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The Week’s Headlines-at-a-Glance

  • On Jan. 20, the World Health Organization announced new guidelines for PCR tests. “We’re already seeing laboratories setting their cycle threshold lower, meaning there’s going to be a lot fewer positive cases. And also we’re seeing lockdown measures be lifted … it’s going to be interesting to see what happens in the next couple months.”
  • An article in TIME magazine on mRNA vaccines “glamorizes” the technology. “I think what we know is that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and others in the pharmaceutical field have been investing a lot of money in the mRNA platform for quite a while . . . But right now humans are the guinea pigs.”
  • Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine trial in children between 12 – 15 is fully enrolled, the company said this week. An article in the Straits Times quotes experts saying to defeat the pandemic and fully revive the economy, children will also have to be immunized. “This is really an extraordinarily thin scientific rationale.”
  • Rep. Steve Stivers, a Republican from Ohio wants to make the $1,400 stimulus check contingent on getting the COVID vaccine, claiming vaccinations will lead to herd immunity. “This is a very, very dangerous idea that basically we will impoverish you if you don’t subject yourself to our experimental medical products.”
  • The Evening Express reported that a judge in the UK ruled against a man who asked to delay vaccinating his elderly mother in a nursing home until more safety information is available.“This is what we’re hearing around the world, that people in nursing homes, especially people with dementia who really can’t make informed decisions, are being subjected to these vaccines.”
  • CNN reported that the growing number of large American chains are offering their workers incentives to get COVID-19 vaccines. “It is extraordinary. If these products are so great, why do people need inducements or coercion? We have to recognize that because of the intense levels of censorship in the media, I think the people who run these corporations really imagine that these vaccines are safe and effective.”
  • The Defender reported on the story of a California man who died hours after getting a COVID vaccine. “This has been the story for 20 years, that whenever a child dies, it was just a coincidence. It had nothing to do with the vaccine, even if it was hours or days after the vaccine and the child was perfectly healthy. And they’re now trying to use that same narrative for all the adults that are dying and let’s see how long it lasts.”
  • CNN ran a headline about anti-vaccine groups exploiting the suffering and deaths of people who happened to fall ill after receiving the COVID shot. “Well that author, Liz Szabo, is well known to be vicious towards people who choose not to vaccinate. But she quotes Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as saying ‘coincidence is turning out to be quite lethal.’ I think that’s exactly dead on, Polly.”
  • In a bit of good news, an Oklahoma senator introduced a bill to appeal state school vaccination laws. I think we’re going to see more of these bills. I don’t think it’s likely they’re going to pass tomorrow, but I think it’s exciting that we’re seeing legislators wake up to this idea that, hey maybe this whole idea is really past its prime time.
  • Science reported this week that cats and dogs may need their own COVID vaccine. “Veterinarians have been much more cautious and much more alert to vaccine adverse events and injuries than pediatricians. So they’re going to have a hard time pushing that one on pets.”
  • The D.C. Court of Appeals this week held a hearing on our lawsuit against the FCC, and one of the judges said he was “inclined to rule against the FCC.”  “That was very exciting … if we do get a favorable judgment, which we hope to get, then that really opens the opportunity to have a lot more input into making safer regulations around wireless technology that almost every person in this country is now exposed to.”
  • CHD also filed an emergency petition this week with the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of parents of schoolchildren in New York who, if not vaccinated, are prohibited from participating in online education. “It is absolutely punitive what the state has been doing to these medically fragile children. Many of them frankly, have been vaccine injured. So we’re hopeful that the supreme court will act on that.”

Also this week, CHD joined other organizations in launching VaxxTracker, an app for reporting vaccine injuries. “If you or anybody you know has an adverse event of any kind, even like a headache, we want to collate that.”

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