The authors were able to establish its mechanism by an elegant experiment. They designed a “pseudovirus”, one that had the SARS-COV2 spike protein on its surface but without any viral RNA in it. The pseudovirus damaged the lungs and pulmonary vasculature in animal models. They then isolated the molecular pathway by which spike proteins alter the metabolism of vascular endothelial cells causing injury. Conclusion: the spike protein itself causes harm in animal models.
Though we cannot definitively assert, from this study alone, that the spike protein is directly responsible for injury in humans, we must avail ourselves of the reality that this may take a very long time to prove definitively. If it is shown that an intervention is dangerous to animals there is no justification in assuming that it will be safe in a human being. That is why we use animal models in medical research to begin with.
“Fact Checkers” are Taking Notice
As expected, such statements are getting a lot of attention in the media. PolitiFact quickly responded with two articles (one here) “debunking” the theory that spike proteins are dangerous to humans. They quote Dr. Walter Orenstein (associate director of Emory University’s Emory Vaccine Center) and Dr. Paul Offit (director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia) who both summarize that they are not aware of any evidence around the danger of spike proteins. Neither, however commented on the study presented in this essay.
PolitiFact also noted that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) called the spike protein “harmless”. Once again, PolitiFact accepted their blanket statement without asking the CDC for their opinion of the evidence cited here. PolitiFact declined to query the CDC for a different explanation of why hospitalized Covid-19 patients commonly expressed systemic disease often with vascular and clotting disorders.
The Danger of an mRNA vaccine that generates spike proteins
If the spike protein is pathogenic, i.e. capable of causing disease, how do we know that when we create antibodies to it we will be completely protected from it? We don’t. How do we know that every person inoculated will mount an antibody response to them? We don’t. This should be sounding alarms in every institution charged with public health. Why? With traditional vaccines there is very little risk, if any, of contracting disease from the vaccine. For example, if a person inoculated with a Hepatitis B vaccine does not mount an immunological response they do not end up getting Hepatitis B.
The situation we may be in is much more concerning. These mRNA vaccines, if they work as intended, are in fact introducing the disease-inducing component of the virus into our bodies. As with most biological processes there will be a wide distribution of responses to the vaccine from people who have little or no side-effects to others who suffer devastating injury. Is that what we are seeing now? Yes it is.
The vaccines migrate throughout the body after injection
More recently, more disturbing information is coming to light. Bioavailability studies of the vaccine were not made public prior to Emergency Use Authorization (EUA). A Pfizer bioavailability study, obtained through the FOIA from a Japanese regulatory agency by a group of international scientists, demonstrates where the vaccine may go once it has been injected into the muscle tissue of our shoulder. Table 2.6.5.5B in this study indicates that the very same Lipid Nanoparticles (LNPs) used in the Pfizer vaccine begin to redistribute throughout the bodies of mice. Within 15 minutes after inoculation LNPs show up in the brain, liver, gastrointestinal tract, heart, lungs and especially in the ovaries and spleen. We can infer that where the LNPs go so do the mRNA that codes for spike protein. That was the purpose behind doing this study. We can also safely say that Pfizer and the other Covid-19 vaccine manufacturers never intended for their product to migrate so far from the site of inoculation.
This story is still evolving, however these studies and recently released bioavailability reports help to explain the clinical picture of Covid-19 with its broad effects on the body that are not limited to the respiratory system. Furthermore it may substantiate the numerous reports of injury following vaccinations like strokes, blood clots, bleeding, “brain fog”, Bell’s Palsy, etc.
The spike protein is toxic. The vaccine induces our cells to make spike proteins. The vaccine spreads throughout the body after injection. Until another unifying explanation is found we must assume that these vaccines are potentially far more dangerous than anticipated.
A call to halt vaccinations in the UK
In this advisory letter to Dr. June Raine, chief executive of Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (the UK’s FDA), Dr. Tess Lawrie, the director of an evidence based medicine consulting firm, urges the director to halt the vaccination program in that country after an extensive review of the UK’s adverse reaction data was conducted.
The Takeaway
We know, through the CDC’s own data, that Covid-19 vaccines provide almost no benefit to children and adolescents. The danger of vaccination is yet to be fully understood or quantified. In my opinion, the medical community, the FDA and CDC have no reasonable argument to encourage parents to vaccinate their children at this point. The Washington Post has once again demonstrated sloppy research standards, unbalanced reporting and lack of integrity. In this case adolescents, who are among the least vulnerable to the virus, may be harmed from The Post’s inability or unwillingness to uphold basic journalistic principles.
Last year, a government commission called for the US to adopt an AI-driven mass surveillance system far beyond that used in any other country in order to ensure American hegemony in artificial intelligence. Now, many of the “obstacles” they had cited as preventing its implementation are rapidly being removed under the guise of combating the coronavirus crisis.
Last year, a U.S. government body dedicated to examining how artificial intelligence can “address the national security and defense needs of the United States” discussed in detail the “structural” changes that the American economy and society must undergo in order to ensure a technological advantage over China, according to a recent document acquired through a FOIA request. This document suggests that the U.S. follow China’s lead and even surpass them in many aspects related to AI-driven technologies, particularly their use of mass surveillance. This perspective clearly clashes with the public rhetoric of prominent U.S. government officials and politicians on China, who have labeled the Chinese government’s technology investments and export of its surveillance systems and other technologies as a major “threat” to Americans’ “way of life.”
In addition, many of the steps for the implementation of such a program in the U.S., as laid out in this newly available document, are currently being promoted and implemented as part of the government’s response to the current coronavirus (Covid-19) crisis. This likely due to the fact that many members of this same body have considerable overlap with the taskforces and advisors currently guiding the government’s plans to “re-open the economy” and efforts to use technology to respond to the current crisis.
The FOIA document, obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), was produced by a little-known U.S. government organization called the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI). It was created by the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and its official purpose is “to consider the methods and means necessary to advance the development of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and associated technologies to comprehensively address the national security and defense needs of the United States.”
The NSCAI is a key part of the government’s response to what is often referred to as the coming “fourth industrial revolution,” which has been described as “a revolution characterized by discontinuous technological development in areas like artificial intelligence (AI), big data, fifth-generation telecommunications networking (5G), nanotechnology and biotechnology, robotics, the Internet of Things (IoT), and quantum computing.”
However, their main focus is ensuring that “the United States … maintain a technological advantage in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other associated technologies related to national security and defense.” The vice-chair of NSCAI, Robert Work – former Deputy Secretary of Defense and senior fellow at the hawkish Center for a New American Security (CNAS), described the commission’s purpose as determining “how the U.S. national security apparatus should approach artificial intelligence, including a focus on how the government can work with industry to compete with China’s ‘civil-military fusion’ concept.”
The recently released NSCAI document is a May 2019 presentation entitled “Chinese Tech Landscape Overview.” Throughout the presentation, the NSCAI promotes the overhaul of the U.S. economy and way of life as necessary for allowing the U.S. to ensure it holds a considerable technological advantage over China, as losing this advantage is currently deemed a major “national security” issue by the U.S. national security apparatus. This concern about maintaining a technological advantage can be seen in several other U.S. military documents and think tank reports, several of whichhave warned that the U.S.’ technological advantage is quickly eroding.
The U.S. government and establishment media outlets often blame alleged Chinese espionage or the Chinese government’s more explicit partnershipswith private technology companies in support of their claim that the U.S. is losing this advantage over China. For instance, Chris Darby, the current CEO of the CIA’s In-Q-Tel, who is also on the NSCAI, told CBS News last year that China is the U.S.’ main competitor in terms of technology and that U.S. privacy laws were hampering the U.S.’ capacity to counter China in this regard, stating that:
“[D]ata is the new oil. And China is just awash with data. And they don’t have the same restraints that we do around collecting it and using it, because of the privacy difference between our countries. This notion that they have the largest labeled data set in the world is going to be a huge strength for them.”
In another example, Michael Dempsey – former acting Director of National Intelligence and currently a government-funded fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations – argued in The Hill that:
“It’s quite clear, though, that China is determined to erase our technological advantage, and is committing hundreds of billions of dollars to this effort. In particular, China is determined to be a world leader in such areas as artificial intelligence, high performance computing, and synthetic biology. These are the industries that will shape life on the planet and the military balance of power for the next several decades.”
In fact, the national security apparatus of the United States is so concerned about losing a technological edge over China that the Pentagon recently decided to join forces directly with the U.S. intelligence community in order “to get in front of Chinese advances in artificial intelligence.” This union resulted in the creation of the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC), which ties together “the military’s efforts with those of the Intelligence Community, allowing them to combine efforts in a breakneck push to move government’s AI initiatives forward.” It also coordinates with other government agencies, industry, academics, and U.S. allies. Robert Work, who subsequently became the NSCAI vice-chair, said at the time that JAIC’s creation was a “welcome first step in response to Chinese, and to a lesser extent, Russian, plans to dominate these technologies.”
Similar concerns about “losing” technological advantage to China have also been voiced by the NSCAI chairman, Eric Schmidt, the former head of Alphabet – Google’s parent company, who argued in February in the New York Times that Silicon Valley could soon lose “the technology wars” to China if the U.S. government doesn’t take action. Thus, the three main groups represented within the NSCAI – the intelligence community, the Pentagon and Silicon Valley – all view China’s advancements in AI as a major national security threat (and in Silicon Valley’s case, threat to their bottom lines and market shares) that must be tackled quickly.
Targeting China’s “adoption advantage”
In the May 2019 “Chinese Tech Landscape Overview” presentation, the NSCAI discusses that, while the U.S. still leads in the “creation” stage of AI and related technologies, it lags behind China in the “adoption” stage due to “structural factors.” It says that “creation”, followed by “adoption” and “iteration” are the three phases of the “life cycle of new tech” and asserts that failing to dominate in the “adoption” stage will allow China to “leapfrog” the U.S. and dominate AI for the foreseeable future.
The presentation also argues that, in order to “leapfrog” competitors in emerging markets, what is needed is not “individual brilliance” but instead specific “structural conditions that exist within certain markets.” It cites several case studies where China is considered to be “leapfrogging” the U.S. due to major differences in these “structural factors.” Thus, the insinuation of the document (though not directly stated) is that the U.S. must alter the “structural factors” that are currently responsible for its lagging behind China in the “adoption” phase of AI-driven technologies.
Chief among the troublesome “structural factors” highlighted in this presentation are so-called “legacy systems” that are common in the U.S. but much less so in China. The NSCAI document states that examples of “legacy systems” include a financial system that still utilizes cash and card payments, individual car ownership and even receiving medical attention from a human doctor. It states that, while these “legacy systems” in the US are “good enough,” too many “good enough” systems “hinder the adoption of new things,” specifically AI-driven systems.
Another structural factor deemed by the NSCAI to be an obstacle to the U.S.’ ability to maintain a technological advantage over China is the “scale of the consumer market,” arguing that “extreme urban density = on-demand service adoption.” In other words, extreme urbanization results in more people using online or mobile-based “on-demand” services, ranging from ride-sharing to online shopping. It also cites the use of mass surveillance on China’s “huge population base” is an example of how China’s “scale of consumer market” advantage allowing “China to leap ahead” in the fields of related technologies, like facial recognition.
In addition to the alleged shortcomings of the U.S.’ “legacy systems” and lack of “extreme urban density,” the NSCAI also calls for more “explicit government support and involvement” as a means to speed up the adoption of these systems in the U.S. This includes the government lending its stores of data on civilians to train AI, specifically citing facial recognition databases, and mandating that cities be “re-architected around AVs [autonomous vehicles],” among others. Other examples given include the government investing large amounts of money in AI start-ups and adding tech behemoths to a national, public-private AI taskforce focused on smart city-implementation (among other things).
With regards to the latter, the document says “this level of public-private cooperation” in China is “outwardly embraced” by the parties involved, with this “serving as a stark contrast to the controversy around Silicon Valley selling to the U.S. government.” Examples of such controversy, from the NSCAI’s perspective, likely include Google employees petitioning to end the Google-Pentagon “Project Maven,” which uses Google’s AI software to analyze footage captured by drones. Google eventually chose not to renew its Maven contract as a result of the controversy, even though top Google executives viewed the project as a “golden opportunity” to collaborate more closely with the military and intelligence communities.
The document also defines another aspect of government support as the “clearing of regulatory barriers.” This term is used in the document specifically with respect to U.S. privacy laws, despite the fact that the U.S. national security state has long violated these laws with near complete impunity. However, the document seems to suggest that privacy laws in the U.S. should be altered so that what the U.S. government has done “in secret” with private citizen data can be done more openly and more extensively. The NSCAI document also discusses the removal of “regulatory barriers” in order to speed up the adoption of self-driving cars, even though autonomous driving technology has resulted in several deadlyand horrific car accidents and presents other safety concerns.
Also discussed is how China’s “adoption advantage” will “allow it to leapfrog the U.S.” in several new fields, including “AI medical diagnosis” and “smart cities.” It then asserts that “the future will be decided at the intersection of private enterprise and policy leaders between China and the U.S.” If this coordination over the global AI market does not occur, the document warns that “we [the U.S.] risk being left out of the discussions where norms around AI are set for the rest of our lifetimes.”
The presentation also dwells considerably on how “the main battleground [in technology] are not the domestic Chinese and US markets,” but what it refers to as the NBU (next billion users) markets, where it states that “Chinese players will aggressively challenge Silicon Valley.” In order to challenge them more successfully, the presentation argues that, “just like we [view] the market of teenagers as a harbinger for new trends, we should look at China.”
The document also expresses concerns about China exporting AI more extensively and intensively than the U.S., saying that China is “already crossing borders” by helping to build facial databases in Zimbabwe and selling image recognition and smart city systems to Malaysia. If allowed to become “the unambiguous leader in AI,” it says that “China could end up writing much of the rulebook of international norms around the deployment of AI” and that it would “broaden China’s sphere of influence amongst an international community that increasingly looks to the pragmatic authoritarianism of China and Singapore as an alternative to Western liberal democracy.”
What will replace the US’ “legacy systems”?
Given that the document makes it quite clear that “legacy systems” in the U.S. are impeding its ability to prevent China from “leapfrogging” ahead in AI and then dominating it for the foreseeable future, it is also important to examine what the document suggests should replace these “legacy systems” in the U.S.
As previously mentioned, one “legacy system” cited early on in the presentation is the main means of payment for most Americans, cash and credit/debit cards. The presentation asserts, in contrast to these “legacy systems” that the best and most advanced system is moving entirely to smartphone-based digital wallets.
It notes specifically the main mobile wallet provider in India, PayTM, is majority owned by Chinese companies. It quotes an article, which states that “a big break came [in 2016] when India canceled 86% of currency in circulation in an effort to cut corruption and bring more people into the tax net by forcing them to use less cash.” At the time, claims that India’s 2016 “currency reform” would be used as a stepping stone towards a cashless society were dismissed by some as “conspiracy theory.” However, last year, a committee convened by India’s central bank (and led by an Indian tech oligarch who also created India’s massive civilian biometric database) resulted in the Indian government’s “Cashless India” program.
Regarding India’s 2016 “currency reform,” the NSCAI document then asserts that “this would be unfathomable in the West. And unsurprisingly, when 86% of the cash got cancelled and nobody had a credit card, mobile wallets in India exploded, laying the groundwork for a far more advanced payments ecosystem in India than the US.” However, it has become increasingly less unfathomable in light of the current coronavirus crisis, which has seen efforts to reduce the amount of cash used because paper bills may carry the virus as well as efforts to introduce a Federal Reserve-backed “digital dollar.”
In addition, the NSCAI document from last May calls for the end of in-person shopping and promotes moving towards all shopping being performed online. It argues that “American companies have a lot to gain by adopting ideas from Chinese companies” by shifting towards exclusive e-commerce purchasing options. It states that only shopping online provides a “great experience” and also adds that “when buying online is literally the only way to get what you want, consumers go online.”
Another “legacy system” that the NSCAI seeks to overhaul is car ownership, as it promotes autonomous, or self-driving vehicles and further asserts that “fleet ownership > individual ownership.” It specifically points to a need for “a centralized ride-sharing network,” which it says “is needed to coordinate cars to achieve near 100% utilization rates.” However, it warns against ride-sharing networks that “need a human operator paired with each vehicle” and also asserts that “fleet ownership makes more sense” than individual car ownership. It also specifically calls for these fleets to not only be composed of self-driving cars, but electric cars and cites reports that China “has the world’s most aggressive electric vehicle goals….and seek[s] the lead in an emerging industry.”
The document states that China leads in ride-sharing today even though ride-sharing was pioneered first in the U.S. It asserts once again that the U.S. “legacy system” of individual car ownership and lack of “extreme urban density” are responsible for China’s dominance in this area. It also predicts that China will “achieve mass autonomous [vehicle] adoption before the U.S.,” largely because “the lack of mass car ownership [in China] leads to far more consumer receptiveness to AVs [autonomous vehicles].” It then notes that “earlier mass adoption leads to a virtuous cycle that allows Chinese core self-driving tech to accelerate beyond [its] Western counterparts.”
In addition to their vision for a future financial system and future self-driving transport system, the NSCAI has a similarly dystopian vision for surveillance. The document calls mass surveillance “one of the ‘first-and-best customers’ for AI” and “a killer application for deep learning.” It also states that “having streets carpeted with cameras is good infrastructure.”
It then discusses how “an entire generation of AI unicorn” companies are “collecting the bulk of their early revenue from government security contracts” and praises the use of AI in facilitating policing activities. For instance, it lauds reports that “police are making convictions based on phone calls monitored with iFlyTek’s voice-recognition technology” and that “police departments are using [AI] facial recognition tech to assist in everything from catching traffic law violators to resolving murder cases.”
On the point of facial recognition technology specifically, the NSCAI document asserts that China has “leapt ahead” of the US on facial recognition, even though “breakthroughs in using machine learning for image recognition initially occurred in the US.” It claims that China’s advantage in this instance is because they have government-implemented mass surveillance (“clearing of regulatory barriers”), enormous government-provided stores of data (“explicit government support”) combined with private sector databases on a huge population base (“scale of consumer market”). As a consequence of this, the NSCAI argues, China is also set to leap ahead of the U.S. in both image/facial recognition and biometrics.
The document also points to another glaring difference between the U.S. and its rival, stating that: “In the press and politics of America and Europe, Al is painted as something to be feared that is eroding privacy and stealing jobs. Conversely, China views it as both a tool for solving major macroeconomic challenges in order to sustain their economic miracle, and an opportunity to take technological leadership on the global stage.”
The NSCAI document also touches on the area of healthcare, calling for the implementation of a system that seems to be becoming reality thanks to the current coronavirus crisis. In discussing the use of AI in healthcare (almost a year before the current crisis began), it states that “China could lead the world in this sector” and “this could lead to them exporting their tech and setting international norms.” One reason for this is also that China has “far too few doctors for the population” and calls having enough doctors for in-person visits a “legacy system.” It also cited U.S. regulatory measures such as “HIPPA compliance and FDA approval” as obstacles that don’t constrain Chinese authorities.
More troubling, it argues that “the potential impact of government supplied data is even more significant in biology and healthcare,” and says it is likely that “the Chinese government [will] require every single citizen to have their DNA sequenced and stored in government databases, something nearly impossible to imagine in places as privacy conscious as the U.S. and Europe.” It continues by saying that “the Chinese apparatus is well-equipped to take advantage” and calls these civilian DNA databases a “logical next step.”
Who are the NSCAI?
Given the sweeping changes to the U.S. that the NSCAI promoted in this presentation last May, it becomes important to examine who makes up the commission and to consider their influence over U.S. policy on these matters, particularly during the current crisis. As previously mentioned, the chairman of the NSCAI is Eric Schmidt, the former head of Alphabet (Google’s parent company) who has also invested heavily in Israeli intelligence-linked tech companies including the controversial start-up “incubator” Team8. In addition, the committee’s vice-chair is Robert Work, is not only a former top Pentagon official, but is currently working with the think tank CNAS, which is run by John McCain’s long-time foreign policy adviser and Joe Biden’s former national security adviser.
Safra Catz, CEO of Oracle, with close ties to Trump’s top donor Sheldon Adelson
Steve Chien, supervisor of the Artificial Intelligence Group at Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Lab
Mignon Clyburn, Open Society Foundation fellow and former FCC commissioner
Chris Darby, CEO of In-Q-Tel (CIA’s venture capital arm)
Ken Ford, CEO of the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition
Jose-Marie Griffiths, president of Dakota State University and former National Science Board member
Eric Horvitz, director of Microsoft Research Labs
Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon Web Services (CIA contractor)
Gilman Louie, partner at Alsop Louie Partners and former CEO of In-Q-Tel
William Mark, director of SRI International and former Lockheed Martin director
Jason Matheny, director of the Center for Security and Emerging Technology, former Assistant director of National Intelligence and former director of IARPA (Intelligence Advanced Research Project Agency)
Katharina McFarland, consultant at Cypress International and former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Acquisition
Andrew Moore, head of Google Cloud AI
As can be seen in the list above, there is a considerable amount of overlap between the NSCAI and the companies currently advising the White House on “re-opening” the economy (Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Lockheed Martin, Oracle) and one NSCAI member, Oracle’s Safra Katz, is on the White House’s “economic revival” taskforce. Also, there is also overlap between the NSCAI and the companies that are intimately involved in the implementation of the “contact tracing” “coronavirus surveillance system,” a mass surveillance system promoted by the Jared Kushner-led, private-sector coronavirus task force. That surveillance system is set to be constructed by companies with deep ties to Google and the U.S. national security state, and both Google and Apple, who create the operating systems for the vast majority of smartphones used in the U.S., have said they will now build that surveillance system directly into their smartphone operating systems.
Also notable is the fact that In-Q-Tel and the U.S. intelligence community has considerable representation on the NSCAI and that they also boast close ties with Google, Palantir and other Silicon Valley giants, having been early investors in those companies. Both Google and Palantir, as well as Amazon (also on the NSCAI) are also major contractors for U.S. intelligence agencies. In-Q-Tel’s involvement on the NSCAI is also significant because they have been heavily promoting mass surveillance of consumer electronic devices for use in pandemics for the past several years. Much of that push has come from In-Q-Tel’s current Executive Vice President Tara O’Toole, who was previously the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and also co-authored several controversial biowarfare/pandemic simulations, such as Dark Winter.
In addition, since at least January, the U.S. intelligence community and the Pentagon have been at the forefront of developing the U.S. government’s still-classified “9/11-style” response plans for the coronavirus crisis, alongside the National Security Council. Few news organizations have noted that these classified response plans, which are set to be triggered if and when the U.S. reaches a certain number of coronavirus cases, has been created largely by elements of the national security state (i.e. the NSC, Pentagon, and intelligence), as opposed to civilian agencies or those focused on public health issues.
Furthermore, it has been reported that the U.S. intelligence community as well as U.S. military intelligence knew by at least January (though recent reports have said as early as last November) that the coronavirus crisis would reach “pandemic proportions” by March. The American public were not warned, but elite members of the business and political classes were apparently informed, given the record numbers of CEO resignations in January and several high-profile insider trading allegations that preceded the current crisis by a matter of weeks.
Perhaps even more disconcerting is the added fact that the U.S. government not only participated in the eerily prescient pandemic simulation last October known as Event 201, it also led a series of pandemic response simulations last year. Crimson Contagion was a series of four simulations that involved 19 U.S. federal agencies, including intelligence and the military, as well as 12 different states and a host of private sector companies that simulated a devastating pandemic influenza outbreak that had originated in China. It was led by the current HHS Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, Robert Kadlec, who is a former lobbyist for military and intelligence contractors and a Bush-era homeland security “bioterrorism” advisor.
In addition, both Kadlec and the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, which was intimately involved in Event 201, have direct ties to the controversial June 2001 biowarfare exercise “Dark Winter,” which predicted the 2001 anthrax attacks that transpired just months later in disturbing ways. Though efforts by media and government were made to blame the anthrax attacks on a foreign source, the anthrax was later found to have originated at a U.S. bioweapons lab and the FBI investigation into the case has been widely regarded as a cover-up, including by the FBI’s once-lead investigator on that case.
Given the above, it is worth asking if those who share the NSCAI’s vision saw the coronavirus pandemic early on as an opportunity to make the “structural changes” it had deemed essential to countering China’s lead in the mass adoption of AI-driven technologies, especially considering that many of the changes in the May 2019 document are now quickly taking place under the guise of combatting the coronavirus crisis.
The NSCAI’s vision takes shape
Though the May 2019 NSCAI document was authored nearly a year ago, the coronavirus crisis has resulted in the implementation of many of the changes and the removal of many of the “structural” obstacles that the commission argued needed to be drastically altered in order to ensure a technological advantage over China in the field of AI. The aforementioned move away from cash, which is taking place not just in the U.S. but internationally, is just one example of many.
For instance, earlier this week CNN reported that grocery stores are now considering banning in-person shopping and that the U.S. Department of Labor has recommended that retailers nationwide start “‘using a drive-through window or offering curbside pick-up’ to protect workers for exposure to coronavirus.” In addition, last week, the state of Florida approved an online-purchase plan for low income families using the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Other reports have argued that social distancing inside grocery stores is ineffective and endangering people’s lives. As previously mentioned, the May 2019 NSCAI document argues that moving away from in-person shopping is necessary to mitigate China’s “adoption advantage” and also argued that “when buying online is literally the only way to get what you want, consumers go online.”
Reports have also argued that these changes in shopping will last far beyond coronavirus, such as an article by Business Insider entitled “The coronavirus pandemic is pushing more people online and will forever change how Americans shop for groceries, experts say.” Those cited in the piece argue that this shift away from in-person shopping will be “permanent” and also states that “More people are trying these services than otherwise would have without this catalyst and gives online players a greater chance to acquire and keep a new customer base.” A similar article in Yahoo! News argues that, thanks to the current crisis, “our dependence on online shopping will only rise because no one wants to catch a virus at a shop.”
In addition, the push towards the mass use of self-driving cars has also gotten a boost thanks to coronavirus, with driverless cars now making on-demand deliveries in California. Two companies, one Chinese-owned and the other backed by Japan’s SoftBank, have since been approved to have their self-driving cars used on California roads and that approval was expedited due to the coronavirus crisis. The CPO of Nuro Inc., the SoftBank-backed company, was quoted in Bloomberg as saying that “The Covid-19 pandemic has expedited the public need for contactless delivery services. Our R2 fleet is custom-designed to change the very nature of driving and the movement of goods by allowing people to remain safely at home while their groceries, medicines, and packages are brought to them.” Notably, the May 2019 NSCAI document references the inter-connected web of SoftBank-backed companies, particularly those backed by its largely Saudi-funded “Vision Fund,” as forming “the connective tissue for a global federation of tech companies” set to dominate AI.
California isn’t the only state to start using self-driving cars, as the Mayo Clinic of Florida is now also using them. “Using artificial intelligence enables us to protect staff from exposure to this contagious virus by using cutting-edge autonomous vehicle technology and frees up staff time that can be dedicated to direct treatment and care for patients,” Kent Thielen, M.D., CEO of Mayo Clinic in Florida stated in a recent press release cited by Mic.
Like the changes to in-person shopping in the age of coronavirus, other reports assert that self-driving vehicles are here to stay. One report published by Mashable is entitled “It took a coronavirus outbreak for self-driving cars to become more appealing,” and opens by stating “Suddenly, a future full of self-driving cars isn’t just a sci-fi pipe dream. What used to be considered a scary, uncertain technology for many Americans looks more like an effective tool to protect ourselves from a fast-spreading, infectious disease.” It further argues that this is hardly a “fleeting shift” in driving habits and one tech CEO cited in the piece, Anuja Sonalker of Steer Tech, claims that “There has been a distinct warming up to human-less, contactless technology. Humans are biohazards, machines are not.”
Another focus of the NSCAI presentation, AI medicine, has also seen its star rise in recent weeks. For instance, several reports have touted how AI-driven drug discovery platforms have been able to identify potential treatments for coronavirus. Microsoft, whose research lab director is on the NSCAI, recently put $20 million into its “AI for health” program to speed up the use of AI in analyzing coronavirus data. In addition, “telemedicine”– a form of remote medical care – has also becomewidely adopted due to the coronavirus crisis.
Several other AI-driven technologies have similarly become more widely adopted thanks to coronavirus, including the use of mass surveillance for “contact tracing” as well as facial recognition technology and biometrics. A recent Wall Street Journal report stated that the government is seriously considering both contact tracing via phone geolocation data and facial recognition technology in order to track those who might have coronavirus. In addition, private businesses – like grocery stores and restaurants – are using sensors and facial recognition to see how many people and which people are entering their stores.
As far as biometrics go, university researchers are now working to determine if “smartphones and biometric wearables already contain the data we need to know if we have become infected with the novel coronavirus.” Those efforts seek to detect coronavirus infections early by analyzing “sleep schedules, oxygen levels, activity levels and heart rate” based on smartphone apps like FitBit and smartwatches. In countries outside the U.S., biometric IDs are being touted as a way to track those who have and lack immunity to coronavirus.
In addition, one report in The Edge argued that the current crisis is changing what types of biometrics should be used, asserting that a shift towards thermal scanning and facial recognition is necessary:
“At this critical juncture of the crisis, any integrated facial recognition and thermal scanning solution must be implemented easily, rapidly and in a cost-effective manner. Workers returning to offices or factories must not have to scramble to learn a new process or fumble with declaration forms. They must feel safe and healthy for them to work productively. They just have to look at the camera and smile. Cameras and thermal scanners, supported by a cloud-based solution and the appropriate software protocols, will do the rest.”
Also benefiting from the coronavirus crisis is the concept of “smart cities,” with Forbes recently writing that “Smart cities can help us combat the coronavirus pandemic.” That article states that “Governments and local authorities are using smart city technology, sensors and data to trace the contacts of people infected with the coronavirus. At the same time, smart cities are also helping in efforts to determine whether social distancing rules are being followed.”
That article in Forbes also contains the following passage:
“…[T]he use of masses of connected sensors makes it clear that the coronavirus pandemic is–intentionally or not–being used as a testbed for new surveillance technologies that may threaten privacy and civil liberties. So aside from being a global health crisis, the coronavirus has effectively become an experiment in how to monitor and control people at scale.”
Another report in The Guardian states that “If one of the government takeaways from coronavirus is that ‘smart cities’ including Songdo or Shenzhen are safer cities from a public health perspective, then we can expect greater efforts to digitally capture and record our behaviour in urban areas – and fiercer debates over the power such surveillance hands to corporations and states.” There have also been reports that assert that typical cities are “woefully unprepared” to face pandemics compared to “smart cities.”
Yet, beyond many of the NSCAI’s specific concerns regarding mass AI adoption being conveniently resolved by the current crisis, there has also been a concerted effort to change the public’s perception of AI in general. As previously mentioned, the NSCAI had pointed out last year that:
“In the press and politics of America and Europe, Al is painted as something to be feared that is eroding privacy and stealing jobs. Conversely, China views it as both a tool for solving major macroeconomic challenges in order to sustain their economic miracle, and an opportunity to take technological leadership on the global stage.”
It is indeed striking how the coronavirus crisis has seemingly fulfilled the NSCAI’s entire wishlist and removed many of the obstacles to the mass adoption of AI technologies in the United States. Like major crises of the past, the national security state appears to be using the chaos and fear to promote and implement initiatives that would be normally rejected by Americans and, if history is any indicator, these new changes will remain long after the coronavirus crisis fades from the news cycle. It is essential that these so-called “solutions” be recognized for what they are and that we consider what type of world they will end up creating – an authoritarian technocracy. We ignore the rapid advance of these NSCAI-promoted initiatives and the phasing out of so-called “legacy systems” (and with them, many long-cherished freedoms) at our own peril.
After the Crash 