#sunetra gupta

[srbachchan]

DAY 6238

Jalsa, Mumbai Mar 15, 2025/Mar 16 Sat/Sun 12:56 am

Ef birthdays wishes :

🪔,

March 16 .. birthday happiness to Ef Kalpana Kakade from Bengaluru .. and Ef Bharat Gupta from Gujarat .. 🙏🏽❤️🚩

Birthdays were missed .. apologies 🙏🏽 .. but the love and affection ever sincere and humongous ..

🪔 .. March 15 .. love and happiness to Ef Ankita Dadajwar from Nanded .. Ef Manish Mishra from Unnao Uttar Pradesh .. Ef Shruti Saini from New Delhi .. Ef Mozhgan Tirandaz from Iran 🇮🇷 .. Ef Avik Ghosh from Kolkata .. and Ef Avnish Dalal ..🙏🏽❤️🚩

🪔 .. March 14 .. love to Ef Rimi Basu .. and Ef Nilanjan Das from Kolkata .. 🙏🏽❤️🚩

🪔 .. March 13 .. love and joys to Ef Meghali B. Lahiry from Kolkata .. 🙏🏽❤️🚩

🪔 .. March 11 .. love to Ef Shirel Segev .. 🙏🏽❤️🚩

🪔 .. March 10 .. love to Ef Monika Jain from Bhopal .. 🙏🏽❤️🚩

🪔 .. March 09 .. love to Ef Altaf Ali Kondkar from Riyadh - KSA 🇸🇦 .. and Ef Misti Das from Assam .. 🙏🏽❤️🚩

🪔 .. March 06 .. love to Ef Muhammad Junaid from Canberra - Australia 🇦🇺 .. and Ef Muhammed Shifan from Kerala .. 🙏🏽❤️🚩

🪔 .. March 05 .. love to Ef Satish Kumar Paig from Kochi .. 🙏🏽❤️🚩

🪔 .. March 03 .. love to Ef Ashish Mali from Kolkata .. Ef Sunetra Ganguly also from Kolkata .. and Ef Radhika Sheshadri from Singapore 🇸🇬 .. 🙏🏽❤️🚩

🪔 .. March 02 .. love to Ef Gita Avinashi Patel .. Ef Laila Abdelkader .. and Ef Rasha Fouad from Egypt 🇪🇬 .. 🙏🏽❤️🚩

🪔 .. March 01 .. love to Ef Asesh Majumdar from Kolkata .. 🙏🏽❤️🚩

🪔 .. February 28 .. love to Ef Jitendra Chauhan .. and Ef Rahul Tiwari from Bangalore .. 🙏🏽❤️🚩

🪔 .. February 24 .. love to Ef Soham Boricha .. 🙏🏽❤️🚩

🪔 .. February 23 .. love to Ef Girish Badave .. 🙏🏽❤️🚩

🪔 .. February 19 .. love to Ef Jahnvi Bhatt .. and Ef Milan Mehta from Surat .. 🙏🏽❤️🚩

🪔 .. February 18 .. love to Ef Sriskandan SK from Sydney, Australia 🇦🇺 .. 🙏🏽🚩❤️

🪔 .. February 15 .. love to Ef Depack Timbadiaa from Kolkata .. 🙏🏽❤️🚩

🪔 .. February 12 .. love to Ef Viviene .. and Ef Anusree Mandi from Kolkata .. and Ef Manish Malhotra .. 🙏🏽❤️🚩

🪔 .. February 10 💖 .. love to Ef Rahul Sen from Kolkata .. 🙏🏽❤️🚩

🪔 .. February 09 .. love to Ef Pinakin Gohil from Bhavnagar, Gujarat .. 🙏🏽❤️🚩

Sometimes the Ef 👆🏼👆🏼does exceptional work, which even the hired professionals do not and cannot do .. pity ..

But my love and gratitude to dedicated Ef that work unconditionally and make life easier for me .. an incorrect date , a wrong typo , a spelling error , wrong numbering .. all so efficiently informing me of my error ..

My gratitude to all ..

The visit to the gym and the physio and the yoga was done in time .. but later in the day just felt like repeating it without any particular reason , and so did two visits ..

Maybe two is good .. perhaps the better for the upkeep of the body ..

One comes across so many ideas and informations of how one can keep their body healthy, on the net .. and one wonders if they should be practised or not ..

The medical professionals raise their eyebrows .. in surprise , and at times with a look of warning .. so one tends to ignore the information on the net , or rather the Insta .. but some of them are really quite useful ..

I wait for the morn and the GOJ and the meeting of the familiar Ef and the affection that is given to me .. it is a feeling of such immense proportion that at times it is difficult to put it in words ..

Time and age have a time .. and the time resonates with change .. many that you remember when you were with them earlier, somehow remain in the image for you , until suddenly you discover how time has taken its time to bring change to them .. the heart and the mind remains the same .. just that the physiognomy alters ..

We convey and inform now, more than we ever did .. we connect more now than we ever did .. and the joy of reminisce is overbearing .. for we have the ability to keep records of the entire proceedings when we met and where and what we said or expressed ..

Oh what a wonderful World we live in .. and our next generation shall perhaps be expressing that from another Planet ..

Space has a fascination among the young, more than we ever thought of .. for us it was a given .. for them it is a question mark .. and rightfully though .. the 6 or 7 year old has a fascination to discover all that in their spare time ..

We were more keen on knowing when we would get free from class to be able to play marbles or 'gulli danda' ..

The scriptures and the mythology was learnt by us through narration .. narration of the elders ..

The knowledge of similar is now a penchant among the youth .. the net the desire for greater know is a habit .. one that is lauded by the elders .. and may they flourish and excel ..

My consideration for your good times .. and love

Amitabh Bachchan

मुँह सिर्फ़ एक, कान दो - कम बोलो, ज़्यादा सुनो

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preseved in our archive (Daily updates!)

By Benjamin Mateus

Stanford University held a conference last month with the misleading title, “Pandemic Policy: Planning the Future, Assessing the Past.” Given the utter bankruptcy of the US and global policy in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, one would conclude that a discussion on how the world can address the current and future pandemics is of immense importance and has significant relevance to international public health policies.

However, the one-day conference held at the prestigious university was funded through Collateral Global and supported by Brownstone Institute, promoters of pandemic misinformation and COVID-19 contrarians. It was the opposite of a serious discussion on pandemic preparedness.

To place these organizations into a proper perspective, it bears noting that Robert Dingwall, a British sociologist who has been heavily promoted by Collateral Global, wrote on his blog in March 2020 that the elderly would be better off to die from COVID-19 than to be protected and later die from a degenerative disease like dementia. This was a thinly disguised version of fascistic eugenics—weeding out the “unfit” from society.

The Stanford symposium showcased a panel of discredited scientists and supposed policy health experts associated with the reactionary Great Barrington Declaration, better characterized as a manifesto of death, set on promoting the notion that no broad-based public health initiatives should have ever been undertaken during the COVID-19 pandemic or when the next pandemic strikes.

At the core of the debunked “declaration” is the claim that there can be “focused protection” against the pandemic for those at high risk, which would allow those at minimal risk of death to lead normal lives while building up immunity to the virus through natural immunity.

Well-respected global health advocate Peter Hotez said of the conference, “This is awful, a full-on anti-science agenda (and revisionist history), tone deaf to how this kind of rhetoric contributed to the deaths of thousands of Americans during the pandemic by convincing them to shun vaccines or minimize COVID.”

These include discredited figures like Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford public policy professor; Dr. Scott Atlas, former Trump administration adviser on the Coronavirus Task Force; and Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s former state epidemiologist, who advocated for a policy of mass infection to achieve “herd immunity” that had horrendous consequences on the population, in particular, the elderly and most frail. Tegnell’s most consequential remark during the conference gave the flavor of the event: “We have focused so much on mortality as a measure of outcome, but there are more important things.”

Included on the panel were Marty Makary, prominent Johns Hopkins University surgeon, who had repeatedly predicted that the population was on the verge of achieving natural immunity and the pandemic would thus come to an end. Also there was Oxford Professor of Epidemiology Sunetra Gupta, one of the original signers of the declaration with Bhattacharya, and Harvard University biostatistician Martin Kuldorff.

Graph compares COVID deaths in the US, Sweden and Norway (which adopted a far more rigorous pandemic mitigation program). [Photo: Our World in Data] Gupta has called for mass infection of the young and declared during the conference that her idea of focused protection had evolved into what she termed “individual risk reduction,” where each person would decide for him or herself the level of protection and mitigation they wanted to assume during a deadly outbreak. This is the literal opposite of public health, treating infection with a highly contagious and potentially lethal disease as a purely individual matter.

That institutions like Johns Hopkins, Harvard and Stanford are at the forefront of promoting such anti-science and anti-public health initiatives speaks to the deep political and moral decline in academic circles. Similarly, these “elite” institutions have embraced censorship and attacks on democratic rights of students protesting the US backing of Israel’s genocidal policies in Gaza.

Closing remarks at the Stanford conference were given by John Ioannidis, professor of epidemiology and one of the principal investigators of the fallacious, non-peer-reviewed Santa Clara County study, released in April 2020, which suggested that COVID-19 was no deadlier than the flu and that the pandemic measures to protect populations needed to be lifted forthwith.

At the time of that study, the COVID-19 pandemic was inundating the healthcare system of New York City. The CDC had noted that close to 20,000 people had died in the three-month window (March through May) with an overall crude fatality rate of 9.2 percent. Also, 30 percent of hospitalized patients with laboratory confirmed COVID-19 were known to have died.

Bhattacharya, who had locked arms with AFT President Randi Weingarten in forcing students and teachers back into schools in 2021 and served as a pandemic adviser to Florida’s fascistic Governor Ron DeSantis, attempted to sell the conference as a forum for people with opposing views coming together to air out their differences.

“What can we do in the future? The pandemic was by any measure a disaster,” he declared. Although he cited the correct number of deaths and economic turmoil caused by the pandemic affecting the poorest in the world, he blamed these losses, not on the failure to carry out systematic public health measures but on the measures themselves. It was a translation into academic jargon of the notorious declaration by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman that “the cure can’t be worse than the disease.”

Bhattacharya had the audacity to assert, “this conference was four years too late, but this is not too late, this is not the last pandemic the world will face.” The purpose of his efforts to codify the perspectives put forth by the Great Barrington Declaration is to ensure no real effort is taken by any government to address any threat, including the current bird flu outbreak that threatens to ignite another pandemic.

His ideas have nothing to do with the field of epidemiology or any scientific comprehension of the nature of pandemics. If he has a bone to pick with the Biden administration and its response to the pandemic is that Biden and Harris did not adopt the mass infection policy officially from the beginning, but only implemented it piecemeal.

Additionally, Bhattacharya has positioned himself as a fellow traveler with the anti-vaxxers promoting the false notion that the current mRNA vaccines are unsafe and the process through which they were brought forward violated safety measures which is patently false.

He wrote for the Brownstone Institute a report published on November 16, 2022, stating, “The Biden plan enshrines former president Donald Trump‘s Operation Warp Speed as the model response to the next century of pandemics. Left unsaid is that, for the new pandemic plan to work as envisioned, it will require us to conduct dangerous gain-of-function research. It will also require cutting corners in the evaluation of the safety and efficacy of novel vaccines. And while the studies are underway, politicians will face tremendous pressure to impose draconian lockdowns to keep the population ‘safe’.”

Scott Atlas blurted out the real purpose of the conference. Reading a prepared statement, he said that the lockdowns failed to stop the dying, and they failed to stop the spread. He blamed the economic lockdowns for the excess deaths rather than the virus. He blamed Dr. Anthony Fauci for implementing the lockdowns and not enforcing “targeted protection.”

Atlas later also called for complete US divestment from the World Health Organization and called for the termination of all middle-level scientists at the CDC, for which he received applause from his colleagues on the panel.

The Stanford conference was entirely divorced from the actual history of the pandemic, particularly its early weeks. The initial outbreak of COVID in Wuhan showed it was propagated by airborne transmission and was both highly contagious and lethal.

When, on January 30, 2020, the WHO declared the outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, Europe, the US, and other countries chose not to act. They could have rapidly eliminated and eradicated the virus but did nothing until the virus had spread globally and began its deadly rampage.

It was in early March, six weeks later, with the horrific scenes emerging out of Italy that prompted the working class to demand a shutdown. Auto workers took the lead in many countries, including the United States and Canada, and it was only out of fear of a mass rebellion among workers internationally that the ruling elites were forced to respond with limited lockdowns to stem the tide of infections.

The Great Barrington Declaration, the right-wing campaigns against mask and vaccine mandates and last month’s conference at Stanford were essentially rooted in fear of the independent initiative of workers insisting on serious in public health measures. The populist demagogy about allowing people the “freedom” to work in the midst of a deadly pandemic cannot disguise what is a fundamentally anti-working class perspective.

The maliciously false point being driven home by the organizers of the conference was that social interventions—masking, closure of schools and businesses, lockdowns, and maintaining social distancing—were worse than the disease, despite studies that have shown when such policies were actually implemented, they saved many, many lives.

As one 2023 study published in The Lancet found, in the period from January 1, 2020, to July 31, 2022, Hawaii, with stricter anti-COVID measures, saw 147 deaths per 100,000 compared to 581 per 100,000 in Arizona and 526 per 100,000 in Washington D.C. The national rate was 372 deaths per 100,000.

Similar conclusions were reached in a more recent comprehensive study that evaluated state by state in the US comparing restrictions in place and impact on excess deaths. As the authors of that study noted, “COVID-19 restrictions were associated with substantial reductions in excess pandemic deaths in the US. If all states had weak restrictions, as defined in the Methods section, estimated excess deaths from July 2020 to June 2022 would have been 25 percent to 48 percent higher than if all had imposed strong restrictions. Behavioral responses provided a potentially important mechanism for this, being associated with 49 percent 78 percent of the overall difference.” This last part of the statement underscores the importance of open channels of communications and an all-in approach to such matters. Public health is first and foremost a social concern.

And still another study published in January 2022 found that the impact of the limited measures employed saved between 870,000 to 1.7 million Americans.

The most insidious issue that the COVID-19 contrarians fail to mention is that herd immunity is not achievable with a virus like SARS-CoV-2, which mutates so rapidly, and the issues raised by Long COVID and reinfections with the concomitant long-term health impacts that will debilitate the population are not even considered. Current estimates place the number of those suffering from Long COVID across the globe at over 410 million as of the end of 2023.

The response to pandemics requires a social investment in public health on an international scale. The global nature of the economy poses that a national approach as was seen in China and its Zero COVID policy cannot withstand an anti-public health policy that is imposed on the global population. This raises the need for a socialist perspective not only to the global economy but to the global health of the working class.

[3nding]

Ettore Meccia, fb

Una selezione minima, solo per avere qualche riferimento.

Il 4 ottobre 2020 scrive, assieme a Martn Kulldorf e Sunetra Gupta la Great Barrington Declaration, un documento in cui sostiene che per fronteggiare al meglio l'emergenza da Covid-19 la vita deve andare avanti come se niente fosse meno che per i vulnerabili che dovranno ricevere una focused protection (non riuscendo a definire né chi siano i vulnerabili né cosa sia la focused protection se no portare la spesa a casa agli anziani). In questo modo la popolazione infettandosi raggiungerà in fretta l'immunità di gregge e ci lasceremo la pandemia alle spalle. Quattro anni dopo contiamo milioni di decessi, un virus che continua a circolare e mutare originando ancora nuove varianti infettando e reinfettando la popolazione, è sempre più chiaro il rischio da infezioni cumulative e milioni di persone stanno ancora combattendo con gli esiti del Long Covid.

L'11 gennaio 2021 sostiene in un articolo su The Print che ormai la maggior parte degli Indiani ha raggiunto l'immunità naturale e non è il caso di vaccinarli per Covid-19, anzi potrebbe essere pericoloso. L'11 gennaio è dove c'è la freccia rossa nel grafico qui sotto con l'andamento cumulativo dei casi per milione (dati Our Wold In Data). Due settimane dopo in India emerge la variante Delta con 300.000 morti, più tutti quelli che farà in giro per il mondo.

A maggio 2023 viene presentato come un eroe in un'intervista pubblicata sul sito della Hoover Institution, il Think Tank conservatore e neoliberal che ha sede da sempre nella sua università (Stanford) per essersi opposto alle politiche di prevenzione del governo durante la pandemia. La Hoover Institution non ha nulla a che spartire con scienza e ricerca biomedica ma solo con politica e economia.

La comunità scientifica internazionale si prepara ad accogliere il prossimo direttore del NIH, Jay Bhattacharya. Sperando che H1N5 continui ad infettare solo oche selvatiche polli e mucche e non si faccia venire strane idee.

[wat3rm370n]

Mark Zuckerberg’s insufferable letter on covid censorship.

The enemy of your enemy is not your friend if your gripe is with Jeff Zients, but you’re considering teaming up with Sunetra Gupta. This doesn’t make sense. And neither does hyping the billionaire Facebook CEO because you’re angry that some pro-mask posts and discussion of long covid have been suppressed on social media. Guess what? I am too, and I’ve documented it. But people are still saying that pro-mask and long covid chronic illness topics are suppressed on social media. And I can pretty much guarantee that Mark Zuckerberg is not sad that the anyone downplayed the seriousness of covid. His letter was apparently addressing a period of time that includes late 2020, when for example Joe Biden, who was not yet the president, had someone reach out to Twitter to have apparently politically motivated revenge porn removed that was posted by James Woods, and which violated all sorts of platform policies and probably some laws. The truth is Zuckerberg is doing a mea culpa to signal he’s sorry for removing anti-vax disinformation. He’s certainly NOT saying he wishes he had promoted masks and other NPIs. Mark Zuckerberg is not championing the cause of public health and pro-mask messaging, and there is likely not much common ground to be found with alt-right ivermectin promoting dick-pic posting anti-vaxxers and tycoons yelling about censorship.

I’m not asking everyone to be perfect and recognize every disinformation narrative out there for what it is instantly, but can we at least, for pity’s sake at a bare minimum, at least people with audiences, not reshare dangerous colloidal silver promotion, cite Trump administration doctors, nod to stuff associated with the movie “Plandemic”, and at least ignore the foolishness of right-wing tescreal billionaires whining about having anti-vax misinformation and racist slurs “censored” in public spaces? Mmm?

[news-9-miami]

In a dramatic shake-up of the nation's vaccine policy leadership, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has fired all 17 members of the national vaccine advisory committee and swiftly replaced them with a new slate of eight scientists, doctors, and public health professionals. Kennedy made the announcement via X (formerly Twitter) on Wednesday, framing the move as a bold step to rebuild confidence in vaccine safety and transparency. “I retired the 17 current members of the committee,” Kennedy wrote. “I’m now repopulating ACIP with the eight new members who will attend ACIP’s scheduled June 25 meeting. The slate includes highly credentialed scientists, leading public-health experts, and some of America’s most accomplished physicians. All of these individuals are committed to evidence-based medicine, gold-standard science, and common sense.” The new members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) include some controversial but credentialed names: Dr. Joseph R. Hibbeln, Dr. Martin Kulldorff, Dr. Retsef Levi, Dr. Robert W. Malone, Dr. Cody Meissner, Dr. James Pagano, Dr. Vicky Pebsworth, and Dr. Michael A. Ross. Kennedy said each of them has “committed to demanding definitive safety and efficacy data before making any new vaccine recommendations.” Controversial Appointments and a Shift in Tone The appointment of Martin Kulldorff immediately raised eyebrows. A former Harvard Medical School epidemiologist, Kulldorff co-authored the 2020 Great Barrington Declaration, a document that called for lifting COVID-19 lockdowns and instead promoting “focused protection” for vulnerable populations. The declaration, co-signed with Oxford’s Dr. Sunetra Gupta and Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, drew fierce criticism from mainstream health authorities including the World Health Organization and Dr. Anthony Fauci. RFK Jr.: “Not Anti-Vaxxers — Just the Best People” Kennedy, a longtime vaccine safety critic now in a position of national influence, addressed concerns that the panel could become a platform for anti-vaccine ideology. “We’re going to bring great people onto the ACIP panel – not anti-vaxxers – bringing people on who are credentialed scientists,” he said Tuesday, ahead of the official announcement. The panel’s June 25 meeting, its first under the new lineup is expected to vote on vaccine guidelines for flu, COVID-19, HPV, RSV, and meningococcal bacteria, although a final agenda has yet to be released. Who Are the New Faces on ACIP? Dr. Joseph R. Hibbeln A psychiatrist and neuroscientist with a history of federal service, Hibbeln previously served as Acting Chief of the Section on Nutritional Neurosciences at the NIH. “His work has informed U.S. public health guidelines, particularly in maternal and child health,” Kennedy noted, highlighting his 120+ peer-reviewed publications and background in immune regulation and psychiatric health. Dr. Martin Kulldorff Kennedy called Kulldorff a “leading expert in vaccine safety and infectious disease surveillance,” citing his service on FDA and CDC advisory boards and development of statistical tools to detect outbreaks and vaccine side effects. Dr. Retsef Levi A professor at MIT’s Sloan School, Levi has co-authored studies scrutinizing mRNA vaccines and cardiovascular risks. “His research has contributed to discussions on vaccine manufacturing processes, safety surveillance, and public health policy,” Kennedy said. Dr. Robert W. Malone Known for his foundational work in mRNA delivery technology in the 1980s, Malone brings a background in molecular biology, immunology, and vaccine development. His role in vaccine discourse surged during the pandemic. Dr. Cody Meissner A pediatric infectious disease specialist and Dartmouth professor, Meissner has shaped national vaccine guidelines as a member of both the CDC and FDA vaccine advisory groups. “He has contributed to national immunization guidelines and regulatory decisions,” Kennedy wrote, noting his role in drafting pediatric vaccine schedules for the American Academy of Pediatrics. Dr. James Pagano With over 40 years of clinical experience, Pagano has worked in emergency rooms across the country. “He is strong advocate for evidence-based medicine,” Kennedy said, citing his long service in hospital executive roles and medical committees. Dr. Vicky Pebsworth A veteran nurse and public health expert with decades of experience, Pebsworth brings deep roots in vaccine safety policy and bioethics. She’s held past roles with the FDA, CDC, and National Vaccine Advisory Committee. Dr. Michael A. Ross An OB-GYN professor affiliated with both George Washington University and Virginia Commonwealth, Ross has led initiatives in women’s health and HPV immunization. “His continued service on biotech and healthcare boards reflects his commitment to advancing innovation in immunology, reproductive medicine, and public health,” Kennedy said. Looking Ahead: High Stakes and High Expectations With the next ACIP meeting just days away, all eyes are now on Kennedy’s newly installed team. The committee, founded in 1964, plays a crucial role in guiding CDC vaccine recommendations and national immunization schedules. Under Kennedy’s leadership, ACIP may take a more aggressive approach to transparency and data scrutiny, particularly in reviewing ongoing concerns about newer vaccines, including those for COVID-19. But one thing is clear: this is no minor personnel shuffle. It’s a top-down overhaul, led by a health secretary with a controversial history and a bold new direction. Read the full article

[storizenmagazine]

#BookReview: At its core, "Memories of Rain" is a meditation on identity, belonging, and the limits of love across cultures.

[news365timesindia]

[ad_1] Black Warrant, starring Kareena Kapoor's cousin Zahan Kapoor, is creating a heavy buzz on the internet. The web series, which is based on the 2019 non-fiction book Black Warrant: Confessions of a Tihar Jailer by Sunil Gupta and Sunetra Choudhury, is receiving positive reviews fro Read More [ad_2] Source link

[news365times]

[ad_1] Black Warrant, starring Kareena Kapoor's cousin Zahan Kapoor, is creating a heavy buzz on the internet. The web series, which is based on the 2019 non-fiction book Black Warrant: Confessions of a Tihar Jailer by Sunil Gupta and Sunetra Choudhury, is receiving positive reviews fro Read More [ad_2] Source link

[tuneindiaradio]

Black Warrant Netflix Drama Review: Unveiling Tihar Jail’s Dark Secrets

Just watched Black Warrant on Netflix? Dive into the gripping reality of Tihar Jail through this powerful drama based on Sunil Gupta’s Black Warrant. Featuring Zahan Kapoor's standout performance and a deep look at India’s penal system, this is a series that will haunt and challenge your perspective on justice. 🔍 #BlackWarrant #TiharJail #NetflixReview #IndianDrama #TrueCrime #PrisonLife #ZahanKapoor #Motwane #CrimeDrama #MustWatch #TuneIndiaRadio

Back to the 80s: A Reflection on Black Warrant Just finished watching Black Warrant on Netflix, a drama inspired by Sunil Gupta and Sunetra Choudhury’s non-fiction book Black Warrant: Confessions of a Tihar Jailer. The series took me on an emotional journey back to the early 1980s, a time etched in my memory from my school days. Those were the years when news of Ranga and Billa’s chilling crimes…

[darkmaga-returns]

By Tom Woods

November 19, 2024

From the Tom Woods Letter:

Now that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has been named the new secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, speculation has turned to who might be appointed director of the National Institutes of Health.

Before we get into that, here’s a related story.

I’ve several times featured Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine at Stanford, on the Tom Woods Show, and I’ve mentioned him a number of times in this newsletter. Jay and I became friends in the course of opposing the Covid madness.

You may recall that Jay was one of three authors — with Harvard’s Martin Kulldorff and Oxford’s Sunetra Gupta — of the Great Barrington Declaration, which decried lockdown hysteria as a catastrophically bad policy decision.

Jay’s view was that measures as extreme as society-wide lockdowns demanded an overwhelmingly strong consensus — and such a consensus did not exist. How could it? Nothing like that had ever even been recommended, much less tried.

A left-wing student group condemned him on posters splashed all over campus kiosks. “On a progressive-dominated campus,” Jay said, “these posters were clearly an incitement to violence. The group placed them on kiosks all over campus, including near a campus coffee shop that I frequent.”

Then in August 2021, Stanford’s chair of epidemiology, Melissa Bondy, had a hand in a secret petition circulated around the medical school urging Bhattacharya to be censured for saying, at a Ron DeSantis roundtable, that there were no randomized controlled trials demonstrating that masks on children did anything to stop the spread of Covid.

That statement happened to be true, but no matter — he wasn’t supposed to say it. Junior faculty worried about tenure knew they were expected to sign the petition.

[theculturedmarxist]

The Great Barrington Declaration was an open letter published in October 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns.[1][2] It claimed harmful COVID-19 lockdowns could be avoided via the fringe notion of "focused protection", by which those most at risk could purportedly be kept safe while society otherwise took no steps to prevent infection.[3][4][5] The envisaged result was herd immunity within three months, as SARS-CoV-2 swept through the population.[1][2][4]

Signed by Sunetra Gupta of the University of Oxford, Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford University, and Martin Kulldorff of Harvard University, it was sponsored by the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER), a conservative think tank, and drafted in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, signed there on 4 October 2020, and published on 5 October.[2][6] At the time, COVID-19 vaccines were considered to be months away from general availability.[4] The document presumed that the disease burden of mass infection could be tolerated, that any infection would confer long term sterilizing immunity, and it made no mention of physical distancing, masks, contact tracing,[7] or long COVID, which has left patients with debilitating symptoms months after the initial infection.[8][9]

The World Health Organization (WHO) and numerous academic and public-health bodies have stated that the strategy is dangerous and lacks a sound scientific basis.[10][11] They say that it would be challenging to shield all those who are medically vulnerable, leading to a large number of avoidable deaths among both older people and younger people with pre-existing health conditions.[12][13] As of October 2020, they warn that the long-term effects of COVID-19 are still not fully understood.[11][14] Moreover, the WHO said that the herd immunity component of the proposed strategy is undermined by the unknown duration of post-infection immunity.[11][14] They say that the more likely outcome would be recurrent epidemics, as was the case with numerous infectious diseases before the advent of vaccination.[13] The American Public Health Association and 13 other public-health groups in the United States warned in a joint open letter that the "Great Barrington Declaration is not grounded in science and is dangerous".[10] The Great Barrington Declaration received support from some scientists, the Donald Trump administration, British Conservative politicians, and from The Wall Street Journal's editorial board.

The Great Barrington Declaration was sponsored by the American Institute for Economic Research, a libertarian free-market think tank associated with climate change denial.[15][16][17]

Something about the fact Covid is being talked about like a common cold now is horrifying to me.

"Oh yeah I got covid again, gonna be resting for a week or so"

"Coworkers came in sick again, now I've got covid. Oh well, whatcha gonna do"

Its normal now. The new strains, the repeated catching, the fact its no longer a pandemic and is now a part of our daily lives.

A deadly disease that can and does permanently disable people who catch it is being treated like an inconvenient stomach bug.

And it was avoidable.

People are dying and being disabled in fucking droves and all anyone can say is "whelp, that's how it goes!" As if there wasn't/aren't vaccines, as if there wasn't/aren't methods that can help (masking, social distancing, etc), as if other places who took it more seriously didn't have better survival rates.

This outcome wasn't a guarantee. Selfish, ableist, racist, conspiracy loving ass-hats made sure it happened.

Looking at the numbers and then talking to people who didn't want to mildly inconvenience themselves to save lives is horrific.

Millions died.

Millions more will follow.

Thousands were disabled by it.

Thousands will follow.

And it. Was all. AVOIDABLE.

[satnpifi]

So why is there not more talk about this?

David Gorski is one of those Americans in what I think is called “the sceptic community”, that I know about, and have respected. More recently wikipedia referred to him when they claimed the Great Barrington Declaration was funded by crazy right wing, climate catastrophe denier Charles Koch.

The thing is, one, of course Sunetra Gupta, Jay Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff have always denied that. And btw at least Gupta says she’s left wing. Two, according to this article: Quacks in the ivory tower, the whole thing comes from a blogger who among other things is a “september 11 truthere”. Like dr David Groski et al. were so determined to prove the “other side” was evil, they didn’t care about the source of their “proof”.  I know, in the US and the UK, it is extremely polarised  - we’re that too, but not that extreme - something like that could happen. It’s not enough that they could be wrong (because they could be wrong) they must be painted as funded by a cartoonish evil anti-science lobbyist. At the same time the right wing in the US does the same thing. Except they call Fauci a “villian”, again it’s not enough to think he is wrong (because he might be wrong) he must be a villain.

The point is anyway, wikipedia isn’t any site. It’s Fooking Wikipedia, if they get something like that wrong, it’s a big deal. Should be talked about, I think.

[covid-safer-hotties]

Column: With a conference on the pandemic, Stanford gives purveyors of misinformation and disinformation a platform - Published Aug 29, 2024

We’re living in an upside-down world, aren’t we?

It’s a world in which scientists whose research findings that COVID probably originated as a spillover from wildlife have been validated by dozens of scientific studies, but got them hauled before a Republican-dominated House committee to be brayed at by the likes of Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and accused of academic fraud.

Meanwhile, the purveyors of claims that COVID’s danger was overstated and could be met by exposing the maximum number of people to the deadly virus in quest of “herd immunity” have been offered a platform to air their widely debunked and refuted views at a forum sponsored by Stanford University.

This is awful, a full on anti-science agenda (and revisionist history), tone deaf to how this kind of rhetoric contributed to the deaths of thousands of Americans during the pandemic by convincing them to shun vaccines or minimize Covid. — Vaccine expert and pseudoscience debunker Peter Hotez

The event is a symposium on the topic “Pandemic Policy: Planning the Future, Assessing the Past,” scheduled to take place on campus Oct. 4.

No one can doubt that a sober examination of the policies of the recent past with an eye toward doing better in the next pandemic is warranted. This symposium is nothing like that.

Most of its participants have been associated with discredited approaches to the COVID pandemic, including minimizing its severity and calling for widespread infection to achieve herd immunity. Some have been sources of rank misinformation or disinformation. Advocates of scientifically validated policies are all but absent.

The event is shaping up as a major embarrassment for an institution that prides itself on its academic standards. It comes with Stanford’s official imprimatur; the opening remarks will be delivered by its freshly appointed president, Jonathan Levin, an economist who took office Aug. 1.

The problem with the symposium starts with its main organizer. He’s Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford professor of health policy. Bhattacharya is one of the original signers of the “Great Barrington Declaration,” a manifesto for herd immunity published in October 2020. The university didn’t respond to my question about Bhattacharya’s role. He didn’t respond to my request for comment.

The core of the declaration is what its drafters call “focused protection,” which means allowing “those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk” — chiefly seniors, who would be quarantined.

Focused protection, the promoters wrote, would allow society to achieve herd immunity and return to normalcy in three to six months.

The quest for herd immunity from COVID has several problems. One is that infection with one variant of this ever-evolving virus doesn’t necessarily confer immunity from other variants. Another problem is that COVID can be a devastating disease for victims of any age. Allowing anyone of any age to become infected can expose them to serious health problems.

Bhattacharya’s name doesn’t appear in the event announcement, but he has identified himself on X as its “main organizer.” Among the announced speakers is epidemiologist Sunetra Gupta of Oxford, another of the declaration’s original signers.

Several other speakers advocated fewer restrictions on schools and businesses while predicting that COVID would be manageably mild, like the flu — predictions that were consistently and catastrophically wrong.

The date of the symposium, by the way, is the anniversary of the signing of the Great Barrington Declaration. It’s also Rosh Hashana, one of the High Holy Days of the Jewish calendar. Stanford says the “overlap” with the holiday is regrettable, but it hasn’t offered to reschedule.

Stanford responded to my request for comment about the event by simply reproducing language from the event announcement.

“The conference was organized to highlight some of the many important topics that public health officials and policymakers will need to address in preparing for future pandemics,” the university said. “The speakers, including those already listed and others who will be added over the next several weeks, represent a wide range of views on this issue. We look forward to a civil, informed, and robust debate.”

That won’t do. Stanford’s argument that it’s merely providing a platform for “robust debate” among speakers with a “wide range of views” is belied by the roster of speakers, in which members of a discredited fringe of pandemic policy advocates are heavily overrepresented.

The event announcement has elicited skepticism and dismay among scientists seriously concerned about pandemic policy.

“Knowing who the speakers and panelists are,” wrote the veteran pseudoscience debunker David Gorski, “I know that ‘assessing the past’ will likely consist of highly revisionist history ... claiming that public health interventions didn’t work.”

The description of some of the daylong symposium’s sessions should give one pause. The precis of a panel titled “Misinformation, Censorship, and Academic Freedom” states as fact that “governments censored information contrary to public health pronouncements in social media settings.” It asks rhetorically, “Does the suspension of free speech rights during a pandemic help keep the population better informed or does it permit the perpetuation of false ideas by governments?”

Yet who among these speakers lost their “free speech rights”? On the contrary, several, including Bhattacharya, rode their discredited claims to regular appearances on Fox News, op-eds in the Wall Street Journal and appointments to blue-ribbon government committees in red states.

A look at the speakers list should tell you where this event is heading. On a panel on “Evidence-Based Decision Making During a Pandemic” is Anders Tegnell, the architect of Sweden’s pandemic policy. Sweden has been held up by critics of school closings and lockdowns and advocates of herd immunity as a success story, the theme being that by keeping schools and restaurants open, the country beat the pandemic.

The truth is just the opposite. As I’ve reported, the Tegnell record is disastrous. Sweden’s laissez-faire approach sacrificed its seniors to the pandemic and used its schoolchildren as guinea pigs. Swedish researchers concluded in retrospect that its policies were “morally, ethically, and scientifically questionable.” The death toll rose so high that the government was eventually forced to tighten up the rules.

Sweden’s death rate from COVID was much worse than that of its Nordic neighbors Denmark, Norway and Finland, which all took a tougher approach. If Sweden’s death rate had only matched Norway’s, it would have suffered only about 4,400 COVID deaths, rather than its toll of 18,500.

Then there’s Scott Atlas, a radiologist and former professor at Stanford medical school, who is currently a fellow at the Hoover Institution, the right-wing think tank housed on the Stanford campus. Atlas was recruited to join the Trump White House as a COVID advisor in July 2020 after having volunteered to Medicare Administrator Seema Verma that the government’s pandemic policies were “a massive overreaction” that was “inciting irrational fear” in Americans.

Atlas estimated that the coronavirus “would cause about 10,000 deaths,” which “would be unnoticed” in a normal flu season. By the end of 2020, as it happens, COVID deaths in the U.S. exceeded 350,000. As of today, the toll is more than 1.2 million.

At the White House, Atlas promoted scientifically dubious prescriptions for the pandemic. He pushed for reduced testing for COVID and dismissed masking as a countermeasure. Most damaging, he called for a herd immunity policy.

Atlas’ prescriptions disturbed his Stanford colleagues, about 110 of whom wrote an open letter in September 2020 alerting the public to “the falsehoods and misrepresentations of science” that Atlas was preaching.

“Encouraging herd immunity through unchecked community transmission is not a safe public health strategy,” they wrote. “In fact, this approach would do the opposite, causing a significant increase in preventable cases, suffering and deaths, especially among vulnerable populations, such as older individuals and essential workers.”

The Stanford administration also formally disavowed Atlas’ statements and prescriptions. “Dr. Atlas has expressed views that are inconsistent with the university’s approach in response to the pandemic,” the university said. “We support using masks, social distancing, and conducting surveillance and diagnostic testing.”

Yet now Atlas appears to be back in the university’s good graces, judging from his presence on the roster. Stanford didn’t respond to my questions about Atlas’ role, and he didn’t reply to my request for comment.

Allowing this symposium to proceed along the lines laid out in the announcement will be a black mark for Stanford in the scientific community.

“What’s happening at Stanford?” asked vaccine expert and disinformation debunker Peter Hotez on X. “This is awful, a full on anti-science agenda (and revisionist history), tone deaf to how this kind of rhetoric contributed to the deaths of thousands of Americans during the pandemic by convincing them to shun vaccines or minimize Covid.”

Stanford’s claim to be a neutral host of a scientific symposium falls short as a fair description of its duties as an academic institution.

No university claims to be open to the expression of any or all views, no matter how unorthodox or counterfactual; they make judgments about the propriety of viewpoints all the time; the level of discernment they practice is one way we judge them as serious educational establishments.

By that standard, Stanford deserves an “F.” On the evidence, neither the university nor its medical school, which is a sponsor of the symposium, exercised any judgment at all before greenlighting an embarrassing gala for the pandemic fringe.

[3nding]

Sergio Pistoi, fb

MAKE ASTROLOGY GREAT AGAIN

La mascherina FFP2 è una di quelle invenzioni che dovrebbero piacere a tutti: economica, tecnologica (non sembra ma lo è), priva di effetti collaterali, niente farmaci, protegge dalle infezioni aeree in modo altamente efficace e permette lo svolgimento delle attività quotidiane anche durante un'epidemia.

Perché allora, nel mezzo della più grande pandemia del secolo (ma ce ne saranno altre peggiori, non temete) abbiamo visto gente inveire violentemente contro le innocue e utili mascherine? Perché tutto fa brodo come pretesto per dividere, creare polarizzazione e cercare di capitalizzare su di essa, anche una mascherina. I movimenti no-mask, nati negli USA e da noi scimmiottati da Salxxni e simili, sono stati l'avanguardia dello sciacallaggio politico e comunicativo legato al COVID-19, Ne ho già parlato molte volte durante la pandemia.

La strategia è talmente brutale che cascarci sembra quasi puerile: gli spin doctor di certi movimenti passano praticamente la giornata a sperimentare sui social pretesti per polarizzare, creare divisioni, confusione. Se questi memi tossici attecchiscono, diventano un ottimo sistema per creare artificialmente una minoranza scontenta (no-mask, no-vax, no-sticazz) di cui ti fai portavoce politico, ma le cui istanze sono appunto create in laboratorio, non vere esigenze dal basso. Queste ultime , le istanze vere, sono poche, ben note, già appannaggio tradizionale di altri partiti, e soprattutto sono difficili da accontentare perché richiedono soluzioni reali e non memi.

I movimenti no-mask, come i no-xy che seguiranno, sono creature politiche, gonfiate dai media (anch'essi in cerca di polarizzazione) ad uso e consumo di strati sempre più imponenti di analfabeti funzionali, che abbiamo o meno la laurea in tasca.

A fornire la base pseudo-scientifica a quel movimento è stata la famigerata Great Barrington Declaration, un documento dell'ottobre 2020 privo di referenze e prove scientifiche, nato sotto l'egida del think tank ultra-liberista American Institute for Economic Research, che incitava a evitare lockdown e perseguire l'infezione naturale per inseguire una altrettanto fantomatica e immunità di gregge. Un'idea delirante e fallimentare anche alla luce di quello che abbiamo visto durante la pandemia e anche oggi, dove nuove varianti virali continuano a circolare perfino tra la popolazione pluri-immunizzata e vaccinata. Una bischerata ridicolizzata da qualunque ricercatore e biologo(a) degno(a) di questo nome, ma che portava la firma di professoroni dell' Ivy League come Jay Bhattacharya (Stanford), Sunetra Gupta (Oxford), Martin Kulldorff (Harvard, verrà successivamente licenziato).

I tre luminari si distinguono per la frequentazione di ambienti di ultra destra trumpiani, dove faranno carriera, e per le posizioni contrarie al controllo dell'epidemia, alla vaccinazione dei bambini, all'obiezione all'uso delle mascherine e simili amenità. Quello straccio di documento, menzionato a pappagallo e mentula canis da milioni di troll e decerebrati sui social, cancellato in migliaia di esemplari dalle mie bacheche e da quelle di chi si occupava seriamente della questione, ha offerto (su gentile richiesta, come avrete capito) la base "scientifica" e ideologica all'intera galassia trumpiana per cavalcare il negazionismo, creare polarizzazione dall'aria fritta e approfittare cinicamente di una popolazione disorientata e spaventata e dei morti che si accumulavano. Parliamo dei giorni in cui gli USA marcavano record drammatici di vittime del virus, mentre Trump, presidente, litigava con Fauci e suggeriva di bere varechina contro il Covid. Trump con il Covid che per lanciare il suo messaggio saliva nell'auto presidenziale senza mascherina.

Oggi i vecchi favori vengono ricompensati. Trump ha oggi nominato uno dei firmatari di quel documento, Jay Bhattacharya, a capo degli NIH, il più importante centro di ricerca pubblica del mondo, e soprattutto il maggiore distributore di fondi per la ricerca statunitense. Chiunque faccia ricerca biomedica negli USA prima poi fa domanda per un grant NIH. Chiunque si occupi di biomedicina nel mondo conosce l'impatto degli NIH nel sistema della ricerca medica globale. Dopo il ministero della salute in mano al complottista Kennedy, il più grande fulcro di ricerca americana, e mondiale, è usato come premio per un amico del vincitore, un sostanziale negazionista, latore di teorie pseudo-scientifiche. Guai se alla prossima emergenza Trump si ritrovasse con un nuovo Fauci a scuotere la testa e spiegargli la scienza. Meglio uno yes man. Pazienza se poi non ci capisce niente. Mentre all'orizzonte si profila l'ombra sempre più minacciosa di una nuova pandemia- stavolta di influenza aviaria- che con una letalità (finora registrata) superiore al 50% potrebbe far correre anche il più accanito no-vax a farsi iniettare sieri sperimentali spintonando le vecchiette in fila per il vaccino.

L'America di Trump rischia di diventare la versione occidentale della russia di putin: un sistema puramente clientelare, basato su rapporti di forza, sudditanza e amicizia, dove pesi e contrappesi sono eliminati, inclusi quelli scientifici e tecnologici e dove l'elettorato vive in una bolla di realtà alternativa. Un sistema anti-meritocratico, dove si fa strada per contiguità politica, cosa che l'America non è mai stata, e che noi invece abbiamo sempre avuto.

Potremmo chiederci come è possibile che sistemi democratici e potenti facciano questa fine, un'idea ce l'ho, l'ho già espressa. Ma ce lo chiederemo con calma. Magari mentre respiriamo particelle di H5N1 per costruirci una bella immunità di gregge.

[wat3rm370n]

Kevin Bardosh, speaker at Stanford University MAGA adjacent political event.

Symposium of covid contrarians celebrating the anniversary of The Great Barrington Declaration.

Kevin Bardosh is still promoting the Great Barrington Declaration in 2024. I’m not sure why anyone feels the need because most of it has been embraced by most elites and those in power. Except the implementation has been that the wealthy largely exercise “focused protection” to protect themselves while having others be forced into repeated infections.

Kevin Bardosh is on the team at an outfit called Collateral Global - an organization that appears to exist in order to organize against public health and advocates against public safety and preventing harm. Sunetra Gupta and Jay Bhattacharya are also involved. I have to assume the organization getting named Collateral Global was inspired by the fact that what they're advocating for will lead to mass global collateral damage. Definitely evokes a vivid grim image.

Kevin Bardosh also hangs out on podcasts with Jay Bhattacharya. Bhattacharya has a podcast called “The Illusion of Consensus” which is very funny since he seems to be hell bent on creating the illusion of a consensus around the idea that most people want to be sick a lot with a potentially dangerous disease…by having podcast after podcast and symposium after fancy declaration meeting, year after year, to try to beat it down our throats with the mere exposure effect and repetitive propaganda techniques to create a “majority illusion”.

Kevin Bardosh does engage in medical anthropological science, or at least tries. He has co-authored a study on covid mitigations in Haiti. Unfortunately, it seems to be a vehicle for hand wringing about “lockdowns” in rural Haiti, where the authors advocate that they should’ve just went for “shielding the vulnerable” (focused protection?) in a place where elders tend to live in multigenerational living circumstances with youths under crowded circumstances, and that’s the people whose homes haven’t been destroyed in disaster and forced them into crowded tent towns or sleeping outside and being afflicted with a number of underlying conditions and respiratory diseases.A glance over the paper suggested to me that this study highlighted how the leadership apparently failed to adequately explain to the public the benefits of disease prevention and failed to support people with adequate public health measures. That wasn’t the takeaway of the study authors though. As far as I can tell their anthropological takeaway was that more Haitians should’ve died in service to ideological adherence to Great Barrington Declaration eugenic economics - perhaps Kevin Bardosh should be a guest on the podcast of Jack Murphy, who in 2021 tweeted out “If covid had been left to do it’s thing, our nation would have become as a result, healthier, fitter, and younger - ie stronger.” Perhaps those two might have topics to discuss.

Crosspost from Teams Human substack & full pdf version.

[nihthraefn]

In October 2020 secluded in the Berkshires, three epidemiologists, Jayanta Bhattacharya (professor of medicine at Stanford), Martin Kulldorff (professor medicine at Harvard) and Sunetra Gupta (professor of theoretical epidemiology at Oxford) wrote and signed the Great Barrington Declaration, which outlined a different way of handling the pandemic, suggesting that the general population without comorbidities should continue their normal way of life and allow for the general population to build up herd immunity.   You can read about it and sign it here:      https://gbdeclaration.org

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