I think Boris Johnson is going to be forced out over this 10 Downing Street staff Christmas party scandal over there. It's turning out that not only did his staff all flaunt the lockdown rules for one party, they may have had FOUR PARTIES all while everyday British were being harassed, fined and arrested for trying to have their own gatherings in December 2020.

Now he's trying to implement another big nationwide lockdown..cause OMNICRON and the people are telling him to piss off, you don't follow your own rules, why should we?

4x more infectious. Not deadly at all. This is the totalitarian's worst nightmare if it gets out...

Omicron 4x More Infectious Than Delta, WHO Says

The number of confirmed cases of the omicron variant has topped 1,000 worldwide, and already Britain's health ministry is warning that it expects at least 1MM cases of omicron in the UK alone, as it expects the new strain to supplant delta due to its sheer transmissibility. Whether that actually happens remains to be seen.

The data is still rolling in on both transmissibility and what appears to be significantly reduced severity vs. Delta, but on Thursday Bloomberg noted a Japanese study which found that omicron is 4.2x more transmissible than delta.

The scientist who shared the findings is an official advisor of the Japanese government, which was one of the first governments to close it borders in response to the threat posed by omicron.

Given widespread reports that Omicron is a far more mild strain of Covid, some experts (including the WHO) have insisted that measures like border closures and travel bans targeting southern African nations are, at present, overkill. Earlier this week, the CDC published data showing that only one out of every 43 patients confirmed to be infected with omicron has been hospitalized.

What's more, over three-quarters of those who have been confirmed to have caught omicron were vaccinated. And one-third had received a booster. So far, no deaths due to omicron have been reported.

When it comes to transmissibility - Hiroshi Nishiura, professor of health and environmental sciences at Kyoto University who specializes in mathematical modeling of infectious diseases, said he analyzed genome data available through Nov. 26. from confirmed Omicron cases in South Africa's Gauteng province.

He concluded that "The omicron variant transmits more, and escapes immunity built naturally and through vaccines more."

His findings were presented at a meeting of the health ministry’s advisory panel on Wednesday.

https://www.zerohedge.com/covi...cines-should-not-mix

this isn't good news...

https://chainstoreage.com/cvs-...artnership-microsoft


CVS Health is focusing on innovative healthcare solutions.

CVS Health is embarking on a new partnership with Microsoft to create innovative solutions to help consumers improve their health.

The drugstore giant is building on an existing collaboration with Microsoft Corp. to help accelerate the development of a data-driven, personalized, privacy-compliant customer experience. By combining information from different areas across the company, CVS Health seeks to enhance its omnichannel pharmacy capabilities and deliver customized, omnichannel health recommendations.

CVS Health will also scale up retail loyalty and personalization programs that use advanced machine learning (ML) models running on the Microsoft Azure cloud computing service. The company currently leverages Azure services like computer vision and text analytics to automate healthcare-related tasks.

Utilizing it a strategic platform, CVS Health will migrate over 1,500 new and existing business applications to Azure cloud. Microsoft and CVS Health will also explore technology solutions, such as Microsoft HoloLens, Dynamics 365 Guides, and Remote Assist, that can support customers, employees, and healthcare partners. can simplify complex procedures with intuitive tools to help support CVS Health employees.

The companies also plan to extend Microsoft Azure AI and cognitive capabilities to automate administrative and predictive processes and reduce waste. In addition, the retailer will use Microsoft Teams and Office products to enable retail employees to have better access to customer health information.

CVS Health has been transforming itself into a digital health solutions provider. The company took a major step in this direction when it purchased Aetna Inc. for nearly $70 billion in late 2018, creating a new health-care powerhouse that brings together one of the nation’s largest drug store operators and pharmacy benefit managers with the country’s third-biggest health insurance company. The company launched a digital service called Aetna Virtual Primary Care in August 2021, including omnichannel features such as a continuous relationship with a virtual care physician, a virtual nurse care team, and access to other existing Aetna virtual care offerings.

Other innovative steps CVS has taken in the area of healthcare include partnering with IBM Watson Advertising to enable chat-style, one-to-one interactions and targeted mobile promotions designed to encourage flu shots, as well as offering a proprietary solution called “Spoken Rx” that can read prescription information aloud at all of its pharmacy locations.

"We are rapidly transforming into a consumer-centric, integrated health solutions company, taking a digital-first, technology-forward approach to all that we do," said Roshan Navagamuwa, CIO, CVS Health. "Business services at this scale requires a new level of partnership. Our collaboration with Microsoft will accelerate this work and empower our employees to provide quality care that is more personal and affordable."

"We are excited to partner with CVS Health on its digital transformation journey, collaborating together on how the company manages health data at scale, improves the customer experience, and drives operational efficiency," said Judson Althoff, Microsoft's chief commercial officer. “We will combine the power of data, the expansive reach of CVS Health's world-class solutions, and Microsoft Teams to connect health care experts and create customized care and services that enable people to live healthier lives."

CVS Pharmacy, the retail division of Woonsocket, R.I.-based CVS Health, operates nearly 10,000 stores, including over 1,700 pharmacies inside of Target and Schnucks grocery stores.

might be time to start dealing with Walgreens

Well this is annoying and sad to see going on:

My in-laws throw a big Christmas party each mid-December on a Friday night, last year it got canceled but they are eager to have it again this year. They sent out invites to around 60 people and the vast majority are coming back as "No, I won't attend". So this will be a sparsely attended party tomorrow night because people are STILL too scared.

At work, I'm part of a social engagement committee that that organizes events and fun things for everyone in our department of about 80 people, we've been forced to do mostly "virtual" events this year due to work Covid rules but we set up an off-site Christmas/Holiday Happy Hour right near our campus and out of 80 people we only have 15 RSVP "Yes, I will attend" replies so far which really pisses me off.

I blame the MSM and these assholes like Fauci for scaring people to death the past 2 years and making them afraid to ever want to congregate like normal human beings again. One employee even said "they don’t know if they want to be in a large gathering before we go home for Christmas". Oh FFS

Dammit, it will probably be cancelled now for low numbers.

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
Well this is annoying and sad to see going on:

we set up an off-site Christmas/Holiday Happy Hour right near our campus and out of 80 people we only have 15 RSVP "Yes, I will attend" replies so far which really pisses me off.

Dammit, it will probably be cancelled now for low numbers.

Don't cancel... those who show should have a good time. Enjoy!

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
Dammit, it will probably be cancelled now for low numbers.

Don't cancel. Re-engineer

Back in the days companies still did this, my last employer would host Christmas parties in the building. There was food, alcohol, the whole nine yards. Then the Karens of the world convinced people the servers of alcoholic beverages should be responsible for in-duh-viduals irresponsible over-indulgence, rather than the ind-duh-viduals, themselves.

That was the end of those halcyon days

The first Christmas to roll around after my employer felt it was no longer safe to host such events on their property, or perhaps it was at their insurer's behest, there was no formal office Christmas party.

So several enterprising coworkers arranged to hold a semi-impromptu Christmas party at a nearby bar. All the fun people were there

The crackpots were right: COVID is a racket

By Jack Cashill

Must Read

Although I will put my COVID-skeptic credentials up against anyone's – I tried to organize a public protest on day one of the lockdown – I confess to having seen Big Health's actions as merely misguided. I was wrong.

The "crackpots" were right. The Big Health involvement did not progress along the Eric Hoffer spectrum from a good cause to a movement with benefits to a racket. It started as a racket, a massive racket that may go down as a Mao-worthy crime against humanity.

As the princeling of America's reigning Democratic dynasty, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has his blind spots, but his dissection of Big Health's war, not on COVID, but on those who are actually warring with COVID, is this century's must-read book.

Rather than summarize Kennedy's "The Real Anthony Fauci," allow me to excerpt one particular conversation that speaks to the enormity of the debacle. The conversation, recorded on Zoom, involves two scientists. One is Dr. Tess Lawrie, a world-renowned data researcher from the U.K. with an international reputation for integrity. The other is World Health Organization researcher Dr. Andrew Hill, a senior visiting research fellow at Liverpool University.

Lawrie and 20 of the world's leading experts had recently performed a meta-analysis of the research done on ivermectin (IVM), and the data overwhelmingly supported its value in treating COVID-19.

TRENDING: Christmas dumping: CEO fires more than 900 employees on video call

Like Lawrie, Hill had been a major IVM proponent before making a very suspicious about-face. As a WHO gatekeeper and adviser to both Bill Gates and the Clinton Foundation, Hill's opinion mattered. His hasty counter-thesis blocked a worldwide ivermectin rollout.

"How can you do this?" Lawrie asks him. "You are causing irreparable harm."

Hill explained that he was in a "tricky position" because his sponsors were pressuring him, the most important of which was Unitaid. Chairing the executive committee of Unitaid, an international quasi-governmental consortium, was the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation representative. Apparently, a $150 million donation buys the best seat at the table.

Lawrie was unmoved by the "sensitivity" of Hill's position. "Lots of people are in sensitive positions," Lawrie challenges Hill. "They're in hospital, in ICUs dying, and they need this medicine."
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"There are a lot of different opinions about this," Hill waffles. "As I say, some people simply …"

Lawrie cuts him off. "You don't have to say, well, so-and-so says this, and so-and-so says that. It's absolutely crystal clear. We can save lives today if we can get the government to buy ivermectin."

When Hill reverts to his "some people" shtick, Lawrie counters, "We are looking at the data. It doesn't matter what some people say."

Lawrie explains Hill's "tricky position" to him. "I appreciate you are in a sensitive position if you are being paid for something and you're being told to support a certain position." She then lays out the only acceptable moral response: "So maybe you need to say, I'm not going to be paid for this. I can see the evidence."

One can understand how an apparatchik could buckle before a Stalin or a Hitler, but a Bill Gates? Dante would need a special Circle to accommodate bureaucrats as easily intimidated as Hill.

When Hill protests that the NIH would not agree to recommend IVM, Lawrie shoots back, "Yeah, because the NIH is owned by the vaccine lobby." Hill cannot deny Lawrie's claim. "That's not something I know about," he says lamely.

"Well," she replies, "all I'm saying is this smacks of corruption, and you're being played." Responds the feckless Hill, "I don't think so."

When pressed, Hill admits that Unitaid "has a say" in his research. Lawrie then asks for a name of someone at Unitaid. Her goal is to "share my evidence and hope to try to persuade them to understand it."

Hill will not oblige her and continues to waffle, "I mean this is very difficult because I'm, you know, I've got this role where I'm supposed to produce this paper and we're in a very difficult, delicate balance."

When Hill insists he occupies a "middle ground," Lawrie denies him his "I was just following orders" alibi. "So this will come out, and you will be culpable. And I don't understand why you don't see that."

Lawrie does not shy from telling Hill what he refuses to see: "All other countries are getting ivermectin except the U.K. and the USA and Europe are owned by the vaccine lobby." Lawrie concludes by telling Hill, "I don't understand how you sleep at night, honestly."

As Kennedy documents, the racket runs deep. When I googled Lawrie's name the first item to show up was a BBC article headlined, "Ivermectin: How false science created a Covid 'miracle' drug."

When I googled Dr. Andrew Hill, the first article Google served up was this gem from the Guardian, "How my ivermectin research led to Twitter death threats."

If it takes a crackpot to think that Big Pharma, Big Health, Big Tech, Big Media and Bill Gates would engage in a conspiracy so vast and so lethal, well then color me a "crackpot."

quote:

Originally posted by nhtagmember:
this isn't good news...


CVS Health is embarking on a new partnership with Microsoft

I loathe CVS, this sounds like a match made in Hell

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/...vate-sector-n2600353

On Wednesday night the U.S. Senate voted 52-48 in favor of a resolution to do away with President Joe Biden's vaccine mandate for private businesses with 100 or more employees. The resolution needed only a simple majority to pass, with Sens. Jon Tester (D-MT) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) joining all 50 Republicans in voting in favor of the mandate.

The effort was spearheaded by Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN).

While the resolution is not likely to pass the House or avoid a veto from Biden , it's nevertheless a noteworthy victory for the GOP.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

more and more pressure building for Nov 2022 elections

NIH: No Documents Available on Removal of ‘Gain-of-Function’ Definition From Website

https://www.theepochtimes.com/...Q%2B%2FdbJoxGosez4FF

No documents exist explaining why officials decided to remove the definition of “gain-of-function research” from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) website, the agency told The Epoch Times.

The NIH site used to include a 232-word definition of the research but it was removed around the same time the agency disclosed that research it funded in China met the definition.

The alteration took place sometime between Oct. 19 and Oct. 21.

The Epoch Times submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for any communications and other documents from between Oct. 1 and Oct. 25 relating to the change, which had been authorized by the NIH Office of Communications and Public Liaison.

The request was closed this week. The NIH told The Epoch Times that it “does not have documentation” on the change other than the updated page.

The Department of Health and Human Services in 2017 published a document explaining how to deal with proposed research involving “enhanced potential pandemic pathogens,” or gain-of-function research. The document narrowed the definition to pathogens both highly transmissible and likely to cause significant sickness or death in humans.

The page in question “had described the general definition of gain-of-function research that fell outside the scope of the HHS P3CO Framework,” an NIH spokeswoman told The Epoch Times in an email in October.

“However, that information was being misused/used incorrectly (and still is) and creating confusion (and still is),” she added, triggering the change.


The NIH’s FOIA office sent a statement on the change that was nearly identical as the one from the spokeswoman.

Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.), the ranking Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, told The Epoch Times via email that the changed definition “has only muddied the waters.”

“Part of understanding what happened in the Wuhan lab is understanding precisely what gain of function means, and NIH has not been helpful in this regard,” he said.

The documents released to lawmakers in October showed the NIH funded, via the EcoHealth Alliance, research in China that included enhancing the pathogenicity of a modified bat coronavirus.

Experts told The Epoch Times that the research clearly fit the definition of gain-of-function.

Dr. Francis Collins, the head of the NIH, had asserted in a statement in May that his agency had never approved any grant ” that would have supported ‘gain-of-function’ research on coronaviruses that would have increased their transmissibility or lethality for humans.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of Collins’ top subordinates, said under oath during a congressional hearing that “The NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”

After the October disclosure, Collins and Fauci appeared to admit the research met the general definition of gain-of-function, but argued it did not meet the definition laid out in the framework.

Anthony Fauci Reveals Himself as a Fabian Socialist, Openly Advocating The Communal Good Supersedes The Individuals Right

This one minute segment from Anthony Fauci’s discussion with MSBNC journalist Andrea Mitchell is eye-opening and alarming. Within the interview Dr. Fauci states that individual rights to medical autonomy must be *forcibly* removed by the state under the premise of a communal good. This is the exactly mindset of the Fabian Socialists throughout history.

Dr. Fauci stated, “Free will. I respect that, but these are unusual times.” Pull your chair a little closer and allow me to whisper in your ear: ‘There will always be unusual times.’

Historically this type of communal outlook has been used as a talking point to justify some of the darkest times in world history. Politicians, eugenicists and some very disturbed world leaders with grand opinions of their own importance have long espoused this same ideology. It is a twisted and sick worldview that eventually leads to the same repeated conclusion. WATCH [1 minute]:



***

A worse problem arises with health, once we give our healthcare responsibility to the state, well, they start making decisions for us; including how many of us around are actually good for the state. Cue Dr. Anthony Fauci…

…”free will. I respect that, but these are unusual times.”

https://theconservativetreehou...s-right/#more-221894

Fauci needs to go away.

Sacrificing the individual against his will for the greater communal good.

Where have we heard that in history?

quote:

Originally posted by Yanert98:
Fauci needs to go away.

Sacrificing the individual against his will for the greater communal good.

Where have we heard that in history?

Sacrificing the individual (against his will or not) for the greater communal good seems like a great idea to me as long as the individual is Anthony Fauci. Seems to me like sacrificing (or at least muzzling) him might be one of the greatest things for our communal good at this point in our history.

quote:

Originally posted by Yanert98:
Fauci needs to go away.

Sacrificing the individual against his will for the greater communal good.

Where have we heard that in history?

Well, you can't spell Fauci without FU.

Problem is that what the advocates isn't even for the communal good in reality. It's for big pharma good. It's bad for the community. So, he can't even get his adherence to Fabianism right. He's just another corrupt thug in the pockets of big pharma.

I haven't kept up with this thread, but I'll pop in just to relay this experience.

Went to a choir concert yesterday at the high school. There were probably 500-600 people in attendance. Afterwards, everybody was in the hallway and foyer (it was a carol/cookie type social). It was packed like a Tokyo subway. The whole evening, I saw exactly two (2) masks on people. I had to actively look around for anybody with a mask, and there were just two people looking sullen against the wall.

At least in my area, people aren't buying into mandates anymore, and we're going on with our lives. Fortunately, we have a governor who is of a similar mindset. Very refreshing to see people out and about like there was never a pandemic. If the rest of the country would just do the same, this whole mess could be put to bed, no matter what the dictators in the government say.

NIH and CDC fail us on Omicron, as they have throughout the pandemic

https://nypost.com/2021/12/08/...throughout-pandemic/

Wednesday, nearly two weeks after news of Omicron ignited global panic, Pfizer announced its vaccine works against the variant but provided few details. Why couldn’t the National Institutes of Health or Centers for Disease Control mobilize any of their 7,000-plus scientists to answer this question rapidly and transparently as the world waited in limbo? What have our public-health leaders been doing?

They’ve been responding to Omicron with one simple message: We got this. They insist they’re following the new variant extremely closely. If so, why not immediately test antibodies from each of the vaccines against it, as well as antibodies from natural immunity? And where’s the real-time data dashboard of all known Omicron cases, including illness severity and whether the infected person was vaccinated, boosted or had previously had COVID. That would be a lot more useful than all the speculation.

The NIH has two of the nation’s highest-level virology labs, BSL-4 labs. They are part of the Biodefense Research Plan of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. But if their current response time is any indication of how fast they’d respond in a real bioterrorism emergency, we’re in trouble.

The Omicron experiment the world has been waiting for is not exactly the Manhattan Project. It’s not solving the riddle of the Sphinx. It’s a simple lab experiment: test neutralizing antibodies induced by each vaccine against the new variant. Each experiment takes about four days, lab experts told me, and can be done in tandem. If the NIH and CDC were really on top of Omicron, they would have reported results for each of the vaccines by now. Instead, they deferred to Big Pharma.

While markets have been experiencing whiplash and businesses paused getting back to normal, our nation’s public-health officials are doing a lot of talking. They’ve been talking in White House briefings, on radio shows and television, eloquently explaining Omicron’s unknowns.

Friday, Fauci will give a distinguished lectureship for my alma mater, the Harvard School of Public Health, as New York City implements a universal vaccine mandate to pre-empt Omicron. Last week, Gov. Kathy Hochul halted some elective surgery in the state, citing Omicron’s unknowns. Surgeon colleagues I know throughout New York and Boston are beginning to ration surgical procedures. Much of this chaos could have been better managed with timelier laboratory and clinical data on Omicron.

Perhaps Fauci could have done fewer media interviews and university lectures this week and last and instead personally overseen an NIH Omicron-antibody-binding experiment. When a Texas nurse contracted Ebola in 2014, Fauci had her flown to the NIH clinical center (for no good reason), where he put on a space suit and visited her bedside. Dr. Fauci, the country needs you to put on your lab coat again.

We also need CDC chief Dr. Rochelle Walensky to create an Omicron case tracker, a Web site with real-time (not delayed) clinical information on case severity, hospitalization status (if any) and age and immune status. The NIH and CDC have more than 40,000 employees, supported by more than $50 billion in taxpayer funding. Surely someone can stop what he’s doing to help us get good data.

Throughout the pandemic, we’ve seen the turtle-speed bureaucracy of our public agencies consistently fail us. According to research my Johns Hopkins research team conducted, in 2020, the year the pandemic hit, the NIH pivoted just 5 percent of its $42 billion budget to COVID (less than half what it spent on aging research that year). More alarming was finding the average time for the NIH to hand off money to researchers was five months. The Food and Drug Administration is no speed-racer either. It sat in decision paralysis while looking into Johnson & Johnson vaccine complications — a prolonged pause that fueled vaccine hesitancy.

The CDC has not done much better. The original sin of the US COVID response was the CDC’s decision to not allow university and private labs to test patients, a policy it reversed months into the pandemic. Since then, the CDC has consistently put out tardy and incomplete data, missing key information on risk stratification, the role of obesity and a breakdown of child deaths by comorbidity as we imposed blanket restrictions on 72 million children. (Germany just reported that no healthy child 5 to 17 died of COVID — all deaths were in children with a comorbidity.) In fact, most of our COVID findings have come from Israel and scientists abroad.

GlaxoSmithKline and Vir Biotechnology recently found that their antibody product works against Omicron. That’s good news. But it raises the question: Why haven’t all pharma companies reported their results?

More than ever, we need the NIH and CDC to focus less on talking and more on what matters most: doing the science and being transparent with the public.

Marty Makary, MD, MPH, is a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and author of the New York Times bestselling book “The Price We Pay.”

quote:

The NIH and CDC have more than 40,000 employees, supported by more than $50 billion in taxpayer funding. Surely someone can stop what he’s doing to help us get good data.
wow...
More than ever, we need the NIH and CDC to focus less on talking and more on what matters most: doing the science and being transparent with the public.

They don't DO any science at the NIH and CDC... they do PR for big Pharma.

Meanwhile... , the FDA approved booster shots for 16 and 17-year-olds this week. And the agency did it without having its vaccine committee make any recommendations or even meet to discuss the move. The CDC is expected to do the same thing and sidestep its own ACIP committee too. This avoids what would have been a significant discussion of myocarditis.

See folks, THIS is how you get things done. THIS is science. So stop complaining.

quote:

Originally posted by sigmonkey:

Stoled!