Most of you know I’ve been covering the actual science on COVID since December of 2019 with daily coverage starting January 14, 2020. My goal was to ensure my audience was informed of the latest on the virus so they could survive. That goal hasn’t changed.
Just as we had in December of 2019, we still have politicians, activists and the media either straight-up lying to you, or at the very least, peddling unverified information that isn’t true. As I’ve always said, the biggest problem with the media isn’t that they are sinister, it’s that they are lazy.
For 15+ years I’ve covered the news media getting scientific stories and studies wrong. Sometimes this was to push a narrative. Other times it was simply that they didn’t understand the study’s conclusions or they went for the ‘if it bleeds, it leads’ strategy for clickbait.
The good news is that he feels great. The story should be ‘Joe Rogan gets COVID, feels great after treatment.’ That isn’t the story though. He must be sacrificed to the mask God Karen for the Cult of Mask. We must have his blood!
Enter Stuart Varney on Fox Business:
Fox Business segment slams Joe Rogan for taking ivermectin after Tucker Carlson pushed the horse dewormer
Ok, Dr. Bob Lahita now has no credibility to discuss this pandemic. None.
Dr. Lahita downplaying Ivermectin as a drug for cattle shows he isn’t in the loop about Ivermectin research over the past several years, even before the pandemic.
Recently, evidence has emerged that the oral antiparasitic agent ivermectin exhibits numerous antiviral and anti-inflammatory mechanisms with trial results reporting significant outcome benefits.
Further down the line:
Conclusions:
Meta-analyses based on 18 randomized controlled treatment trials of ivermectin in COVID-19 have found large, statistically significant reductions in mortality, time to clinical recovery, and time to viral clearance. Furthermore, results from numerous controlled prophylaxis trials report significantly reduced risks of contracting COVID-19 with the regular use of ivermectin. Finally, the many examples of ivermectin distribution campaigns leading to rapid population-wide decreases in morbidity and mortality indicate that an oral agent effective in all phases of COVID-19 has been identified.
Wow! Fauci’s NIH has research on their site showing ivermectin works against COVID. Oh, the scandal!
COVID isn’t the first virus ivermectin has been studied to use as a treatment.
Also in the NIH article:
Since 2012, a growing number of cellular studies have demonstrated that ivermectin has antiviral properties against an increasing number of RNA viruses, including influenza, Zika, HIV, Dengue, and most importantly, SARS-CoV-2.9–17 Insights into the mechanisms of action by which ivermectin both interferes with the entrance and replication of SARS-CoV-2 within human cells are mounting.
We’ve been studying ivermectin to treat the flu, Zika, HIV Dengue Fever, etc. since 2012. The idea that using ivermectin to treat a virus is, to quote Dr. Bob Lahita, “ridiculous” is … well … ridiculous. Ivermectin is also approved for use in humans for parasitic worms and diseases and has been established as safe for humans in the right dosage. He’s not only wrong, but he’s also, at least, 9 years behind the science.
So, how does ivermectin work against certain viruses, like COVID?
For the SARS-CoV-2 virus to make you sick, it has to first infect your cells.
Then while inside the cell, the virus makes heaps of copies of itself, so it can spread around your body.
The virus also has ways of reducing the way your body fights the infection.
During the infection of the cell, some viral proteins go into the cell nucleus, and from here they can decrease the body’s ability to fight the virus, which means the infection can get worse.
To get into the nucleus the viral proteins need to bind a cargo transporter which lets them in.
Ivermectin can block the cargo transporter, so the viral proteins can’t get into the nucleus. This is how the scientists believe Ivermectin works against SARS-CoV-2 virus.
By taking Ivermectin, it means the body can fight the infection like normal, because its antiviral response hasn’t been reduced by the viral proteins.
Keep in mind, that’s Drugs.com, not some guy named Kyle with a blog. The article goes on to cite several studies where ivermectin saves lives fighting COVID.
This Stuart Varney segment reminded me of when Neil Cavuto, also of Fox Business, LIED to his audience about Hydroxychloroquine. Falsely claiming ‘you will die‘ if you took it. The Stuart Varney segment may not be as unhinged as the Cavuto nonsense but it was equally inaccurate. HCQ, like all medications, isn’t perfect and some patients shouldn’t take it depending on other health issues. Again, like every other medication on the planet. HCQ has only claimed the lives of 8 people from overdosing since the 1950s. It’s a safe drug as long as you don’t have any health issues that would suffer from taking it.
You have to ask why everywhere else in the world shows overwhelmingly positive results with HCQ but we don’t. Of course, the answer is most studies done in North America only use HCQ by itself in the late stages of COVID. In those circumstances, it’s only about 21% effective. For reference, the golden child, and very expensive, Remdesivir is only about 22% effective but is universally praised by the media, politicians, and medical community. Of course, Remdesivir’s maker, Gilead, has a lot of people in their pockets and was responsible for a lot of anti-HCQ propaganda. When I took the HCQ stack, my symptoms disappeared in 2 hours. Countless others have similar stories. Did it save my life? Probably not. It did make my recovery faster.
With the constant droning on about hospitalizations overwhelming communities, should we be focusing on inexpensive and effective treatments that keep people out of the hospital?
Just because a lab shows a result, doesn’t mean it works in the real world. However, we know HCQ worked in the real world because we had thousands of doctors who treated COVID patients daily attest to how well HCQ worked. The political class in the US chose to ignore those medical professionals, with more experience treating COVID than our own doctors, and instead ostracized them as quacks. At a time when we had nothing else, taking HCQ with azithromycin and zinc would have saved countless lives. The media, activists, politicians, and ill-informed public health officials needlessly let people die.
Are there better options than HCQ now? Yes. Ivermectin is one of them. Yet the media and ‘doctors’ who are way out of their depths are smearing it again in the middle of a surge in Delta variant COVID. They are repeating their mistakes and people will die because of their hubris.
The fiasco in the Democratic Iowa caucuses have been directly tied to the app that allegedly crashed. That app is run by a group called Shadow Inc.
This is Shadow’s mission statement:
Our mission is to build political power for the progressive movement by developing affordable and easy-to-use tools for teams and budgets of any size.
Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden have been accused of using Shadow to try and steal the Iowa caucuses from Bernie Sanders. I don’t know if that’s true but they have a legitimate beef. Get ready to go down the rabbit hole.
In 2019, a liberal group called ACRONYM acquired Shadow Inc. ACRONYM is a Democrat dark money machine that was founded by Tara McGowan. She has a long resume as a Democrat operative. Her husband advises Pete Buttigieg’s campaign and she is a big fan of Pete.
Buttigieg has been given the moniker of Mayor Cheat by Bernie supporters for claiming victory in Iowa in spite of the results not being released yet. Also, his internal results have him losing to Bernie.
Pete’s campaign gave Shadow Inc. money. Not unusual but given how things are playing out in Iowa, this is giving Bernie supporters fits. It certainly doesn’t look good.
Shadow Inc. describes its mission on its website as: “Our mission is to build political power for the progressive movement by developing affordable and easy-to-use tools for teams and budgets of any size.”
A check of the Federal Election Commission website shows Buttigieg isn’t the only candidate to use their services.
So an app by former Hillary campaign alums got money from Biden and Buttigieg, and Bernie’s Iowa win is being caught up in a disaster of results reporting. I wonder why Bernie supporters might be a bit conspiratorial here?
The debate has raged for some days now … was the killing of al-Awlaki in Yemen illegal?
Rep. Ron Paul says it was, but he says everything is illegal.
There are two primary arguments alleging the illegality of al-Awlaki’s killing.
First, he was a US citizen, and as such, was due a trial.
Second, the US violated international law by assassinating him in Yemen.
Neither argument holds up, both morally or legally.
First I’ll address international law.
Neither the Hague Convention of 1899, or the Protocol Addition to the Geneva Convention of 1949 forbid al-Awlaki’s killing by international law. Right off the get go, proponents of this argument are off to a bad start. In fact, the international law community has often taken the stance that killing an adversary can often fall within the confines of international law.
The clauses that traditionally have been construed as prohibiting “targeted killings” are far from clear prohibitions. In the Hague Convention (II) with Respect to the Laws and Customs of War on Land (29 July 1899), Article 23b states that it is prohibited “to kill or wound treacherously individuals belonging to the hostile nation or army.” Treachery is not explicitly defined, and it can be argued that using missiles to attack a car in which a target is traveling, while brutal and having a high probability of injuring bystanders, does not fall within the purview of treachery. Similarly, targeted killings can be argued to fall outside the Protocol I Article 37 prohibition on killing, injuring, or capturing “an adversary by resort to perfidy”—described as “acts inviting the confidence of an adversary to lead him to believe that he is entitled to, or is obliged to accord, protection under the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, with intent to betray that confidence.” Article 37 gives examples of perfidy including “the feigning of an intent to negotiate under a flag of truce or surrender” and “the feigning of civilian, non-combatant status.”
Basically, you can’t ‘assassinate’ under false-flag circumstances. No such circumstance existed with the al-Awlaki killing. It should be noted that this provision addresses someone belonging to a hostile nation OR army. While al-Awlaki did not belong to a hostile nation, he did belong to a hostile army. This is important later when I argue the relevance of his US citizenship.
In addition to this international law, the US has NO LAW forbidding foreign assassinations. We do, however, have a policy of not undertaking assassinations. Policy does not equal law.
The second component to this operation is that Yemen fully approved, and supported the killing of al-Awlaki. So no argument can be made that we violated the sovereignty of a foreign nation.
The other argument making its way around is that al-Awlaki’s killing was illegal because he was a US citizen. As such, an assassination order by the President of the United States would violate his constitutional right of due process. It should also be noted that al-Awlaki was not the only American killed in the attack.
Al-Awlaki’s ties to terrorism are not in dispute, his actual influence is. So can the president order his killing, or not?
8 U.S.C. § 1481 addresses the issue of US citizenship in situations like this.
(a) A person who is a national of the United States whether by birth or naturalization, shall lose his nationality by voluntarily performing any of the following acts with the intention ofrelinquishing United States nationality –
(1) obtaining naturalization in a foreign state upon his own application or upon an application filed by a duly authorized agent, after having attained the age of eighteen years; or
(2) taking an oath or making an affirmation or other formal declaration of allegiance to a foreign state or a political subdivision thereof, after having attained the age of eighteen years;
The law also addresses taking up arms against the United States in section 7. Considering al-Awlaki’s Yemeni citizenship, which does not recognize dual-citizenship, and his taking up arms against the US, it would appear that he renounced his US citizenship long ago.
Section 7 automatically revokes his citizenship because of his terrorist activities, but requires capture and tribunal. Since he was in Yemen, we revert to international law which permits his killing in order to prevent a further loss of life. More relevant is local Yemen law. Again, they assisted in the killing of al-Awlaki.
Is his killing a gray area? Only in the perpetually unrefined laws of US citizenship. Laws that most Americans agree need to be revamped, but the law nonetheless.
The only component missing to classify al-Awlaki as a non-citizen appears to be a mere formality of choreographed theater that would only serve to satisfy the selfish needs of third party citizens, not the parties directly involved. It’s pretty clear that al-Awlaki, the US, and Yemen were all on the same page.
Both al-Alwaki and Yemen agree that he is a citizen of Yemen. The US agrees that he revoked his citizenship. Who are you to swoop in and negate those facts?
The only sources of outcry appear to come from the ignorant, and those with a vested interest in ideological pacifism. Not from a position of morality or legality.
Ultimately, this is a debate that will fall upon opinion. If you think al-Awlaki’s killing was illegal, you’ll likely never change your mind. Same goes for those who think it was legally justified. Each individual will have to decide for themselves if international law, US law, or Yemeni law should reign supreme.
