PP NewsBrief: 2021-04-23

We need to begin to reclaim control over the institutions which have such oversized roles in our lives. As you read this people work tirelessly to see to it that you are dumb and docile. Let's stop them.

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Biden endorses Democrat proposal to make Washington, DC the 51st US state

"The Biden administration “strongly supports” a bill that would make the District of Columbia a new US state named Douglass Commonwealth, and shrink the seat of the US government to a tiny enclave in downtown Washington.

In a “statement of policy” released on Tuesday, the White House endorsed House Resolution 51, also known as the Washington, DC Admission Act.

“For far too long, the more than 700,000 people of Washington, DC have been deprived of full representation in the US Congress. This taxation without representation and denial of self-governance is an affront to the democratic values on which our Nation was founded,” the statement said.

...

The District of Columbia – named after a female personification of the American Colonies back in the early 1700s – was established by the US Constitution as the seat of the federal government, with territory ceded by Maryland on the north side of the Potomac River and Virginia to the south. Virginia reclaimed its territory – present-day Arlington County and the city of Alexandria – in 1846, leaving the federal district surrounded by Maryland on three sides.

...

Article I, Section 8, Clause 17 of the US Constitution says that a seat of government “not exceeding ten miles square” will be established by Congress and not be under the jurisdiction of any state. This was motivated by an incident in June 1783 – while the war of independence was still ongoing – when the Continental Congress was forced out of Philadelphia by a group of protesting soldiers, and neither local nor state authorities took action to disperse them."

You can absolutely make a credible case for statehood of places like Puerto Rico or Guam. But not for DC. As Jonathan Turley points out, retrocession is the solution: Maryland regains its previously ceded territory minus the required federal district encompassing "...the Mall and core federal buildings..."

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Pesticide DDT Linked to Increased Breast Cancer Risk Generations after Exposure

"A woman’s exposure to the pesticide DDT during pregnancy can increase her granddaughter’s risk for breast cancer decades later, according to a new study.

...

Researchers have established health effects from transgenerational exposure to chemicals in laboratory animals, but never before in humans. Grandchildren’s exposure can occur when their mothers are in utero and their mother’s egg cells are in development.

DDT compounds are known endocrine-disrupting chemicals that can alter and interfere with natural hormones that are essential for development. DDT exposure has been linked to breast cancer, birth defects, reduced fertility, and an increased risk of diabetes. It was banned in the United States in 1972 but is still used in other countries to kill mosquitoes that carry malaria.

Conducted by researchers at CHDS and the University of California at Davis, the study relied on blood samples collected from pregnant women between 1959 and 1967 as part of the CHDS study that has followed 20,000 pregnant women in California’s Bay Area, and their families, for more than 60 years. CHDS investigates how health and disease are passed on between generations. The original cohort of women, the grandmothers, gave blood samples at each trimester during pregnancy and one sample shortly after they gave birth.

The current study is based on a subset of 365 adult granddaughters. The risk of obesity (Body Mass Index greater than 30 kg/m2) in young adult granddaughters was found to be 2 to 3 times greater when their grandmothers had higher levels of o,p’-DDT, a minor compound of DDT, in their blood during or just after pregnancy. Similarly, granddaughters were twice as likely to have earlier first menstrual periods (before age 11) when their grandmothers had higher o,p’-DDT blood levels.

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The study breaks other important ground, according to Julia Brody, executive director at the Silent Spring Institute, who was not involved in the study. First, it shows consistency that o,p’-DDT is the best marker for recent exposure. Most previous studies, conducted after DDT was banned in the U.S., have measured DDT’s main breakdown compound (DDE) in women’s blood and they largely failed to find a connection to breast cancer.

CHDS researchers focused on o,p’-DDT, a contaminant comprising roughly 15 percent of commercial grade DDT, as a marker for active exposure—that is, exposure during pregnancy many decades ago—because it is more quickly metabolized than DDT’s main ingredient (p,p’-DDT) which breaks down to DDE.

Second, Brody told EHN, the study shows, “You can’t assume that exposure later in life is the same as exposure early in life.” Exposures to DDT at pregnancy appear more impactful than at mid-life, the age that other researchers have focused their investigations into DDT and breast cancer risk.

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Though they were not able to account for diet or exposure to other so-called obesogens (chemicals associated with obesity), Cohn pointed to the strong association they found between grandmothers’ DDT levels and granddaughters’ obesity and said that for other factors to explain granddaughters’ obesity, “only the daughters whose grandmothers were exposed to DDT would have to be exposed to current obesogens today,” and that’s unlikely.

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Moving forward, both Cohn and Brody would like policymakers to view the study as proof of concept that exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals can impact generations, and to begin looking to animal studies that have documented the impact of endocrine disruptors on future generations to devise policies that reduce human exposure.

“We don’t want to wait the next three generations to find out the chemicals that are in use now cause breast cancer,” said Brody."

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Vaccine Makers Destroy COVID Vaccine Safety Studies

"Makers of COVID-19 vaccines are now destroying long-term safety studies by unblinding their trials and giving the control groups the active vaccine, claiming it is “unethical” to withhold an effective vaccine.

In so doing, they make it virtually impossible to assess any long-term safety and effectiveness, and the true benefit versus cost.

It’s ironic, because vaccine mandates are being justified on the premise that the benefit to the community is more important than an individual’s risk of harm. Yet vaccine manufacturers are saying that participants in the control groups are harmed by not getting the vaccine, and saving the individual is more important than securing the data needed to make public health decisions.

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...Truly, what we’re watching is the active destruction of basic medical science in a surreal dystopian nightmare.

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Consider this report in JAMA by Rita Rubin, senior writer for JAMA medical news and perspectives, for example. According to Rubin, the launch of “two highly efficacious” COVID-19 vaccines has “spurred debate about the ethics, let alone the feasibility, of continuing or launching blinded, placebo-controlled trials …”

Rubin recounts how Moderna representatives told a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel that rather than letting thousands of vaccine doses to go to waste, they planned to offer them to trial participants who had received placebo.

Pfizer representatives made a similar announcement to the advisory panel. According to a news analysis published in The BMJ, the FDA and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are both onboard with this plan, as is the World Health Organization.

In the JAMA report by Rubin, Moncref Slaoui, Ph.D., chief scientific adviser for Operation Warp Speed, is quoted saying he thinks “it’s very important that we unblind the trial at once and offer the placebo group vaccines” because trial participants “should be rewarded” for their participation.

All of these statements violate the very basics of what a safety trial needs, which is a control group against which you can compare the effects of the drug or vaccine in question over the long term. I find it inconceivable that unblinding is even a consideration at this point, seeing how the core studies have not even concluded yet. The only purpose of this unblinding is to conceal the fraud that these vaccines are safe.

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If we are to accept the “greater good” justification for vaccination, then people who agree to participate in a study, and end up getting a placebo, need to roll the dice and potentially sacrifice their health “for the greater good.” Here, the greater good is the study itself, the results of which are of crucial importance for public health decisions.

Without this data, we will never know whether the vaccines work in the long term and/or what their side effects are. If an individual in the control group gets COVID-19, then that’s the price of scientific participation for the greater good of society, just as when a vaccinated person gets harmed, that’s considered an acceptable price for creating vaccine-induced herd immunity.

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I remain confident that we’ll continue to see many more health problems and deaths develop in time, but without control groups, these trends can more easily be written off as “normal” and/or blamed on something else. As noted by Dr. Steven Goodman, associate dean of clinical and translational research at Stanford University, who is quoted in Rubin’s JAMA article:

“By unblinding trial participants, ‘you lose a valid comparison group,’ Goodman said. ‘There will be this sense, and it will be sort of true, that the study is over.’ Unlike, say, a highly effective cancer drug, ‘the vaccine is not literally a life-and-death issue today and tomorrow’ for most trial participants, Goodman said.

So, he noted, those running COVID-19 vaccine trials shouldn’t feel obligated to unblind participants and vaccinate placebo recipients right away. Doing so implies ‘you can just blow up the trial’ on the basis of promising preliminary results, establishing ‘an ethical model for future trials that we maybe don’t want to set,’ Goodman said.”

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Goodman is also quoted in another article,9 this one in MedPage Today, discussing the problems with trial participants unblinding themselves by taking an antibody test:

“‘There is no good scientific reason for someone to do this,’ he told MedPage Today. ‘I can understand why they want that information, but it can only serve to diminish the value of the trial. Getting tested is not right unless there is a pressing need for unblinding for health reasons.'”

Here, yet another hypocritical irony arises, as the reason they don’t want trial participants to unblind themselves is because if they know they got the vaccine, they’re statistically more likely to take more risks that might expose them to the virus.

This, then, will skew the results and “could make the vaccine look less effective than it is,” Dr. Elizabeth McNally of Northwestern University explained to MedPage Today. So, whether vaccine scientists agree with unblinding or not, unblinding really only has to do with whether it will skew results in their favor.

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Keep in mind that we still do not know the percentage of adverse effects being reported. Is it between 1% and 10% as past inquiries into VAERS reporting have shown, or is it higher?

If only 10% are reported, we may be looking at 23,420 deaths, but if it is as low as 1%, it jumps to more than 230,000 deaths. We will never know because there are major attempts to suppress this information, as we have already witnessed with the deaths of sport celebrities Hank Aaron and Marvin Hagler, both of whom died shortly after COVID vaccinations.

Regardless, it’s hard to justify even a single death of an otherwise healthy individual, seeing how the survival rate for COVID-19 across all age groups is 99.74%. If you’re younger than 40, your survival rate is 99.99%.

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Vaccine makers are also very careful about only referencing relative risk, not absolute risk. By doing so, the vaccines appear far more protective than they actually are. It’s a commonly used statistical trick that I encourage you to familiarize yourself with."

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Scathing FDA report finds J&J Covid vaccine plant where 15mn doses were ruined is unsanitary, staff training inadequate

"US health inspectors have ordered a Baltimore plant that was manufacturing Johnson & Johnson's Covid-19 vaccine to rectify a series of issues that could potentially contaminate the jab and seriously jeopardize its safety.

The 12-page report by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) laid bare a litany of health and safety issues at the Maryland factory, where production of J&J's Janssen jab was halted last month after 15 million doses were spoiled.

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Employees in one manufacturing area were seen throwing unsealed bags of medical waste into an elevator and removing their protective clothing near raw materials.

Personal hygiene was also flagged as a problem, with one member of staff who moved between different manufacturing zones only recorded once in the plant's shower logbook.

Other issues cited included staff not cleaning equipment properly and the “failure to conduct thorough investigations” related to a leak as a batch was filled.

The FDA has informed Emergent Biosolutions Inc. of the issues and the company is now required to respond.

The concerns raised in the report may take months to resolve, according to experts cited by Reuters. The FDA and J&J have not released a date for production to restart."

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“Believe Your Eyes, Chauvin’s Knee Killed Floyd”: How The Line Between The Press and The Prosecution Disappeared In The Chauvin Trial

"The coverage was striking in the glowing accounts of the prosecution’s closing arguments as opposed to the criticism of the defense. More importantly, the coverage shows little concern over the rights of criminal defendants or appreciation for the position of defense counsel.

We saw the same trend during the Trump Administration when legal experts adopted ridiculously broad interpretations of criminal provisions in a blind obsession to find any way to charge Donald Trump or his family. Some of us from the defense bar warned how dangerous such interpretations would be — and how they ignored both the element and controlling case law.  Legal experts dismissed abuses disclosed in prior investigations involving defendants like Michael Flynn and Carter Page. They disregarded the implications of sweeping definitions of crimes like obstruction or the Logan Act.  They defended judicial bias when it worked against Trump officials.

The saddest aspect to this trend is that legal analysis was once largely immune from such open bias. I have worked as a television legal analyst for thirty years on various networks. I have watched as legal analysts in both television and print have become part of the echo journalism model — offering reassuring analysis for viewers who want continual reaffirmation of their own political preferences.  We have now lost any semblance of objectively or neutrality.  That is consistent with the trend in journalism at large where there are growing calls for advocacy in journalism. This includes academics rejecting the very concept of objectivity in journalism in favor of open advocacy. Even Columbia Journalism Dean and New Yorker writer Steve Coll denounced how the First Amendment right to freedom of speech was being “weaponized” to protect disinformation. The result however has been the steady decline in trust for the media."

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The Search to Explain Our Anxiety and Depression: Will ‘Long COVID’ Become the Next Gender Ideology?

"...The fixation on identity-based victimhood serves as a means to explain or deflect pre-existing personal emotions. Observed anxiety levels in American children and youth have been going up for decades, even as their material circumstances have improved. For students from wealthy families who attend elite schools that now cater to every imaginable need and desire, abstract theories of gender now serve as one of the only avenues available to externalize negative emotions as a manifestation of outward oppression, ignorance, or bigotry.

Some critics of gender theory have dismissed the movement as an ersatz religion, since it relies on the unfalsifiable, faith-based proposition that humans are born with a soul-like gender spirit that defines one’s identity. But in an important sense, that analogy is inapt: While a traditional psychological benefit of religious belief is to explain evil and misfortune, gender theory has achieved its greatest popularity in hyper-privileged enclaves such as Haverford, where even activists typically can’t identify sources of alleged trauma that aren’t purely symbolic. (And even here, the evidence is scant: The word “misgendering” doesn’t appear once in the Clearness report. Instead, the authors repeat vague claims of “insensitivity” in classroom discussion.)

For years now, highly LGBT-supportive schools such as Haverford have been running what is, in effect, a long-term experiment to discover the source of ennui among gender-diverse individuals. What we’ve discovered is that the problem these students face isn’t explaining actual evil. The problem they face is finding a way to make sense of their (very real) anxiety and depression within wealthy, highly tolerant milieus from which evil has been almost entirely banished.

Every movement waxes and wanes. And it’s possible that the popularity of gender ideology already is in decline. But the psychological appetites that this movement has served aren’t going away. Absent some revolution in psychiatry, destabilizing emotional traumas are always going to be part of adolescence and young adulthood. It’s simply the way humans are wired. And these processes will inevitably have a political aspect, especially in the age of social media: As every parent (and self-aware teenager) knows, anger and self-pity are more psychologically manageable responses to emotional tumult than candid self-examination.

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One could even extend this pattern to the question of race. Every reasonable person will acknowledge that racism is a real phenomenon, and that the distinction between white and non-white can have concrete (and sometimes tragic) consequences for people who are victims of bigotry in Western societies. But out of this fact has sprung fanciful lexicons and hierarchies that purport to rank and encode fine racial distinctions, often (some might say, especially) in the case of privileged individuals who can’t explain how racism has affected their lives except by reference to abstract (and unfalsifiable) theories that cast the problem as an invisible, systemic malignancy generated by white people.

Another interesting point of comparison is the subclass of medical ailments known as “contested illnesses”—conditions such as chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), multiple chemical sensitivities, and chronic Lyme disease, which don’t seem to exist except as a sort of crowdsourced belief system among individuals who claim to be afflicted. While none of these movements have attained anything close to the political and academic prominence of gender theory, their most politically engaged proponents echo the now-familiar idea that their problems can be traced to an outwardly undetectable condition whose denial generates its own separate form of suffering.

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...there is also a pseudo-scientific movement that seeks to present its adherents as sufferers of a condition they call “Long COVID.”

As McMaster University psychiatrist Jeremy Devine recently wrote in The Wall Street Journal, some COVID-19 patients really do experience long-term effects that linger after the infection has left their body. But he adds that “such symptoms can also be psychologically generated or caused by a physical illness unrelated to the prior infection.” Moreover, he notes that a survey produced by Body Politic Covid-19 Support Group, a prominent driver of the Long COVID idea, indicates that “many of the survey respondents who attributed their symptoms to the aftermath of a COVID-19 infection likely never had the virus in the first place. Of those who self-identified as having persistent symptoms attributed to COVID and responded to the first survey, not even a quarter had tested positive for the virus. Nearly half (47.8%) never had testing and 27.5% tested negative for COVID-19. Body Politic publicized the results of a larger, second survey in December 2020. Of the 3,762 respondents, a mere 600, or 15.9%, had tested positive for the virus at any time.”

Echoing the idea of “self-identification” as the gold standard of gender identity, the Long COVID survey authors brushed aside these facts, arguing that “future research must consider the experience of all people with COVID-19 symptoms, regardless of testing status.”...

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...we are left with a whole population of rich, pampered students looking for some kind of ideological framework that will help them weave a meaningful narrative out of the necessarily wrenching emotions associated with growing up.

During their school years, when hormone levels run high, it is natural that these constructed narratives should center on questions of sex and gender, and take performative expression through clothing, hair, social-media postures, and avant-garde language. But once this generation grows up and stops focusing as much on pronouns and hashtags, they will have new forms of pain to deal with. Long COVID is just the latest example of the sort of idea that will become popular among this generation—and it certainly won’t be the last."

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Facebook plots to conceal inflammatory George Floyd-related content as Chauvin murder trial verdict looms

"Content relating to Floyd and his death will be strictly controlled, Facebook implied in a blog post on Monday, warning the site will “remove Pages, groups, Events, and Instagram accounts that violate our violence and incitement policy and we will remove events organized in temporary, high-risk locations that contain calls to bring arms.”

Facebook seemed to quietly open the door for abuse directed at Chauvin, noting that “we consider [him] a public figure for voluntarily placing himself in the public eye, which means we will remove attacks that are severe” - unlike involuntary public figures like Floyd, for whom “a higher standard of protection” is warranted.

The megacorporation declared that its highest priority was not ensuring that accurate information reach the largest number of people, but “preventing online content from being linked to offline harm,” no matter who was doing the linking and how much integrity their claims could be said to possess. The site essentially roped off the entirety of Minneapolis as a “high-risk location,” while declaring it would “protect the memory of George Floyd and members of the Floyd family from harassment and abuse.”"

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First GMO Mosquitoes to be Released in the Florida Keys

"This spring, the biotechnology company Oxitec plans to release genetically modified (GM) mosquitoes in the Florida Keys. Oxitec says its technology will combat dengue fever, a potentially life-threatening disease, and other mosquito-borne viruses — such as Zika — mainly transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito.

While there have been more than 7,300 dengue cases reported in the United States between 2010 and 2020, a majority are contracted in Asia and the Caribbean, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In Florida, however, there were 41 travel-related cases in 2020, compared with 71 cases that were transmitted locally.

Native mosquitoes in Florida are increasingly resistant to the most common form of control — insecticide — and scientists say they need new and better techniques to control the insects and the diseases they carry. “There aren’t any other tools that we have. Mosquito nets don’t work. Vaccines are under development but need to be fully efficacious,” says Michael Bonsall, a mathematical biologist at the University of Oxford, who is not affiliated with Oxitec but has collaborated with the company in the past, and who worked with the World Health Organization to produce a GM mosquito-testing framework.

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But Oxitec has been proposing to experimentally release GM mosquitos in the Keys since 2011, and the plan has long been met with suspicion among locals and debate among scientists. Some locals say they fear being guinea pigs. Critics say they are concerned about the possible effects GM mosquitoes could have on human health and the environment. In 2012, the Key West City Commission objected to Oxitec’s plan; in a non-binding referendum four years later, residents of Key Haven — where the mosquitoes would have been released — rejected it, while residents in the surrounding county voted in support of the release. With the decision left up to the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District, officials approved the trial to be conducted elsewhere in the Keys.

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...In May, the EPA granted a two-year experimental use permit, which the agency can cancel at any time. State and local sign-off soon followed — finally giving the project the greenlight.

Oxitec’s OX5034 mosquitoes are the first GM mosquitoes approved for release in the U.S. The company has already conducted a trial with the OX5034 mosquitoes in Brazil and released more than a billion of a previous version, called OX513A, there and in other locations over the years — including the Cayman Islands. The company says it is confident in the effectiveness and safety of the technology.

But some scientists want to hit pause on Oxitec’s Florida trial, to find what they say is a fairer process in deciding to release the mosquitoes. Others want to see clearer proof that this technology is even necessary, claiming that the company has only released its most positive data with the public and has kept other key data, including whether the mosquitoes curb disease transmission, private. And if the release actually launches as planned, some Keys residents say they aim to interfere.

Critics also say that Oxitec failed to engage with local communities in Florida and get their consent to release the mosquitoes. “What’s the most upsetting is that the very people that are going to be most impacted, both by the benefits or the risks of such a decision, have like the smallest voice in how these choices are made. I think that’s a really big issue,” says Natalie Kofler, a molecular biologist and bioethicist who founded Editing Nature, a platform that advocates “for inclusive decision-making processes to steer” the use of genetic technology. “If Oxitec doesn’t do this right,” she adds, “we could have huge impact on delaying the use of other beneficial technologies like that in the future.”

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At Oxitec’s laboratory in the U.K., the company genetically engineers the mosquitoes, giving the insects the “self-limiting” gene that makes the females dependent on the antibiotic tetracycline. Without the drug, they will die. Eggs from these genetically-altered mosquitoes — which will hatch both male and female insects — will be shipped to the Keys. Mosquitoes require water to mature from an egg to an adult; when Oxitec’s team adds water to the boxes the mosquitoes will be deployed in, both GM males and GM females will hatch. With no tetracycline present in the box, the GM females are expected to die in early larval stages.

The male mosquitoes will survive and carry the gene. When they leave the boxes, the insects will, hypothetically, fly away to mate with wild females to pass the gene to the next wild generation, according to Nathan Rose, head of regulatory affairs at Oxitec. Kevin Gorman, the company’s chief development officer, says the local female mosquito population will be increasingly reduced — which will also reduce the number of wild male mosquitoes in the treatment areas.

Gorman emphasized to Undark that the EPA and other regulators found no risk in using tetracycline in breeding their genetically-altered mosquitoes. But some scientists think the presence of this antibiotic in the environment does pose a risk. According to Jennifer Kuzma, co-founder and co-director of the Genetic Engineering and Society Center at North Carolina State University, tetracyline is commonly used in Florida to prevent bacterial diseases in agriculture — particularly in citrus groves — and to treat bacteria in sewage plants. The use of the antibiotic for these purposes may mean that it will remain in the environment, especially in water where the mosquitoes breed, which could allow Oxitec’s female mosquitoes to survive. While the company does not plan to release the mosquitos near areas where the antibiotic is used, Kuzma says the EPA’s risk assessment did not include testing of any standing water for tetracycline — something, she adds, “would have been easy enough to do for good due diligence.”

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Oxitec has released more than a billion of their OX513A mosquitoes over the past 10 years. According to independent scientists, some of those experiments did not go well.

For example, researchers at Yale University and collaborators from Brazil analyzed Oxitec’s 2015 release of OX513A in Brazil. The scientists confirmed that some offspring of the genetically modified mosquitoes — which were supposed to die and not pass new genes to the wild population — survived to adulthood and mated with their native counterparts. Between 10 and 60 percent of the native mosquitoes contained genes from Oxitec, according to the Yale study, which published in Nature in 2019. The paper’s authors concluded they do not know what impacts these mixed mosquitoes have on disease control or transmission, but added that their findings underscore the importance of monitoring the genetics of the insects.

Oxitec disagreed with the findings and responded on the journal’s website. Oxitec told Gizmodo that Yale’s study includes “numerous false, speculative, and unsubstantiated claims and statements about Oxitec’s mosquito technology.” And when Kofler and three other scientists wrote about Oxitec’s Brazil trial in The Conversation, Oxitec pushed to have the article retracted, says Kofler.

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For this coming release, some Key Largo locals are willing to act on their anger. Daly, for instance, says that if the mosquitoes are deployed in her neighborhood, she’ll try to put insecticide in any box she finds or send it to an expert to test — even if it means getting in trouble with the federal authorities. “I already have my arresting officer and she said she’s gonna clean her handcuffs for me,” she says. “I don’t care.”

Ideally, Daly says, it won’t have to come to that. She and other locals hope to stop Oxitec before the latest mosquitos are delivered. Daly says she has been busy organizing protests — like one that happened recently in Key Largo — and giving out yard signs to residents who don’t want their property used in the trial. “Locals are pissed off. So I have been busy getting the press to cover the local opposition,” Daly wrote in an email to Undark.

“The first flying insect or animal that can actually use our human blood for a friggin trial for a product to come to market without my consent,” Daly says.

“That’s my blood,” she adds. “That’s my son’s blood. That’s my dog’s blood.”"

Here's a thought: Maybe just constantly spraying the natural world with poisons, many of which are designed to kill insects, which themselves serve as a key nutrition source for other creatures, was a bad idea? I bet there'd be a lot more birds & bats around eating those insects if we didn't starve them for generations by destroying their food supplies.

The logic used in this mass experimentation event is the same used in the vaccine mass experiments. And all this for an average of 730 deaths a year. This is why ideals like standardization & perfection at such scales are immensely dangerous. The deaths could be 100 times that figure and this is still an unacceptable course of action. There's 8 billion of us and 330 million or so are in the US. We need to start coming to terms with large numbers in the real world or the elite are going to continue to use statistics to manipulate us into entering the Final Cage.

Remember: Just like geoengineering, you can't opt out of GMO Skeeters.

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Germany’s upper house approves plan to give government power to overrule states on Covid restrictions

"Germany’s Bundestag, the country’s upper house of parliament, has approved a law that gives Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government greater powers to combat coronavirus, including overruling federal states to impose restrictions.

Once it comes into effect on June 30, the law will give the government the ability to impose evening curfews on states, declare restrictions on gatherings, reduce crowds at events and limit shop-opening times, as well as close schools and force students to learn remotely. These measures would be used if an area exceeded a seven-day incidence rate of 100 new infections per 100,000 residents over three consecutive days.

The law still requires approval from President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, which he is expected to give later on Thursday, making the legislation official and allowing it to be published in the Federal Gazette.

Merkel’s team have defended the law and praised parliament for supporting it, with her chief of staff, Helge Braun, saying a federal emergency brake is “urgently needed” as “the current level of infections is far too high in most regions.”

Despite the legislature giving the law its backing, it still faces some opposition from regional officials in areas reluctant to relinquish their right to act without the intervention of the federal government."

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Hawaii becomes 2nd US state to implement ‘vaccine passport’, after 6 states banned the practice

"Hawaii has become the second US state after New York to launch a “vaccination verification” scheme that will exempt fully vaccinated residents from pre-travel testing and quarantine requirements for inter-island flights from May.

The scheme, which begins May 11, does not significantly alter the status quo for trans-Pacific and inter-island travel, but adds another option for state residents who have completed a two-week period after their final Covid-19 shot. Only those who receive their shots in the state will be eligible for the exemption.

Noting that the state has some of the lowest Covid-19 infection and mortality rates in the country, Governor David Ige on Tuesday said authorities expect to expand the program to trans-Pacific travelers by summer after piloting it among island residents with international tourists to be added later.

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The announcement comes a day after Arizona became the sixth state to ban ‘vaccination passports’. Arizona Governor Doug Ducey signed an executive order on Monday that prevents state and local governments as well as government-funded businesses from requiring proof of vaccination.

That order came on the heels of similar bans – primarily due to concerns about personal data privacy – in other Republican states, including Montana, Idaho, Texas, Florida, and Utah. A number of other Republican governors have denounced vaccination verification schemes, but are yet to issue executive orders to ban them."

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Iowa prisoners monitored after being OVERDOSED with up to SIX TIMES the normal amount of Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine

"Iowa corrections officials are monitoring 77 inmates at a maximum-security prison for adverse reactions after they were inadvertently given up to six times the normal dosage of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine.

Two nurses at the penitentiary in Fort Madison, Iowa incorrectly administered the vaccine, according to a statement by the prison on Thursday. The incident occurred on Tuesday, leading to a pause in vaccinations at the prison after the two staffers were placed on temporary leave.

Iowa Department of Corrections spokesman Cord Overton told the Des Moines Register that most of the affected inmates had only minor symptoms like those associated with normal doses of the vaccine, such as sore arms and body aches. At least one prisoner suffered a fever, which was treatable with Tylenol.

Prison officials sought guidance from experts at the CDC, Pfizer and the University of Iowa, who recommended that the inmates be monitored for at least 48 hours. Kimberly Koehlhoeffer, the mother of an inmate, told the Register that her son and other prisoners had other reactions, such as nausea and severe dehydration."

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Ironic: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki receives Free Expression Award from pro-First Amendment group

"...after giving her personal testimony on the importance of free speech, Wojcicki then answered a question on “needing to try to balance people’s right to free speech with protecting our [YouTube’s] community from content that can be harmful.”

In her answer, Wojcicki insisted that YouTube wants to “represent as many views as possible” but that it needs to “make sure there are limits.”

She added that as YouTube has grown bigger, it has had to increase its “responsibility work” – a phrase that Wojcicki often uses to describe the way YouTube censors content that breaks its far-reaching rules, suppresses content that doesn’t break the rules, and boosts content from mainstream media outlets.

“We removed nine million videos last quarter and almost all of them – over 90% – we removed with machines, which is good because it means if there’s content that’s violative, we find that really quickly,” Wojcicki said.

She also discussed the “reduce” principle in YouTube’s responsibility work – a principle that suppresses videos that don’t break any rules:

“There’s a lot of content that technically meets the spirit of what we’re trying to do, but it is, it’s borderline. And so for that content, we’ll just Reduce, meaning we’re not going to recommend it to our users. It’s still on the platform, but it’s content that is not necessarily recommended by our platform.”

...

During the year leading up to the receipt of this Free Expression Award, YouTube has implemented a range of far-reaching censorship policies that prohibit several types of speech that would be protected by the First Amendment.

These policies include YouTube’s ban on anything that goes against the World Health Organization (WHO) and allegations that “widespread fraud, errors, or glitches” changed the outcome of the 2020 US presidential election.

Countless creators have been banned or suppressed as YouTube introduced these policies including Donald Trump who was banned from the platform while still serving as President of the United States."

========

EU confirms it won’t be ordering more AstraZeneca Covid-19 jabs as Europe mulls legal action

"A spokesman for the European Commission has said that no decision has been made as to whether the body will pursue legal action against the Anglo-Swedish firm but confirmed reports it won’t purchase any more of its vaccine.

Speaking at a press conference on Thursday, a European Commission spokesman said that the EU had decided against taking up an option to buy 100 million more Covid-19 shots from AstraZeneca.

The commission’s contract with the Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical company saw 300 million shots ordered with an option to buy a further 100 million. The spokesman said that this option had already expired, confirming previous reports, adding that there was no intention to purchase more jabs from the company.

The spokesman also said that there had been no decision as to whether Brussels would be commencing legal action against the drugs company who has previously stated it would not be making a profit from the sale of its Covid-19 vaccine during the pandemic."

========

"Over the last few years, the seemingly banal topic of pronouns has been the subject of much debate in America. What began as a trend in the woke context of university life has rapidly spread across institutional contexts outside academia: more and more, it is expected that people will not only name their “preferred pronouns” for how they should be referred to in the third-person, but that others will unquestioningly comply and refer to the individual in a way that honors those preferences....

...

What advocates of compelled usage hesitate to acknowledge is that these preferences are not merely a question of social propriety. Rather, the pronoun gambit advances larger political agendas—agendas that generally fall under the umbrella of what one might call “postmodern woke progressivism.” Devotees of that school of thought commit themselves to a “radical critique” of the “status quo.” Put differently, they see the unspoken, traditional assumptions that guide social life in America as proof-positive that the nation is a hotbed of cultural violence and exclusion. As many prominent political thinkers on the left have observed, contesting common standards for language use is one way that this critical demolition of norms proceeds.

...

My working hypothesis for this seeming redundancy (he/him/his) was that the parties asserting a right to one’s preferred pronouns would eventually push for more modifications to standard English usage. I supposed that eventually, I would see a series of pronouns that did not agree in terms of either gender or number. Last week, I saw the first evidence of this new trend in the battle over pronouns.

...

On REAP’s website, plaintiff Hayden Brown’s bio reads as follows:

“Hayden Brown lives in York, NE. He identifies as a queer demiboy and is majoring in English Education with an emphasis in reading instruction. Hayden studies at York College. They came out as part of the LGBTQ+ community the summer after their freshman year to their parents, who forced him into therapy designed to push Hayden toward changing their identity. School officials have attempted to interfere with her education, including by asking her to withdraw from a study abroad program in Vienna, Austria because of her sexual orientation, and by telling her to change her clothes when she wears high heels or dresses.”

What immediately caught my eye was the shifting pronouns in this passage. It opens by referring to Brown with third-person, masculine singular pronouns (“he”), then switches to third-person plural pronouns which are neutral in gender (“they”), before finally switching to third-person, feminine singular pronouns (“her.”) Wondering if I had finally found confirmation for my hypothesis, I visited Brown’s profile on the REAP site. Sure enough: the pronouns listed were “he/they/she.”

...

My fear here is that if I agree to navigate the linguistic minefields of the sort that Brown draws me into, this will only incentivize others to demand that I submit to even more labyrinthine and arcane linguistic contortions. For example, if someone like Brown can insist that I ignore the standard rules of English usage (where pronouns should agree in gender and number), why must the accommodations end there?...

...

...ten years ago, the idea that people would name any preferred pronouns at all in a professional context would have seemed absurd. Not only that, but just a year or two ago, a pronoun sequence that blurs all the lines of gender and number would have been difficult to imagine. And yet, here we are. There is no reason to expect that the demands placed on speakers in the name of courtesy can’t expand, and certainly, no reasons to assume that they won’t. People mock the “slippery slope” argument, but some slopes are, in fact, slippery. In the case of this slope, it seems we have already slipped considerably. Where do we draw the line?

...

The left’s desire for a new set of English usage norms is one reason we should be wary of compelled uses of language that are justified through appeals to politeness. Leaving aside whether such linguistic reforms are a good thing or a bad thing, adhering to the new “preferences” is very difficult for those who have internalized the rules of traditional usage, regardless of the LGBT lobby’s insistence to the contrary. And since any failure or refusal to comply with those preferences is often cited as “hatred” that is an actionable attack on one’s being, the increasingly complex standards of compliance amount to an increasing liability—not only for dissenters in professional and social contexts, but also for sympathetic “allies” who have difficulty absorbing the new rules.

Ultimately, language does not simply organize our thoughts; language is the medium of thought itself. Given that one’s right to their preferred pronouns was an idea that was born in the humanities departments of universities, the architects of these new expectations and reforms are deeply aware of how reinventing linguistic rules and norms has the power to change ways of thinking and being in the world. Of course, those larger existential and sociopolitical reforms are a conscious objective of those insisting upon modifications in language use. Policing your words is a way to police your thoughts. In a world where so much of what used to be the private space of the individual has recently become public, those who are on the fence regarding the right to one’s preferred pronouns must ask how much they value the most sacred private space left in our society: the privacy of their own thoughts."

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Restoring Confidence in American Elections

"There is a crisis of confidence in American elections. Almost half of all voters have doubts about the integrity of the 2020 elections, and consequently, they question the democratic legitimacy of their elected representatives from the president and Congress all the way down to the state and county level. Whether one believes those doubts are justified or not, effective democratic governance requires the consent and effective participation of the governed. So it is imperative that confidence in the legitimacy of elected representatives be restored.

Restoring trust in people or institutions when that trust has been shattered is never easy, particularly in a country as deeply polarized and politicized as the United States is now. Fortunately, while such deep distrust in the electoral process is unprecedented in the United States, it is relatively common overseas, and over the last several decades democracy and elections assistance providers have developed some effective means for diagnosing and treating distrust in elections.

Typical factors that can undermine faith in the integrity of elections in developing democracies include politicized institutions, lack of transparency in processes, late and unjustified changes in election procedures, and the undue influence of rich companies and individuals. Unfortunately, each of these factors was also present in U.S. elections in 2020. In aggregate, these factors caused a large percentage of Americans to question the integrity of the election process, and to doubt the democratic legitimacy of representatives elected through that process.

...

...surveys suggest up to 95 percent of civil servants in the United States are Democrats. This is one party control of the organs of state at a level comparable to Communist China, and unseen elsewhere since the fall of the old Soviet Union....

...

Democratic Party control of the administrative state was not an issue for a long time, as public officials were believed to be generally impartial, but over the last decade it has become increasingly apparent that the apparatus of state is no longer neutral, and this has diminished confidence in the integrity of the election process among Republicans and independents....

...

...In the short term, the only way to enhance public confidence that biased officials are not affecting election outcomes will be to increase scrutiny of these officials to such an extent that space for malpractice is limited. International election assistance has proved that non-partisan election observation can be an effective tool to provide that scrutiny.

Historically, the United States has relied on party representatives (poll watchers) to monitor polling and counting processes. With significant percentages of the population not identifying with either major party, however, and some areas so monolithically one party that it is difficult to find opposition poll watchers, partisan observation is no longer sufficient to promote public confidence in election processes. The nonpartisan model for election observation that we promote overseas would be a better fit for the United States. It’s more inclusive, allowing participation by any concerned citizen (not just party members); and deploys observers whose primary objective is to support a free and fair process for every voter, rather than to represent the interests of one party. It would be more effective in promoting trust and confidence in the process.

...

Judged against any international standard, our legal framework and election processes are convoluted, inefficient, and nontransparent. Past efforts at reform have been difficult because, unlike almost every other democracy, the United States does not have a national election process. Instead, the Constitution grants each state the right to define its own election process, and over the centuries, these have diverged widely....

...

While it is not possible under the Constitution for the federal government to mandate a national process, there is nothing to prevent citizen groups from establishing national standards for fair elections and advocating for their adoption in each state. If these standards were widely endorsed and accepted, it would be difficult for local officials and politicians to argue against their adoption, as results from jurisdictions where the reforms had not been adopted would be perceived as tainted and potentially illegitimate....

...

Effective voter ID and accurate voter lists are cornerstones of international standards for fair elections; and the U.S. government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars helping other countries with voter ID and voter registration programs to prevent fraud and enhance voter confidence in the integrity of the process. In some situations there are marginalized populations that do lack access to ID, but the response in those cases has always been to develop programs to ensure the marginalized have ID (the United Nations even recognizes the right to ID), not to lower standards for election integrity.

...

Both international and U.S. election experts (including the bipartisan Commission on Federal Election Reform) acknowledge the particular susceptibility of postal voting to fraud and abuse. Given this consensus, and to enhance voter confidence in the integrity of the process, in the future voting by mail should be limited to rare cases of genuine need (absentee ballots), with stringent and appropriate safeguards in place. The vast majority of voters should vote in person on Election Day, in what should be viewed as a national celebration of democracy. If this requires making Election Day a national holiday, that should be considered.

...

If one cannot see or truly understand a process, it is hard to have confidence in it. Overseas we know that every time there is a break in the chain of observation, doubt is introduced. In the old days, this was when ballot boxes were packed up and stored overnight before counting; or were loaded on trucks and sent to a counting center far away. No one knew what happened to the boxes when they were out of sight, so anything was imaginable.

The same principle is at play with what some call “black box voting.” An ordinary voter cannot really observe or know what is happening inside the machine. To enhance confidence in polling processes, international assistance providers increasingly recommend reversion to simple, transparent manual processes; i.e. paper ballots in a ballot box. That would mean an observer could arrive at the polling station in the morning, see the empty ballot box, watch the process all day, then see the box opened and the ballots counted. This process is simple, and completely transparent.

...

...election reformers should not look at election processes only. There should be curbs on the undue influence corporations and oligarchs play in American elections. Democracy requires equal influence for every citizen, and a level playing field for all Americans, regardless of their wealth. Laws should be adopted that prevent private funding of elections by corporations and oligarchs, and most importantly, we should prevent corporations and oligarchs from undermining the most basic civil rights of the American people: freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion. That we allow them to limit our freedoms for profit is unconscionable.

Restoring confidence in American elections will be difficult, but it is not impossible, and it is necessary if we really want to protect our democracy, and ensure the health of our republic for future generations."

========

Police officer fired after donating $25 to Kyle Rittenhouse defense fund

"Chip Filer, the city manager of Norfolk, announced in a statement that an investigation into Kelly found his actions were “in violation of City and departmental policies.”

“His egregious comments erode the trust between the Norfolk Police Department and those they are sworn to serve. The City of Norfolk has a standard of behavior for all employees, and we will hold staff accountable,” he added.

Kelly’s donation was discovered after a data leak from a Christian crowdfunding website that revealed numerous government employees showing financial support for Rittenhouse. The teen is facing murder charges after shooting and killing two men and wounding a third rioter during protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin last August, sparked by the shooting of Jacob Blake, an African-American man, by police.

Supporters believe that Rittenhouse, then 17, acted in self-defence, citing footage of the encounter where he is seen being chased by several protesters. Those who are calling for the murder conviction see Rittenhouse as a white supremacist.

When making his donation, Kelly left the message: “God bless. Thank you for your courage. Keep your head up. You’ve done nothing wrong.”"

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Towards a World Without Roadkill: Appalachians Make the Case for Wildlife Crossings

"Jean Loveday is driving her husband, Tom, home from a doctor’s appointment in Johnson City, Tennessee. Their Toyota pickup truck is winding along Interstate 26, not far from the North Carolina state line north of Asheville.

Suddenly Loveday sees something black tumbling down the mountain and out into the highway in her peripheral view. ​“Oh no, Tom, oh no!” she mumbles. Loveday realizes it’s a bear cub hurtling toward them. She attempts to avoid hitting it by steering into the median, but vehicle and animal seem destined to collide.

“It all happened so fast,” she says today. ​“I don’t know where its mother was, whether the cub was following her or on its own. We stopped. It moved for a few minutes, and then was still. All I could think for days was, ​‘I killed a bear cub!’ I hope I never, ever have to go through that again.”

...

The intersection of roads and wildlife is a safety issue that is not unique to North Carolina and Tennessee. According to the Federal Highway Administration, an estimated two million large mammals are hit on roads in the United States each year, resulting in more than 26,000 human injuries and at least 200 human fatalities.

For years, road ecologists around the world have been working to mitigate highways that were originally designed without consideration for wildlife. Europe, Canada, Mexico, and many U.S. states have already created effective wildlife road crossings. Recent articles and videos featuring large wildlife overpasses in Utah and Texas have been shared widely on social media.

...

Conservationists point out the gravity of individual animals being killed on roads. But when they no longer try to cross, it can signal an even more dire situation.

“When wildlife finally stops even trying to cross, the highway has become a barrier,” says Hunter. ​“The ​‘barrier effect’ is not to be confused with the concrete Jersey barriers that prevent many individual crossings. When a whole population stops crossing the road, that means their habitat is now fragmented, preventing the healthy genetic exchange that species need to thrive.”

...

...people often get wildlife corridors and wildlife road crossings confused.

“A wildlife corridor is the term we use for a defined movement pathway that, if protected or restored, would provide essential habitat connectivity for one or more species,” he says. ​“They can be easy to see — such as a vegetated trail alongside a roadway — or nearly invisible and defined only by the movements of the animals.”

A wildlife road crossing, on the other hand, is ​“a structure that is designed to allow wildlife to safely cross over or under a busy road,” he says. ​“So, of course it follows that one of the best places to put wildlife road crossings is where you have a wildlife corridor that gets cut off by a highway.”

...

Wildlife crossings can only succeed if located where animals wish to cross the road, not just where it may be easy or convenient from a construction perspective. To this end, researchers have employed wildlife cameras to help them assess wildlife road mortality patterns in the gorge and examine how some animals use existing structures such as culverts designed to move water under the roads. They have also been tracking wildlife activity in the right-of-way alongside the road....

...

When it comes to road ecology, the economic reality can be as shocking as the roadkill. But Huijser says, in the long term, the benefits outweigh the costs.

“Collision-related costs add up to roughly $12 billion annually in the U.S.,” he says. ​“The cost of a deer – vehicle collision averages around $6,000 and running into an elk can cost upwards of $17,000.”

Wildlife crossing structures and road mitigation have improved human safety and wildlife corridor connectivity at Snoqualmie Pass on I‑90 in Washington State, along the Trans-Canada Highway in the Rocky Mountains and Banff National Park, and on the Flathead Indian Reservation in Western Montana where Huijser worked for 13 years. In these examples, fencing successfully reduces collisions and guides wildlife to safe-crossing opportunities such as vegetated overpasses, open-span bridges, and large- and medium-mammal underpasses. Dozens of such wildlife corridor projects have led to an 80 – 95% collision reduction with large mammals like deer and elk since the mid-’90s.

Although road mitigation measures are good for human safety and for animals, they cost money. Fences may cost about $100,000 per mile, an underpass may require around half a million to build, and a single wildlife overpass can cost up to $10 million.

...

“Implementing effective mitigation measures substantially reduces costs associated with wildlife – vehicle collisions by 80 – 100%,” Huijser says. ​“Bottom line: Even if people don’t care about human safety or wildlife conservation, it can still make economic sense. And if you consider the biological conservation aspect, the value expands to take in benefits to local tourism economies and other economic benefits of having healthy wildlife populations in the landscape.”"

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‘We are not going to restrict freedom’: South Dakota governor is latest to ban 'un-American' vaccine passports

"South Dakota became the latest state to officially ban vaccine passports, with Republican Governor Kristi Noem condemning them as “un-American” and freedom-restricting.

...

According to the executive order, no “state agency, department, board, commission, or other executive branch entity or official under direct control of the Governor shall require an individual to present a COVID-19 vaccine passport” to enter a government building or do business with the state. Nor should any agency, commission, or local government order a private business to mandate vaccine passports, the executive order said.

South Dakota joins several other states, including Florida, Texas, Arizona, Idaho, and Utah, which have also banned mandatory vaccine passports.

Though some of the states allow private businesses to implement their own vaccine requirements for customers, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis issued his own executive order banning businesses from asking customers for their vaccination status earlier this month."

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Why scientists think discovering vaccine side effects is GOOD, as blood clot fears have many in doubt

"Last week, the EMA confirmed the link between blood clots and the jab (now renamed Vaxzevria), but stressed that “the benefits of the vaccine continue to outweigh the risks for people who receive it.” Statistics show that younger people have a higher chance of developing the clots, so some countries have started limiting Vaxzevria vaccination to certain groups.

Obviously, not everyone scheduled to receive the vaccine is prepared to believe that the “benefits outweigh the risks.” Moreover, the confusing guidance leads to the question: How old must one be to get the AstraZeneca jab safely? In France, the age cut-off is 55+, in Germany, it’s 60+, in Spain, it’s allowed for those aged 60-69. The UK is a bit out of the pattern, as it is advising that the vaccine in question not be given to people younger than 30.

...

“France has a lot of vaccine-skeptic people,” Vincent Marechal, professor of virology at the French Sorbonne University, says. “People are not confident in the vaccines in general. The AstraZeneca story and blood clot cases make people even less confident. The problem is that we don’t know whether these vaccine-skeptic people may compromise the collective immunity that we are trying to reach. If we want to control the epidemic in France, we need to vaccinate almost 90% of the adult population… It’s a matter of rationality between the benefit and the risk.”

...

...from the point of view of the scientific community, nothing unusual has happened. “It’s normal that the problems emerge. The vaccines were developed very fast,” Prof. Valenzuela explains. Prof. Marechal also believes that the detailed report about the AstraZeneca vaccine-related blood clots, at the end of the day, will help researchers modulate and modify the inoculation process.

...

Prof. Valenzuela calls for patience amid all the fear-mongering and speculation. “Why do we normally need from five to 10 years to create a vaccine? Because, for example, something that may go well for a young person of 20-40 years, might go differently for someone who has an illness, or for a pregnant woman, or for an elderly person, or for a child. So, while you are developing a vaccine against one certain pathogen, you should take into account all these peculiarities. Plus, the virus mutations, as well as side effects. It takes time.”

...

“Politicians, together with the scientists, should explain to people that we are in phase 4 of clinical trials. Phase 3 has given us certain data, especially about safety and level of immune response, but it all has been done very fast.”"

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3 people in Sri Lanka die of blood clots associated with AstraZeneca vaccine

"The Sri Lankan health minister has informed parliament that the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine has led to three deaths, as well as three additional cases of non-fatal blood clotting.

Speaking to the Sri Lankan parliament on April 21, Health Minister Pavithra Wanniarachchi explained that there had been six cases of blood clotting after the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, and this has led to three deaths.

However, the government has not said it will stop using the vaccine. In fact, the health minister noted that it would be dangerous to scaremonger on the back of this statistic.

Instead of causing fear, the minister noted that there were measures in place for the rare minority that experience issues. Speaking to the Sri Lankan parliament, Wanniarachchi explained what these are. “If you have headache, sore throat or chest pain four days after the injection, you should seek medical advice. A committee of specialists has also been appointed to identify patients with chronic complications.”"

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What's Changed and What Hasn't in a Tumultuous Year

"Interestingly, every one of historian Peter Turchin's 3-point Political Stress Index is now checked. Recall that these are core drivers of consequential social disorder, the kind that leads to empires collapsing, the overthrow of ruling elites, social revolutions, etc.

1. Stagnating real wages (i.e. adjusted for real-world inflation): check
2.  Overproduction of parasitic elites: double-triple check
3. Deterioration of central state finances: check

But what about social changes?...

...

Here are four long-term trends that may have been accelerated by the pandemic:

1. The residents of overcrowded tourist destinations are sick of tourists and are demanding limits that protect increasingly fragile environments and resident quality of life.

...

2. Work from home is here to stay. The benefits are too personal and powerful. Corporations demanding a return to long commutes and central offices will find their most productive employees are giving them "take this job and shove it" notices as they find positions with companies that understand that you can't turn back the clock or ignore the benefits of flexible schedules.

3. Consumer behaviors have changed and are continuing to change. This is not just an expansion of home delivery; it's a re-appraisal of big-ticket spending on concerts, entertainment, sports events and many other sectors that depend solely on free-spending consumers who ignore the recent doubling or tripling of prices.

4. Perceptions of the wealthy are changing...."

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Young People Are Particularly Vulnerable to Lockdowns

"In response to the Covid-19 pandemic governments across the world implemented an unprecedented and untested strategy to slow the spread of the disease. Colloquially known as lockdowns, these public health interventions effectively shut down most normal societal functions through the use of stay-at-home orders, school closures, business closures, bans on large gatherings, and travel restrictions. This policy apparatus effectively relegated the vast majority of people to a form of self-quarantine and completely upended the standard social functioning of society. Although these measures were advertised in the United States as a short-term measure, the now infamous two weeks to flatten the curve policy to shut down societal functions to control the spread of Covid-19 dragged on for over a year.

...

Quarantine in general is a traumatizing experience for most people. A study conducted by the Mental Health Foundation found that,

“For a variety of reasons, quarantine can be traumatising for some parents. In a study on post-traumatic stress disorder in health-related disasters, criteria for PTSD was met in 25% of isolated or quarantined parents. The same study found links between PTSD criteria in adults and their children having PTSD symptoms. Duration of quarantine and consequent lack of social and physical contact with friends/family and the outside world has been shown to be associated with increased PTSD symptoms. Similarly, it has been shown that social isolation and associated loneliness have a negative impact on mental health outcomes for adults.”

Although lockdowns have detrimentally affected the entire population, young people (primarily referring to those under the age of 30) have been particularly harmed by these policies at rates much higher than the general population. This is concerning for many reasons. One of the first being that young people make up less than half of one percent of Covid-19 related deaths in the United States. An article published in the New England Journal of Medicine noted that in Sweden, where schools remained open, from December 31, 2019, to February 18, 2021, there were zero reported Covid-19 related deaths for children aged 1-16. The second, which will be explained in-depth in this article, is that young people are biologically, culturally, and developmentally more vulnerable to the effects of lockdown policies and social isolation. Finally, young people have very little political voice despite comprising around a third of the US population.

...

To understand why young people have been especially harmed by lockdowns, it is important to first know what makes them so vulnerable in the first place. People do not become fully functional and equipped adults from birth. Over many years, important biological functions are developed and important life skills are learned. From a socioeconomic standpoint, youth is also when important social and professional milestones are achieved from establishing relevant career experience to making important friendships. These biological and social factors all further necessitate the need for young people to be able to partake in normal societal functions, which are not only important for their emotional well-being, but their ability to become stable members of society.

...

One year for a young person is far more significant than a year for an older individual. This is not only because of ongoing physical maturation but because of the way life events are structured in human upbringing. These important events could range from making meaningful connections in the first year of college to memorable events such as sports and school dances to creating critical foundations in entry-level jobs. All of these were wiped out by lockdowns, which further exacerbate the vulnerability of young people to lasting psychological and developmental damage. The economic downturn caused by lockdowns also hit young workers especially hard....

...

Societal norms and practices exist for a reason and part of that is because of biological traits. When government policies ignore these scientific truths about human nature in favor of world views that believe that people’s lives are simply switches that can be flicked on and off, that is a recipe for disaster. The inability of policymakers to acknowledge and grasp the basic biological needs of young individuals has resulted in nothing but disaster for all segments of the population. Lockdowns have failed to adequately protect the elderly from Covid-19 and unleashed a new public health crisis upon the young that may take years to fully understand."