I had not heard of South African doctor Shankara Chetty prior to this interview, but since the beginning of the pandemic he claims to have successfully treated over 7000 Covid patients with widely available and cheap antihistamines and steroids. What stands out in the interview is his basic approach to the pandemic: see the patient in person and take time to understand the progression of the disease. This stands in stark contrast to the approach in Europe and North America where we are suffering from an obsession with data and randomized clinical trials while completely ignoring the efforts of medical innovators like Dr. Chetty.
A discussion you won’t see on the CBC
Grab a coffee and take the time to listen to this group of experts engaging in the kind of open discussion that we desperately need to have today. Geert Vanden Bossche is one of the participants. The most common observation is that today’s mass vaccination program is completely ignoring the role that innate immunity needs to play in the fight against Covid.
“…it worries me that these leaky, incomplete, sub-optimal vaccines are immunotherapy of an unknown kind of consequence…”
Masks work!…until they don’t…
With airline flights now being barred from various nations in the latest knee jerk response to avoid importing the latest Covid variant, (which is apparently already here), this news item inadvertently destroys the case for mask usage.
The traveller from South Africa used a mask with a valve that doesn’t filter exhaled air and may have transmitted the virus to his neighbour when the hotel room door was open, a health department spokesperson said Friday.
As the mass vaccination program lurches to another grandiose failure, it would not be a surprise to see mask rules mandating the use of industrial respirators. Who knows what absurdity is next at this point?
A firing offense?
How long will it be before this doctor gets turfed for challenging the standard Covid narrative? If she manages to avoid dismissal, that may be an indication that there is a little more light at the end of this very dark tunnel. She’s definitely pro-vaccine, but still recognizes the bizarre contradictions and futility of many aspects of current Covid strategy.
Politicians need to abandon the quixotic quest for COVID zero, making many of the interventions intended to stop virus circulation irrelevant. Public mask-wearing, social distancing etc. were only going to defer, not eliminate, transmission.
Society also needs to shift how it sees the unvaccinated. The prevailing opinion, including among many of my colleagues, is that the unvaccinated pose a threat to others. Since the vaccinated are still likely to be infected and transmit disease, with similar viral loads as those who are unvaccinated, this is not entirely true.
Where the Fact Checkers mysteriously vanish….
Mention Ivermectin and you’ll be denounced as a quack by the MSM, but advocate “balance” between modern and “traditional” medicine and you’ll be celebrated as some sort of hero.
Whitebean and Constant developed a plan, which included an intense healing sweat before Whitebean started chemotherapy. She stayed in contact with Constant through her chemotherapy, but the real traditional healing began once it ended.
And when the western treatment was done, she would “detox” and regain her strength with traditional remedies.
“What we did for Roxann was we had four sweats in four days. Before she went in we made medicine for her to drink, and this medicine is to go into this area where she’s sick, to clean her out from inside,” said Constant.
The 4th Wave
A forth wave is hitting Europe, but it’s not just Covid cases. It also has to do with a formal repeal of the principle of informed consent.
Germany’s federal tourism commissioner Thomas Bareiß has now said the worsening situation makes it clear that compulsory vaccination is ‘unavoidable’.
Bareiß told DPA news agency: ‘In retrospect, it was wrong not to see that right from the start. The hope at that time is understandable, but it was not realistic.’
The other wave hitting Europe is a descent into violence over the endlessly repetitive Covid lockdown cycle.
Last night, Europe descended into a second night of violent carnage amid the return of strict lockdown rules aimed at curbing rising rates of Covid infection.
Thousands of people took to Amsterdam’s central Dam Square and the Hague on Saturday, a day after the ‘orgy of violence’ during the Rotterdam riots that saw seven people injured. Police said seven arrests were made on Sunday after youths set streets ablaze and shot fireworks at officers.
98% effective!
Waterford, Ireland, with a 99.5% adult vaccination rate, now has the dubious honor of also having the highest Covid infection rate in the country.
Naturally, the news item trots out the usual host of experts who are trying to explain this conundrum without challenging the standard narrative.
“…function of vaccines is to prevent illness and death…” The immunologist should tell that to the fully vaccinated guy who spent 66 days in hospital.
The culprit? Why, that’s due to the “…decrease in people taking mitigation measures like keeping 2 meters from each other and wearing masks…” In other words, when Covid cases rise in fully vaccinated populations, that’s because those people foolishly attempted to return to a normal state of existence. How dare they!
Think of the children!
If it takes a village to raise a child, it’s doubtful that the quality of childcare will be enhanced if the village is drowning in exponentially rising debt. The fact that two levels of government have reached an agreement on this multi-generational millstone is nothing to be celebrated.
The agreement follows the outline of agreements reached with several other provinces that call for daycare fees to be cut in half next year, and reduced to an average of $10 per day in five years. It includes the creation of more than 40,000 new spaces and commits the federal government to spending $3.8 billion over the next five years.
House arrest for the “unclean”
I suspect that Canadian authorities will be watching events in Austria quite closely over the next few weeks, probably with smiles on their faces as they rub their hands with glee. Now that the vaxxpass system is failing, they will be looking for ways to hit those they view as expendable cattle even harder.
Austria has already banned the unvaccinated from going to restaurants, cinemas, ski lifts and hairdressers, but things are about to get even tougher in Upper Austria.
The province is introducing a lockdown for the unvaccinated.
The chancellor says this means that people who have not been vaccinated won’t be able to leave home, unless it is for essential reasons like going to work, buying food or exercise.
Green Utopia
At the Glasgow confab, Justin unveiled a whole host of ideas for destroying an economy. When confronted with the obvious problem that some nations not fully committed to economic suicide might gain an advantage over those that are, Justin is proposing a special tax that he believes can somehow convince the recalcitrant few to put a gun to their own head as well.
[Trudeau’s] government has begun consultations exploring the idea of imposing “border carbon adjustments” to ensure a level playing field, where imported goods are subject to the same carbon costs as domestically produced goods.
Trudeau pointed to aluminum as an example of the problem, arguing that Canada has invested heavily in producing “some of the cleanest aluminum in the world” but is competing with cheaper aluminum produced elsewhere “in dirtier ways with significantly lower labour standards.”
Solidarity with the enemy
The reason that Erin O’Toole is unable to mount a solid attack on the prospect of a Liberal/NDP coalition is not because of MP Marilyn Gladu, but because he basically agrees with everything that the coalition is proposing. On the energy front, does O’Toole believe his carbon tax regime, as opposed to that of the coalition, would not obliterate oil patch jobs?
“This coalition will create billions in new spending that will further drive up inflation even more,” O’Toole said…. A Liberal-NDP coalition would shut down Canadian energy and resource sectors, eliminating thousands of jobs,…
It’s a start
We’ll see how long O’Toole tolerates this latest development, but considering that he did not do as well as hoped in the last election, these MPs will hopefully be allowed to run with this issue.
Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu says she and other colleagues are forming what she calls a “mini-caucus” within the existing Tory caucus to advocate for Canadians concerned about the impacts of vaccine mandates.
Nothing to see here…
With focus of the world’s mainstream media and their political and intellectual cohorts almost exclusively being on Covid or climate, its not surprising that news like this flies well under the radar.
Is it 2008 in the Chinese property market? Will the rot spread, given the deep ties between the Chinese economy and the rest of the world?
The relentless contagion inside China’s property sector pushed the country’s dollar high-yield bonds to fall for a ninth straight day Tuesday after tumbling nearly 9 cents on the dollar in October, closing out the worst two-month slide in a decade. The average yield in the dollar junk bond index touched a record 21.5% on Tuesday, surpassing even the Sept 2011 repo crisis highs.
Not 100%, but….
In what seems to be a remarkable turn of events, the CBC actually ran this story without attempting to hide a whole lot.
The cases are linked to a three-on-three league for men over the age of 50, who had been playing at the rink for several years. All are considered breakthrough infections because they were among fully vaccinated people, the health unit said.
“I’m still trying to figure out how this all sort of happened.”
The medical authorities may have a lot of “figuring” to do over the next few months. Perhaps they could start by walking back the widely accepted but absolutely false idea that vaccination means you cannot spread Covid. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard that since last spring I’d be considering early retirement.
Central planners gotta centrally plan…
Rather than admit that failures are a feature, not a bug, of centrally planned systems, some Saskatchewan doctors are talking about putting their careers on the line for socialized medicine.
She says she’s heard from a lot of other people in her profession who share her frustration over ignored recommendations from doctors.
Would those “recommendations” involve near-permanent dictatorial powers for medical professionals to manage vast sectors of the economy for which they have neither understanding nor expertise? Only someone with a god-complex would be surprised that such measures garner at least some pushback.
Consuming capital
If you, like most, are wondering how anyone can afford a house these days, here’s part of the answer: a multi-generational transfer of wealth. Absent that, the housing boom could never have gotten to the point where prices behave like a homesick angel.
The issue is not that capital is being transferred. Rather, the problem is that capital currently deployed to finance productive ventures where it earns dividends and income is being cashed out to purchase a consumption good.
So where do parents get the money? Based on data from Equifax, the study estimates that only 5.5% use debt to finance gifting, with the highest share in Toronto and Vancouver.
It would appear that most is coming from parents’ savings, which grew during the pandemic, but also perhaps from grandparents.
The vaccines are “working”….
A vaccine proclaimed as 98% effective combined with a mass vaccination program was supposed to allow a return to normal existence. Judging by what is now happening in the UK, the window for normal existence may be closing rapidly, less than 4 months after most restrictions were lifted.
The culprit? That could never be a vaccine whose effectiveness was deliberately oversold to the public. Rather, the problem arose when the failings were not covered up with the permanent imposition of a bewildering myriad of restrictions on normality. The vaccination program is starting to resemble an inept worker whom the authorities must “protect” from the consequences of his own incompetence, instead of demanding accountability:
“We have the vaccines and we know which public health protections are effective … but the government has removed all public health protections to protect the vaccination programme.”
A gold standard
When fiat currency fails, the most marketable commodity will find its way back for widespread use as money.
…in the barber shops and restaurants and hotels that constitute the main strip of one dusty little outpost after another, you’ll find prices displayed in grams of gold.
The collapsing economy
Squeezed as they are between green energy boondoggles, Covid restrictions and zero percent interest rates, its no surprise that companies like CNH are shuttering production facilities.
The company said it will shut down several of European agricultural, commercial vehicle and powertrain manufacturing facilities in response to ongoing disruptions to the procurement environment and shortages of core components, especially semiconductors.
A bonfire of capital
As the rot of the economy’s capital structure accelerates, expect more, not less, of problems like these in manufacturing.
In the former Soviet Union, unfinished equipment rolling off the assembly line was the norm, not the exception. The negation of competent production management has now arrived in the west:
CNH estimates that supply chain constraints ranging from increases in freight to higher raw materials prices have cost the company $1 billion.
That lag has forced the company to turn some factory parking lots into storage lots. At CNH’s combine plant in Grand Island, Nebraska, hundreds of unfinished combines sit outside, waiting for parts.