Tuesday, August 24, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Tuesday, August 24, 2021

Note: I am planning a road trip to the US east coast probably immediately after Labor Day, September 6, from my home in southern Minnesota. If any of you regular followers would like to meet me on this road trip, I will try to accommodate you in my itinerary. The arrangement would at least consist of meeting over a beverage of your choice at a location near you or at your home. Please contact me if this interests you at my email address: goatmeal36@yahoo.com.  Ron H.

Professor Jay Bhattacharya [of Stanford University] is one of the famous voices to have emerged out of the pandemic. A vocal critic of lockdowns, his name became synonymous with the controversial Great Barrington Declaration, which called for an “alternative approach to the pandemic” that would entail no lockdowns. Along with co-signatories Sunetra Gupta and Martin Kulldforff, the trio argued that public health strategies should instead centre on the ‘focused protection’ of at-risk groups while keeping society as open as possible so the healthy parts of the population could build herd immunity. [my insertion]

The declaration triggered a huge global debate, with critics arguing that many more lives would have been lost on account of the difficulty of shielding all those who were vulnerable. During this week’s interview, Freddie Sayers challenged Prof Bhattacharya on what would have happened if his strategy was adopted, whether he has changed his mind in retrospect, and how his ‘focused protection’ have would worked with waning immunity and new variants? 
 
And at one point (36:09m) Prof. Bhattacharya regarding censorship and harassment said:

I know for fact that there was not a consensus [among scientists]. Yet there
were many, many people afraid to speak up and say this hypothesis
[CDC policies?] doesn't make sense. I know that because both before and after, especially after, I've gotten countless people [probably scientists] writing to me saying thank you for speaking up, and letting me say my piece. [my insertions]
Why It Matters: Now that full FDA approval is in place, we’re likely to see vaccine requirements and mandates take off intensely. Hospitals, colleges, corporations and other organizations will now likely look to mandate their workers be vaccinated, while still offering reasonable accommodation via religious or medical exemption.
I interview Dr Lucy Morgan Edwards about the recent events in Afghanistan, the reality of life under the Taliban and why the NATO aggression post 9/11 should never have happened but US, UK intelligence agencies ensured it stayed on track despite political resolution being an option.
A 471-page report by the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts for Bolivia (GIEI-Bolivia) recently presented to Bolivian President Luis Arce in La Paz on Tuesday this week confirms the U.S.-backed coup’s persecution of opponents, including “systematic torture and summary executions” in 2019. The report is based on interviews with 400 victims of the Anez regime and other witnesses, as well as 120,000 files related to abuses between September 1 and December 31, 2019.

The findings prompted Bolivian prosecutors to charge the self-styled “interim leader” Jeanine Anez with genocide.