facts

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW ∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞≈≈≈≈≈≈!!!

Please note: This posting does not mean that Gus is a Trump supporter. He's not a Biden supporter either. As usual the US shoots themselves in the head for having to choose between two dorks — one a deceiving old fool and the other one being a deceiving old fool. Take your pick. The media chose for you — by hiding the truth about Biden. Easy choice.

Note: the figures in the cartoons are CORRECT. For Trump this was the number of deaths in the last two years of his presidency and for Biden the figures are for the first 10 months of his presidency...

More than 800,000 Americans have now died from the coronavirus, the highest national death toll from the global pandemic. 

It comes as the US reached 50 million confirmed cases of Covid-19 on Monday. 

Most deaths have been recorded among the unvaccinated and the elderly, and more Americans died in 2021 than in 2020.

The US is again seeing deaths rising at an alarming rate.

The last 100,000 deaths came in just the past 11 weeks, a quicker pace than any at other point aside from last winter's surge.

"The waves of illness that we're seeing will continue until the population-level immunity is high enough to prevent them. Quite simply, we're not there yet," said Dr Keri Althoff, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-59645307

Read from top.

MORE PEOPLE HAVE DIED UNDER JOE BIDEN'S SHORT PRSIDENCY THAN under Trump's...

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW...........

Welcome to President Joe Biden’s America: record-high inflation, an ongoing crisis on the southern border, and the rapid expansion of the national debt, all while giving up on his main campaign promise to shut down Covid-19.

The numbers, whether metrics from the U.S. economy or public polling, don’t bode well for Biden, the soon-to-be octogenarian heading into just the second year of his presidency. I don’t want to get out over my skis, given President Donald Trump seemed to have a clear path to reelection this time just two years ago, but Republicans seem poised to make big gains in this year’s midterms. If a red wave crashes this November, Democrats will try to blame the DINOs, namely Sens. Manchin or Sinema, but the blame falls squarely on Biden’s shoulders for his abysmal record.

Preliminary data shows that the cost of consumer goods rose about 7 percent in 2021. The 7 percent increase in prices set a new record for the U.S. in the 21st century, which prior to last year had not eclipsed 4 percent . In fact, one has to go back all the way to 1981 to find an inflation rate higher than the one Americans experienced last year. At the time, the U.S. was in the midst of a recession caused, in part, by then-Chair of the Federal Reserve Paul Volcker’s decision to increase short-term interest rates for an extended period of time to bring the stagflation of the Carter years to heel, which it eventually did.

Biden’s first year also added about $2 trillion to the national debt, which already sat at a staggering $27.8 trillion when he took office. This increase was thanks primarily to Biden’s misdirected Covid relief and an infrastructure package filled with progressive priorities, rather than the infrastructure improvements the American working class actually needs.

Furthermore, 1.78 million migrants were apprehended at the southern border, and 1 million migrants have been expelled from the U.S. under Title 42, the health regulations put in place by the Trump administration to turn away migrants in March 2020 because of Covid-19, in FY 2021. At first glance, this might seem like a silver lining, but the increased number of expulsions and apprehensions have been caused by the Biden administration’s rhetoric and policies that encouraged a record-breaking number of migrants to seek entrance to the United States. The 1.78 million migrant apprehensions is nearly quadruple that of the 458,000 apprehensions in 2020, and nearly double that of the 977,508 apprehensions in 2019, which saw a migrant crisis of its own.

The migrant surge has contributed to a record-number of pending cases in immigration courts, which now stands at 1.6 million. When Trump left office, the immigration case backlog was 1.3 million cases.

Arguably, Biden’s foremost campaign promise was that he would “shut down” Covid-19, which killed just over 385,000 Americans in 2020. However, less than a year into his presidency, Biden openly admitted his administration would not be able to deliver on that key promise. “There is no federal solution,” to Covid-19, Biden told a group of governors during a late-December phone call. Last year, more than 450,000 Americans died of Covid-19, despite the proliferation of vaccines. It’s astonishing how quickly Biden admitted defeat in the face of Covid-19. For comparison, President George H.W. Bush took nearly two years to renege on his promise of “no new taxes.” That didn’t end well for the 41st president.

Even Biden’s defenders in the corporate media have been forced to admit the first year of Biden’s presidency, which was supposed to deliver the nation from the darkness of the Trump years, has been an unmitigated disaster. “Joe Biden enters the second year of his presidency looking for a reset after a tumultuous first 12 months,” one CNN headline read. A NBC News headline proclaimed, “Biden ends first year as president with ‘bleak, discouraging’ marks from the public,” announcing the findings of a new NBC News poll. Another headline, surely intended to be the most damning of Biden’s first year, from Politico, read, “Biden’s first-year report card: Just like Trump’s.”

Of course, once the 2022 election cycle is in full-swing, Biden’s defenders are sure to fall in line. But Biden’s first year seriously calls into question his viability as candidate for Democrats come 2024. This isn’t a cheap shot at Biden’s mental faculties or age (he’d be 82 at the start of his second term), though those considerations merit serious discussion. No, this is purely based on the president’s performance. Rumors are already circulating that Harris, Buttigieg, or Warren might replace Biden as the Democrats’ frontman (or woman). If Republicans retake the House, and possibly the Senate, could Biden benefit from the low expectations that a divided government brings? It’s possible. But for now, I’m thinking: One year down, three to go.

Read more:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/state-of-the-union/one-year-in-joe-bidens-america/

Note: A little war with Russia might help Biden's cheeks to get back some colour...

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW %%%%%%%%%∞∞∞∞∞!!!!

US President Joe Biden on Thursday mourned the 1 million American lives lost to the pandemic, saying each of the dead represented "an irreplaceable loss'', leaving behind a family, a community, and a nation "forever changed".

Biden marked the grim milestone in remarks opening the second Global Covid Summit, a virtual gathering of world leaders, nongovernmental organizations and private sector companies hosted by the White House.

"One million empty chairs around the family dinner table. Each irreplaceable, irreplaceable losses," Biden said in recorded remarks from the White House. "Each leaving behind a family, a community, forever changed because of this pandemic. My heart goes out to all of those who are struggling."

"As a nation, we must not grow numb to such sorrow. To heal, we must remember. We must remain vigilant against this pandemic and do everything we can to save as many lives as possible, as we have with more testing, vaccines and treatments than ever before," he said.

Biden ordered flags to be flown at half-staff at the White House and all public buildings, grounds, military posts and naval vessels until sunset on May 16 to honor the dead.

"This pandemic isn't over," the president declared. He said that tackling COVID-19 "must remain an international priority".

"This summit is an opportunity to renew our efforts to keep our foot on the gas when it comes to getting this pandemic under control and preventing future health crises," Biden said.

Separately, and ahead of addressing the summit, Biden urged Congress to deliver funds needed for the next phase of the pandemic, including for testing, vaccines and therapies. That lack of funding is a US reflection of faltering resolve that jeopardizes the global response to the pandemic, he said in a statement.

Biden has requested an additional $22.5 billion. US lawmakers had reached a $10 billion deal, but the additional tranche of funding has been delayed over various concerns.

In addition to the 1 million Americans, the coronavirus has killed at least 6.2 million people globally since it emerged in late 2019, according to figures compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

The precise toll of the pandemic may never be known. Some people who died while infected were never tested and aren't represented in the data. Others, while having COVID-19, may have died for another reason such as cancer, but were still counted as COVID deaths.

More people died in two years of the COVID-19 pandemic in the US than in 40 years of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

The toll dwarfs the estimated 675,000 deaths during the 1918-19 Spanish Flu outbreak. The 1 million is also more than the number of American deaths from World War I, World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War combined.

The coronavirus ranks behind only heart disease and cancer as America's leading causes of death over the past two years. By comparison, the flu season of 2017-18, one of the deadliest in recent decades, claimed an estimated 52,000 lives.

A recent Gallup poll has shown the public's concern about the virus has declined since the Omicron wave. In March, 63 percent of respondents said the COVID-19 situation is improving, a jump from 20 percent in January, with worries highest about new variants and unvaccinated people.

READ MORE:

https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202205/13/WS627d7137a310fd2b29e5c535.html

READ FROM TOP.

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW.

Dr. David Gortler

Back in November 2021, the White House paid drugmaker Pfizer nearly $5.3 billion for 10 million treatment courses of its experimental Covid-19 treatment, Paxlovid, an antiviral combination of nirmatrelvir and ritonavir.  

Ritonavir was developed in 1989 and nirmatrelvir was developed in 2020. In other words, Paxlovid wasn’t developed from scratch to treat Covid-19; the compounds already existed.  

In December 2021, Pfizer claimed initial study findings showed that Paxlovid cut the risk of hospitalization and death by nearly 90 percent in people with mild to moderate coronavirus infections.  Without context this statement is grossly misleading. Just about everyone who gets the existing Covid-19 mutation will have mild or moderate disease, yet the drugmaker limited its study to people who were unvaccinated and faced the greatest risk from the virus due to age or health problems, such as obesity. An updated, more recent analysis from 1,153 patients (out of a possible 2,246 patients) showed a lackluster, non-significant 51 percent relative risk reduction.  A sub-group analysis of 721 vaccinated adults with at least one risk factor for progression to severe Covid-19 showed a non-significant relative risk reduction in hospitalization or death (treatment arm: 3/361; placebo: 7/360).

According to Pfizer’s official June 14 press release, results from the Phase 2/3 of the amended Paxlovid EPIC-SR (Evaluation of Protease Inhibition for COVID-19 in Standard-Risk Patients) study showed, with my emphasis:  

• The novel primary endpoint of self-reported, sustained alleviation of all symptoms for four consecutive days was not met.  
• Pfizer will cease enrollment into the EPIC-SR trial due to low rate of hospitalization or death in the standard-risk population.

Tucked within Pfizer’s press release was the following financial nugget for investors: “The results from these additional analyses are not expected to impact Pfizer’s full-year 2022 revenue guidance.” The reason for that is: Pfizer already has $5.3 billion in hand from taxpayers, and has locked in “blockbuster status” (defined as one billion dollars in sales of a single drug). 

In addition to the $5.3 billion already committed, in January the U.S. announced a confidential additional “commitment” to order an additional 10 million doses (at the price of 5.3 billion dollars more, for a total of $10.6 billion), giving Pfizer highly sought-after “super blockbuster status” (defined as 10 billion dollars in sales of a single drug). The administration remained “firmly committed to proceeding with the [additional] purchase,” according to an April 2022 Bloomberg report.

According to Bloomberg, the White House initially sought $22.5 billion in new pandemic funding. Democrats were prepared to include just over $15 billion in a broad government-spending bill earlier this year, but it was removed amid disputes with Republicans about whether it should be offset by spending cuts elsewhere in the government. 

The $10 billion Senate bill included a requirement that at least half the money must be spent on therapeutics, but why did Biden gamble every dollar on one single drug from one single drugmaker? Why was Pfizer chosen to satisfy the therapeutics clause by itself?  

As we have seen, FDA Emergency Use Authorizations (EUAs) don’t always work out as they should, but in this case, it was because of some manipulative action by Pfizer and a risky bet by the Biden White House.  

That’s because with no public mention, Pfizer had secretly lowered its own bar following its EUA after the White House had committed to purchasing $5.3 billion dollars of product. Pfizer stated:  

Following the Emergency Use Authorization of Paxlovid for individuals at high risk of progression to severe COVID-19, the protocol was amended to exclude high-risk individuals and allow enrollment of patients without risk factors for progression to severe COVID-19 who were either unvaccinated, or whose last COVID-19 vaccination occurred more than 12 months from enrollment. (emphasis added) 

This way, Pfizer was able to administer its drug to a less severely ill and healthier population in hopes of having a superior efficacy signal and a decreased safety signal, but it still failed to show an adequate clinical effect on any of its prospective protocol-established endpoints.  

In order to amend the protocol following FDA submission, Pfizer would have had to communicate with the FDA formally and in writing.  A former Pfizer non-scientist executive, Patrizia Cavazzoni, now the head of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, would have had to approve the change. Interestingly, Pfizer’s protocol amendment was kept under such tight wraps that it was not public knowledge until the Pfizer June 2022 press release. About a week prior, Yale University’s YaleMedicine had even published a lengthy article on the benefits of Paxlovid, quoting the outdated original protocol endpoints.  On June 7, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla had announced plans to spend over $100 million to increase Paxlovid production and committed to hiring hundreds of new employees to maintain appearances with the White House and Pfizer investors.  

Paxlovid is not the first example of “secret” and scientifically questionable decisions made outside of standard channels at the FDA under Patrizia Cavazzoni’s watch. About a year ago, secret meetings surrounded Biogen’s multi-billion-dollar monoclonal-antibody drug aducanumab (Aduhelm) for Alzheimer’s disease, which had failed to meet both safety and efficacy standards in every study it had attempted.  Following contentious and potentially illegal and unethical back-channel meeting with Biogen executives, however,Biogen’s drug was approved by Cavazzoni against advice from FDA advisory-committee members and FDA employees.  Cavazzoni affirmed her decision by writing a comically inadequate 1.5 page justification, which mostly quoted others’ opinions and did nothing to address their debatable hypotheses. Nearly every medical commentator scolded Cavazzoni’s approval of aducanumab, calling it things like “false hope,” “bad medicine,” “disgraceful,” “dangerous” “a disaster” or “a new low.” The circumstances surrounding Pfizer’s Paxlovid clinical outcomes are similarly awful.  

But unlike Biogen, I couldn’t even find any online record of a meeting by Cavazzoni justifying the protocol amendment for Paxlovid, let alone an adequate one. Pfizer would have had to provide detailed reasoning in its protocol amendment and the FDA kept those requests and changes a secret. It’s just another example of the FDA’s total lack of transparency. 

I opined in an op-ed a year ago that Cavazzoni would continue to make questionable decisions due to her close ties and extended history of employment in Big Pharma. Most of Cavazzoni’s career shows her working as a non-scientist Big Pharma executive. She also has a conspicuous lack of basic scientific or research experience for holding such a critical public health position. Unfortunately, I was correct, but it’s the taxpayers who will bear the costs of the failed Paxlovid gamble.

Why did the White House cut a blank check of taxpayer dollars before obtaining conclusive findings?  

It’s not as if Pfizer is hurting for money or that Americans don’t already have multiple inexpensive, generic alternatives with voluminous peer-reviewed evidence behind them, covering decades and hundreds of thousands of patients. Still, the Biden White House ignored the historic wisdom of the Proverbs of Ahiqar, choosing to “throw away two in the hand (i.e., hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin) for one in the bush (Paxlovid).”  

We have known for some time that the dominant mutated variants of Delta and Omicron (which comprise >99 percent of current cases, per the CDC) have mostly produced mild infections. Deaths and hospitalizations from Covid are down, because most people only get minimal to moderate cold-like symptoms these days. Even Johns Hopkins shows all-time record lows in Covid-19-related hospital ICU admissions.  

Pfizer may have exaggerated its experimental product and been deceptive about changing its protocol without informing the public. By trusting Pfizer and making a considerable gamble with taxpayer funds, the White House flushed $5.3 billion taxpayer dollars largely down the drain. The White House is now on the hook for an additional $5.3 billion—for a total of $10.6 billion—for an ineffective Covid-19 treatment that Pfizer had already developed, when they could have spent almost nothing and promoted the established safety and efficacy of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin with a superior outcome. More practically, since Delta and Omicron are mild, we could have just let Covid-19 mutations run their course and treat infections symptomatically with available generic pharmacology so that individuals can obtain natural immunity.  

The Biden administration opted instead for this preposterous and outrageous waste of taxpayer money.  Will the president, or anyone else, be held responsible?

Dr. David Gortler is a pharmacologist, pharmacist, and FDA and health care policy oversight fellow and FDA reform advocate at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. He was a professor of pharmacology and biotechnology at the Yale University School of Medicine, where he also served as a faculty appointee to the Yale University Bioethics Center. While at Yale, he was recruited by the FDA and became a medical officer who was later appointed as senior advisor to the FDA commissioner for drug safety, FDA science policy, and FDA regulatory affairs. He is an exiled columnist from Forbes, where he used to write on drug safety, healthcare politics, and FDA policy

READ MORE:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/biden-pays-big-bucks-for-pfizers-latest-flop/

READ FROM TOP.

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW........................