During the pandemic, journalists discovered a new occupation, one which was particularly appealing for the small effort it required. This occupation consisted of consulting any of the numerous Covid dashboards and weekly virus statistics supplied by health authorities, and pasting the numbers they found there into tiresome one-dimensional articles on which numbers happened to be going up and which numbers happened to be going down. Now that the dashboards have gone dark and nobody bothers to test anymore, our journalists have been deprived of their convenient pastime. One suspects they are not happy about this.
In Germany, all that remains to these uninspired, myopic journalists are the weekly reports compiled by the tireless influenza tabulators of the Robert Koch Institute. Before 2020, the flu sniffers laboured in obscurity, but now their weekly reports routinely generate headlines. Like the Covid headlines which preceded them, these are all about which numbers are going up and which numbers are going down. In this way, the reading public can continue to enjoy the virus anxiety to which they have grown accustomed. The Deutsche-Presse Agentur appears to drive the greater part of this reporting, and its dogged virus updates are recirculated reliably by most of the national and regional papers. It is cheap and easy content.
This week, it is RSV that is going up. ‘The RSV Wave Has Started in Germany,’ say Der Spiegel and tagesschau. ‘Respiratory tract infections: RS-Virus Wave Underway‘ declares ZDF. ‘Corona, flu, RSV: The infection situation in Bavaria,’ is the offering of Bayrischer Rundfunk; ‘Wave of infections continues to grip Saxony: Covid, influenza and RSV,’ is an equivalent piece from the Leipziger Volkszeitung. And because we are mostly asked to worry about those viruses for which there exist vaccines, the Süddeutsche Zeitung supplies its own write-up on ‘RSV Protection: These New Vaccination Options are Available‘.
Now, it is true that RSV infections are on the rise. This is because RSV is among the solstice viruses that become especially active in the darkest months of the year. So far, however, everything suggest that RSV infections are in line with long-standing historical trends. The latest RKI report shows that the “consultation incidence” for the critical age group of 0-4 year-olds – the number of kids seeing the doctor because of acute respiratory infections – is about 5,000 per 100,000, or 5%.
This is the age group most heavily affected by RSV, so we can assume the virus is driving a good part of this trend. Past RKI reports show that this incidence is totally normal: in 2018 and 2019, for example, the consultation incidence for this age group was also at or just below 5,000 in early December.
By all accounts, the situation is vastly better than last year, when children were being treated at twice the normal rate. The immunity deficit that ravaged the young after the end of pandemic measures has been repaid, and we are once again in equilibrium with the respiratory syncytial virus.
This doesn’t matter and we get the mindless contextless number-go-up reporting anyway, because everything is stupid now, and few things are as stupid as post-Covid health reporting. I’ve searched high and low for pre-pandemic articles on RSV infections, and beyond a few items in the local press I can’t find anything of note. This anxiety about RSV is a legacy of the pandemic, and in the near term I guess it will be used to encourage RSV vaccine uptake in pregnant women. I very much doubt that these vaccines will do anything to alter seasonal trends; as far as I can tell, nobody is even claiming that they will. If this time next year we see the same hospitalisation and consultation incidences that we always have, we’ll know the vaccines are for nothing. That won’t stop the vaccinators, though.
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It is hard to understand the MSM culture of silence and avoidance of anything that seems like a critique of either the mRNA ‘vaccines’ or of the government health agencies, who refuse to review the collateral health damage even though informed consent and patient safety are at stake. The bodies that are meant to defend the patient and stand up for medical ethics remain quiet. The journalists, media outlets, celebrities, influencers and activists who speak out on ‘climate emergency’ or the UK getting there first on the vaccine remain deadly quiet when it comes to the greatest medical experiment inflicted on humankind” (TCW, my bold)
Not really hard to understand. I repeat my call for the Times muppets to give full disclosure on all direct and indirect links to the pharmaceutical industry. Whilst their welcome if belated story about harms from the experimental AZ coronavirus medication suggests at least some acknowledgment of the issue, they remain silent about Pfizer and Moderna, despite having a policy editor in Oliver Wright (Oliver Wright | The Times & The Sunday Times) who has written articles like these for the Independent in 2014 about unethical practices in the pharmaceutical industry, including AZ and Pfizer:
Big Pharma lobbyists exploit patients and doctors | The Independent | The Independent
Revealed: Big Pharma’s hidden links to NHS policy, with senior MPs saying medical industry uses ‘wealth to influence government’ | The Independent | The Independent
(Refresh page to show full story?)
Note particularly this section:
‘JMC Partners’ clients include blue-chip drugs firms such as Novatis, Astro Zenica, Sanofi and Pfizer. It also represents a number of medical device manufacturers and biotech companies who sell their products to the NHS, including Roche Diagnostics, Cyberonics and Bausch & Lomb.
The company’s website makes bold claims about how it has been able to influence policy. In one case study it says it represented a medical device manufacturer who was worried about a planned cut in the amount the NHS paid for a treatment with which it was involved. JMC boasted that it organised a lobbying campaign targeting MPs and ministers as well as mobilising doctors to support its cause. It concludes: “The market for the technology was saved.” ‘ (my bold)
I rather suspect that groups such as the Orthomolecular Medicine News Service (OMNS) and the Health Advisory & Recovery Team (HART) with the patient interest at heart do not have such lobbying powers. Having slandered btl commenters on this site for raising legitimate questions about the “covid ‘vaccines’ “, theTimes muppets owe us an explanation. Until they do so, and until they start behaving like proper responsible journalists, I will continue to regard them as anti-truthers. Muppets.
Not entirely unrelated to my above post, this interview with RFK Jr on the Mark Steyn show is well worth a watch:
RFK Jr runs for President :: SteynOnline
Highlights include disturbing information about the “sickest generation in American history”, how he is “anti pharmaceutical industry’s control of government”, how profit was more important than public health, and some interesting stuff on the Ukraine war.
RFK Jr and De Santis going for the “American presidency”? Now there’s a contest I could live with!
Hang it, I wish I was going on that Mark Steyn cruise…
This is just evil and sick. I sincerely hope this family get either a good lawyer to overturn the hospital’s policy or Tanner can go to another hospital where they are actually interested in saving lives.
”Tanner Donaldson, a 9-year-old from Cleveland was born with a rare birth defect that caused irreversible kidney damage in utero and has resulted in stage 4 chronic kidney disease as well as bladder and urinary dysfunctions as he grew older.
A kidney transplant from the proper donor could reverse his disease and put Tanner back on track to have a normal life for at least 20 more years. Before the pandemic began to unfold in 2018, Tanner had found that donor — his dad, Dane Donaldson.
Because a kidney from a live donor only lasts about 20 years, the family decided to wait a couple of years before carrying out the transplant to extend Tanner’s life as long as possible. Then covid happened.
Prior to the Emergency Use Authorization of the covid vaccine, Dane and Tanner could’ve undergone the surgery and be in recovery right now. But covid changed all that and the hospital is now refusing to conduct the surgery because Dane is not vaccinated against covid-19. Seriously.”
https://magspress.com/9-year-old-boy-refused-life-saving-kidney-transplant-because-his-father-is-unvaccinated/
Absolutely disgraceful isn’t it?
“Individuals who are actively infected with COVID-19 have a much higher rate of complications during and after surgery, even if the infection is asymptomatic,” the hospital stated.
Surely that should exclude all the jabbed from being donors, then?
It seems the hospital would accept an organ from a soon-to-die / brain dead individual – jab status unknown – but won’t accept from a healthy unjabbed donor.
Not only crazy, it’s bordering on evil, denying someone a chance of life.
Don’t know where the links from the word ‘surgery’ came from.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12077475/Starbucks-manager-sacked-transphobia-rant-activist-terrifies-neighbours.html
Why is it that people who demand tolerance and understanding have no concept of tolerance or understanding?
What ‘rights’ don’t the transpeople have that others have?
What do they realistically want?