https://popularrationalism.substack.com/p/fifth-circuit-court-of-appeals-affirms
Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Affirms: “We Said Hold On There, OSHA”
Citing Natural Immunity and Separation of Powers, a 3-Judge Panel Affirms the TRO after the Biden Administration Complains. And more on “Grave Dangers”.
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The Biden administration’s use of OSHA to enforce the COVID-19 vaccine mandate has many problems, and the 5th Circuit Court sees some of the important ones, such as the constitutional issue of separation of powers as well as natural immunity.
The Biden Administration asked the court to lift its stay on the mandate, saying stopping its implementation “would likely cost dozens or even hundreds of lives per day”, to back their false claim of “Grave Danger” to the “unvaccinated”.
Hundreds Per Day? What About the Kids? And No, Fewer Motor Vehicle Accidents Do Not Explain the Massive Drop in Pediatric Deaths During Lockdown
The term “Grave Danger” brings to mind an interesting pair of facts that were originally brought forward by Mark Blaxill and April Becker.
Fact 1. The CDC has reported significant declines in childhood vaccination rates during the pandemic, ranging from 7% decrease to 20% decrease in childhood vaccination uptake.
Fact 2. Becker and Blaxill published a compelling analysis pointing to a reduction in mortality rates in young people (especially infants) during the pandemic. Their analysis, based on NCHS data, points to hundreds of lives in infants not lost per day during the same period of time when vaccination uptake dropped significantly.
The Omniscient “Fact-Checkers” Weigh In [Sarcasm Alert! for those who need that]
Not surprisingly, self-nominated, non-peer-reviewed “Fact-Checking” opinion blog websites (like this one at “Health Feedback Dot Org” have concluded for themselves that the drop in infant deaths is NOT related to the drop in vaccination, well, because they have special magical powers to discern causality and truth, when no one else can. Their monopoly on truth is self-evident, because their opinion articles are published on their very own blogs on the internet and you can read their words with your own eyes, which must make them true. Their virtue is unparalleled in this regard, and we are ever so grateful for their generosity in sharing their opinions. Plus, they even cite other people’s opinions. Man, that’s amazing.
Ok, back to reality. “Health Feedback Dot Org” cited things like lags in reporting, but “Health Feedback Dot Org” fails to emphasize that Blaxill and Becker did adjust for that. The opinion blog site instead claims that Blaxill and Becker must not have adjusted sufficiently for underreporting… well, because, you know, they just know that.
“Health Feedback Dot Org” also fails to mention the size of CDC’s budget or question why CDC has such deplorable and biased lag times in reporting, such as was found by IPAK Joshua Kuntz Research Scholar Dr. Jessica Rose, who found (in a peer-reviewed research article, not an opinion blog) that CDC held onto serious adverse event data longer than mild adverse events data in the months leading up to key committee meetings to determine policy on COVID-19 vaccination. But I digress.
They jump from guessing that there must be underreporting to 100% fact-holding. Their certainty is remarkable (ahem, their title: “Infant deaths did not decrease during the pandemic due to a reduced use of vaccines” is a causality determination).
They accuse Blaxill and Becker of coming to a definite claim:
“Overall, Blaxill and Becker’s claims are premature because they are based on incomplete data due to underreporting.”
“HealthCheck DOT org” also says that Blaxill and Becker did not consider factors that they consider to be important. Remember that word “important”.
They wrote:
“The article compares… pediatric vaccine uptake during the pandemic to child deaths and does not consider the many other factors which may have contributed to the recent decline in child deaths, such as lockdowns leading to reduced travel and social contact, culminating in fewer traffic accidents and infectious diseases, respectively.”
Blaxill and Becker’s interpretation of their own results is more far tempered than the opinion blog article “Health Feedback Dot Org” would have you believe. They write:
“What has changed during this period that might have such an effect? Are infant deaths not being recorded? Are parents taking better care of their families while working remotely and their children are not going to school? There are many possible hypotheses about the infant death decline.”
Compared to “Health Feedback Dot Org”’s chronically inaccurate assessment and misrepresentation, Becker and Blaxill appear studious, reserved, academic and focused. They estimated 154,029 life-years saved by whatever was causing the drop in deaths in people under 25.
Remember that word “Important?”
According to CDC, 608 child passengers aged 12 and younger died in motor vehicle crashes in 2018. That’s a maximum of 1.66 deaths per day that could possibly have been prevented by less driving during the lockdown, not hundreds.
According to Healthy People.org, 300 children die each year in the US from “vaccine preventable diseases”. 300. So, fewer infectious disease cases due to social isolation, but no vaccination that would allegedly prevented those that would occur in spite of the lockdown, ok, I think I follow, but still, it’s 300 people. Less than one per day.
Vaccine cessation was followed by hundreds of fewer deaths per day and “Health Fact Check Dot Org’s” summoned other causes account for… at most… two.
These are the kinds of distortions that “Fact Check” websites feed the public. They are dangerous sources of misinformation. It is quite possible that pediatric vaccines are killing hundreds of kids per day, and reducing symptoms from infectious diseases. Think of Peter Aaby’s team finding of ten times more mortality from deaths from other causes, including infections following DTP vaccination:
Grave danger, indeed. Becker and Blaxill have done a service to humanity for pointing out the possible link between pediatric vaccinations and pediatric mortality.
Back to the OSHA case, the FACT is that the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has called bullshit on OSHA’s administrative rule on some very important fundamental points – including the importance of recognizing natural immunity and the separation of powers mandated by the US Constitution – and when the Biden administration complained, they repeated their assessment more firmly.
The panel wrote:
“The mandate is a one-size-fits-all sledgehammer that makes hardly any attempt to account for differences in workplaces (and workers).”
And,
“We next consider the necessity of the Mandate. The Mandate is staggeringly overbroad. Applying to 2 out of 3 private-sector employees in America, in workplaces as diverse as the country itself, the Mandate fails to consider what is perhaps the most salient fact of all: the ongoing threat of COVID-19 is more dangerous to some employees than to other employees. All else equal, a 28 year-old trucker spending the bulk of his workday in the solitude of his cab is simply less vulnerable to COVID-19 than a 62 year-old prison janitor. Likewise, a naturally immune unvaccinated worker is presumably at less risk than an unvaccinated worker who has never had the virus. The list goes on, but one constant remains-the Mandate fails almost completely to address, or even respond to, much of this reality and common sense.”
Fact check that.
Credit to John Gilmore, Autism Action Network for the quips from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Reference
- Becker, A and M Blaxill. Why are so many fewer children dying? July, 2020 https://healthchoice.org/lessons-from-the-lockdown/
- Some Bullshit Opinion Article on the Internet.
- Mogensen, Søren Wengel et al. The Introduction of Diphtheria-Tetanus-Pertussis and Oral Polio Vaccine Among Young Infants in an Urban African Community: A Natural Experiment. EBioMedicine vol. 17 (2017): 192-198. doi:10.1016/j.ebiom.2017.01.041
- Jessica Rose, 2021. Critical appraisal of VAERS Pharmacovigilance: Is the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) a functioning pharmacovigilance system? Sci, Publ Health Pol & Law 3:100-129. https://www.publichealthpolicyjournal.com/general-5 Related: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kimberleespeakman/2021/11/12/federal-appeals-court-reaffirms-decision-to-temporarily-halt-biden-administration-covid-19-vaccine-mandate/
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https://popularrationalism.substack.com/p/the-argument-over-natural-immunity
The Argument Over Natural Immunity is Over. It’s Time to Update Policy.
Science shows robust and durable T-cell immunity to variants. Now, CDC admits no record of unvaccinated person who had COVID-19 spreading.
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Public health policies, including the rationalization of universal vaccination with endless boosters, and OSHA’s recent and highly challenged universal administrative rule, have been based on the theoretical possibility that those with past COVID-19 infections may still spread the SARS-CoV-2 virus, but evidence on viral escape from natural immunity has been scarce.
By contrast, a study in Genomics published in July, 2021 found Vaccine Escape and Vaccine-Weakening mutations in the receptor binding domain of the SARS-CoV-2 virus (See “Vaccine-escape and fast-growing mutations in the…”).
The theoretical concern over escape from infection is comparatively weak. A study in PNAS predicted that SARS-CoV-2 would evolve to escape polyclonal antibodies produced against the viral proteins during infection (See SARS-CoV-2 escape from a highly neutralizing COVID-19 convalescent plasma). This theoretical analysis reported that “only three mutations were necessary” for the virus to escape infection-acquired immunity to existing immunity to the spike protein. The study did not provide any probability of such escape happening and failed to distinguish between polyclonal immunity to multiple proteins, as happens in SARS-CoV-2 infection, and immunity to the single spike protein, which may occur in persons who have had mRNA vaccines.
Public health policies have been based on the premise that natural immunity does not play an important role in protecting individuals. OSHA’s recent administrative rule requires that those who have survived COVID-19 still need to vaccinate, or test & mask due to OSHA’s concern over accuracy of tests for immunity. (Ironically, OSHA shows no concern over accuracy of the use of PCR tests for case discernment, a problem that has long been recognized by scientists around the globe).
All of that changed this week when The Gateway Pundit shared the contents of a letter, obtained via FOIA from the US CDC admitting that they have no record of anyone who has recovered from SARS-CoV-2 infection spreading the virus post-recovery.
From Pundit:
“The CDC admitted it has no record of an unvaccinated person spreading Covid after recovering from Covid in response to an attorney’s FOIA request.
A New York attorney filed a FOIA request in September asking for “documents reflecting any documented case of an individual who (1) never received a Covid-19 vaccine; (2) was infected with Covid-19 once, recovered, and then later became infected again; and (3) transmitted SARS CoV-2 to another person when reinfected.”
The CDC responded: ‘A search of our records failed to reveal any documents pertaining to your request. The CDC Emergency Operation Center (EOC) conveyed that this information is not collected.’”
The Pundit article includes a Tweet linking to the CDC’s response letter, as well as a Tweet from Senator Rand Paul that mentions this peer-reviewed study published in the journal Open Forum Infectious Diseases.
Oddly, the Pubmed database labels this study as a “Preprint”, while clearly (from the publisher’s website) it has now survived peer review.
Long-term immunity to the SARS-CoV-2 virus is expected following COVID-19 infection given the large number of immunogenic epitopes present in the proteome of the virus. In April 2020, I published an analysis (validated by Harvard University) in which I identified over 50 epitopes in the SARS-CoV-2 proteome (See: Pathogenic priming likely contributes to serious and critical illness and mortality in COVID-19 via autoimmunity).
The SARS-CoV-2 vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer target one protein. This has led to grave concern over “vaccine escape”. One article in The Lancet predicted vaccine escape within six months if the number of cases remains too high (See SARS-CoV-2 incidence and vaccine escape). The madness of mass vaccination during an epidemic was known; if the vaccine is imperfect (i.e,, “leaky”), vaccine escape is all but assured. Vaccine efficacy has plummeted, and is now likely below 50% for all three vaccines in use in the US (See Do COVID-19 Vaccines Still Qualify for Emergency Use Authorization?)
Broad and Durable beats Narrow and Temporary
A longitudinal study in Cell Reports Medicine followed 254 patients with mostly mild to moderate symptoms of SARS-CoV-2 infection over a period for more than eight months (250 days). The study authors reported that the patients’ immune responses to the virus remained durable and strong. (See Longitudinal analysis shows durable and broad immune memory after SARS-CoV-2 infection with persisting antibody responses and memory B and T cells).
Studies reporting durable immunity from vaccines are less reassuring, as the vaccination program does not provide redundant immunity due to polyclonal antibodies to the myriad immunogenic epitopes provided by SARS-CoV-2 infection.
If public health policy in the US were at all science-based, those who have B- and T-cells would be exempt from vaccination, masking, social distancing and should not have their livelihoods threatened by administrative rules agnostic to the on-the-ground, real-world and peer-review data.
Madison Area Lyme Support Group 