Folks, we are only 15 days into this. Imagine how much worse it will get. Who is your mortgage loan with? Have you worked out how to find enough liquidity if they call your note?
There has been an enormous amount of talk — not just this week, but over the last month — about violent extremism and the people who embrace it. Those people, we’re told, are domestic terrorists who must be put down by force. The war on terror has moved stateside. Extremists are inside our country, and we must hunt them down.
We’re hearing those words nonstop, not just on cable news, but from elected officials, including some Republicans. We’re hearing it from the leaders of federal law enforcement agencies and the intelligence agencies. We’re hearing it from the Pentagon. Just this week, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin ordered the entire U.S. military to “stand down” while investigators cleanse the ranks of political extremists.And, of course, we’re hearing it from the business establishment, from Wall Street and the tech monopolies, from the massive multinational corporations that increasingly control the contours of American life. All of them are now on the hunt for political extremists.
…
Bank of America, the second-largest bank in the country with more than 60 million customers, is actively but secretly engaged in the hunt for extremists in cooperation with the government. Bank of America is, without the knowledge or the consent of its customers, sharing private information with federal law enforcement agencies. Bank of America effectively is acting as an intelligence agency, but they’re not telling you about it.
In the days after the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, Bank of America went through its own customers’ financial and transaction records. These were the private records of Americans who had committed no crime; people who, as far as we know, had absolutely nothing to do with what happened at the Capitol. But at the request of federal investigators, Bank of America searched its databases looking for people who fit a specific profile.
Here’s what that profile was: “1. Customers confirmed as transacting, either through bank account debit card or credit card purchases in Washington, D.C. between 1/5 and 1/6. 2. Purchases made for Hotel/Airbnb RSVPs in DC, VA, and MD after 1/6. 3. Any purchase of weapons or at a weapons-related merchant between 1/7 and their upcoming suspected stay in D.C. area around Inauguration Day. 4. Airline related purchases since 1/6.”
The first thing you should notice about that profile is that it’s remarkably broad. Any purchases of anything in Washington, D.C.; any overnight stay anywhere in an area spanning three jurisdictions and hundreds of miles; any purchase not just of legal firearms, but anything bought from a “weapons-related merchant,” T-shirts included; and any airline-related purchases — not just flights to Washington, but flights to anywhere, from Omaha to Thailand. That is an absurdly wide net.
Bank of America identified a total of 211 customers who met these “thresholds of interest.” At that point, “Tucker Carlson Tonight” has learned, Bank of America turned over the results of its internal scan to federal authorities, apparently without notifying the customers who were being spied upon…
You might have heard that the NIH rescinded its ban on ivermectin as a treatment for corona a few weeks ago.
This was accomplished in large part by the impassioned testimony of Dr. Kory on December 8th, 2020. If you haven’t watch it yet, it is must see TV. The NIH timing is also interesting, isn’t it, because the FDA can’t issue Emergency Authorization for a “vaccine” if viable treatments are already available. But now that that’s done, boom, cheap and effective drug no longer banned. If you have any lingering doubts about the safety and efficacy of ivermectin, you need to listen to Dr. Kory:
By the way, they’ve known as far back as June 2020 that ivermectin is highly effective, safe, and FAST. Goes to work immediately, and wipes out the corona in 48 hours.
I am now hearing first hand reports of doctors refusing to prescribe ivermectin, even though the ban was lifted, and even when specifically requested by the patient/caregiver. If this happens to you, here is the direct link to the NIH statement… click and then print this off in case you need it:
If that still doesn’t work, you’ve always got the option of horse paste. Yes, really. Not tasty, but quite effective.
The best news is, it works as a prophylactic too.
This is what it looks like out of the box. If you were treating a horse, you’d take the cap off, stick the white part into the tooth gap (horses have a gap between their front and back teeth… where the bit goes), and PLUNGE! Mr. Ed is now safe from bugs of all sorts for three months.
Now, if you don’t have a 2500 animal you are using this on, that’s okay. You can divide it into smaller doses by sliding that white ring down the plunger and locking it back in at the weight you want. So now the plunger will only go partway down, until it hits the ring and stops. No need for any math to determine proper dosage.
The dosage administered here is for healthy individuals, as a prophylactic. It’s half as strong as the full dosage. I took two doses, ten days apart. That was three weeks ago, zero side effects. I highly suggest finding some sort of food to wrap up your paste, to make it easier to go down. Mixing it into a glass of juice could also work. Just don’t try it straight, as the aftertaste will make you cry.
I just noticed, horse paste is now “Amazon’s Choice for ivermectin for humans:” Yup.
I have been a city boy all my life, but I did spend one summer on a ranch in Colorado around 5th Grade. I had a horse. His name was Spunky.
I direct your attention to a post today from Mary Ann Kreitzer at Les Femmes. Ask yourself, why would cheap and effective treatments be withheld from the public, right until Emergency Authorization for the “vaccines” was approved. Follow the evidence. What seems to make the most sense? What if the “vaccine” is worse than the virus? Below is an excerpt; but here is a link to the full post: https://lesfemmes-thetruth.blogspot.com/2021/02/are-wuhan-virus-and-covid-vaccines.html
Are the Wuhan Virus and the Covid Vaccines Biological Weapons?
What if we were in an unconventional war with the perfect stealth bioweapon that could attack and kill your enemy in a way that was totally untraceable! That’s what we are experiencing according to Dr. Lee Merritt. She is no conspiracy theorist. She is an expert with long experience in biological warfare.
You absolutely need to listen to her explain what’s happening with the Wuhan virus. The first generation of COVID was particularly virulent. It even killed many doctors and health care workers. But viruses mutate in order to stay alive, even man-made viruses. They can’t survive if they kill all their victims. As the virus has changed, it is less dangerous and fewer people are dying. And even from the beginning IT WAS AND IS TREATABLE! Dr. Merrit points out that we make vaccines for diseases that have no treatment, like smallpox, not for diseases that can be treated, like COVID:
“We actually have a treatment for this that works extremely well. In spite of all the propaganda… and the attempts to dismiss anything they disagree with, we have treatment for this….Why would they hide treatment?….[money — $69 billion vaccine industry]…. It’s much bigger than anything to do with Trump….Why don’t they want you to know [about effective treatments]?….If we are at biowarfare right now as a part of this multi-dimensional warfare, if you have a treatment in your back pocket they cannot terrorize you with…viruses….The way they’ve made this experimental – it’s really not a vaccine, but whatever this thing — this RNA thing — it doesn’t prevent transmission by their own admission.”
Read the article and pay special attention to the discussion of warnings about the vaccine’s links to a second exposure that can cause the body to react with a super immune response that can lead to death. Dr. Mercola, using data from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. discusses it in this article:
According to Kennedy, the same thing happened [super immune response] in 2014 with the dengue vaccine DENVax, which Fauci owns the patent on. “They knew from the clinical trials that there was a problem with paradoxical immune response,” Kennedy says, but they gave it to several hundred thousand Filipino kids anyway.
They got a great immune response from the vaccine, but those exposed to wild dengue got horribly sick and 600 of the children died. “Today, the Philippine government is prosecuting criminally a bunch of the people locally who were involved in that decision,” Kennedy says.
Do the research, people. Fauci and company are lying to you. They also are censoring life-saving information. Dr. Merritt says we are being deliberately denied informed consent…
Ask your doctor if this is fake news, and ask yourself why no one is talking about it. They have been working on a SARS-Coronavirus vaccine since 2002. No dice in 19 years, yet they found one that is “safe and effective” in nine months? Hmmm. Do you understand that it is literally impossible to determine safety in nine months?
The tendency of coronavirus vaccines to harm the patient isn’t new… it is a well-known problem, and has been for years. You don’t have to dig deep into technical lab procedures nor medical terminology; it’s right there out in the open.
In this case, it’s the very title of the study:
The emergence of the disease SARS and the rapid identification of its severity and high risk for death prompted a rapid mobilization for control at the major sites of occurrence and at the international level. Part of this response was for development of vaccines for potential use in control, a potential facilitated by the rapid identification of the causative agent, a new coronavirus[8]–[9]. Applying the principles of infection control brought the epidemic under control but a concern for reemergence naturally or a deliberate release supported continuation of a vaccine development effort so as to have the knowledge and capability necessary for preparing and using an effective vaccine should a need arise. For this purpose, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases supported preparation of vaccines for evaluation for potential use in humans. This effort was hampered by the occurrence in the initial preclinical trial of an immunopathogenic-type lung disease among ferrets and Cynomolgus monkeys given a whole virus vaccine adjuvanted with alum and challenged with infectious SARS-CoV [14]. That lung disease exhibited the characteristics of a Th2-type immunopathology with eosinophils in the lung sections suggesting hypersensitivity that was reminiscent of the descriptions of the Th2-type immunopathologic reaction in young children given an inactivated RSV vaccine and subsequently infected with naturally-occurring RSV[32]–[33]. Most of these children experienced severe disease with infection that led to a high frequency of hospitalizations; two children died from the infection [33], [40], [41]. The conclusion from that experience was clear; RSV lung disease was enhanced by the prior vaccination.
In addition to the RSV experience, concern for an inappropriate response among persons vaccinated with a SARS-CoV vaccine emanated from experiences with coronavirus infections and disease in animals that included enhanced disease among infected animals vaccinated earlier with a coronavirus vaccine[31]. Feline infectious peritonitis coronavirus (FIPV) is a well-known example of antibody-mediated enhanced uptake of virus in macrophages that disseminate and increase virus quantities that lead to enhanced disease [31], [45]. Antigen-antibody complex formation with complement activation can also occur in that infection and some other coronavirus infections in animals. Thus, concern for safety of administering SARS-CoV vaccines to humans became an early concern in vaccine development...
A summary of the SARS-CoV vaccine evaluations in animal models (including the current report) that indicated an evaluation for immunopathology after challenge is presented in Table 2. …Th2-type immunopathology was seen after challenge of all vaccinated animals when evaluation for immunopathology was reported except the study in hamsters with a GSK whole virus vaccine… Thus, a Th2-type immunopathologic reaction on challenge of vaccinated animals has occurred in three of four animal models (not in hamsters) including two different inbred mouse strains with four different types of SARS-CoV vaccines with and without alum adjuvant. An inactivated vaccine preparation that does not induce this result in mice, ferrets and nonhuman primates has not been reported.
“This combined experience provides concern for trials with SARS-CoV vaccines in humans. Clinical trials with SARS coronavirus vaccines have been conducted and reported to induce antibody responses and to be “safe” [29], [30]. However, the evidence for safety is for a short period of observation. The concern arising from the present report is for an immunopathologic reaction occurring among vaccinated individuals on exposure to infectious SARS-CoV, the basis for developing a vaccine for SARS. Additional safety concerns relate to effectiveness and safety against antigenic variants of SARS-CoV and for safety of vaccinated persons exposed to other coronaviruses…”
Today is the Feast of St. Ignatius of Antioch. The Communion verse is his own words at the point of his martyrdom: “I am the wheat of Christ; may I be ground by the teeth of beasts that I may be found pure bread.”
GOSPEL (John 12:24-26)At that time, Jesus said to His disciples, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless the grain of wheat falling into the ground die, Itself remaineth alone. But if it die it bringeth forth much fruit. He that loveth his life shall lose it and he that hateth his life in this world keepeth it unto life eternal. If any man minister to me, let him follow me: and where I am, there also shall my minister be. If any man minister to me, him will my Father honour.”
Ignatius was the second bishop of Antioch after St. Peter. When Emperor Trajan tried to force the Christians of that region to worship the Roman gods, the greatest obstacle to his purpose proved to be the aged bishop of Antioch. Trajan ordered that the intrepid prelate be taken to Rome in the year 107 and then thrown to the lions in the arena. The magnificent letters Ignatius sent to several Christian communities during his journey recall the mysticism of St. Paul’s Epistles. “My yearning is for death. My love has been crucified, and I am not on fire with the love of earthly things. I desire incorruptible love,” he wrote.https://tridentine-mass.blogspot.com/2021/02/saint-ignatius-of-antioch-107-ad-saint.html
Yesterday was the feast (not celebrated due to the Sunday) of St. John Bosco. John Bosco (1815-88) grew up on a Piedmont farm in Italy. While still a student-priest at Turin, he began his mission for the abandoned boy apprentices of the early industrial era, who roamed uncared for on the streets of the city. Priests and Brothers gathered about John Bosco as his work developed, and formed the Salesian Order, named in honor of St. Francis of Sales. He also founded a community of Sisters to aid needy girls. Today, the missioners of John Bosco carry on his ideals of gentleness and charity among poor children in Asia, Africa, and South America, as well as in Europe and North America.
St. John Bosco was given much knowledge through prophetic dreams. The most famous is the one where the pope guides the barque away from shipwreck, to be anchored on two giant pillars, one being the BVM, the other being the Eucharist. Following is a lesser known one, that is quite telling:
One of the prototypical dream-visions St. John Bosco had concerned “The Snake and the Rosary.” In it, he and the boys were in a meadow where a stranger took him to see “a huge, ugly snake, over twenty feet long.” The stranger impelled him to dangle a rope over the snake, which he was quite hesitant to do out of fear. He finally agreed to hold the rope over the menacing snake, and the snake leaped up and “ensnared itself as in a noose.” The snake then furiously writhed to free itself but ended up tearing itself to pieces. The stranger then took the rope and put it in a box saying “watch carefully.” Then, opening the box he saw the rope had taken the shape of the words “Ave Maria” or “Hail Mary.” The man then explained to him that the snake is a symbol of the devil and the Ave Maria rope stands for the Rosary — with which “we can strike, conquer, and destroy all of hell’s demons.”
The dream, however, was not done. In the second part of the dream, the boys of the Oratory were now congregated around the remnants of flesh from the snake. Then, against St. John Bosco’s protests that it was poisonous, some of the boys began to pick up the snake flesh and eat it saying, “It’s delicious!” They promptly crumpled to the ground, with their bodies swelled and hardened like stone. The saint tried vigorously to keep them from eating the meat but they just kept eating it. He questioned the stranger why do they keep eating the meat even though it will kill them? The stranger replied, “Because the sensual man does not perceive the things that are of God!” He pleaded to the stranger that there must be some way to save them. To which, the stranger said there is, by “anvil and hammer.” St. John Bosco then put the boys on an anvil and hit them with a hammer. With that, most of the boys were “restored to life and recovered.” The stranger then explained to him that the anvil and hammer are symbols respectively for Holy Communion and Confession. By Confession we strike away at sin, and by Holy Communion we are sustained.https://catholicexchange.com/snake-rosary-dreams-st-john-bosco
There was a massive landslide south of Big Sur on Friday, and it appears PCH is going to be closed for a bit.
“The emphasis today has ceased to be upon the joys of Christ’s coming or upon the peace and wonder of possessing Him. Now the stress is on what it cost Our Lord to atone for the sins of men, on how much everyone needs His atoning death, and on what everyone can do to have a part in atoning for sin.Every Christian without exception must enter into the warfare between Christ and Satan — the warfare that begins to be dramatized and lived anew in these weeks.” https://tridentine-mass.blogspot.com/2021/01/septuagesima-sunday-saint-john-bosco.html
The following is an excerpt from a longer essay on the liturgical/historical aspects of the season, written by a priest of the FSSP who is known to me. Please pray for him.
Themes: The season of Septuagesima is set aside as a season of preparation for Lent and for the reception of ashes on Ash Wednesday. We are invited by the Liturgy to contemplate the misery of fallen humanity and the fatal consequences of original and actual sin. The Fall (original sin), the Flood (resulting from the malice of actual sin), and the Sacrifice of Melchisedech (a foreshadowing of the Sacrifice of Christ by which He worked our salvation from sin) are presented in the Matins readings over the course of the season. The Gospels and Epistles of the Sundays also touch on the themes of the Passion, salvation, and the necessity of penance. The season also serves as a transition period from the joys of Christmastide to the austerities of Lent.
The numerical value associated with the name of this season, 70, brings to mind the 70 years of exile the Hebrews endured in Babylon. This serves as a reminder that we, too, are living exiled from our heavenly home and invites us to sever our inordinate attachments to the things of this world so that we can seek after those of our true Homeland.
This multiple of 7 also calls to mind the Seven Ages of the World which, according to the ancient Christian tradition, are as follows:
1. The time from the creation of Adam to Noah
2. The time from Noah and the renovation of the earth by the flood to the calling of Abraham
3. The time from Abraham to Moses
4. The period between Moses and David
5. The years which passed between David’s reign and the captivity of Babylon, inclusively
6. The return of the Jews to Jerusalem to the birth and life of Our Savior
7. From Christ’s Resurrection to His Second Coming
The 8th and Final Age is that which follows the General Resurrection and the Last Judgement.
Length of Septuagesima: 17 days including Sundays.
Shrovetide and Forty Hours: “Shrovetide” refers to the three last three days of Septuagesima (Quinquagesima Sunday and the following Monday and Tuesday). The English terms “shrove” and “Shrovetide” come from the verb “to shrive,” which means “to hear confessions.” It was a traditional practice to confess one’s sins before the start of Lent. These are also the final days of Carnival (derived from the Latin “carnem levare,” “taking away of flesh/meat”). Tuesday of Shrovetide, Shrove Tuesday, is also called “Mardi Gras” (French for “Fat Tuesday”) or “Pancake Tuesday” because fats, eggs, and butter in the house had to be used up before Lent began (when the Lenten fasting laws were stricter), and making pancakes or waffles was a good way to do it (this also helps explain the practice of the Easter egg). Unfortunately, the innocent merrymaking kept during this time before entering the exercises of Lent was corrupted by a general excess. In order to provide a pious alternative and to make reparation for these excesses, the Church instituted for this time the Forty Hours Devotion (forty hours of Eucharistic Exposition and Adoration).
Gloria?: Only on feast days. The intermittent absence of the Gloria is a foretaste of its prolonged absence during Lent.
Alleluia?: At the conclusion of First Vespers of Septuagesima Sunday (the Saturday night before), the Easter Benedicamus with double Alleluia is Sung.
After this, the Alleluia will not be heard again in the Liturgy until the Easter Vigil. In some places an Alleluia banner is buried on this day and then dug up on Holy Saturday.
The absence of the Alleluia, which is a heavenly word, serves as a striking reminder that we are in a land of exile and should set our hearts on our heavenly home and that, were it not for the Sacrifice of Christ, which will be solemnly commemorated during Holy Week, the gates of Heaven would, due to sin, still be closed to us. The Alleluia in the Mass is replaced by the Tract and in the opening of the Office by “Laus tibi, Domine, Rex æterne gloriæ! / Praise be to Thee O Lord King of eternal glory!”
Liturgical Color: Violet, as a preparation for Lent, is the color of the season.
Organ and Flowers?: Yes, they are a remnant and reminder of our Christmas joy.
Merck will now focus instead on two therapeutic drugs, termed MK-7110 and MK-4482. MK-7110 allegedly has a “greater than 50 percent reduction in the risk of death or respiratory failure in patients hospitalized with moderate to severe COVID-19,” although full results are not yet published.The company is to receive around $356 million from the U.S. government as part of Operation Warp Speed in order to manufacture 60,000-100,000 doses of the two drugs until June 30, 2021.https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/merck-stops-developing-covid-vaccine-better-immunity-found-through-natural-infection
I mean, if the other vaccines work (Pfizer/Moderna), why would anyone be anticipating a surge in severe patient outcomes this summer? Doesn’t that seem counterintuitive? Why would a company place all their focus on treatment drugs for a disease that is about to be wiped out? What did Merck learn during their own vaccine trials that led them to make the switch, storming toward the betting window like Doyle Lonnegan when he found out Lucky Dan was going to run second…
This. Is. Why. I stumbled across the following last summer, when President Trump was promising a vaccine before the election. If you want to understand how and why all previous attempts at a coronavirus vaccine have failed, and failed spectacularly, read this. The vaccines have a history in causing a supercharged adverse reaction… not when injected, but down the road when the subject encounters the wild virus. It’s not just that the vaccines don’t work, it’s that they cause harm. One of the key terms you will want to research is antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE).
Would you be surprised to learn that coronavirus vaccines have a tendency to kill the patient?
Originally posted on
Imagine my shock to learn that there is a significant risk of worsened illness or higher mortality for vaccines for several past strains of coronavirus, including RSV, SARS, and feline coronavirus. The vaccines end up enhancing the infection by increasing the body’s uptake of the pathogen. It’s almost as if they picked a coronavirus on purpose. The following article is three nine months old, so bear that in mind, but all of the facts remain relevant. Full annotation at the source link.
As they race to devise a vaccine, researchers are trying to ensure that their candidates don’t spur a counterproductive, even dangerous, immune system reaction known as immune enhancement.
The teams of researchers scrambling to develop a coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine clearly face some big challenges, both scientific and logistical. One of the most pressing: understanding how the immune system interacts not only with the pathogen but with the vaccine itself—crucial insights when attempting to develop a safe and effective vaccine.
Researchers need to understand in particular whether the vaccine causes the same types of immune system malfunctions that have been observed in past vaccine development. Since the 1960s, tests of vaccine candidates for diseases such as dengue, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) have shown a paradoxical phenomenon: Some animals or people who received the vaccine and were later exposed to the virus developed more severe disease than those who had not been vaccinated (1). The vaccine-primed immune system, in certain cases, seemed to launch a shoddy response to the natural infection. “That is something we want to avoid,” says Kanta Subbarao, director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza in Melbourne, Australia.
This immune backfiring, or so-called immune enhancement, may manifest in different ways such as antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE),a process in which a virus leverages antibodies to aid infection; or cell-based enhancement, a category that includes allergic inflammation caused by Th2 immunopathology. In some cases, the enhancement processes might overlap. Scientific debate is underway as to which, if any, of these phenomena—for which exact mechanisms remain unclear—could be at play with the novel coronavirus and just how they might affect the success of vaccine candidates.
Some researchers argue that although ADE has received the most attention to date, it is less likely than the other immune enhancement pathways to cause a dysregulated response to COVID-19, given what is known about the epidemiology of the virus and its behavior in the human body. “There is the potential for ADE, but the bigger problem is probably Th2 immunopathology,” says Ralph Baric, an epidemiologist and expert in coronaviruses—named for the crown-shaped spike they use to enter human cells—at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In previous studies of SARS, aged mice were found to have particularly high risks of life-threatening Th2 immunopathology (2). Baric expresses his concern about what that might mean for use of a COVID-19 vaccine in elderly people. “Of course, the elderly are our most vulnerable population,” he adds.
Experts generally agree that animal experiments and human clinical trials of candidate vaccines for COVID-19, which is caused by the novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), should include a careful assessment of possible immune complications before releasing the vaccine to the public. If any of the mechanisms under investigation are indeed involved, they say, the resulting risks are real. “You really have to test a vaccine carefully,” says Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health in Boston, MA, “and not just roll it out because people are clamoring for it with an epidemic underway.”
Upwards of 80% of patients who contract COVID-19 develop only mild flu-like symptoms. “The immune system fights off the virus and people might hardly notice,” says Darrell Ricke, a researcher with the MIT Lincoln Laboratory’s Bioengineering Systems and Technologies Group in Lexington, MA, who posted a preprint in March on the possible COVID-19 vaccine risks (3). “But there seems to be a tipping point: Some individuals appear equally healthy yet can progress to a more severe disease.”
Ricke points to ADE as a potential explanation for this variability. The phenomenon has been reported in some tissue culture and animal studies of HIV, influenza, and SARS. But it is best known for its influence on the immune response to the dengue virus. If a person is infected with one of dengue’s four serotypes, their immune system should confer lifelong protection against that serotype. But as researchers have discovered, if that person is later infected by a different dengue serotype, then they can develop a severe and potentially deadly illness. In fact, according to one study in the 1980s, more severe responses were found to be 15 to 80 times more likely in secondary dengue infections than in primary infections (4). Instead of the antibodies neutralizing encountered dengue viral proteins, they enhance uptake of the virus. The back end of the antibody binds to macrophages, a type of white blood cell, and helps the virus enter those cells and accelerate viral replication.
ADE has posed a similar challenge in the creation of vaccines for infections including dengue and a cat coronavirus, feline infectious peritonitis virus (FIPV). In one study, cats vaccinated against FIPV got sicker than cats left unvaccinated (5). Again, the virus-specific antibody increased the virus uptake by macrophages.
…
Barney Graham, deputy director of the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, in Bethesda, MD, which is collaborating with the Cambridge, MA-based biotech Moderna on a COVID-19 vaccine candidate, also questioned the role of ADE… Graham emphasizes alternative ways in which a vaccine could potentially induce more serious COVID-19 infections: Th2 immunopathology, in which a faulty T cell response triggers allergic inflammation, and poorly functional antibodies that form immune complexes, activating the complement system and potentially damaging the airways.
Both processes were at play as an unfortunate situation unfolded in the 1960s, according to Graham. Researchers at the time were pursuing a vaccine against RSV, the leading cause of severe respiratory illness in infants. In trials of one vaccine candidate, several children who received the vaccine developed a serious illness when infected with the natural virus (7). Two toddlers died. In this case, researchers noticed severe damage and the unexpected presence of lots of neutrophils and eosinophils, both immune cells, in the children’s lung tissue. A similar inflammatory response was seen in animal models of RSV, in which cytokines, a type of immune cell, had invaded and damaged tissue.
“That really killed RSV vaccines for a generation,” says Peter Hotez, a vaccine researcher and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, TX. After more than 50 years of further study, a candidate RSV vaccine is finally back in clinical trials.
When SARS, also a coronavirus, appeared in China and spread globally nearly two decades ago, Hotez was among researchers who began investigating a potential vaccine. In early tests of his candidate, he witnessed how immune cells of vaccinated animals attacked lung tissue, in much the same way that the RSV vaccine had resulted in immune cells attacking kids’ lungs.
Moderna’s mRNA vaccine candidate has progressed at unprecedented speed, thanks in large part to China’s January release of the genetic sequence of the virus. A phase 1 clinical trial began on March 16 in Seattle, WA. “We need to get some answers by next winter so we can at least be more prepared for the winter of 2021–2022,” adds Graham.
But immune enhancement concerns linger. Stanley Perlman, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, agrees that a good T cell response should sidestep enhancement concerns. He is also part of a special committee convened by the World Health Organization (WHO) to address immune enhancement, which they refer to as vaccine enhancement. The committee now aims to define what exactly this enhancement means, what the relevant issues are for a COVID-19 vaccine, and what to do with that information, notes Perlman. A subgroup of the committee is expected to produce a summary report within a few months.
…
Vaccine experts have underscored the need to avoid mistakes from the past, such as the halting of SARS vaccine development. More coronaviruses are likely waiting in wild bats, primates, and rodents, ready to make the jump to humans. “Ecological disruption really increases the odds that we might encounter a pathogen that we’ve never seen before but grows in us just fine,” says Rasmussen.
The normal way Joe Basement shorts a stock is to “borrow” the shares and sell them into the market, betting that the stock will fall, and he will be able to buy the shares back for cheaper, before he has to return them. There is nothing wrong with this, and in fact is part of a healthy market. Putting on a short squeeze (betting against the short), as we have seen the past few days, is also perfectly fine, so long as motives are out in the open, no deception/manipulation.
But we do have a problem. You see, Big Hedge gets to play by a different set of rules. Big Hedge is allowed to naked short, which means they can sell the shares into the market without acquiring them first. You can imagine how this could become problematic? It means that the short float (numbers of shares shorted) can become disconnected from the reality of total shares outstanding. Denninger:
If you want to short a stock you are supposed to first borrow it. That is, ordinary people cannot sell what they don’t have, so if you wish to short you must first borrow that which you want to sell. This is one of the ways brokers make money; they keep all the stock their customers have in “street name” and keep track of who has what. They can (and if supply is limited do) charge you to borrow that stock. There’s nothing wrong with this, provided the stock borrowed is real. It’s one of the things you agree to allow if you have a margin account; as part of the “price” of that privilege the broker can loan your stock to others for the purpose of shorting it. However, since you own it if you demand it back because you wish to sell it the broker either has to find some other set of shares to replace what he lent out of yours or the short-seller is forcibly bought-in at the market because they have to return your shares. If that causes to take a loss, tough crap.
Yes, I’ve been forcibly bought-in before. It’s a risk of the game.
There is an exception to this rule: If you are a market maker then you can short naked, that is, without borrowing first. Why? Because a market maker’s job is, as the name implies, to make the market — that is, to take the other side of whatever the customer wants to do. If I want to be long something in order to do it someone else has to sell it. Now in the physical security market this is easy; there either is or is not what I want to buy out there on the sheet offered by someone else. But in the options market there is no physical security; the entirety of it is synthetic. This means if someone wishes to buy a CALL someone else has to sell one. The MM’s job is to, when necessary, be that other person.
Well, that’s dangerous because naked short options positions are obligations to deliver.
Doctor Tells NBC Americans Should Consider Wearing FOUR Face Masks
Doctor Scott Segal told NBC News that Americans should consider wearing FOUR face masks if they want the most effective protection against spreading COVID-19.
Yes, really.
As we highlighted yesterday, Dr. Fauci advised Americans to begin wearing two masks, saying that it “makes common sense” for more than one layer to be more effective.
However, Fauci was outdone by researchers at Virginia Tech, who said that two face masks only provide 50-75% efficacy and that three masks should be worn to achieve 90% effectiveness.
But why stop at 90 per cent?
According to Dr. Scott Segal, chair of anesthesiology at Wake Forest Baptist Health in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, even that may not be enough.
“If you put three or four masks on, it’s going to filter better because it’s more layers of cloth,” Segal told NBC News.
$370 intraday swing. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. If you don’t understand how short selling works, and how a squeeze on said short works, this chart is a great lesson. But that intraday isn’t the only thing I had never seen before.
It was all fun and games (and legal) until Robinhood unilaterally halted trading of GME for their clients, while the market remained totally open. All the other daytrading brokers (TD, Schwab, etc) followed suit. Basement traders could sell, but couldn’t buy, while the big boys were unrestricted. The free market ended in that moment. Stock peaked at $483, then started to plummet, to the squealing delight of the big hedges who had been burning through capital like Hunter Biden burning through hookers and blow.
As bad as this was, it got worse. As they rode it down like a rented three-legged donkey, they started allowing buying again, but only to close out your position IF YOU WERE ALREADY SHORT. I can’t believe I am typing this.
As bad as this was, it got still worse. At 11:25a.m., as the stock hit the intraday low of $117, Robinhood said “hold my beer” to itself and began arbitrarily selling their clients’ positions without their permission.
Wow, just wow.
I have been out of the market since 2011. I have never regretted it.
