Global Access to Effective Coronavirus Treatments as Important as Vaccines

As breakthrough cases show us, politicians need to broaden their focus from a vaccine focused solution to one that considers therapeutics.

by Jack Rowing for American Greatness

While the science community researches the newly discovered Omicron variant of COVID-19, treatments will become even more necessary where breakthrough cases are detected and those who choose to be unvaccinated are infected. What we already know from the COVID-19 variants is that they are not going away leading to the reality that we will be living with this virus for a long, long time. A vaccine focused approach misses the fact that treatments are going to be needed as a backstop.

The facts surrounding the Omicron variant are emerging day-by-day. CNNreported on November 30, 2021, “there is still a lot we don’t know about the Omicron variant, but scientists are racing to determine its severity, transmissibility and whether it evades current vaccines.” The report indicates that 70 countries have imposed travel restrictions from hot zones in Africa and a growing number of countries outside of Africa are reporting cases. Moderna’s CEO, Stéphane Bancel, worries that the new variant may have an impact on vaccine efficacy while Pfizer’s CEO, Albert Bourla, said that the company is working on an updated vaccine if one is needed. The bottom line is that vaccines have proven to be helpful, yet the COVID-19 pandemic must be fought with vaccines and therapeutics.

High-risk patients who are vaccinated and the unvaccinated need protection in the form of therapeutics to treat symptoms. The renewed calls for a “vaccination-or-bust” approach to global public health and has given fresh oxygen to the notion that wealthy countries continue to hoard vaccines at the expense of poorer nations, like the ones where Omicron has been detected. This thinking continues to ignore the reality that widespread vaccination is not sufficient for stopping the spread of COVID-19, including new variants.

Politicians around the globe need to engage in a robust conversation around the need for vaccine alternatives and treatments regardless of vaccination status and, importantly, equitable global access to those treatments. Just look at the country of Gibraltar with a 100 percent vaccination rate, meaning all eligible adults have been fully vaccinated, yet as recently as 10 days ago, new cases have spiked. In Singapore, 94 percent of the eligible population is vaccinated, nevertheless cases and deaths spiked to record levels in late October. And finally in Ireland, 92 percent of the eligible population is vaccinated, still COVID-19 cases and deaths have doubled since August. These are three nations that have a strong vaccination defense that proved to be not enough to protect their population.

There is much talk in the United States about boosters being needed to help get the vaccinated back to a status where they have strong immunity to COVID-19 like the weeks after they were first vaccinated. Boosters have already been approved for the general population and a newer Omicron booster is already in the works. A myopic focus on a vaccine-only approach ignores the latest science and leaves no room to discuss the need for a wide array of COVID-19 therapies. The existing vaccines have not contained the spread of the coronavirus in the most vaccinated nations. 

Jared Whitley wrote at RealClearHealth on November 18, 2021, that there is an array of treatments, including “Rigel Pharmaceuticals’ Fostamatinib, originally approved by the FDA for the treatment of chronic immune Thrombocytopenia . . . ” This treatment is currently undergoing phase III trials as an immunoregulator for COVID-19, and it is able to throttle the body’s response to infection and reduce the need for oxygen and ventilation in hospitalized patients. Fostamatinib seems to have demonstrated high levels of effectiveness and safety when used on hospitalized patients, including minimizing patients’ time on oxygen and ventilators, and preventing patients from needing ventilators in hospitalized settings altogether. This will serve the equitable goal of global access to effective treatments for those who need them. With the examples of highly vaccinated Gibraltar, Singapore, and Ireland, treatments—like Fostamatinib—will ultimately prove more important than access to vaccines.

Even if every American were fully vaccinated and boosted, this virus would still be with us. Treatments may become even more important than vaccines if we continue to see variants that cause breakthrough cases. Politicians need to broaden their focus from a vaccine focused solution to one that considers therapeutics as one tool in the toolbox to fight a COVID-19 series of variants that will be with us for possibly decades.

Red pill news, and more-Dec 8

 

Too cold out to go out for my taste, plus, it's nighttime. So I'm staying in my warm apartment making this article. :)

Here's tonight's news:

GAC Family news: https://deadline.com/2021/12/jessica-lowndes-jesse-metcalfe-harmony-from-the-heart-movie-gac-family-1234887222/  (this looks like a great Valentine's Day movie!)

Why You Should Come Out of the Closet With Your Conservative Values

Virtually no price paid for coming out of the closet is comparable to the rewards of doing so. There is little as happiness-inducing as having kindred spirits in your life.

by Dennis Prager for American Greatness

I received a phone call on my radio show from a man who said, “Dennis, I’m a gay conservative actor in Hollywood, and it is far easier to come out of the closet as gay than as a conservative.”

That call was in the 1980s.

While the current cancel culture—the firing, humiliation, disparagement, and smearing—of conservatives is exponentially worse today than 30 years ago, it is not new.

As a result, the great majority of Americans who are conservative—that is, about half the country—hide their true beliefs. They fear saying anything that differs with the Left. This would include such reprehensible sentiments as:

With all its flaws, America is the finest country ever made.

Men do not give birth.

There are only two sexes.

A person’s color is the least important thing about them.

The greatest problem in black life is not whites but a lack of fathers.

A man who becomes a woman and then competes in women’s sports is cheating.

Posting to social media a video by a renowned epidemiologist, virologist or medical doctor who asserts that ivermectin and/or hydroxychloroquine with zinc, when used early enough, almost always prevents hospitalization for COVID-19.

The list is far longer than this. But if you think even this list overstates the problem, put any of these statements on any mainstream social media platform and see what happens. See if any relatives drop you from Facebook or even from their lives. See what your employer says or does. See what Twitter or Facebook does to your account.

There are valid reasons to fear publicly differing with the Left.

So, then, what arguments can be offered on behalf of coming out of the closet?

The first is this: For every person you alienate, you will likely bring at least one new, wonderful person into your life.

Putting aside issues of courage, of standing for what is right, of saving America from those working to destroy it, there is a great selfish reason to come out of the closet: kindred spirits, i.e., good people, will discover you.

In 2020, I received an email from a young woman in her second year at Harvard who told me that my book that explains the Left and America, “Still the Best Hope,” had changed her from liberal to conservative. Needless to say, I was intrigued to learn more about her and, as it happened, she lives—as I do—in Los Angeles. So, I invited her to sit in on my radio show.

While speaking to her during commercial breaks, I was impressed enough to ask if she would be willing to describe her political and moral metamorphosis on the radio. I warned her that appearing on “The Dennis Prager Show” and talking about her conservative views would likely lead to some lost friends, angry, if not alienated, relatives, and attacks back at Harvard. I made that case persuasively enough to give her pause and ask, “May I call my mother?”

She stepped out to make the call. When she returned to the studio, she announced, “I’m coming on.”

About half a year later, she made another appearance on my show, and I asked her what happened after her initial appearance.

“I went through two weeks of hell,” she responded.

As predicted, she lost friends she had had since elementary school, some relatives limited their contact with her, and some students back at Harvard regarded her as an indecipherable sellout.

“Then what happened?” I asked.

“Then I entered heaven,” she responded.

She offered two big reasons.

One was that she began to sleep better than she had in years. The other was the number of kindred spirits, all quality people, who reached out to her, some of whom became friends.

Regarding reason one—sleeping better—staying in the closet exacts a serious mental price on a person. One should not think only coming out of the closet exacts a price.

As for the second reason, virtually no price paid for coming out of the closet is comparable to the rewards of doing so. There is little as happiness-inducing as having kindred spirits in your life.

Now, is that worth losing one’s job? If you are sure you will lose your job and no other job paying a comparable salary will be available, only you can answer that question. Similarly, if one of your children will stop talking to you because you are not “woke,” it is not for me to advise you what to do. But there are no other compelling arguments not to come out of the closet.

And there are at least two other arguments for coming out.

One is that you will respect yourself more. And so will others—including, quite possibly, one or more of your children (and your grandchildren, if you have any).

And two: You will help save this country from tyranny. For some, that should suffice.

On Abortion, Courts Should Follow the Science

Consider the empirical evidence of pre-borns’ humanity.

by Lloyd Billingsley for American Greatness

Those who wish to preserve Roe v. Wade seem reluctant to follow the science on abortion’s central question. When it comes to the unborn, are we talking about a human life? As Graham H. Walker notes, the objective answer to this question hinges not on religion or ideology but on empirical evidence. 

“Check the cell DNA,” Walker recommends. “It is tissue of a member of the species homo sapiens. Does it have a distinct individual genetic identity, or does its genetic blueprint match that of other cells comprising a woman’s body? Again, check the DNA: every cell of the pre-born entity carries a genetic fingerprint marking it as an individual distinct from all other individuals in the species. Accordingly, the pre-born entity has its own separate brain, nerve, cardiovascular, digestive, excretory, respiratory, musculoskeletal, immune, endocrine, and reproductive systems. It even has its own blood type, distinct from that of the mother.” 

Add the scientific findings of advanced ultrasonography and “It is hard to avert one’s eyes from the increasingly plain empirical evidence that the unborn is a human life.” Pete Buttigieg doesn’t think so, however, and so the onetime Democratic presidential hopeful appeals to religion. 

“There’s a lot of parts of the Bible that talk about how life begins with breath, ” Buttigieg said in 2019. “The most important thing is the person who should be drawing the line is the woman making the decision.” That would be the decision to terminate a human life. Those pondering that choice might consider the lateChristopher Hitchens. 

Like all orthodox atheists, Hitchens had no use for concepts such as “ensoulment,” taking place at some point after conception and before birth when a person allegedly becomes fully human. For Hitchens, life begins at conception simply because there is no other place it can begin. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was born on March 15, 1933, but Hitchens believed her life actually began at conception.

As the late Nat Hentoff observed, a change of address does not make you a human being. The great jazz writer and civil libertarian opposed abortion as the taking of a human life. So Hentoff believed Ruth Bader Ginsburg was already a human being on March 1, 1933 and long before. Pro-abortionists don’t think so.

Among pro-abortion Democrats, Buttigieg’s view is something of a middle ground. The abortion industry doesn’t think so, with its advocacy of “partial birth” abortion. Former Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, known for appearances in blackface, wants to keep already delivered babies comfortable while the mother makes the decision to end the baby’s life. According to nurse Jill Stanek, when babies survive abortion, the compassionate staff at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, Illinois, send the babies to a “comfort room” to die in peace. 

In this crowd, human beings have no right to live apart from someone else’s wishes for them. Recall that abortion godmother Margaret Sanger colluded with the KKK and saw abortion as a way to reduce the number of brown people in the world.

As Drew Allen explains, if people on the Left acknowledged that the unborn were babies, “abortion would have to be recognized as murder, both immoral and wrong.” That’s why pro-abortionists fight to preserve Roe. “Keeping abortion legal means never having to face the horror of what they have done,”notes Antoinette Aubert. “Those who have committed that sin will do whatever it takes to keep their absolution.”

For Graham Walker, “the paramount question is, and has always been, is what we’re talking about a human life?” To find out, “check the cell DNA.” The genetic fingerprint marks a distinct individual, with separate brain, nerve, cardiovascular and other systems separate from the mother.

The humanity of the unborn is a matter of science. In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court was emanating in the penumbras. The current Supreme Court should follow the light of science. 

SIX JABS: BioNTech CEO Says Omicron Variant May Need Three More Vaccine Doses, Plus Initial Vaccine and Boosters

 https://nationalfile.com/six-jabs-biontech-ceo-says-omicron-variant-may-need-three-vaccine-doses-plus-initial-vaccine-boosters/

Ugur Sahin, the CEO of BioNTech, declared that a new vaccine designed to tackle the Omicron variant would need to be given in three doses, after taking the initial vaccine and booster shots.

Sahin spoke to the media during a press conference discussing the effectiveness of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine against the new Omicron coronavirus variant. In a statement released on Wednesday, the pharmaceutical companies claimed that an initial laboratory study showed that a booster shot of the initial vaccine would give protection against the Omicron variant comparable to the initial COVID-19 strain after two doses.

“Our preliminary, first dataset indicate that a third dose could still offer a sufficient level of protection from disease of any severity caused by the Omicron variant,” Sahin said in a statement. “Broad vaccination and booster campaigns around the world could help us to better protect people everywhere and to get through the winter season.”

However, the statement revealed that BioNTech was working on an “adapted” vaccine for the Omicron variant. Speaking at the press conference, Sahin argued that it was “very clear” that for their Omicron vaccine, people should take three doses, rather than two.

Trending:

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One journalist asked Sahin as to whether people should take a booster shot now after having two doses of the initial vaccine, or whether they should wait for the Omicron specific vaccine, with Sahin saying it was “very clear” that they should take both, meaning that people could potentially have to take six shots in total.

“The data that we have clearly indicates the value of the third dose, and we should be really clear about that, that an Omicron vaccine, even if you start supply in March, would not be broadly available,” Sahin said. “We would start with the first 25, 50, maybe 75 million doses. But the best [way] to ensure better protection would be have to a booster shot.”

Over the weekend, a scientific study was released in which researchers suggest the Omicron variant may share genetic code with the virus responsible for causing the common cold, potentially explaining both why the Omicron variant of the virus is generally described as mild and spreads quickly. The paper is awaiting peer review.

Despite the Omicron variant repeatedly surfacing in vaccinated individuals and scientists maintaining that it is a very mild variant of COVID-19, Democrats including Joe Biden and his key advisors have insisted that even more mass vaccination is the only viable option.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio blamed the Omicron variant on Monday for the city’s implementation of new vaccine mandates on private employers and children.

Omicron Alarmists Delight

Having missed out on the opportunity during the first wave of pandemic panic as they busied themselves with impeachment theatrics, Democrats are ready for it now.

by Adam Mill for American Greatness

“So today, we will make history,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) intoned somberly over the chatter of camera shutters. “When the [House] managers walk down the hall, they will cross a threshold in history delivering articles of impeachment against the president of the United States for abuse of power and obstruction of the House.” One day earlier, on January 14, 2020, science.org had reported on “a new SARS-like virus found in China.” The speaker’s pomp and circumstance notwithstanding, history seems to have taken more interest in the virus than her impeachment farce.

Much like a midwestern driver speeding through the summer darkness, it’s not always immediately clear whether the object approaching one’s windshield is a deer or just another bugsplat in the night. To the thinking of Pelosi and so many others, the impeachment hearing over some phone call between Trump and the Ukrainian president was supposed to be the crash through the windshield of history. In contrast, the virus from the obscure province in China, they figured, would splat harmlessly and with little notice.

It’s worth remembering how difficult it can be to gain perspective of historic events as they fly toward our proverbial windshield. Pelosi, who has an uncanny ability to predict stock performance, usually misses the boat when it comes to assessing the long-term significance of news stories. Thus, when her party raises new alarm over the new Omicron variant (pronounced, “OmyGoDIcantBelieveTHISisHAPPENING-again-icron”), we should judge for ourselves whether we’re in the midst of another bloody mess like the one few foresaw in January 2020.

It’s possible—and I know this sounds crazy—that the Omicron variant actually represents good news. 

Hear me out. Early signs indicate that the Omicron variant lacks the death-dealing symptoms of its predecessors yet spreads much more quickly even than the fast-moving Delta variant. Even the sainted Dr. Anthony Fauci finds himself backpedaling on the reflexive fear-mongering, saying, “[I]t does not look like there’s a great degree of severity to it.” Thus, it seems possible that the Omicron could spread natural immunity quickly and relatively harmlessly through the population and, God willing, we can be done with this.

One South African doctor who helped address the very earliest cases of Omicron reported that the symptoms of Omicron were, “very mild.” This, of course, will not stand. Fear is the currency of power and nobody is going to bend the knee just to avoid an evening of chills and fatigue. 

CNN, seeking to prop up its own relevancy, has again hit the well-worn panic button. On Saturday, Dr. Megan Ranney published an opinion piece describing the Omicron variant as, “dreaded.” Instead of focusing on the mild symptoms, the doctor sowed panic, warning, “It’s not looking good. One preliminary model suggests that Omicron spreads twice as easily as the Delta variant. This is the reason that many of us scientists are warning people to mask up in public and go get their booster.” 

Do masks work? That question will always start an argument. Does the booster work against Omicron? Ranney admitted we don’t know whether boosters have any effect on the new variant.

The Biden Administration has announced new measures to combat the virus—which look a lot like the old measures from 2020. These appear to include plans for booster mandates, “to ensure that the nearly 100 million eligible Americans who have not yet gotten their booster shot, get one as soon as possible.” Again, do the boosters work on Omicron? Stop asking questions, science denier!

Further, the Biden Administration will expand vaccinations of children to protect against Omicron. Are the risks of Omicron to children more or less deadly than the chance of the vaccine inflicting heart damage, i.e. myocarditis and pericarditis? It seems a relevant question but social media nevertheless censors virtually any reporting on side effects as, “misinformation.” Remember when they censored stories about the Hunter Biden laptop? Or the censorship of the Wuhan lab leak origin hypothesis? Or when social media didn’t censor blatant falsehoods about the Kyle Rittenhouse Kenosha shootings but did censor posts supporting Rittenhouse and suppressed efforts to raise funding for the ultimately innocent Rittenhouse? The censorship, ironically, makes misinformation more credible and destroys the clash of ideas that are vital to informing the democratic electorate.

The Biden Administration also plans to “launch a new public education campaign,” to encourage adults to get boosters with a special emphasis on the skeptical “communities of color.” It’s hard to imagine that anyone in America could escape the constant drumbeat of “education” that saturates our airwaves and electronic media.

Clearly, Pelosi misdiagnosed the January 2020 moment in history in which she found herself impeaching then-President Trump for . . . something about a phone call. She’s not going to miss out on the panic this time. She recently urged  Americans, “our message is that we have to respect governments”—meaning vaccine mandates. 

Most reasonably intelligent Americans make choices about risk every day. Mandates and censorship deprive individuals of the ability to make their own informed decisions. Even more troubling, nearly one-in-three healthcare workers who work in the medical field are still refusing to get vaccinated in spite of, presumably, having the best access to information. Indeed, the one-in-three rate appears to be slightly higher than that of the general population. 

Why are so many doctors and nurses “anti-science?” None of this builds confidence in the dictates of bureaucrats who have wrested real power away from elected governments.

 Signing of the ORIGINAL Constitution of the United States of America

Article by Reid Wilson in The Hill

Conservatives prepare new push for constitutional convention

SAN DIEGO — Conservative lawmakers will mount a new push to call a constitutional convention aimed at creating a balanced budget amendment and establishing term limits for members of Congress in an effort to rein in what they see as a runaway federal government.

State legislators meeting at the American Legislative Exchange Council’s policy conference here last week hope to use Article V of the Constitution, which allows state legislatures to call a convention to propose new amendments.

“It’s really the last line of defense that we have. Right now, the federal government’s run away. They’re not going to pull their own power back. They’re not going to restrict themselves. And so this Article V convention is really, in my opinion, is the last option that we have,” said Iowa state Rep. John Wills (R), the state’s House Speaker pro tempore who backs the convention.

At least two-thirds of states must pass a call to force a convention; so far, 15 states have passed the model legislation proposed by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a conservative group that backs free markets and states’ rights.

Bills have passed at least one legislative chamber in another nine states, and bills have been introduced in 17 more states. The 15 states that have passed measures so far all have Republican-controlled legislatures and Republican governors; another nine states totally controlled by the GOP have yet to finalize passage, according to Convention of States Action, a project of the conservative group Citizens for Self-Governance.

Once a sufficient number of states have approved a call to a convention, Congress gets to set the initial rules. Article V says any proposed amendments would have to be ratified by three-quarters of the states to take effect.

“It’s a very high bar, very difficult to do,” said Stuart Adams (R), the president of the Utah state Senate and ALEC’s chairman.

But like many provisions in the Constitution, Article V leaves much open to interpretation: Nothing in its 143 words describes the process by which a convention would be run or the delegates who would meet and vote on potential amendments. The founding document’s requirement that any new amendments be ratified by three-quarters of states was a requirement the last constitutional convention ignored.

“Congress can purport to make whatever rules it wants for the convention. The convention can then throw them in the trash, which is certainly what the convention in Philadelphia did in 1787,” said David Super, a constitutional law expert at Georgetown Law. “There’s no guarantee that they will follow the ratification procedures. The only precedent we do have, they didn’t follow the ratification procedures.”

It is not even clear that state calls for a constitutional convention must be limited to narrow or specific topics. While the ALEC draft legislation mentions a balanced budget amendment and term limits, others have issued calls for a convention meant to tackle limits on Congress’s ability to levy taxes, or gun control, or rolling back the right to an abortion.

Along with the 15 Republican-led states that have approved ALEC’s model legislation, another five Democratic-led states — Vermont, California, Illinois, New Jersey and Rhode Island — have approved calls for a convention focused on campaign finance reform. The group behind that proposal, called Wolf-PAC, was founded a decade ago by the progressive commentator Cenk Uygur.

“What we’re seeing is they’re kind of putting all these applications into one basket,” said Rebecca Timmons, a communications coordinator at Common Cause, which opposes the Article V convention. “There are no guardrails.”

Over the course of the nation’s history, every state except Hawaii has passed legislation calling for a constitutional convention, albeit on different grounds. States had submitted more than 700 calls for conventions through 2010, according to a database maintained by Friends of the Article V Convention, a supportive group. 

A 2010 report by the Congressional Research Service laid out the few occasions in modern history in which states have come close to forcing a convention. In the late 1960s, a push to reform legislative apportionment gained 33 petitions, just one short of the 34 necessary to force a convention. The first push for a balanced budget amendment earned support from 32 states in the 1980s, two short of the necessary mark.

Supporters of the Article V convention say they are not concerned about a runaway circus, in which topics far afield from the planned agenda dominate the discussion. If a convention passed an amendment outlawing abortion, or the Second Amendment, or anything similarly divisive, legislatures in many states would not give final approval, Wills said.

“I don’t know that anything is set in stone. I’d like to see a well-rounded convention. I’d like to see us tackle the problems in general, with one fell swoop,” Wills said in an interview. “Let’s just tackle the problems that we have now and be done with it. Versus, you know, trying to deal with it to the future.”

But there is no guaranteed time frame under which states would have to act on proposed amendments. Anything that might emerge from a convention could potentially lie dormant until one party sweeps to power.

“It’s going to be hanging over the country for the rest of time, waiting for a wave election to give them control over enough states,” Super said. “The only rules are sitting there in Article V.”

 

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/584835-conservatives-prepare-new-push-for-constitutional-convention

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Scared People, Stay Home And Leave Life To The Rest Of Us

Tristan Justice reporting for The Federalist

Ireland will reimpose restrictions on social life this week, ordering nightclubs to close with restaurants reduced to table service only at a distance. Home gatherings will be capped at three households, with mass sports events limited to 50 percent capacity.

The lockdown implemented on Tuesday will last through the holiday season until at least Jan. 9 in the island nation where nearly 90 percent of the eligible population is fully vaccinated. Irish nightlife had only just reopened in October.

“[The] risks associated with proceeding into the Christmas period without some restrictions to reduce the volume of personal contacts is just too high,” said Prime Minister Micheál Martin. Despite near-universal vaccination, almost 5 million residents will be back under lockdown for an entire month.

The return of similar restrictions in spite of compliance with face masks and vaccines are already on their way to the United States. Oregon, with a nearly 65 percent vaccination rate boasting one of the highest in the nation, is about to become the first to make its state mask mandate permanent as liberal enclaves of the country embrace a permanent pandemic.

Five other states and Washington D.C. still maintain mask mandates regardless of vaccination status, according to a MultiState tracker, and 14 mandate vaccines on specific private-sector industries. As cases rise and new variants threaten to undermine vaccine-immunity, harsher restrictions are guaranteed to follow.

The United States is far from immune from the hysteria that’s gripped the globe, with states only saved from the same measures in Europe and Australia in thanks to grassroots opposition emanating from within the Republican Party. Even then, too many Republican governors have refused to fight the lockdowns.

An anxious population infected with media-induced neurosis is demanding restrictions become a permanent and mandatory fixture of American life to the detriment of their neighbors. In September, Gallup released results of an August survey that found 92 percent of 3,000 U.S. adults polled overstated the risks of hospitalization for the unvaccinated.

“62 percent overstate the risk for vaccinated people,” the group reported.

The survey was completed as a follow up to research from the Franklin Templeton-Gallup Economic Recovery Study last published December. It found Americans of all political stripes dramatically overestimated the probability of severe outcomes from COVID-19.

Five-thousand U.S. adults were asked, “As far as you know, what percentage of people who have been infected by the coronavirus needed to be hospitalized?” Only 18 percent said between 1 to 5 percent, the accurate answer at the time.

“A higher percentage of Republicans (26 percent) gave the correct response than did Democrats (just 10 percent),” Gallup reported.

The surveys’ results is a stunning indictment of American media. Reporters have likely become similarly infected by undue panic feeding their hysterical reporting.

Meanwhile, it seems nobody wants to tackle the underlying epidemic of obesity, a condition affecting at least 42 percent of the population that triples one’s risk of hospitalization with COVID.

True pandemic preparedness begins with a commitment to healthier lifestyles, so that if a coronavirus variant does emerge to evade vaccine immunity, a healthier population runs far less risk of overwhelming hospitals. After all, that was always the justification for lockdowns. In Ireland, more than 60 percent of its residents are overweight or obese, ranking it among the highest in Europe.

Heaven forbid scared people either stay home and exercise rather than demand the world come to a grinding halt over their misguided anxiety.

Instead, the lockdowns have become far too comforting for far too many. A basic internet search for “anxious return to normal” will turn up countless articles from legacy publications either profiling the anxious, counseling others over normalcy’s return, or outright arguing against it.

People conditioned to stay home now see no issue with ordering others to do the same perpetually, seemingly oblivious to their own demonstrated ability to do just that.

Pfizer CEO Gives the Game Away With Comments on 'Omicron' COVID-19 Variant

Bonchie reporting for RedState

With the emergence of the Omicron COVID-19 variant, world leaders have largely responded as you’d expect — with mass hysteria and tripling down on the same failed mitigation measures that didn’t work the last time. Yet, the reality of Omicron has done nothing to justify the reactions we’ve seen.

As South African doctors have shared, this variant appears to be very mild. As of this moment, I’m not even aware of anyone who has died from it, though, with pre-existing conditions being a factor, it’s certain someone eventually will. Still, Omicron does not appear to be the threat it was presented as.

That’s left big pharma scrambling. What if this new variant doesn’t require a new vaccine? What if it spreads far and wide enough that people don’t bother getting the current vaccine? That would mean a lot of lost future income, and they can’t have that. Thus, you get absolute idiocy like this from the CEO of Pfizer.

It sure seems like Albert Bourla is suggesting that it’d be better if the Delta variant, which has killed hundreds of thousands of people, stuck around instead of being supplanted by a variant that is far less deadly.

Frankly, I find his logic to be absolutely asinine. Why should a largely baseless fear of “mutations” override the information we have now that says Omicron is less deadly? Further, Bourla’s commentary eschews the fact that viruses often become less deadly as they evolve. That’s not always true, but it is the common path and it’s the one COVID-19 appears to be on based on the data we have so far.

Given that, the risk from Delta almost certainly outweighs any speculatory concern that some new super-variant could emerge, and common sense says that if COVID-19 is going to be endemic, and that’s a certainty, then humanity would benefit from a far less deadly strain becoming dominant. Yet, here’s the CEO of Pfizer saying the opposite. Are you paying attention yet?

At the end of the day, Bourla is a salesman. If COVID-19 evolves into a mild cold as Omicron may end up being, then we won’t need vaccines anymore, and that will represent the end of the gravy train for Pfizer. That’s the game here for these pharmaceutical giants — to keep that (mostly taxpayer-funded) coronavirus money flowing for as long as possible by any means necessary. In this case, that means Bourla making stupid claims that it’s better to have a more deadly variant of COVID-19 spreading around.

Profit rules all, and I’m fine with that on some level. Obviously, without the profit motive, the United States wouldn’t lead the world in the research and development of drugs and vaccines. Yet, we should also keep a clear eye anytime big pharma speaks. There’s a reason Pfizer has never publicly acknowledged natural immunity. They have one motivation, and it’s not to tell you the truth.