#omicron media

[chnldivr]

Omicron Complex

Hello, I wanted to post this so people can find this in nearly every location possible, please share. (...I know this may seem like a very odd post to y'all hypno lullaby fans but I helped find this so I'm sorry for the out of place post LOL)

This was previously lost media in the Halley Labs/Lapfox Trax/Vulpvibe community. The owner of the CD reached out to me and uploaded it, and I took the time to organize it, upload it, & put it on the wiki as a download.

So here it is, the 15 years in the waiting, Omicron Complex CD rip in WAV & MP3.

Here's a youtube link for the mobile users who wanna listen to it. :b

Here also, is a note Vix (the owner of the CD) wrote for all of y'all to read.

"This is the CD rip of Omicron Complex. This CD was originally bought on Cafepress for about $10 in June of 2008.

--> I bought Omicron Complex, I Prefer The Sky, and an "Eat Me" shirt all from Cafepress. I still own all of them. All of the above items were bought with my first paycheck ever totalling to about $35. It was the whole 2 week paycheck and I spent it on Vulpvibe Records. These items are VERY sentimental. I still remember the first time listening to all of the tracks in my mom's truck going to a fair. Mom was not a fan. (lol)

I initially was going to release everything in 2009 when I uploaded the initial videos, but I had multiple people requesting I download X and Y software for higher and higher quality rips. It just seemed they were not in it for the music.

I became an evil villain for years. Way too many years.

Recently I found an arcade dumper that had a piece of hardware I used to own. They are refusing to dump it. Saying they will dump it in 10 years to never. It put me into perspective that this is just me with this CD. I didn't create this music, but I did pay for it and don't have to share it. Similar to this arcade dumper. However, there are furries that like Vulpvibe and later eras as much as I did that were out of the loop or too young to buy this music. Why punish them for liking this great music?

Renard shaped my childhood. Introducing me to all of the music in Mungyodance, the music making process, using samples, identifying samples... (I recommended the ShaLaLa Vengaboy sample in "Go to the Party". Staying up to 3a-4a on Youtube pays off. <3). Mungyodance 1&2 was in an ITG2 cabinet I went to as a kid and introduced me to Fur Affinity & FURRIES through Renard's FA account. Literally Renard completely changed my life. I am still a HUGE fan of Mungyodance 15 years after its death.

Keeping this CD "lost" meant that people were still interested in the era that meant so much in my life. It's really immature of me to think that way, but here we are 15 years after release.

I apologize to everyone including Renard/Emma. Here is the release. Better late than never.

Just promise me that you will remember the old stuff and play a game of Mungyodance.

-Vix"

[trevlad-sounds]

Sunday 29 October Mixtape 391 “Future Incraments EXCLUSIVE” Electronic experimental Uptempo Retro Wednesdays & Sundays. Support the artists and labels. Don't forget to subscribe or tip so future shows can bloom.

Trevlad Sounds-Welcome in you wonderful listener 00:00

Piero Umiliani-Dolomiti 00:31

Tim Blake-Metro / Logic 04:36

Pierric Gildas-Funiculaire Amoureux 10:50

The Science Fiction Corporation-Visitors of A.D. 2022 13:40

Timecop1983-Into the Night 15:30

SOFTWARE-Taste Of Future 19:34

Gilroy Mere-Just a River 25:19

The British Stereo Collective-Recurring Dream 29:48

The British Stereo Collective-The Nature of the Beast (Call of the Wild) 31:11

Bento-Intro 31:45

Augusto Martelli-Rito Polinesiano 32:21

Paul Ellis-Heron Rising 33:24

Oronzo De Filippi-Meccanizzazione agraria 39:50

Moray Newlands-Good Home Management 42:13

Everyday Dust-Grass Green Horn 45:32

The British Stereo Collective-Ascension 49:00

The Exorcist GBG-Doppler 53:15

Moray Newlands-Good Home Management 1:02:04

Salvatore Mercatante-Tempest 1:05:26

Ghost Power-Grimalkin 1:08:04

CN-Maat 1:12:55

HAWKSMOOR-On Netherfield Estate 1:17:18

Binaural Space-Impatient 1:21:04

Pbs'73-Antennas In Air 1:22:10

Moray Newlands-Are You A Quitter 1:26:32

Emeralds-Double Helix 1:29:44

TITLE-Afternoon Tea 1:32:34

Edgar Froese-Era Of The Slaves - 2012 Remaster 1:34:52

Jonathan Fitoussi / Clemens Hourrière-Murmuration 1:42:39

Sven Wunder-Prussian Blue 1:47:34

Lone Bison-Out of Phase Increments 1:51:29

Jarmodular-Dawn in industrial retreat 1:54:35

[milf--adjacent]

I hate that the average person is stupid and inattentive enough to be tricked by the media rebranding covid waves every 8 to 12 months. It was "waves" in 2020 and 2021 with each new variant getting a greek letter, then it was "surges" in 2022 with alphanumeric codes for each new variant, then it was "upticks" in 2023 and you were lucky if they posted what clade the current variants were in, and now in 2024 it's "bumps" with journalists misconstuing the name of a variant's spike protien mutation for the variant name and some covid minimizing doctors trying to claim "this is just descended from omicron" when the covid evoution chart looks like this

[covid-safer-hotties]

New COVID Variant XEC May Outpace Others This Fall - Published Sept 18, 2024

"The virus is always going to be mutating away from what it was in order to get more efficient at infecting individuals," Adalja said. "So I think this really highlights the fact that a universal COVID vaccine, or some vaccine with different technologies, perhaps a nasal vaccine and using mucosal immunity, all of those things are important."

What if, get this, we prevented covid cases by improving ventilation, mandating air filtration, and wearing masks in public? Wouldn't that accomplish the same goal right now? Every mutation takes us further away from the current scientific fantasy of a universal covid vaccine. We have to stop cases to make this dream a reality.

by Sophie Putka

The new COVID-19 variant XEC may overtake others in circulation to become dominant in the coming months, experts said, but will not prompt a meaningful change in symptoms or vaccine response.

So far, the CDC's variant proportions tracker has not registered enough cases of XEC in the U.S. to report it. (The agency's projected estimates for the 2 weeks ending in September 14 currently show KP.3.1.1 and KP.2.3 as the leading variants, with 52.7% and 12.2% of national cases, respectively.) Another estimate using data from the variant tracker GISAID has XEC at 1.11% of U.S. cases as of September 15, with around 48 sequences reported.

First detected in Germany in June, it's been found mostly in Central Europe, representing 10% of cases, according to the U.K.'s Science Media Centre.

"XEC represents a fairly minor evolution relative to the SARS-CoV-2 diversity currently in circulation, and is not a highly derived novel variant such as those that were granted Greek letters," like Alpha, Delta, and Omicron, Francois Balloux, PhD, a computational biologist at University College London and director of the UCL Genetics Institute, said in a Science Media Centre statement.

Experts noted that while XEC may have a small advantage in transmission, available vaccines are still likely to provide protection from serious illness.

XEC is a "recombinant variant of some of the other Omicron lineages that have been around for a while, and it does appear to be more immune evasive, giving it a transmissibility advantage in the population with the immunity that it has," Amesh Adalja, MD, of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in Baltimore, told MedPage Today. "But it doesn't really change anything, just like the last variant didn't change anything, or the one before that, one before that, or the one before that."

Currently available COVID vaccines target slightly different subvariants. The updated mRNA shots aimed at KP.2 from Pfizer-BioNTech (Comirnaty) and Moderna (Spikevax), as well as Novavax's vaccine targeting the JN.1 variant lineage, are still protective against the most serious consequences of COVID infections, experts said.

"If this becomes a dominant variant, it will decrease the efficacy against infection of the updated vaccines, but the updated vaccines will still be durable against severe disease [and] hospitalization, and that's what is really the primary function of our current, first-generation COVID vaccines," Adalja said.

Still, he emphasized, the rapid mutation of the virus underscores a need for a different kind of vaccine than those currently available if the goal is to protect against infection rather than just severe disease.

"The virus is always going to be mutating away from what it was in order to get more efficient at infecting individuals," Adalja said. "So I think this really highlights the fact that a universal COVID vaccine, or some vaccine with different technologies, perhaps a nasal vaccine and using mucosal immunity, all of those things are important."

[foone]

Given how betas are so overlooked in A/B/O media, I think it's time we balanced the scales by writing romance in a full Greek alphabet world.

There are 24 genders, and they're all male.

The way zetas are attracted to omicrons and phis but persued by etas is complex and confusing. But we gotta work it out, somehow.

[incorrect-hs-quotes]

ERIDAN: fun fact if you rearrange the letters of delta and omicron you get MEDIA CONTROL

TEREZI: YOU 4LSO G3T "3ROT1C 4LMOND". WH4TS YOUR PO1NT

VRISKA: "Ughhhhhhhh, I'm TRYING to t8ke over the world, 8ut my incessant need to m8ke anagrams of my top secret plans is giving me away!!!!!!!!"

KANAYA: Other Anagrams Of Delta-Omicron

Moron Citadel

Cilantro Mode

Condom Retail

Moonlit Cedar

Lord Meat Coin

Rent Acid Loom

Acne Mold Riot

TEREZI: OOUGHHGH 1 GOTT4 FOCUS. 1M SH1FT1NG 1NTO C1L4NTRO MOD3

VRISKA: Ha! Guess Eridan lives in the fucking Moron Citadel!

[askvectorprime]

What are the universal streams of Earthspark and Transformers One? With the Shrouding preventing the TransTech from plotting the multiverse, it falls on us fans to do so instead. That brings up a couple of questions. What exactly is the exact, precise definition of a universal cluster which we can use to checklist all future media to determine whether it’s a new cluster or not? You previously designated Cyberverse as Khathos cluster. All three use evergreen. Are they the same cluster?

Dear Continuity Codifier,

As you note, the actions of my brother Nexus have greatly limited the Transcendent Technomorphs' ability to map the universe. Since the Shroud fell, Axiom Nexus had only been able to concretely identify four new "pillar realities"; while consensus has labelled one of the four as Primax 623.14 Gamma, the other three—temporarily classified as 818.27 Alpha, 1122.11 Alpha, and 924.20 Delta—have yet to be conclusively named. As you say, stream 818.27 Alpha has tentatively been classified as part of the Khathos cluster; however, there are still many who argue it belongs as part of the Primax or Uniend clusters. Universe 1122.11 Alpha has been similarly argued to be part of the Primax, Uniend or Khathos clusters; among those who consider it to be part of its own cluster, proposed names include Gaius, Pentis, Ninmah, Onogo, and Dheghom. As for stream 924.20 Delta—well, it was detected so recently that there is nowhere near consensus on its placement or classification, with some scientists proposing it to be part of the Tyran cluster thanks to their near-identical levels of Lorenz-Ω electromagnetic force.

Of course, as I've mentioned before, the academic discourse surrounding universal streams is far from settled. In fact, in the aftermath of the Shroud, a significant corpus has come to believe that the terminology of "universal clusters", while once useful, has become redundant now that there are barely a Prime's dozen reality streams to keep track of. Some have proposed adopting the "spacetime" system of Cloud World to more precisely pinpoint spatio-temporal coordinates within these realities, while others have suggested entirely new systems that would "lump" universes together more broadly—though, of course, each of these approaches introduces its own difficulties that make me doubt that the current paradigm will be abandoned any time soon. The universal stream system may not be perfect, but it is functional, and I have my doubts that any replacement would have benefits outweighing the difficulties in completely overhauling the system from the ground up.

Ah, but I digress. You wanted to know how universal clusters are determined? Well, as I have illustrated, that is a complex and highly subjective process. Generally, TransTech scientists will log a reality stream's most fundamental traits—ranging from macro-scale aspects such as a high level of WY-att interference waves, to micro-scale details like the presence or absence of the AllSpark—and compare them to other, similar realities, grouping them by their most common shared traits. Thus, a reality in which the Mini-Cons were central to the Cybertronians' war, the power of Primus manifests through Cyber Keys, and the planet Xerxes is at least five parsecs off-course from impact with the Omicron Rift might be classed as part of the Aurex Cluster, and so on. These heuristics might strike you as rather arbitrary, and indeed there are one or two outspoken researchers to have come out of Axiom Nexus’ organic population, who are increasingly vocal in their criticism of the TransTechs’ classification system for its cybercentric framing of reality.

Ultimately, I think you are correct: it is up to you, not we Transformers, to determine how to categorize the multiverse in the way you find most useful. Surely you would be better served by a taxonomy that reflects more human-relevant concerns—perhaps distinguishing realities by whether or not the Federation of Western Europe was founded, or the number of Earth's moons?

[reality-detective]

The new variants coming out are MILITARY codes and each variant signals Military operations and White Hats chess< counter movements/

(The DEEP STATE got really confused when so much different Variants started popping up on the news and papers without their CONTROL and Acknowledgement>>>> they can't back track these STORIES planted or say they didn't name the new variants ...it will truly destroy their NARRATION if they deny these variants popping up!!!)/////

Pay close attention to the new variant >>>>>>>>>>>>OMICROM<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

OMI= ODIN (Omi is one of ODINS name)

CROM: is a commanded to an operating system or server for a job that is to be Executed at Specified time.

> >>>>>>>>>>PROJECT ODIN < </<<<<<<<<

MILITARY SPACE FORCE INTELLIGENCE AGENCY OPERATION CONNECTED TO STARLINK SATS. AND CONTROL ALL GRIDS AROUND THE WORLD AND CAN BYPASS ALL MEDIA/RADIO/INTERNET PLATFORMS. MORE OVER PROJECT ODIN CAN TAKE AND OPERATE ALL MEDIA/RADIO/INTERNET/DIGITAL PLATFORMS AND EBS.

_________________________________________

>OMICROM<

WHO Skips Next Greek Letter After “Nu” in Naming New COVID Variant – The Next Letter “Xi” Might Draw Attention to China – So They Named it “Omicron” Instead

Xi =11 in Roman numerals

XI = 11 =LAW OF WAR MANUAL/ CHAPTER 11.

>Q, POST #1116 (>ELEVEN<16)

Thank you Xi

Good start.

China/CQ cancel.

Q

(This post was not about China or Xi ...it was disinformation..Q knew the enemy was reading the post.... And Q Mil.Intel couldn't break the laws of National Security by openly stating the Laws of War > End of occupation 11.3< )

CHAPTER 11(xi) in the Law Of War all pertain to END FOREIGN OCCUPATION and 11.15 has specific rules on how to " combat the spread of contagious diseases and EPIDEMICS"

__________________________________________

Side note;

Xi also means 14 (fourteen in gematria =104)

Q post #104

Now is the time to pray.

We're are operational.

God bless the United States of America.

Q

__________________________________________

How many coincidences before mathematically impossible?

It was over before it began.

Q

__________________________________________

~ Be careful PATRIOTS/ANONS/ Freedom fighters across the world....... Be careful of those who divide inside the Great AWAKENING......( Many are drunk on EGO> FOLLOWERS>or simply are drunks and high and take to social media to vent (hate/accuse/>ego<) and instead of seeking help for their mental problems or drug problems or alcohol problems........./////

I'm not here for these games or followers or being a keyboard warrior looking for fights and raging nonsense....

Some of us are here.. Because we truly care for humanity, nature, animals and Earth...

No matter where you are seek peace.

God will not do for you.. What you can do for yourself. ( This means learn to use all your sacred senses in Harmony ..... Come to a clean life.. LIGHT)> THE GREAT AWAKENING is much more than can be fathomed...

I'm sure I'll get some flack for sharing this but I have to admit, a lot of Q posts have come to fruition in many ways. Sure it's a Psyop and it's happening on both sides. It's up to you to know or be-LIE-ve. 🤔

[omicronmysteryhour]

For the first time in history, an Omicron Halloween special is not lost media. Here are some outtakes in the shape of a teaser. Spooky!

[ao3feed-jaydick]

shivers

read it on the AO3 at https://archiveofourown.org/works/60619699 by Anonymous Being an Omega comes with a lot of quirks; and not all of them are fun. Dick struggles to accept a more unconventional side effect of his subgender, going as far as to hide from even Jason for fear of being rejected. Because if even he doesn’t like this part of himself, then why the hell would Jason? Jason... disagrees. Words: 9198, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English Series: Part 4 of omicron Fandoms: Batman - All Media Types Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Categories: M/M Characters: Dick Grayson, Jason Todd Relationships: Dick Grayson/Jason Todd Additional Tags: Omega Verse, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Omega Dick Grayson, Alpha Jason Todd, Pseudo-Incest, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Body Dysmorphia, blink and you miss it - Freeform, Arguments, Conflict Resolution, Mild Fluff, a significant salting of angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, a very Happy Ending lmao, Shameless Smut, Top Jason Todd, Bottom Dick Grayson, Anal Sex, Rimming, Nipple Play, of a kind - Freeform, Coming Untouched, Creampie, Lactation Kink, Size Kink, Breeding Kink, Praise Kink, Marking, Possessive Jason Todd, Insecure Dick Grayson, Possessive Sex, Dom/sub Undertones, Light BDSM, very light imo but I love it, Under-negotiated Kink, you can’t negotiate mid-kink people, Safe Sane and Consensual, Jason Todd Needs A Hug, Dick volunteers as tribute, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, I believe the term is shmoop, Shakespeare Quotations, Minor Original Character(s), mentioned by name but not actually in the story, Not Beta Read, Never Beta Read, Don’t Like Don’t Read read it on the AO3 at https://archiveofourown.org/works/60619699

[darkangel1791]

Please understand, COVID is still a thing and people are still getting sick, hospitalized and even dying from it. The idea that the COVID epidemic was over was made up by people who wanted to get people back to work, which meant they had to get kids back in school. With the vaccinations, the occurances of being infected by the original COVID virus are far below the standard for an "epidemic" but that is because the COVID virus has mutated.

The public was also noticing how clean the air and water were during quarantine, and those who put impurities into the air and water didn't want the public to get any big ideas about making them stop doing that.

Those within the American health care and insurance system should already realize that no one cares if you live or die. They only care if you make and spend money, or if you are a money drain on the system. If you are a drain it is best for the system that you die quickly before too much money is lost.

So do not depend on media or politicians to tell you when your health is in danger. You are on your own. The World Health Organization is usually reliable. But, the WHO depends upon countries to send them accurate reports, so again, they may not be completely reliable, through no fault of their own.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2023/08/08/eris-covid-variant-eg-5-omicron/

[sapphic-luminosity]

4.5 years

I’m so tired.

It’s really incredibly tiring living through the ongoing pandemic and feeling like the world around me does not care that it still exists and is dangerous as ever. 

It really does feel like few people care at this point. It’s very hard to be honest, but the threat is such that I can’t really just relax and pretend like it’s not there.

I do follow covid conscious people on social media and it helps to know that there’s many of us out there. And I’m glad to have a number of friends who have remained covid conscious, but like we really are few in number. A lot of friends and family members who used to be cautious have thrown caution to the wind, only maybe masking when, say, going on flights or maybe to crowded spaces if that. I still want to be friends and have relationships with these people but every time I meet with them I’m very aware that there’s increased risk in doing so. Meanwhile plenty of friends who stopped taking covid seriously have simply stopped really talking to me or including me in plans, even online friends. It’s disappointing. It’s isolating. It feels like I’m disposable to many people. But at least I do see some people repeatedly in person consistently wearing masks like I do. And that helps some.

Every couple waves I’ll see more people wearing masks such as the ongoing one. You know what, that’s welcome, I appreciate everyone who starts masking again after having stopped. But masking only during the heights ignores that the spread of the virus still goes on in between. So the next wave comes as people relax and transmission increases again. 

It’s hard feeling mostly housebound. I am a bit of a homebody, but not nearly to this degree. Not having an in person job outside of my home doesn’t help with that but also I’m not sure that I could bear to do one at this point. Being disabled already pre-covid and moving states literally weeks before the shelter in place orders came into effect (not lockdowns, we never had those in the US) meant that I did not have a job when the pandemic struck. I decided to wait it out for weeks months a year until the first vaccines got rolled out and thought about trying to apply again but then in the summer of 2021 Delta came. Then Omicron. And so on. Now we’re up to BA.2.86 and JN.1 as the variants of interest. It’s never stopped. There’s never been a break. The years start comin' and they don't stop comin'.

Working from home was a huge option early in the pandemic for many people outside industries that require people to work in person but gradually companies and organizations have rolled back this accessibility by requiring people return to office. And the economy sucks right now. Applying to jobs sucks even in the best of times with the current system, but now we have confirmed cases of job recruiters putting up phantom jobs, some admitting that 75% of the jobs they’ve posted being fake to make their company look like it’s in better shape or positions where the candidate has already been selected internally and they just want to make it look sorta fair. Not to mention all the scam listings. Job hunting sucks. It’s a lot of energy spent for very few returns and my disability/chronic illness means I just can’t channel endless amounts of energy without paying a far greater price in the future.

It’s not just work either. I haven’t seen a movie in theaters since the Harley Quinn and the Birds of Prey movie in February 2020. Maybe I’ll actually go see one soon, but it’s a real risk, even during a matinee when fewer people might be there, even masked in an N95. (And definitely a much bigger risk if I should want some popcorn or a drink.) I have been to one indoor event (MBMBaM live show) that required masks of everyone in late 2022. It was a risk but masking made it feel a little safer. Nothing like the risks today where so many people seem to have forgotten the danger that they knew in 2020 and 2021 and maybe 2022 and will look at you funny if you even wear a mask much less suggest they might wear one.

We’ve known about covid spreading as an aerosol but I’ve had people I know act like it’s safe to eat inside as long as you’re far away from people regardless of ventilation. Some even still believe the six feet away idea that has been thoroughly debunked. We’ve known about long covid post-viral syndromes since 2020 and that you can still get long covid after vaccines at least since 2021. Research has come out over the last few years about covid having rampant effects on your immune system, heart, brain, pretty much any organ in your body, but people still think of it as just a respiratory illness.

Our government has failed us profoundly. I never had much trust in the government, becoming politically conscious in the early Bush era in the wake of Islamophobia and endless wars against concepts which got widespread support from both dominant parties in the US. Coming out as queer in my early adulthood, I learned about the Reagan response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic (ignoring it for several years because ewwwww gay people!!) which filled in the blanks of knowledge from my childhood where the education was pretty much just scaremongering. It’s truly monstrous how Reagan ignored HIV and yet I’m not sure anyone has really done that much better since him.

I’ve never liked Biden nor do I pretend to. But even so, he campaigned on how thousands of covid deaths in 2020 were unacceptable under a US president when it was Trump in power. Yet under him we’ve seen likely over a million people die and the dismantling of protections that helped prevent covid’s spread or monitoring. We were pushed the idea that you simply had to get vaccinated and then it wouldn’t be a problem anymore. But that’s never been true. He declared that the pandemic was over in September 2022 and in the two years since then I’ve watched more friends who mask consistently get sick than those I knew who got sick from November 2019 to September 2022. (I’m pretty fortunate in that regard, I know many people had lots of friends and relatives get sick and die or become permanently disabled prior to September 2022.) 

Sure, the White House approved 4 more covid tests per household again in response to the current wave (after getting rid of that program months ago), but the tests are notoriously unreliable for a single test unless it gives you a positive and generally you need to use them over multiple days to make sure you don’t have false negatives. Not to mention that we have known about asymptomatic transmission of covid since 2020, but people just seem to have forgotten about that. Testing daily would do so much to help track the disease, especially if our leaders were to encourage everyone to do them. But there’s a serious lack of test availability. The government could give each of us a test per day and help stop a lot of transmission. Where are free masks? Where is the continued funding for vaccines? Where is funding for improved ventilation including air filtration systems for every classroom and other shared public space? Where are protections to make sure that employers have to keep people home and give them sick pay? Any public health response we had has pretty much fallen away into privatized, “you-do-you” individualism. (Anyone remember that “you-do-you” MTA sign from 2 years ago saying masks were optional so wear them however the fuck you want? “You-do-you” feel free to get someone’s immunocompromised grandma mortally ill on the subway.)

There’s only one mention of the pandemic on Harris’ campaign website’s Issues page at the moment, only in passing while talking about automotive industry jobs. The pandemic is in the past, this seems to say. There’s no need to mention it except to compare what she has done under Biden vs. what Trump did. Biden may have stepped down from running after getting covid for at least the third time and possibly suffering lasting health issues including possible covid-accelerated dementia from it but there’s no need to address that. Simply move on and forget. Maybe she can’t even admit that Biden fucked up royally in 2022, she just has to save face for the DNC. Or she’s trying to appeal to anti-vax anti-mask “Never Trump” Republicans who still won’t vote for her. I don’t pretend to understand what she’s thinking of during her campaign’s numerous missteps so far.

We don’t live in 2019 anymore but so many people seem trapped there. They think that we who are covid conscious are unwilling to move on and are trapped in 2020, but I find that often we’re more attuned to the actual situation going on. So many people seem to be unaware of the long term consequences of catching covid, especially multiple times. So many people passively question why everyone seems to be sick all the time or why there are so many more heart attacks and such happening in young people or why there seem to be more dangerous drivers on the road or why there are so many fewer workers these days but never stop to pursue the answer to the most clear solution. Occam’s Razor never had a chance.

The pandemic has changed us all on levels we probably won’t realize for years or decades, but I feel like many people who have moved back to 2019 are worse for it. Worse empathy for those who had any empathy at all beforehand. Worse science literacy, especially amongst medical professionals. (“You’re not going to get sick in a hospital!” “Why would we wear masks in the cancer ward!?”) Worse critical thinking. Worse memory. I know people deal with trauma in different ways but so many people just seem to be so avoidant that any tiny reminder of it makes them want it gone gone gone. Or they seem to just sigh and laugh internally at those of us taking it seriously. “You just have anxiety!” they might say, even when in my humble opinion nothing is more rational than our desire to not get sick. Not to mention all the harassment people have gotten for doing things like masking because using a simple medical device has turned into a moral panic in some spaces. (I know of some people who would mask don’t anymore because of social pressure or outright threats used against them.)

It’s hard to have hope for the future and yet I hang in there. Maybe someday I’ll be able to work in person again. Maybe someday I will be able to be on a plane again and travel outside of the US or go to visit friends in parts of the US I’ve never been to. Maybe someday I will be able to eat inside a restaurant again instead of getting takeout or (rarely) taking a risk by eating outside of one. Maybe someday I’ll be able to casually sip an iced latte in a coffee shop while reading to pass the time again. Maybe someday I will be able to go to concerts or conventions or crowded outdoor festivals or indoor parties or board game nights or even ride the bus without having to ask myself if it’s worth the risk and without having to wear a mask. But with the infection rates we’ve been seeing that feels far off and most people don’t seem to care about making that world a reality.

I hope that there will be some treatment to finally end covid-19 and its numerous lineages that continue to mutate and spread across the world like wildfire. I feel like that’s one of the only hopes. We had a chance to end covid in other ways but our government leaders and greed from corporations failed us. Yet even with that, I know that if a treatment using some kind of super effective antibodies or such is developed, it’ll probably still be kept from many people by corporate greed. But still I hope for the future even if that hope is dim.

Until then I’m largely housebound. And I will forever be changed by this pandemic, largely not for the better. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to trust people in general again. I’m not sure how I would cope if covid suddenly disappeared from the face of the planet, like with magic. Maybe I would just completely lose it. Maybe I’d bounce back completely in a few months. (Unlikely. I’m still disabled and chronically ill from pre-covid times. My life would still have big challenges.) But I’m pretty sure it won’t disappear suddenly.

And I’m so very tired.

[creature-wizard]

So kind of New Age anons to send me updates on whatever BS is they think's going on right now in my inbox. Saves me the trouble of combing through their videos and sites.

Highights from the latest include:

The Annu-Elohim, Drakonian and Elite Anunnaki Races that began to digress from their original “Christos” blueprint set forth in dominion conquest of the stellar system the Star Gates of our Time Matrix.

This is essentially fancied-up whining about Jews not accepting Jesus. It all goes with David Icke's conspiracy theory that Judaism was created in Babylon by reptilian entities.

The Gold Order Seraphei-Seraphin reptilian Omicron Race from D-10 Lyra-Vega began to digress and became known as the “Fallen Seraphim”, the forefathers of the contemporary D-10 Orion-Drakonian Fallen Angelic Legion.

Fancy way of saying "Jews are demonic." Old antisemitic bullshit with a space-age paint job.

The fallen ones began their quest for universal dominion with the intention of destroying all races but their own and claim dominion of out Time Matrices.

Fancy way of saying "Jews want take over the world." Typical Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion bullshit.

Through removing the 12th DNA Strand Template form their genetic blueprint, the Annu-Elohim successfully blocked the Density-5 Breneau Founders races from incarnating into their race line, so they were freed to create a legion of self-contained Fallen Angelic dominion forces within or Time Matrix.

Spiritual eugenics BS. New Agers often assert that their ideological opponents have defective genes.

The Fallen Angelics’ Legion Galactic Federation (not the Galactic Federation of 'free/light' Planets) intention was, and continues to be today, oppressive, exploiting dominion of our Time Matrix and its life-fields, and the operational control over the 12 Primary Star Gates of the Universal Templar Complex in our Time Matrices.

Fancied-up way of saying "Jews are oppressing and exploiting the world!" Standard Protocols BS.

In their misguided contemporary quest for dominion, "take over of Earth’s Star Gates the Hall of Amenti", the Anunnaki Fallen Angelic Legions hope to infiltrate, highjack and rob earth humans of their dormant Diamond “Christed living light Human Race” potentially ascension process through governments bureaucracy, narrative information, PSYOPS, altering articles and factual information, television and internet misinformation, show distraction, rewritten transcription, distraction away from the facts in covert genetic manipulation via distorted teachings of DNA, bio-energetic field and Soul/Spirit (Merkaba) activation and hybridization programs.

Fancy way of claiming Jews are manipulating the media and spreading false religion. Also sourced from that old Czarist hoax, The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.

The Elite Anunnaki are attempting to perpetrate this deception of humans right now in order to prevent Earth humans from actualizing the dormant DNA - 12 Strand potential, through which humans can reclaim the Original true light Human heritage to serve as conscious guardians of the Hall of AMENTI 12 Star Gates.

More spiritual eugenics - "the worthy believers have superior genes."

Portions of the earth human populations carry the 9, 10 and 11-Strand DNA Template mutations resulting from ancient race hybridization with Anunnaki and Drakonian Fallen Angelic Legions.

Spiritual eugenics again - claiming that some people (read: their ideological opponents) are innately evil because they carry inferior DNA.

"All humans and the Fallen Angelic who chose to do so can reverse mutate DNA Template distortions and bring dormant DNA template potentials into activation through self-generated DNA BIO REGENESIS technologies, naturally, through which the 12-Strand DNA Living Light Human potential can be progressively restored and reactivated within the current operational DNA".

Conversion rhetoric - you can "fix" your "bad" DNA by accepting New Age doctrine.

And YOU, earthling humans are distracted by the Anti-Christ (power trigger elites, governments), by a sequence low frequency wave of the American 2024 election movement/show involves modern DNA highjacking program.

New Age to normal person translation: "Biden is part of the Jewish agenda!" More Protocols-derived nonsense.

All in all, things haven't really changed much; they're still spouting the same antisemitic conspiracy bullshit they've been spouting for years.

[covid-safer-hotties]

Long Covid activist Meighan Stone didn't want to take her mask off. After pressuring her multiple times, an ER nurse called security on her. This public health failure happened at Sibley Hospital in D.C. These incidents are happening on a regular basis now as mask bans and proposals spread from L.A. to New York. You're not going to hear much about it in the news. When you do, it's framed as a problem for the vulnerable, with blue fascists freely associating masks with crime and hate.

None of the handful of stories that discuss these mask bans mention that we're currently in the middle of a deep Covid surge, at a million cases a day. None of them talk about mask bans in the context of Long Covid in adults and children.

A widely cited study declaring "strikingly low" rates of Long Covid in children was recently retracted due to major flaws in methodology. The researchers who pushed for this retraction are heroes and champions of truth.

Is the media covering that?

Not really.

To their credit, Time did recently run a very important piece on Long Covid in children, focusing on a recent study published in JAMA.

Here's the highlight:

They estimated that 20% of the previously infected younger children and 14% of the previously infected adolescents met that threshold [for diagnosis]. Kids infected before the Omicron wave were especially likely to fall into the Long COVID category. Those numbers are higher than some previous estimates—for example, a recent U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report concluded that only about 1% of U.S. kids had had Long COVID as of 2022. But other studies have come to similar conclusions, estimating that somewhere between 10% and 20% of kids who catch COVID-19 will develop long-term complications.

Media outlets like USA Today and NBC are also covering this study. For once, major news networks are devoting attention to something that deserves it. Of course, they're doing it after years of running stories blaming children's school performance and developmental delays on smartphones and lockdowns.

Earlier this year, The New York Times published a misleading, biased story on the "long-lasting" harm of school closures. And The Washington Post recently ran a story also blaming absences on everything except Long Covid and immune system damage. Even Education Week has run pieces attributing weak academic performance to school closures and stress, not the virus itself. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. Pick a magazine or newspaper and you'll find stories like these, but very few talking about the ongoing harm of exposing children and teenagers to Covid. The ones that do are almost always sitting behind a paywall.

Absence speaks louder than words, and not just about Covid.

In 2022, barely 1 percent of all corporate television focused on climate change. That was, in fact, a record high. A year later, it fell 25 percent. That was 2023, the year we surpassed 1.5C of warming for all practical purposes. It was the hottest year in recorded history, and also the worst year for climate disasters, costing us $600 billion in the U.S. alone. Entire countries shut down because it was too hot for work or school. All that, and the corporate media spent even less time talking about the problem. Meanwhile, one columnist after another published long screeds against doomers and fearmongers, insisting that we still had plenty of time to turn things around.

A compelling piece by Ryan Hagen breaks down the unsettling relationship between western news media and the fossil fuel industry. As he points out, internal reports from companies like Exxon celebrate their campaign to turn liberal news outlets like The New York Times in favor of their own industries, convincing the public they were working hard to shift toward renewable energy when the plan was always to use it like icing on top of a cake made out of coal.

Tireless work by Amy Westervelt has chronicled the impact of these campaigns. As her research shows, climate change has morphed from a topic that 80 percent of the public felt an urgency about to, now, a divisive issue and a point that most people would rather not talk about. On top of that, think tanks like the Atlas Network have made a major push to criminalize peaceful climate protests and turn public opinion against activists. A Yale study found that more than 60 percent of Americans hardly ever hear anything about climate change now.

And if you bring it up...

You're a doomer.

There has been a concerted effort across the internet to paint anyone who actually cares about the future as a deeply unhinged fearmonger. Meanwhile, social media giants like Meta have relentlessly censored information about Long Covid.

Have you noticed?

Nate Bear pulled the curtain back on how the media works roughly a year ago. As he puts it, "A lot of the stories you see in the headlines are the result of a PR agency. And depending on the news, the PR agent might not send out a release en-masse but “sell in” the story as an exclusive to just one outlet... Every day a proportion of all news you read starts at just a handful of these agencies."

PR firms are constantly wooing journalists, creating an atmosphere where conflict of interest is more of a feature than a bug.

Caitlin Johnstone did a thorough breakdown of mass media bias. Perhaps the most egregious example: MSNBC reporter Krystal Ball leveled blunt but accurate criticism of Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign and correctly predicted that she would lose against Donald Trump because of all her neoliberal baggage. In response, the Clinton campaign threatened the entire network "not to provide any access during the upcoming campaign." The head of the network told Ball that she "could still say what I wanted, but I would have to get any Clinton-related commentary cleared with the president of the network."

So, she couldn't say whatever she wanted.

Right?

Johnstone cites a piece by Jeff Cohen in Salon that also outlines the peer pressure, groupthink, and careerism that dominates the newspapers, magazines, and mainstream news networks in the U.S.

As she further explains:

Journalists either learn how to do the kind of reporting that will advance their careers in the mass media, or they don’t learn and they either remain marginalized and unheard of or they get worn down and quit.

Christopher Hedges, who left The New York Times after a written reprimand for criticizing the Iraq War, has gone on to describe in disturbing detail how the U.S. media caters to the Israeli government, continually overlooking its war crimes. An outspoken critic of U.S. policy, Hedges has endured persecution for speaking the truth, including the cancellation of his news program for defending other writers and real journalists from charges of antisemitism.

Another outspoken critic, Mehdi Hasan, was dropped from MSNBC for speaking out over Palestine. As Sharon Zhang wrote after the decision, "Hasan has been one of the only news anchors on a major broadcast outlet speaking up against Israel's brutality." He was also one of the few news anchors who told the truth about Covid. As Hasan recently made clear in The Guardian, it's imperative for Democrats to take a stronger, pro-humanitarian stance on Gaza and break with Biden's approach, which has sparked outrage and disgust across the left.

Hasan makes a remarkable point in this column, looking to history for cues about how Democrats need to act to ensure history.

It's not vibes.

It's guts.

Nobody really remembers Hubert Humphrey, LBJ's vice president who lost the 1968 election to Richard Nixon by about a percentage point. It's a lesson worth talking about. Humphrey was losing badly because he couldn't stand up to his own party, the Democrats, who were actually very, very pro-Vietnam War. He managed to close the gap considerably in the 11th hour of the race, finally standing up to his own party and promising to end the war if he became president. Hasan wonders what would've happened if he had trusted his gut sooner.

Well, history gives us a few clues. After all, Nixon did end the war. In the decades since, the Vietnam War has gone down in history as one the biggest mistakes the U.S. ever made. Psychologists use it as a case study of entrapment in escalating conflicts. It's a touchstone used to rate our other failures.

Time and again, history tells us that doing the right thing actually serves political expedience far more than vibes.

Democrats could ensure a landslide victory if they would just take a clear stance on our biggest threats and challenges. They could be honest about Covid. They could stand up against mask bans. They could stand up against genocide. They could renew their promise to take on climate change.

We're not seeing that.

Instead, we see the same groupthink and indirect censorship that dominates the news media. It's not a surprise, given how entwined they've become.

Look at what's happening to Taylor Lorenz.

Outlets like The Washington Post and NPR, who pride themselves on their devotion to democracy and diversity, have assailed Lorenz for referring to Biden as "a war criminal" in a private social media post.

Here's the worst part of NPR's story:

Lorenz has also courted controversy, online, in print, and in real life. During the peak of the pandemic, and since its ebb, she has inspired mockery from conservatives over her insistence on wearing masks, even outdoors. She has cited autoimmune issues as the reason.

Look at the verbs here. Far from objective, they describe Lorenz as "insisting" on wearing a mask "even outdoors," and then frame her autoimmune issues not as a reality but as a reason, almost an excuse. For the record, multiple studies have shown that Covid spreads outdoors, especially at crowded events.

This is what writers and real journalists deal with as they try to do the right thing. It's disturbing to watch.

Both Jared Yates Sexton and Sarah Kendzior have expressed an ambivalent reluctance to get on board with the vibes as the DNC hosts their national convention. The kindest thing Sexton can say is that "It was a masterful feat of political theater" as organizers clambered to put down pro-Palestinian protests during speeches and tilted cameras away from violence and toward more soothing, therapeutic shots of Tim Walz with his family.

As Kendzior writes, "Today both the Democratic and Republican parties operate on cult logic, which means they sometimes have the same policies, but wrapped in different rhetoric--because cultists will abide anything so long as their leader is the one pushing it. Policies they would protest if they were carried out by the other side are suddenly deemed acceptable when pushed by their own."

The same goes for media coverage.

It's worth pointing out that Kamala Harris no longer supports a ban on fracking. She no longer supports a single-payer healthcare system, otherwise known as "Medicare for all" which would provide healthcare access to everyone. Her stance on border patrol and police funding have all shifted right. The media signs off on it, saying "Progressives said they’re disappointed but still support her as she works out the best strategy to defeat former President Donald Trump — even if it means leaving their cause behind."

But it's not just causes getting left behind.

It's human beings.

Is it simply a desire or a wish that nurses don't call security on us because we want to wear masks at an ER, like Meighan Stone? Do we have to leave our human rights behind so we can ensure our human rights?

Do we have to lay down our lives for vibes?

That's the current groupthink.

So there you have it.

The media doesn't report the truth. They spend about 1 percent of their time on things that actually matter. Politicians cater to an underinformed public, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy that leads to nurses calling security on immunocompromised patients for wearing a mask, while newspapers and networks fire real journalists for daring to do their jobs.

It's really something, isn't it?

It doesn't help when readers and viewers complain anytime someone salts their mood with the truth. In an era where free, independent content matters more than ever, it's also harder than ever to come by. How are content creators supposed to tell the truth or talk about things that matter when they're constantly being reprimanded, penalized, and punished every time they try?

We desperately need a free press, and we need a public that supports a free press and not silos of dueling echo chambers.

You get what you support.

It's that simple.

[theculturedmarxist]

Although many Canadians act as though the pandemic has ended, the airborne virus that causes COVID-19 continues to evolve at an amazing pace with devastating consequences for both individuals and the public at large.

The pandemic may no longer be a major conflagration but it still kills about 140 Canadians a week while morphing into a steady viral blaze sustained by dirty air, waning immunity and overt political indifference.

What was once a giant wave of acute illness has become a series of often unpredictable wavelets driven by ever-changing variants that can cause chronic illness. Long COVID, a disabling health event that can affect multiple organs and destabilize the immune system, now affects millions and continues to claim new victims.

A 2023 Danish study recently confirmed that about 50 per cent of those diagnosed with long COVID fail to improve 18 months after infection regardless of the variant.

Long COVID has taken a huge toll among health-care workers. Anywhere from six to 10 per cent of Quebec’s health-care workforce, for example, has been derailed by long COVID.

Seventy-one per cent of health-care workers impaired by long COVID reported that their state of health now interferes with their ability to function. Another 16 per cent said that they are often unable to work. Multiply this data across the country and then ask: How sustainable is this trend?

The cost of living in a ‘viral soup’

While the media focus concern on the potential next big nasty viral wave, evolutionary biologist T. Ryan Gregory says that threat seems less likely than before, but the current reality is nothing like normal.

“We are not dealing with Omicron-like waves but a viral soup,” Gregory told The Tyee. “We are seeing a near-constant high level of hospitalizations that falls just below overwhelming them but is nonetheless unsustainable. More health-care workers are getting sick and that just adds to the strain on the whole system.”

What worries Gregory, an expert on the evolution of COVID variants at the University of Guelph, “are the long-term effects of multiple infections and the sustained pressure on the health-care system and well-being.”

Yet the current impact of COVID — measurably higher than at some previous points during the pandemic — remains largely ignored or poorly reported.

Tara Moriarty, a University of Toronto infectious disease expert and co-founder of COVID 19 Resources Canada, recently tallied the imperfect data, and it is bracing. She calculates that about one in every 23 Canadians is now infected with COVID. We are not at the low point of the pandemic in Canada. To the contrary, compared with a previous time during the pandemic, infections are 25 times higher and the rate of long COVID is 19 times higher. Meanwhile the hospitalization rate is 13 times higher and deaths are 25 times higher.

In the middle of October, Moriarty calculated that COVID patients occupied about nine per cent of intensive care beds and 21 per cent of hospital beds across the country. (The average hospitalization rate during the pandemic has been seven per cent.) The estimated cost of this sustained viral assault is $274 million a week.

Governments peddling denial

Most governments seem intent on diminishing or hiding these realities. They avoid any talk about the effectiveness of masking in public places or the value of improved ventilation and filtration in schools and workplaces. It’s a demonstrated fact that the virus travels through the air in tiny smoke-like aerosols that can infect people at much greater distances than six feet, but the natural responses to this reality are not encouraged by our leaders.

Alberta, for example, now pretends that COVID is just another mild respiratory disease and reports its doings along with influenza and RSV activity.

Despite this push for “normalization,” only one disease stands out as a routine killer and dominant occupant of hospital beds on the province’s “respiratory virus dashboard.” And that’s COVID. COVID also dominates outbreaks in Alberta’s hospitals and long-term care facilities where masking and attention to ventilation have become haphazard practices.

Lumping COVID in with other respiratory diseases is also patently misleading. A recent Swiss study compared hospitalized patients infected with COVID and those infected with the flu. Those with COVID had a 1.5-fold higher risk of dying in hospital up to 30 days after infection than patients infected by influenza A. The death rate was even higher for unvaccinated people.

A 2023 Swedish study also found the death rate from Omicron greatly surpassed that of influenza patients.

And next comes the increased risk of cardiovascular problems. Medical researchers have long observed strokes and acute myocardial infarctions in patients after respiratory infections, such as influenza. But COVID breaks the mould here. Compared with patients with the flu, the risk of stroke is more than sevenfold higher in COVID-19 patients.

This is likely tied to the fact that COVID can inflame the vascular system through which the body’s blood travels. New non-peer-reviewed evidence suggests that even a mild infection can temporarily damage endothelial cells that line the interior of blood vessels.

COVID may begin with the symptoms of a cold or flu for most people, but it often ends as thrombotic or vascular disease in a small percentage for reasons researchers don’t clearly understand. The virus can therefore infect multiple organs from the brain to the kidneys.

Immune systems and long COVID

COVID can also unsettle the immune system by damaging T-cell response, as recent studies have illustrated.

These findings make all the more illogical the current, widespread blasé attitude towards the ever-evolving virus.

Let’s begin with diabetes, which itself stresses the immune system and makes it less effective.

Early in the pandemic, researchers suspected there might be a connection between having COVID and later developing diabetes. Now it’s confirmed. Earlier this year the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai organization in Los Angeles found that a COVID infection dramatically increases the risk for developing Type 2 diabetes and that this risk continues with Omicron variants.

“The trends and patterns that we see in the data suggest that COVID-19 infection could be acting in certain settings like a disease accelerator, amplifying risk for a diagnosis that individuals might have otherwise received later in life,” noted Susan Cheng, a senior author of the study and a professor of cardiology.

Another study found that the incidence of diabetes in Black and Hispanic youth has increased by 62 per cent since the pandemic. The authors noted that COVID can bind to receptors in the pancreas, resulting in damaged cells.

A Canadian study also found steep increases in diabetes after COVID infections. University of British Columbia researchers examined a large population of British Columbians (more than 600,000) and discovered that people infected with COVID had a 17 to 22 per cent higher risk of developing diabetes within a year compared with uninfected people.

Concluded the researchers: “SARS-CoV-2 infection was associated with a higher risk of diabetes and may have contributed to a three per cent to five per cent excess burden of diabetes at a population level.”

Related research has also demonstrated that COVID infection can trigger or lead to a variety of autoimmune disorders.

One recent Lancet study that looked at nearly a million people who were unvaccinated between 2020 and 2021 found that COVID cases experienced much higher incidence of autoimmune disease than non-infected people.

These autoimmune conditions included rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, vasculitis (inflamed and swollen blood vessels), inflammatory bowel disease and Type 1 diabetes mellitus.

A similar German study, which has not yet been peer reviewed, evaluated a cohort of 640,701 unvaccinated individuals with PCR-confirmed COVID infection during 2020 for the risk of autoimmune conditions. The researchers identified “a 42.6 per cent higher likelihood of acquiring an autoimmune condition three to 15 months after infection” compared with a group of 1,560,357 individuals who weren’t infected.

The researchers also found that a COVID infection “increased the risk of developing another autoimmune disease by 23 per cent” in individuals with pre-existing immune conditions.

The autoimmune studies confirm that COVID can be a significant immune deregulator. The Yale University immunologist Akiko Iwasaki, who has dedicated her lab to studying long COVID, notes that “there's misfiring of the immune response happening in the severe COVID patients that lead to pathology and lethality.” Even a mild infection can lead to this misfiring and long COVID, and this group tends to be women between the ages of 30 and 50.

Reinfection is no trifle

The autoimmune studies, of course, don’t tell us anything about the current crop of variants and what autoimmune or cardiovascular diseases they might trigger in the future. But the precautionary principle would suggest avoiding infection.

The highly regarded U.S. epidemiologist Ziyad Al-Aly, who also studies long COVID, has been very clear about the hazardous consequences of reinfection in terms of chronic disease such as diabetes, brain inflammation and heart disease: “Two infections are worse than one and three are worse than two.”

His most recent research shows that people with mild infections are still at risk for chronic disease two years after the fact. Patients who were hospitalized with COVID were at even greater risk for chronic complications.

“The concern here is that this pandemic will generate a wave of chronic disease that we did not have before the pandemic,” Al-Aly, chief of research and development at Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care System, recently told Euronews Next.

“Even when the pandemic abates and is in the rear-view mirror, we will be left with it after the fact in the form of a chronic disease that for some people may last for a long time or even a lifetime,” added Al-Aly.

The Tyee has repeatedly reported evidence that immunity to COVID from natural infection or vaccination is not long-lasting because of the nature of the virus.

The research now confirms that infections can even leave some people more vulnerable to reinfection. A startling Canadian study published this year looked at 750 vaccinated elders at long-term care facilities where COVID deaths continue to be high. They found infection with Omicron in its first wave actually made these inmates more susceptible to reinfection in subsequent waves. Counterintuitively, these people were more prone to reinfection than patients who had never experienced COVID.

“Our current vaccine schedules are based on the assumption that having had an infection provides some level of protection to future infections, but our study shows that may not be true for all variants in all people,” noted Dawn Bowdish, an immunologist and one of the study’s authors.

What our health leaders should be saying

The implications of these findings are plain enough. The pandemic has a long tail, and it can be found in a growing population of people experiencing chronic disease. Therefore, limiting transmission is still the most important public health goal.

We know how to do that but are reluctant to employ the tools. Masking in crowded public spaces or poorly ventilated buildings during periods of high infection is a proven viral risk reducer. Cleaning dirty air in workplaces and schools removes the virus and other pollutants such as wildfire smoke and should be an urgent public health crusade.

We might all take inspiration from what happened at one Australian school. Concerned parents studied airflow and then installed HEPA filters with the result that improved air circulation stopped COVID transmission dead.

Rigorous surveillance testing is also essential to inform citizens of the advancing or retreating COVID risks.

Vaccinations play a role because they can significantly reduce the risk of hospitalization, death and long COVID. But current vaccines will not stop transmission. Or end the pandemic.

In a recent study a group of U.S. researchers modelled a variety of paths that COVID might take in the future.

If repeat infections and vaccinations actually work to improve immunity and dent the pandemic over time, then models suggest infections and the incidence of long COVID should decline too.

But as Omicron demonstrated, community immunity is unlikely to be achieved via existing vaccines and especially at a time when vaccine hesitancy is rising.

In one pessimistic scenario the researchers posited that “a first infection may provide partial protection against a second infection” but the combination of new variants and complexities surrounding immune responses “could then increase the susceptibility to tertiary and quaternary infections.”

That means a good proportion of the population could end up with long COVID in the absence of effective public health measures and the development of a durable, transmission-blocking vaccine.

“More pessimistic assumptions on host adaptive immune responses illustrate that the longer-term burden of COVID-19 may be elevated for years to come,” added the researchers.

[darkmaga-returns]

The CDC has admitted that vaccinated children are catching COVID-19 at alarming rates compared to their unvaccinated peers.

A new study published by the Journal of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society looked into how effective COVID-19 vaccines were at reducing the risk of infection among children under the age of five. To do so, the researchers looked at several cohort studies to determine efficacy against any infection and against symptomatic COVID infection.

Outkick.com reports: In short, as their topline result indicates, there was absolutely no efficacy whatsoever. 

“To understand how COVID-19 vaccines impact infection risk in children <5 years, we assessed risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection from Sept 2022–April 2023 in three cohort studies. There was no difference in risk by vaccination status,” the study reads.

So every single mandate, every single advertisement, marketing campaign, political lecture, media promotion, public health expert…all of the facets of The Science itself were wrong. Completely, spectacularly, wrong.

But wait! It gets worse.

Essentially, the researchers used statistics to compare the rates of infection among babies aged six months old, up to four years old. The population that the CDC recommends get vaccinated. The vaccinated group includes those who had completed “just” the original two dose series of Moderna, or a whopping three doses of Pfizer. 

“Statistics were also compared between those who were unvaccinated to those who, at a minimum, had completed their primary series (at least 2 doses of Moderna or at least 3 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech, including both original [non-Omicron containing] and bivalent [Omicron-containing] vaccines),” they write. 

The majority of participants int he study were either partially vaccinated or fully vaccinated, with a significant portion having received a specific bivalent booster targeted to the currently circulating strains in late 2022-early 2023.