Highly Credentialed Doctors Testify before Congress, Excoriate U.S. Public Health Policy on COVID

Marty Makary MD, MPH, testifying before Congress:

The greatest perpetrator of misinformation during the pandemic has been the United States. Government misinformation that COVID was spread through surface transmission.

That vaccinated immunity was far greater than natural immunity. That masks were effective. Now we have the definitive Cochrane Review. What do you do with that review? Cochrane is the most authoritative evidence body in all of medicine and has been for decades Do you just ignore it and not talk about it? That myocarditis was more common after the infection than the vaccine. Not true. It's four to 28 times more common after the the vaccine.

That young people benefit from a booster. Misinformation. Our two top experts on vaccines quit the FDA in protest over this particular issue: pushing boosters in young, healthy people. That data was never there. That's why the CDC never disclosed hospitalization rates among boosted Americans under age 50.

That vaccine mandates would increase vaccination rates. The George Mason University study shows it didn't. It did one thing: it created never vaxxers who are now not getting the childhood vaccines they need to get.

Over and over again, we've seen something that goes far beyond using your best judgment with the information at hand. We've seen something which is unforgivable, and that is the weaponization of medical research itself: The CDC putting out their own shoddy studies like their own study on natural immunity looking at one state for two months, when they had data for years on all 50 states. Why did they only report that one sliver of data? Why did they salami slice the giant database? Because it gave them the result they wanted. Same with masking study. Well, the data has now caught up in giant systematic reviews.

The public health officials were intellectually dishonest. They lied to the American people.

Thank you.

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya opens at the House COVID Subcommittee: “Science bureaucrats abusing their authority to create an illusion of scientific consensus in favor of destructive ideas… With such a litany of failure, the American people deserve an honest COVID commission.”

Continue ReadingHighly Credentialed Doctors Testify before Congress, Excoriate U.S. Public Health Policy on COVID

For want of a half penny, a future was lost…

Yesterday, my son shared the video below - Neil deGrasse Tyson's "We Stopped Dreaming (Episode 1)". It took me back to childhood memories when I was inspired to be a scientist. I remember watching the Apollo launches. I think I remember listening to the Gemini 4 space walk – I was four, and my father recorded it on reel-to-reel, but I don’t remember him ever replaying it. I remember staying up late and falling asleep…thankfully to be awoken by my mother just before Apollo 11 landed on the moon. ...Skylab, ...the test flight of the Space Shuttle Enterprise. Years later, I left behind aspirations of a science career (practicalities…how much money does the average physicist make anyway?) for one of engineering, but the love of space, cosmology, NASA…all still with me…which is why what Neil deGrasse Tyson is saying in this video saddens me all the more.

I worry that decisions Congress makes doesn't [sic] factor in the consequences of those decisions on tomorrow.
Apart from the applicability of that to just about any of the current Congress's decisions, he’s dead right in this specific instance. We are not funding science. We are not encouraging and developing engineers. We are failing in educating our young people, not only in the technical fields, but in general. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) compares 15 year olds in 65 industrial countries. From the 2009 report:
The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a collaborative effort among OECD member countries to measure how well 15-year-old students approaching the end of compulsory schooling are prepared to meet the challenges of today’s knowledge societies. The assessment is forward-looking: rather than focusing on the extent to which these students have mastered a specific school curriculum, it looks at their ability to use their knowledge and skills to meet real-life challenges. This orientation reflects a change in curricular goals and objectives, which are increasingly concerned with what students can do with what they learn at school.
“…to meet real-life challenges.” Care to guess how the U.S.A. fared in the latest, 2009, assessment? You can see here for yourself, but I’ll spoil it:
  • Reading – 17th (out of 65)
  • Mathematics –31st (significantly below the average)
  • Science – 23rd
We fail. We fail across the board. We fail where it matters. I’m not sure how we will fare in the 2012 PISA, but I seriously doubt we’ll improve. Our system doesn't support it anymore. Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum, in their book “That Used to Be us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back”, quote Matt Miller, one of the authors of a 2009 McKinsey & Company report titled The Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in America’s Schools, who said
They [American students] are being prepared for $12-an-hour jobs – not $40 to $50 an hour.”
I don’t know what the answer is. I admit a selfish cop out - we home educate our children – so I don’t think often on what can or should be done; we've taken responsibility for preparing our children ourselves. Still, one simple solution seems to be to promote science, math and engineering. And we start doing that by not cutting NASA’s budget. Fat chance. How much would YOU pay for the universe?

Continue ReadingFor want of a half penny, a future was lost…

Matt Taibbi on Congressional corruption

Once again, Matt Taibbi says it like it is.

This is a classic example of how the Senate works . . . Bernie Sanders had put forth a proposal in the Senate to put a 15 percent cap on credit-card interest. Who isn't in favor of this kind of legislation? The only difference between credit card companies and loan sharks at this point is that you can choose to not patronize a loan shark. As an adult professional in this country one has to have a credit card - it's impossible to rent a car, buy a hotel room, shop online or do countless other things without one. But all the credit card companies use the same insane formulae based on FICO scores to charge exorbitant interest rates for anyone who slips up - and they don't exactly make it easy to not slip up . . . Almost everyone has horror stories about consumer credit and my guess is that if put to a national referendum, something like the Sanders 15% cap would pass pretty easily. In Washington, of course, it's another story.
If we had a national referendum, the 15% cap would pass 90-10 if we had an honest debate. Of course, if there were really a national vote on the issue, the airwaves would be filled with bank-financed fraudulent ads telling us how the entire country will go bankrupt if we don't charge a minimum of 30% interest rates on credit cards, or some similar bullshit.

Continue ReadingMatt Taibbi on Congressional corruption

Why we need public funding for our elections

Members of Congress are supposed to assert independence regarding their deliberations and actions, but it has long been clear that campaign cash corrupts this entire process. In the video below, Lawrence Lessig succinctly makes the case that corporate contributions have made a farce out of Congress. Truly, how can Senator Scott Brown (featured in the video) take a position opposing a bill when he doesn't even know why? Rather than considering the merits of the financial reform legislation with an open mind, Scott Brown is giving the terms of the bill no consideration. Instead of understanding the bill, then weighing the pros and cons, he is merely granting the wishes of his biggest contributors, who happen to be big corporations. This is political malpractice, and We the People deserve far better than this. This is the equivalent of turning on your kitchen faucet and hoping for clear water, but seeing only raw sewage come out. The "Congress" we have is not a functioning Congress. Because it is devoid of the critical deliberative function that should serve as it's heart and soul, it is a charade and it should be the highest priority of this country to Fix Congress. The solution Lawrence Lessig proposes is to enact a law called the Fair Elections Now Act, which will allow publicly-funded elections. One such bill is currently pending in Congress: the Fair Elections Now Act. You can read the full text of the Senate version of the bill here. If you click on the "Take Action" page, you can encourage additional sponsors for this desperately needed legislation. There are many co-sponsors to both the Senate and House versions of the bill, but there is a long way to go. It would only take you five or ten minutes to review the bill, and make a few calls to voice your support to your representatives.

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Exhibit A regarding Congressional dysfunction

How is it that one senator can stifle government function? Tim Rutten of the LA Times explains:

In the face of these daunting issues, what was it that preoccupied the Senate on the eve of its long weekend recess? The legislative drama du jour is the standoff between the White House and Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.), who has put a personal hold on more than 70 executive branch appointments until the Obama administration agrees to fund a couple of pork-barrel projects he has earmarked for his state. One involves tens of millions of dollars for an FBI laboratory focusing on improvised explosives -- something the bureau doesn't think it needs. . . . Unless the administration agrees to give Shelby what he wants, he intends to invoke an archaic senatorial privilege that allows him to prevent the chamber from considering any of the administration's nominees to executive branch vacancies, no matter how crucial. Without the 60 votes to force cloture -- another archaic convention -- there's nothing the Democrats or the White House can do.

Continue ReadingExhibit A regarding Congressional dysfunction