ACE2 isn't solely responsible for Covid-19, which explains a lot

 Understanding immunology is still a work in progress. Which is why biologists at the Wuhan laboratory were working on SARS-CoV-2. Which also explains a lot about the not-so-natural origin of the virus...

This article is already a year old but shows clearly how although the political response came within weeks and the vaccines within months, the scientific understanding arrived a year later. This tells us that the political message was little but propaganda and the vaccines little more than a shot in the dark!

Shin Jie Yong
Medium
Wed, 09 Dec 2020

The discovery of two new receptors — neuropilin-1 and CD147 — explains why Covid-19 is a mix of respiratory, vascular, nervous, olfactory, and immunological diseases.

It has been odd right from the start. If SARS-CoV-2 (the novel coronavirus that causes Covid-19) uses the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) as a receptor to infect cells, then why is it a lung disease when the lungs have low levels of ACE2?This was determined back in May 2020 in a study finding that alveolar cell type 2 (the primary target of SARS-CoV-2) in the lungs has ACE2 expression that is "4.7-fold lower than the average expression level of all ACE2 expressing cell types," such as the liver, stomach, ileum, kidney, and colon.

Later, a systematic review published over a month ago further points out that SARS-CoV-2 tend to end up in places not consistent with ACE2 expression levels. Looking at the figure below, organs SARS-CoV-2 tend to localize (e.g., lungs and brain) do not always have high expression of ACE2, and vice-versa.

© Trypsteen et al. (2020).
Left: Gradient color (purple) indicates low to high evidence for SARS-CoV-2 detection; the highest expression was found in the upper airways, lungs, oral cavity, gastrointestinal tract, and urinary system.

Right: Gradient color (orange) indicates low to high evidence for ACE2 expression; the highest expression was detected in the oral cavity, gastrointestinal tract, and the male reproductive system.

"Hence, the SARS-CoV-2 may depend on co-receptor or other auxiliary membrane proteins to facilitate its infection," authors of the May study hypothesized. Indeed, in the past month, published studies have confirmed additional receptors that SARS-CoV-2 uses to sneak into cells, which are neuropilin-1 and CD147 (or basigin). These two new receptors also tell us why Covid-19 tends to cause problems in the pulmonary, vascular, nervous, olfactory, and immune systems with little or no ACE2 expression.

Neuropilin-1

In 2009, a study discovered that neuropilin-1 could bind to genes with patterns conforming to the C-end rule. Apparently, the genetic sequence of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein also has this C-end rule.

So, two independent groups of international researchers sought to test if SARS-CoV-2 could use neuropilin-1 as a receptor. The resulting two papers were published last month in Science with the titles, "Neuropilin-1 facilitates SARS-CoV-2 cell entry and infectivity," and "Neuropilin-1 is a host factor for SARS-CoV-2 infection." Judging from the titles alone, we know the hypothesis is confirmed to be true.

In short, they showed that SARS-CoV-2 can still infect cells deficient in ACE2, as long as they express neuropilin-1. If both ACE2 and neuropilin-1 receptors are present, the infection became more infectious. Using genetic editing to cut or antibodies to block neuropilin-1, in turn, prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection.

"Whereas ACE2 was detected at very low levels, [neuropilin-1] were abundantly expressed in almost all pulmonary and olfactory cells, with the highest levels of expression in endothelial cells."

Binding to neuropilin-1 would hinder its normal function, which is to aid neurons to make connections and blood vessels to grow. This explains why SARS-CoV-2 can attack the nervous and vascular systems. This explains why Covid-19 is also a neurological and vascular disease. And why SARS-CoV-2/Covid-19 attacks the lungs and sense of smell since neuropilin-1 is highly expressed in the respiratory and olfactory tracks.

As one of the studies in Science stated:

"Whereas ACE2 was detected at very low levels, [neuropilin-1] were abundantly expressed in almost all pulmonary and olfactory cells, with the highest levels of expression in endothelial cells."

Endothelial means blood vessels; thus, neuropilin-1 concentrates in blood vessels and cells of the lungs and nose. This study also did an autopsy of olfactory cells isolated from the nose of deceased Covid-19 victims, showing that cells positive for neuropilin-1 — but lacking ACE2 — were still infested with SARS-CoV-2 particles.

Interestingly, another research group had found that rats with chronic neuropathic pain no longer feel pain when the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 blocked neuropilin-1. This is because neuropilin-1 participates in pain excitation in neurons. In an anecdote, a 49-year-old South African male suffered a nerve injury in a motor accident in 2011. As a result, he lived with chronic pain — so unbearable that it disrupts his sleep every night — until he got Covid-19.

"I found it very strange: When I was sick with Covid, the pain was bearable. At some points, it felt like the pain was gone. I just couldn't believe it," he said. "I lived a better life when I was sick because the pain was gone." But the man recovered from Covid-19, and his pain resurfaced.

CD147 (Basigin)

This month, a new study was published in the Nature-partnered journal, Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy, titled "CD147-spike protein is a novel route for SARS-CoV-2 infection to host cells." Again, the title has said it all. Researchers in China discovered that SARS-CoV-2 could infect human cells and mice expressing CD147 (also called basigin). SARS-CoV-2 infection can be further blocked with Meplazumab (an anti-CD147 antibody) or boosted with increasing CD147 expression.

"These findings demonstrate that CD147 provides more entries for SARS-CoV-2 infection and plays a potential role in mediating virus infection, especially in ACE2-deficient cell types."

More importantly, this study showed that T-cells (both CD4+ and CD8+) collected from human blood were susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection via CD147. Notably, the study also confirmed that these T-cells do not express the ACE2 receptor, which is expected as T-cells are inherently ACE2 deficient.

The T-cell's CD147 functions as a receptor to receive chemotaxis signals. Chemotaxis is the attraction or recruitment of immune cells to the area where foreign invaders are located. Thusly, CD147 expression heightens when T-cells are activated. As follows, in the above study, activated T-cells were also shown to be more susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection than inactive T-cells. This also explains why Covid-19 tends to reduce T-cell count in severe cases.

In addition, the study determines the levels of ACE2 and CD147 expressions in human lung cells — BEAS-2B, and Vero E6 bronchial cells. Apparently, CD147 expression was 2.3-fold higher than ACE2 in Vero E6 cells, and ACE2 wasn't even expressed in BEAS-2B cells.

"These findings demonstrate that CD147 provides more entries for SARS-CoV-2 infection and plays a potential role in mediating virus infection, especially in ACE2-deficient cell types," the study authors wrote.

Exploiting the CD147 receptor is not unique to SARS-CoV-2. It's also a receptor that the human immunodeficient virus type 1 (HIV-1) — that causes AIDS — uses. As T-cells are important for the specialized killing of infection, it's not unexpected that viruses evolve ways to counter T-cells.

Short abstract

We thought ACE2 is the only receptor SARS-CoV-2 can use for almost a year, which is odd given that the lungs don't even have a high ACE2 expression. But in the past month, two additional receptors of SARS-CoV-2 were discovered. One is neuropilin-1, which is highly expressed in the respiratory and olfactory tracts, specifically in cell types that SARS-CoV-2 preferentially infects. The second is CD147 (also called basigin), which is highly expressed in T-cells and bronchial cells in the lungs. This clarifies why Covid-19 tends to kill certain lung cells and T-cells that don't have ACE2.

Overall, these two newly identified receptors of SARS-CoV-2 explain many facets of Covid-19 that ACE2 alone cannot. We now know why Covid-19 is a mix of pulmonary, vascular, neurological, immunological, and olfactory diseases.

A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Systemic Collapse and Pandemic Simulation

 This to my opinion is the most complete story you'll ever read about the "pandemic" with all the financial background without which it is so difficult to understand the urgency and zeal of the last two years. The control of the Media and narrative is so  complete that no counter arguments was possible. Just the narrative and censorship of whoever diverge from it. 

 But since the financial breakdown was not a consequence but the cause of the pandemic, there is no escape. The last two years were only a short monetary respite. This is why, as the pandemic shrill starts receding, the Media are in full swing, singing the odes of war in Ukraine... 

The Philosophical Salon

A year and a half after the arrival of Virus, some may have started wondering why the usually unscrupulous ruling elites decided to freeze the global profit-making machine in the face of a pathogen that targets almost exclusively the unproductive (over 80s). Why all the humanitarian zeal? Cui bono? Only those who are unfamiliar with the wondrous adventures of GloboCap can delude themselves into thinking that the system chose to shut down out of compassion. Let us be clear from the start: the big predators of oil, arms, and vaccines could not care less about humanity.

Follow the money

In pre-Covid times, the world economy was on the verge of another colossal meltdown. Here is a brief chronicle of how the pressure was building up:

June 2019: In its Annual Economic Report, the Swiss-based Bank of International Settlements (BIS), the ‘Central Bank of all central banks’, sets the international alarm bells ringing. The document highlights “overheating […] in the leveraged loan market”, where “credit standards have been deteriorating” and “collateralized loan obligations (CLOs) have surged – reminiscent of the steep rise in collateralized debt obligations [CDOs] that amplified the subprime crisis [in 2008].” Simply stated, the belly of the financial industry is once again full of junk.

9 August 2019: The BIS issues a working paper calling for “unconventional monetary policy measures” to “insulate the real economy from further deterioration in financial conditions”. The paper indicates that, by offering “direct credit to the economy” during a crisis, central bank lending “can replace commercial banks in providing loans to firms.”

15 August 2019: Blackrock Inc., the world’s most powerful investment fund (managing around $7 trillion in stock and bond funds), issues a white paper titled Dealing with the next downturn. Essentially, the paper instructs the US Federal Reserve to inject liquidity directly into the financial system to prevent “a dramatic downturn.” Again, the message is unequivocal: “An unprecedented response is needed when monetary policy is exhausted and fiscal policy alone is not enough. That response will likely involve ‘going direct’”: “finding ways to get central bank money directly in the hands of public and private sector spenders” while avoiding “hyperinflation. Examples include the Weimar Republic in the 1920s as well as Argentina and Zimbabwe more recently.”

22-24 August 2019: G7 central bankers meet in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to discuss BlackRock’s paper along with urgent measures to prevent the looming meltdown. In the prescient words of James Bullard, President of the St Louis Federal Reserve: “We just have to stop thinking that next year things are going to be normal.”

15-16 September 2019: The downturn is officially inaugurated by a sudden spike in the repo rates (from 2% to 10.5%). ‘Repo’ is shorthand for ‘repurchase agreement’, a contract where investment funds lend money against collateral assets (normally Treasury securities). At the time of the exchange, financial operators (banks) undertake to buy back the assets at a higher price, typically overnight. In brief, repos are short-term collateralized loans. They are the main source of funding for traders in most markets, especially the derivatives galaxy. A lack of liquidity in the repo market can have a devastating domino effect on all major financial sectors.

17 September 2019: The Fed begins the emergency monetary programme, pumping hundreds of billions of dollars per week into Wall Street, effectively executing BlackRock’s “going direct” plan. (Unsurprisingly, in March 2020 the Fed will hire BlackRock to manage the bailout package in response to the ‘COVID-19 crisis’).

19 September 2019: Donald Trump signs Executive Order 13887, establishing a National Influenza Vaccine Task Force whose aim is to develop a “5-year national plan (Plan) to promote the use of more agile and scalable vaccine manufacturing technologies and to accelerate development of vaccines that protect against many or all influenza viruses.” This is to counteract “an influenza pandemic”, which, “unlike seasonal influenza […] has the potential to spread rapidly around the globe, infect higher numbers of people, and cause high rates of illness and death in populations that lack prior immunity”. As someone guessed, the pandemic was imminent, while in Europe too preparations were underway (see here and here).

18 October 2019: In New York, a global zoonotic pandemic is simulated during Event 201, a strategic exercise coordinated by the Johns Hopkins Biosecurity Center and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

21-24 January 2020: The World Economic Forum’s annual meeting takes place in Davos, Switzerland, where both the economy and vaccinations are discussed.

23 January 2020: China puts Wuhan and other cities of the Hubei province in lockdown.

11 March 2020: The WHO’s director general calls Covid-19 a pandemic. The rest is history.

Joining the dots is a simple enough exercise. If we do so, we might see a well-defined narrative outline emerge, whose succinct summary reads as follows: lockdowns and the global suspension of economic transactions were intended to 1) Allow the Fed to flood the ailing financial markets with freshly printed money while deferring hyperinflation; and 2) Introduce mass vaccination programmes and health passports as pillars of a neo-feudal regime of capitalist accumulation. As we shall see, the two aims merge into one.

In 2019, world economy was plagued by the same sickness that had caused the 2008 credit crunch. It was suffocating under an unsustainable mountain of debt. Many public companies could not generate enough profit to cover interest payments on their own debts and were staying afloat only by taking on new loans. ‘Zombie companies’ (with year-on-year low profitability, falling turnover, squeezed margins, limited cashflow, and highly leveraged balance sheet) were rising everywhere. The repo market meltdown of September 2019 must be placed within this fragile economic context.

When the air is saturated with flammable materials, any spark can cause the explosion. And in the magical world of finance, tout se tient: one flap of a butterfly’s wings in a certain sector can send the whole house of cards tumbling down. In financial markets powered by cheap loans, any increase in interest rates is potentially cataclysmic for banks, hedge funds, pension funds and the entire government bond market, because the cost of borrowing increases and liquidity dries up. This is what happened with the ‘repocalypse’ of September 2019: interest rates spiked to 10.5% in a matter of hours, panic broke out affecting futures, options, currencies, and other markets where traders bet by borrowing from repos. The only way to defuse the contagion was by throwing as much liquidity as necessary into the system – like helicopters dropping thousands of gallons of water on a wildfire. Between September 2019 and March 2020, the Fed injected more than $9 trillion into the banking system, equivalent to more than 40% of US GDP.

The mainstream narrative should therefore be reversed: the stock market did not collapse (in March 2020) because lockdowns had to be imposed; rather, lockdowns had to be imposed because financial markets were collapsing. With lockdowns came the suspension of business transactions, which drained the demand for credit and stopped the contagion. In other words, restructuring the financial architecture through extraordinary monetary policy was contingent on the economy’s engine being turned off. Had the enormous mass of liquidity pumped into the financial sector reached transactions on the ground, a monetary tsunami with catastrophic consequences would have been unleashed.

As claimed by economist Ellen Brown, it was “another bailout”, but this time “under cover of a virus.” Similarly, John Titus and Catherine Austin Fitts noted that the Covid-19 “magic wand” allowed the Fed to execute BlackRock’s “going direct” plan, literally: it carried out an unprecedented purchase of government bonds, while, on an infinitesimally smaller scale, also issuing government backed ‘COVID loans’ to businesses. In brief, only an induced economic coma would provide the Fed with the room to defuse the time-bomb ticking away in the financial sector. Screened by mass-hysteria, the US central bank plugged the holes in the interbank lending market, dodging hyperinflation as well as the ‘Financial Stability Oversight Council’ (the federal agency for monitoring financial risk created after the 2008 collapse), as discussed here. However, the “going direct” blueprint should also be framed as a desperate measure, for it can only prolong the agony of a global economy increasingly hostage to money printing and the artificial inflation of financial assets.

At the heart of our predicament lies an insurmountable structural impasse. Debt-leveraged financialization is contemporary capitalism’s only line of flight, the inevitable forward-escape route for a reproductive model that has reached its historical limit. Capitals head for financial markets because the labour-based economy is increasingly unprofitable. How did we get to this?

The answer can be summarised as follows: 1. The economy’s mission to generate surplus-value is both the drive to exploit the workforce and to expel it from production. This is what Marx called capitalism’s “moving contradiction”.[1] While it constitutes the essence of our mode of production, this contradiction today backfires, turning political economy into a mode of permanent devastation. 2. The reason for this change of fortune is the objective failure of the labour-capital dialectic: the unprecedented acceleration in technological automation since the 1980s causes more labour-power to be ejected from production than (re)absorbed. The contraction of the volume of wages means that the purchasing power of a growing part of the world population is falling, with debt and immiseration as inevitable consequences. 3. As less surplus-value is produced, capital seeks immediate returns in the debt-leveraged financial sector rather than in the real economy or by investing in socially constructive sectors like education, research, and public services.

The bottom line is that the paradigm shift underway is the necessary condition for the (dystopian) survival of capitalism, which is no longer able to reproduce itself through mass wage-labour and the attendant consumerist utopia. The pandemic agenda was dictated, ultimately, by systemic implosion: the profitability downturn of a mode of production which rampant automation is making obsolete. For this immanent reason, capitalism is increasingly dependent on public debt, low wages, centralisation of wealth and power, a permanent state of emergency, and financial acrobatics.

If we ‘follow the money’, we will see that the economic blockade deviously attributed to Virus has achieved far from negligible results, not only in terms of social engineering, but also of financial predation. I will quickly highlight four of them.

1) As anticipated, it has allowed the Fed to reorganise the financial sector by printing a continuous stream of billions of dollars out of thin air; 2) It has accelerated the extinction of small and medium-sized companies, allowing major groups to monopolise trade flows; 3) It has further depressed labour wages and facilitated significant capital savings through ‘smart working’ (which is particularly smart for those who implement it); 4) It has enabled the growth of e-commerce, the explosion of Big Tech, and the proliferation of the pharma-dollar – which also includes the much disparaged plastic industry, now producing millions of new facemasks and gloves every week, many of which end up in the oceans (to the delight of the ‘green new dealers’). In 2020 alone, the wealth of the planet’s 2,200 or so billionaires grew by $1.9 trillion, an increase without historical precedent. All this thanks to a pathogen so lethal that, according to official data, only 99.8% of the infected survive (see here and here), most of them without experiencing any symptoms.

 

Doing capitalism differently

The economic motif of the Covid whodunit must be placed within a broader context of social transformation. If we scratch the surface of the official narrative, a neo-feudal scenario begins to take form. Masses of increasingly unproductive consumers are being regimented and cast aside, simply because Mr Global no longer knows what to do with them. Together with the underemployed and the excluded, the impoverished middle-classes are now a problem to be handled with the stick of lockdowns, curfews, mass vaccination, propaganda, and the militarisation of society, rather than with the carrot of work, consumption, participatory democracy, social rights (replaced in collective imagination by the civil rights of minorities), and ‘well-earned holidays.’

It is therefore delusional to believe that the purpose of lockdowns is therapeutic and humanitarian. When has capital ever cared for the people? Indifference and misanthropy are the typical traits of capitalism, whose only real passion is profit, and the power that comes with it. Today, capitalist power can be summed up with the names of the three biggest investment funds in the world: BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street Global Advisor. These giants, sitting at the centre of a huge galaxy of financial entities, manage a mass of value close to half the global GDP, and are major shareholders in around 90% of listed companies. Around them gravitate transnational institutions like the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the World Economic Forum, the Trilateral Commission, and the Bank for International Settlements, whose function is to coordinate consensus within the financial constellation. We can safely assume that all key strategic decisions – economic, political and military – are at least heavily influenced by these elites. Or do we want to believe that Virus has taken them by surprise? Rather, SARS-CoV-2 – which, by admission of the CDC and the European Commission has never been isolated nor purified – is the name of a special weapon of psychological warfare that was deployed in the moment of greatest need.

Why should we trust a mega pharmaceutical cartel (the WHO) that is not in charge of ‘public health’, but rather of marketing private products worldwide at the most profitable rates possible? Public health problems stem from abysmal working conditions, poor nutrition, air, water, and food pollution, and above all from rampant poverty; yet none of these ‘pathogens’ are on the WHO’s list of humanitarian concerns. The immense conflicts of interest between the predators of the pharmaceutical industry, national and supranational medical agencies, and the cynical political enforcers, is now an open secret. No wonder that on the day COVID-19 was classified as a pandemic, the WEF, together with the WHO, launched the Covid Action Platform, a “protection of life” coalition run by over 1,000 of the world’s most powerful private companies.

The only thing that matters for the clique directing the health emergency orchestra is to feed the profit-making machine, and every move is planned to this end, with the support of a political and media front motivated by opportunism. If the military industry needs wars, the pharmaceutical industry needs diseases. It is no coincidence that ‘public health’ is by far the most profitable sector of the world economy, to the extent that Big Pharma spends about three times as much as Big Oil and twice as much as Big Tech on lobbying. The potentially endless demand for vaccines and experimental gene concoctions offers pharmaceutical cartels the prospect of almost unlimited profit streams, especially when guaranteed by mass vaccination programmes subsidised by public money (i.e., by more debt that will fall on our heads).

Why have all Covid treatments been criminally banned or sabotaged? As the FDA candidly admits, the use of emergency vaccines is only possible if “there are no suitable, approved and available alternatives”. A case of truth hidden in plain sight. Moreover, the current vaccine religion is closely linked to the rise of the pharma-dollar, which, by feeding on pandemics, is set to emulate the glories of the ‘petro-dollar’, allowing the United States to continue to exercise global monetary supremacy. Why should the whole of humanity (including children!) inject experimental ‘vaccines’ with increasingly worrying yet systematically downplayed adverse effects, when more than 99% of those infected, the vast majority asymptomatic, recover? The answer is obvious: because vaccines are the golden calf of the third millennium, while humanity is ‘last generation’ exploitation material in guinea pig modality.

Given this context, the staging of the emergency pantomime succeeds through an unheard-of manipulation of public opinion. Every ‘public debate’ on the pandemic is shamelessly privatised, or rather monopolised by the religious belief in technical-scientific committees bankrolled by the financial elites. Every ‘free discussion’ is legitimised by adherence to pseudo-scientific protocols carefully purged from the socio-economic context: one ‘follows the science’ while pretending not to know that ‘science follows the money’. Karl Popper’s famous statement that “real science” is only possible under the aegis of liberal capitalism in what he called “the open society”,[1] is now coming true in the globalist ideology that animates, among others, George Soros’s Open Society Foundation. The combination of “real science” and “open and inclusive society” makes the Covid doctrine almost impossible to challenge.

For COVID-19, then, we could imagine the following agenda. A fictitious narrative is prepared based on an epidemic risk presented in such a way as to promote fear and submissive behaviour. Most likely a case of diagnostic reclassification. All that is needed is an epidemiologically ambiguous influenza virus, on which to build an aggressive tale of contagion relatable to geographical areas where the impact of respiratory or vascular diseases in the elderly and immunocompromised population is high – perhaps with the aggravating factor of heavy pollution. There is no need to make much up, given that intensive care units in ‘advanced’ countries had already collapsed in the years preceding the arrival of Covid, with mortality peaks for which no one had dreamed of exhuming quarantine. In other words, public health systems had already been demolished, and thus prepared for the pandemic scenario.

But this time there is method in madness: a state of emergency is declared, which triggers panic, in turn causing the clogging up of hospitals and care homes (at high risk of sepsis), the application of nefarious protocols, and the suspension of medical care. Et voilà, the killer Virus becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy! The propaganda raging across the main centres of financial power (especially North America and Europe) is essential to maintaining the ‘state of exception’ (Carl Schmitt), which is immediately accepted as the only possible form of political and existential rationality. Entire populations exposed to heavy media bombardment surrender through self-discipline, adhering with grotesque enthusiasm to forms of ‘civic responsibility’ in which coercion morphs into altruism.

The whole pandemic script – from the ‘contagion curve’ to the ‘Covid deaths’ – rests on the PCR test, which was authorised for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 by a study produced in record time on commission from the WHO. As many will know by now, the diagnostic unreliability of the PCR test was denounced by its inventor himself, Nobel laureate Kary Mullis (unfortunately passed away on 7 August 2019), and recently reiterated by, among others, 22 internationally renowned experts who demanded its removal for clear scientific flaws. Obviously, the request fell on deaf ears.

The PCR test is the driving force behind the pandemic. It works through the infamous ‘cycle thresholds’: the more cycles you make, the more false positives (infections, Covid-deaths) you produce, as even guru Anthony Fauci recklessly admitted when he stated that swabs are worthless above 35 cycles. Now, why is it that during the pandemic, amplifications of 35 cycles or more were routinely carried out in laboratories all over the world? Even the New York Times – certainly not a den of dangerous Covid-deniers – raised this key question last summer. Thanks to the sensitivity of the swab, the pandemic can be turned on and off like a tap, allowing the health regime to exert full control over the ‘numerological monster’ of Covid cases and deaths – the key instruments of everyday terror.

All this fearmongering continues today, despite the easing of some measures. To understand why, we should return to the economic motif. As noted, several trillions of newly printed cash have been created with a few clicks of a mouse by central banks and injected into financial systems, where they have in great part remained. The aim of the printing-spree was to plug calamitous liquidity gaps. Most of this ‘magic-tree money’ is still frozen inside the shadow banking system, the stock exchanges, and various virtual currency schemes that are not meant to be used for spending and investment. Their function is solely to provide cheap loans for financial speculation. This is what Marx called ‘fictitious capital’, which continues to expand in an orbital loop that is now completely independent of economic cycles on the ground.

The bottom line is that all this cash cannot be allowed to flood the real economy, for the latter would overheat and trigger hyperinflation. And this is where Virus continues to come in handy. If it initially served to “insulate the real economy” (to quote again from the BIS paper), it now oversees its tentative reopening, characterized by submission to the vaccination dogma and chromatic methods of mass regimentation, which may soon include climate lockdowns. Remember how we were told that only vaccines would give us back our ‘freedom’? All too predictably, we now discover that the road to freedom is littered with ‘variants’, that is to say, iterations of Virus. Their purpose is to increase the ‘case count’ and therefore prolong those states of emergency that justify central banks’ production of virtual money aimed at monetizing debt and financing deficits. Rather than returning to normal interest rates, the elites opt to normalize the health emergency by feeding the contagion ghost. The much-publicised ‘tapering’ (reduction of monetary stimulus) can therefore wait – just like Pandexit.

In the EU, for instance, the European Central Bank’s €1.85 trillion ‘pandemic emergency purchase program’, known as PEPP, is currently set to continue until March 2022. However, it has been intimated it might need to be extended beyond that date. In the meantime, the Delta variant is wreaking havoc on the travel and tourism industry, with new restrictions (including quarantine) disrupting the summer season. Again, we seem to be caught within a self-fulfilling prophecy (especially if, as Nobel laureate Luc Montagnier and many others have intimated, variants, however mild, are the consequence of aggressive mass vaccination campaigns). Whatever the case, the fundamental point is that Virus is still needed by senile capitalism, whose only chance of survival depends on generating a paradigm shift from liberalism to oligarchic authoritarianism.

While their crime is far from perfect, the orchestrators of this global coup must nevertheless be credited with a certain sadistic brilliance. Their sleight of hand succeeded, perhaps even beyond expectations. However, any power aiming at totalisation is destined to fail, and this applies also to the high priests of the Covid religion and the institutional puppets they have mobilised to roll out the health emergency psyop. After all, power tends to delude itself about its omnipotence. Those sitting in the control room fail to realise the extent to which their dominance is uncertain. What they do not see is that their authority depends on a ‘higher mission’, to which they remain partly blind, namely the anonymous self-reproduction of the capitalist matrix. Today’s power lies with the profit-making machine whose only purpose is to continue its reckless journey, potentially leading to the premature extinction of Homo sapiens. The elites who have conned the world into Covid-obedience are the anthropomorphic manifestation of the capitalist automaton, whose invisibility is as cunning as that of Virus itself. And the novelty of our era is that the ‘locked-down society’ is the model that best guarantees the reproducibility of the capitalist machine, irrespective of its dystopian destination.

Thunder Out Of China: The Lab-Leak Theory Strengthens

 This is probably the most damning article to date concerning the origin of the Sars-CoV-2 virus. It explains not only the why and the how, but the reasons why so many people insisted that the virus was from natural origins. The beauty of science is that the truth emerges, eventually. But the sad reality of society is that it is two years too late and it does not really matters anymore. The damage is done.  

Still, if you want to know, read on.

Authored by Yuri Deigin, biotech entrepreneur and co-founder of DRASTIC, via Inference-Review.com

On August 27, 2021, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a summary of the US Intelligence Community’s assessment on the origins of COVID-19.¹ Four of the agencies involved and the National Intelligence Council assessed “with low confidence that the initial SARS-CoV-2 infection was most likely caused by natural exposure to an animal infected with it or a close progenitor virus.”²

One of the agencies—later reported as the FBI³—assessed “with moderate confidence that the first human infection with SARS-CoV-2 most likely was the result of a laboratory-associated incident, probably involving experimentation, animal handling, or sampling by the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”

“These analysts,” the summary continued, “give weight to the inherently risky nature of work on coronaviruses.”⁴

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there have now been more than 360 million confirmed cases of COVID-19, resulting in over 5.6 million deaths worldwide.⁵

Questions about the origins of COVID-19 are of more than academic interest.

 To continue reading, click here.

The Secret to Aging in Reverse (Video)

 The progress being made in understanding aging is stunning. For the better of worse we may soon control part then most of this process...

 This video is amazing!

 

Israeli study offers strongest proof yet of vitamin D's power to fight COVID

 This article confirms what we have known from the beginning: Vitamin D (sunshine) is one of the most potent factor against the Covid Virus which is the reasons why the flu spikes in winter. I was once criticized by a friends who argued that this common knowledge was not "scientific". Well, now it is!

A mother gives her child vitamin D drops.

• Article from SOTT.net

Israel scientists say they have gathered the most convincing evidence to date that increased vitamin D levels can help COVID-19 patients reduce the risk of serious illness or death.

Researchers from Bar Ilan University and the Galilee Medical Center say that the vitamin has such a strong impact on disease severity that they can predict how people would fare if infected based on nothing more than their ages and vitamin D levels.

Lacking vitamin D significantly increases danger levels, they concluded in newly peer-reviewed research published Thursday in the journal PLOS One.

The study is based on research conducted during Israel's first two waves of the virus, before vaccines were widely available, and doctors emphasized that vitamin supplements were not a substitute for vaccines, but rather a way to keep immunity levels from falling.

Vitamin D deficiency is endemic across the Middle East, including in Israel, where nearly four in five people are low on the vitamin, according to one study from 2011. By taking supplements before infection, though, the researchers in the new Israeli study found that patients could avoid the worst effects of the disease.

"We found it remarkable, and striking, to see the difference in the chances of becoming a severe patient when you are lacking in vitamin D compared to when you're not," said Dr. Amiel Dror, a Galilee Medical Center physician and Bar Ilan researcher who was part of the team behind the study.

He noted that his study was conducted pre-Omicron, but said that the coronavirus doesn't change fundamentally enough between variants to negate vitamin D effectiveness.

"What we're seeing when vitamin D helps people with COVID infections is a result of its effectiveness in bolstering the immune systems to deal with viral pathogens that attack the respiratory system," he told The Times of Israel. "This is equally relevant for Omicron as it was for previous variants."

Health authorities in Israel and several other countries have recommended vitamin D supplements in response to the coronavirus pandemic, though data on its effectiveness has been sparse until now.

In June, researchers published preliminary findings showing that 26 percent of coronavirus patients died if they were vitamin D deficient soon before hospitalization, compared to 3% who had normal levels of vitamin D.

They also determined that hospitalized patients who were vitamin D deficient were 14 times more likely, on average, to end up in severe or critical condition than others.

While the scientific community recognized the importance of the results, questions arose as to whether recent health conditions among the patients might have been skewing the results.

The possibility was raised that patients could have been suffering from conditions that both reduce vitamin D levels and increase vulnerability to serious illness from COVID-19, meaning the vitamin deficiency would be a symptom rather than a contributing factor in disease severity.

To zero out that possibility, Dror's team delved deeper into the data, examining each of its patients' vitamin D levels over the two-year stretch before coronavirus infection. They found that the strong correlation between sufficient vitamin D levels and ability to fight the coronavirus still held, and the level of increased danger in their preliminary findings remained almost identical.

"We checked a range of timeframes, and found that wherever you look over the two years before infection, the correlation between vitamin D and disease severity is extremely strong," Dror said.

"Because this study gets such a good picture of patients' vitamin D levels, by looking at a wide timeframe instead of just the time around hospitalization, it offers much stronger support than anything seen so far emphasizing the importance of boosting vitamin D levels during the pandemic," he added.

A flood of dubious claims about natural remedies to the coronavirus, including a theory that Israelis had immunized themselves with lemons and baking soda, have left some skeptical about claims of vitamins warding off the virus.

But Dror insisted that his team's research showed that the importance of vitamin D was not based on incomplete or flawed data.

"People should learn from this that studies pointing to the importance of taking vitamin D are very reliable, and aren't based on skewed data," he said. "And it emphasizes the value of everyone taking a vitamin D supplement during the pandemic, which, consumed in sensible amounts in accordance with official advice, doesn't have any downside."

The SARS-CoV-2 S protein alters cardiac PC function (Technical)

 This is a technical but important article which confirms why inflammatory cytokines are produced and why the vaccine may consequently induce heart and micro-vascular diseases. (You will find the full article in the link below.)

 A research team led by Bristol's Professor Paolo Madeddu exposed human heart pericytes, which are cells that wrap small blood vessels in the heart, to SARS-CoV-2 Alpha and Delta variants, along with the original Wuhan virus. Surprisingly, they found the heart pericytes were not infected.

Intrigued by this finding, in a second test-tube experiment, the researchers challenged the cardiac pericytes with the spike protein alone, without the virus. The spike protein made pericytes unable to interact with their companion endothelial cells and induced them to secrete inflammatory cytokines, suggesting the spike protein is harmful to human cardiac cells. Interestingly, the team found that antibodies blocking CD147 — a receptor for the spike protein — protected heart pericytes from damage.

Schematic summary of the research. We hypothesise that in patients with acute COVID-19, S protein molecules are cleaved from the virus particle and released from the respiratory system into the bloodstream. Through the circulation, isolated S protein reaches all organs of the body, including the heart. Here, the interaction of the S protein with the CD147 receptor on cardiac PCs triggers the ERK1/2 signalling (A) and provokes PC dysfunction, including increased cell motility (B) and decreased cooperation with coronary ECs during angiogenesis. (C). In addition, the S protein–CD147 interaction prompts cardiac PCs to release pro-apoptotic factors, which cause EC death (D). Finally, through a mechanism CD147-independent, the S protein induces PCs to release pro-inflammatory cytokines, which include MCP1, IL-6, IL-1β, and TNFα (E). These cytokines can damage neighbouring cardiomyocytes and activate ECs, potentially triggering blood clotting and increasing vascular permeability.

Pentagon Responds To DoD Whistleblowers' Claim Of Spiking Disease Rates In The Military After COVID Vaccine Mandate

 I do not approve journalists calling the Corona Virus: CCP (Chinese Communist Party) Virus. It is unscientific and does not help their credibility. Still the statistical rise of apparently unrelated diseases seems to be widespread and in line with alarmist warnings from epidemiologists early on and the article is therefore interesting. The data may or may not be accurate as the DoD argues. But eventually statistics will become clearer and clearer... for all the see? Or maybe not!   

Authored by Enrico Trigoso via The Epoch Times,

Three United States military doctors have blown the whistle on documents allegedly from The United States Department of Defense (DoD) that they had access to, which show “skyrocketing rates of disease” since the introduction and mandating of the CCP virus vaccines in armed forces, human rights attorney Leigh Dundas told The Epoch Times.

Dundas was recently approached by Dr. Samuel Sigoloff, Special Forces flight surgeon Lt. Col. Peter Chambers, and Aerospace occupational medicine specialist Lt. Col. Theresa Long.

They handed documents to Dundas, who appeared recently with attorney Tom Renz in a five-hour hearing organized by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) titled “COVID-19: Second Opinion.”

Renz shared some of the numbers related to medical disorders in the U.S. military data with The Epoch Times.

The whistleblowers, who are represented by Renz, gave him the data “under penalty of perjury,” he said during the hearing.

Renz intends to submit the information to the courts, he told Johnson.

The DoD responded that the DMED (Defense Medical Epidemiology Database) data from 2016 to 2020 that the whistleblowers brought up was erroneous and incomplete, and is currently under review.

“DHA’s Armed Forces Surveillance Division (AFSD) conducted a complete review of the data contained in the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED) and found that the data was incorrect for the years 2016-2020,” Maj. Charlie Dietz, a spokesperson for the DoD, told The Epoch Times.

“DMED is a web-based tool to query de-identified active component personnel and medical event data contained within the Defense Medical Surveillance System (DMSS).

“Comparing the DMED database to the source data contained in DMSS, AFHSD discovered that the total number of medical diagnoses from 2016-2020 that were accessible in DMED represented only a small fraction of actual medical diagnoses for those years. In contrast, the 2021 total number of medical diagnoses were up to date in DMED.  Comparison of 2021 to 2016-2020 resulted in the appearance of significant increased occurrence of all medical diagnoses in 2021 because of the under-reported data for 2016-2020. AFHSD has taken DMED offline to identify and correct the root-cause of the data corruption,” Dietz said.

Renz responded:

“The DoD has claimed that the DMED data from the years 2016-2020 was incorrect. This is absurd. We spend millions of dollars per year on DMED and people monitoring DMED which is one of the premier epidemiological databases in the world. Accuracy in this database is critical as it is used to monitor for health issues in our troops.

“The DoD would have us believe that the DMED database was wrong from 2016-2020 but then magically was corrected in 2021 despite the fact that they had not noticed it was wrong until we pointed it out in our testimony before Senator Johnson. Further, we are asked to believe that in 2020, the year of what they claim to be the greatest pandemic since 1918, and despite the fact that it is documented that the CDC was also watching this database, no one noticed an error of 20 million-plus injury/disease codes per year,” Renz told The Epoch Times.

“The Department of Defense, the Biden administration is on notice they must preserve these records and this must be investigated,” Johnson said in the five-hour hearing in Washington.

“Renz also informed me that some DMED data showing registered diagnoses of myocarditis had been removed from the database. Following the allegation that DMED data had been doctored, I immediately wrote to you on January 24 requesting that you preserve all records referring, relating, or reported to DMED. I have yet to hear whether you have complied with this request.” Johnson wrote in a letter (pdf) to Lloyd Austin, the U.S. defense secretary.

Medical Data

Dundas told The Epoch Times that “in January of 2021. They introduced the vaccine, they mandated the vaccine for the U.S. military members. And in just the first 10 months of that vaccination year, anxiety jumped from 37,000 typically prior to that to 931,791 cases. It was a 2,400 plus percent increase.”

She went on to say that breast cancer was “pretty formulaic,” ranging from 500 to 900 cases for the five years prior to the introduction of the mandatory vaccination.

“First 10 months or 2021. They were at 4,068 cases. Again, it was about 450 some odd percent increase.

“Female infertility 2,200 cases a year a bad year would be 2,300 cases a year, first 10 months of 2021 after the vaccine 10,713 cases. ”

Even diseases that have not been connected so far with the vaccines saw a dramatic spike.

“Esophageal cancer in the U.S. military. Very, very minimal. Twenty-five, 26 cases, maybe a bad year is 39 cases. Jumps to 200 plus cases,” Dundas said.

“January acute myocarditis was in 176 cases, but now it’s practically down to 70 … bad that stuff going on,” she continued.

“Bell’s palsy 400 cases a year on average in the first 10 months of 2021 over 1,300 cases."

"Cognitive issues way up altered mental status way up. Congenital male malformations doubled."

“HIV 400 cases on average [per year] and now over 2,400 cases in the first 10 months.”

Miscarriages

According to the whistleblower documents, miscarriages in the military were at 1,400 to 1,500 a year in the first three quarters of 2020, and it increased to over 4,000 during the first 10 months of 2021.

The Epoch Times reached out to Dr. Christiane Northrup, a board-certified obstetrician-gynecologist with more than 30 years of experience and the former president of the American Holistic Medical Association.

Particularly alarming is the increase in miscarriages, she said.

“Here’s what we were finding—starting in April of 2021. All of us in the five Doc’s group, Dr. Lee Merritt, Dr. Carrie Madej, Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, and Dr. Larry Palevsky, and me. We were hearing stories from all over the country about women who were having abnormal bleeding, miscarriages, and stillbirths, just from being around the people who had recently had the shot,” Northrup told The Epoch Times.

“We all got together and we said, Wait a minute. We’ve got to study this,” Northrup went on.

“People that I knew in the fertility business, we’re finding that all these women were having problems. I was getting a lot of personal calls. ‘What do I do?’ … we were very concerned.”

Michael Yeadon, the former Pfizer vice president and chief scientist for allergy and respiratory research, and Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg issued a petition (pdf) for administrative action regarding confirmation of efficacy on several of their findings regarding the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus vaccines.

“We detailed a series of mechanistic toxicology concerns which we believed were reasonable to hold, unless & until proven not to occur,” Yeadon told The Epoch Times.

“Among those was that adverse impacts on conception & ability to sustain a pregnancy were foreseeable,” he added.

“It’s important to note that none of these gene-based agents had completed what’s called ‘reproductive toxicology.’ Over a year later, this battery of tests in animals still has not been done. So there was & still is no data package supporting safety in pregnancy or prior to conception.”

One of the whistleblowers, Dr. Pete Constantine Chambers, has been practicing medicine for 25 years, 16 of which he served as a flight surgeon attached to Special Operations.

“Here is a question that troubles me,” Chambers told The Epoch Times via email.

“After having my orders cut short leaving me no medical insurance coverage, losing my pay and leave that I had accumulated without any forewarning for exhibiting the Army Value of Personal Courage, and practicing the safe standard of care medicine by an entity I have served for so long; 1) What will happen to my enlisted troops? 2) How many? How many soldiers and airmen will experience adverse reactions, some of which result in disabilities or God forbid, death.

“One might call a provider such as myself an ‘anti-vaxxer.’ Nothing is further from the truth,” he further noted.

“I took the full course starting in January. I trusted my government and medical leaders. I have taken every vaccine the Army has given me since my first day as a private, in 1983. However, I too have experienced adverse reactions and am currently in the care of medical specialists exploring the signs and symptoms post second vaccine as well as the ominous finding on my brain MRI.

“I love my country, my state, and the heroes I work with and for. I believe all Americans are worth the sacrifices we make to keep us safe. I also believe as a provider in the first stanza of the Hippocratic Oath; ‘First of all, do no harm.'”

3D: The Future of Advertising (Video)

 It's the weekend, so let's take a break with the future of advertising. 

What I find interesting is that Back to the Future II, got it right with 3D adverts.

Integrity. Dignity. Community by Dr Robert Malone

We are now over two years in the Covid-19 pandemic and publishing an article by Dr Malone is almost an act of dissidence. Isn't it amazing how fast the scientific (and social, and political) discourses have been maligned? To the point that it is now almost impossible? Whatever course the virus and our response to it takes in the coming months, the social damage is done. There is no turning back to the world pre-2020. From now on, whatever the issue, there is an orthodox and an heretic view. Governments decide within hours and the press let you know which is which. 

To paraphrase the Beatles: "Back in the USSR!"

Guest post by Dr. Robert Malone

In March of 1963, a great man came to Washington, stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, and changed the world by speaking from his heart about his dream.  Simple words that continue to resonate through time.

We all stand on the shoulders of giants.  The simple truths are what matter most.  Honest words, spoken from the heart, can change the world.

I am a physician and a scientist, highly trained and experienced in developing vaccines and other medicines, but I have also been a carpenter and a farm hand.  In my life, my wife, my family, my friends and my treasured horses have provided all that I could hope for.

It has not been an easy life, and I have seen hard times.  In walking my path, I have traveled from the arrogance and hubris of youth to arriving at awareness that peace and happiness flows like a fountain from a commitment to kindness, good works, and striving to help others.

I come to you with an open heart, as a physician committed to healing, bringing three simple words.  Each of which ring like bells in the soul of honest people.

Integrity.  Dignity.  Community. 

Integrity is a commitment to truth, in what you say, how you live, and how you treat others.

Dignity flows from respect, for ourselves, for each other, and for the world we live in.

Community is what binds us together, to each other, and gives our lives purpose and meaning.

Saint Augustine, the doctor of the Roman Catholic Church, famously said “The truth is like a Lion. You don’t have to defend it. Let it loose. It will defend itself.”

Harry Truman, a warrior against war profiteering, famously said “I just tell the truth, and they think it’s hell”.

These are my truths, and I believe that they are self-evident.

We should not have politicized the public health response to SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19.

Regarding the genetic COVID vaccines, the science is settled.

They are not working, and they are not completely safe.

Now we have Omicron. These vaccines were designed for the Original Wuhan strain, a different virus. Whether they made sense for protecting our elderly and frail from the original virus is irrelevant.  So let’s stop arguing about that. We must look forward.

These vaccines do not prevent Omicron infection, viral replication, or spread to others.  In our daily lives, with our friends, with our families, we all know that this is true.

These genetic vaccines are leaky, have poor durability, and even if every man, woman, and child in the United States were vaccinated, these products cannot achieve herd immunity and stop COVID. They are not completely safe, and the full nature of the risks remain unknown.  In contrast, the natural immunity which healty immune systems develop after infection and recovery from COVID is long lasting, broad, and highly protective from disease and death caused by this virus.

If there is risk, there must be choice.

This is the fundamental bedrock truth of modern bioethics.

All medical procedures, vaccines, and drugs have risks.

All of us have the right to understand those risks, and to decide for ourselves whether we willingly accept those risks.

To deny this is to deny human dignity.

Evil has many roots. A willingness to deny human dignity is one of the largest.  In our hearts, and in our souls, we all know this is true.

Although I am a physician who is deeply committed to the Hippocratic oath, I am above all a husband, father, and grandfather.  I ask that you allow me a moment to speak to you about our children, and about our fundamental responsibility to protect them.

If nothing else, we must nurture and protect our children.  This is job one.  It is your job.  It is my job. It is not their job to protect us.  And during the last two years, our society and our public health response has failed to protect them.  Many things that our public health system has demanded we do to our children has directly harmed them.

Self-harm, suicide and drug abuse in children have taken off all around the world.  Anxiety, bullying, intimidation, coercion have become the norm. Measured IQ in the very young has dropped.  Fundamental childhood delays are easily measured.  And physical damage to children from injecting them with genetic vaccines in order to protect the elderly from a virus is occurring.

As a parent, it is ultimately your responsibility to protect your children. If they are harmed by these genetic vaccines, you are the one that will have to take care of them.  And you will carry that burden for the rest of your life and theirs. On average, between one in two thousand and one in three thousand children that receive these vaccines will be hospitalized in the short term with vaccine-caused damage.  Only with the passage of time will we know what long term damage may occur.  The vaccines do not protect our children from becoming infected with Omicron, and do not prevent infected children from infecting others.  In contrast, the pharmaceutical companies and the government are almost fully protected from any damages these products might cause to them.  If your child is damaged by these vaccines, you will be left alone with both your grief and the burden of care.

These genetic vaccines can damage your children.  They may damage their brain, their heart, their immune system, and their ability to have children in the future.  And many of these types of damages cannot be repaired.

So I beg you, please, get informed about the possible risks that your children may be damaged by these experimental medical products.  Don’t let anyone tell you what to do.  Think for yourself.  Because it is your responsibility to protect and nurture them.  If they are damaged, no state Governor, no federal public health official, no television doctor will be there to help you.  You, your family and your child will have to carry the load yourselves.

Are the mRNA vaccines counter-productive in the long term?

Guest post by Alex Berenson

The world’s most mRNA vaccinated countries now have shockingly high Covid infection rates. Hospitalizations and deaths are rising fast too. The mRNA experiment needs to stop. Immediately.

Something is rotten in Denmark.

And Australia.

And Israel.

Where nearly 1 percent of the entire population just tested positive for Covid.

Not in a month. Or a week. In one day.

You read that right.

On Saturday, Israel had 84,000 new infections, the equivalent of almost 3 million in the United States. Infections in Israel have risen unthinkably fast since late December. They’re are up 100-fold in one month, driven by the collapse of booster protection and the arrival of the Omicron variant.

Israel is not alone. Denmark reported 42,000 cases yesterday, equal to almost 2.5 million in the United States. France, the second-largest country in Europe, reported the American equivalent of about 12 million new infections in the last week. Australia had a tremendous surge in cases earlier this month, though it seems to be subsidizing for now.

Daily new infections in Israel:

 

These countries have very different population demographics and previous exposure to Covid. They even have very different weather; it is summer in Australia.

What do they share, then?

Incredibly high Covid vaccination rates, mostly with the mRNA vaccines. Israel is among the world’s most vaccinated countries. More than 90 percent of Israeli adults have been vaccinated with the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. Almost 80 percent have received a booster dose, and several hundred thousand have gotten a fourth.

Yet Israel had more coronavirus infections in the last week than in all of 2020, before it began mass mRNA Covid vaccinations.

Omicron is much milder than Delta or the original coronavirus. So the data from South Africa – which was the first country where Omicron spread quickly – seemed to show.

But South Africa is quite lightly vaccinated. The more recent data from the highly vaccinated countries has not been as promising. Yes, Omicron is milder.

Even so, hospitalizations and deaths are spiking in countries like Israel and Denmark. In Israel, the number of severely ill patients has risen eightfold this month, and almost fourfold in the last two weeks – even though the true spike in infections has come only in the last few days, and hospitalizations typically lag infections. In Australia, deaths are up tenfold since in the last four weeks, although from a low base.

Daily new serious cases in Israel:

In part the rise has come because Omicron infections have reached such stunningly high levels that even a relatively low risk can lead to a significant number of deaths. And yes, many Omicron hospitalizations are incidental – they are people in the hospital for other reasons who just happen to test positive for Omicron.

But other factors may be at play too. Here are four facts:

1: Both the within-country and the between-country data show that people who are vaccinated but not boosted are at higher risk of Omicron infection than the unvaccinated.

Anyone who says otherwise is lying.

2: Thus vaccines will actually make hospitalization or death from Omicron MORE likely unless they somehow protect against serious outcomes from Covid infections more than they increase the odds of infection. That’s simple math.

At this point we have no way of knowing how those two factors interact. In other words, we do not know if Omicron is more dangerous to the unvaccinated than the vaccinated (putting aside any vaccine side effects).

Anyone who says otherwise is lying.

3: It is unclear whether the vaccines interfere with the development of long-term post-infection immunity in people who are infected with Omicron.

Anyone who says otherwise is lying.

4: It is clear that a third vaccine dose temporarily reduces the risk of serious illness or death from Omicron.

But it is unclear how long that protection will last, and whether when it ends people who have received a third dose will be less or more vulnerable than those who are unvaccinated or have received two doses.

Anyone who says otherwise is lying.

Put these four facts together and it is clear that to encourage booster shots for anyone – including the elderly – at this point is reckless, bordering on criminal.

I have not used language like this before. I did not discourage older people from the primary vaccination series. But the facts have changed and they continue to change, and not to face this reality is incredibly dangerous.

mRNA Covid vaccinations and boosters need to stop worldwide while we figure out what is happening. Not next week. Not tomorrow.

Today.