Research Shows That Facemasks Stopped Working Against Covid In Feb. 2022

The Daily Mail reports that "Facemasks haven't stopped people getting Covid since February 2022,  research shows." The explanation is that February 2022 was when the omicron variant became the dominant variant, and that omicron was so infectious (because it infected the upper respiratory tract) that face masks were useless against it. In other words, the researchers are admitting that the original version of Covid that caused all the lockdowns, social distancing, masks, and other B.S. "safety theater" wasn't very infectious because even a mask that had gaps all around it and could barely filter dust was effective in stopping its spread. (Of course, other research has shown that masks never made a difference). 

Cultural Enrichment In France: Muslim Drug Leader Escapes After Ambush On Prison Van

The Daily Mail reports some more on how France has been strengthened and enriched by admitting Muslims:

    The prison van was attacked after 11am on the A154 motorway near the Incarville tollbooth, located in the town of Val-de-Reuil, Normandy, northern France.

    At least two French guards were killed, and two others were left wounded, following the attack which saw the assailants and detainee, Mohammed Amra, 30, managing to escape the scene.

The article also relates:

    A police source told Le Parisien that he was 'the head of a narcotics network' in France, and accordingly considered hugely dangerous.

    The French publication also reported that Mohammed had attempted to escape his cell just two days before Tuesday's escape.

    He had allegedly been placed in solitary confinement an his surveillance level was raised to 'Escort 3'. 

    Amra, who had a total of 13 convictions to his name, was under ‘special surveillance’, but not considered radicalised or a terrorist suspect, said Éric Dupond-Moretti, France’s justice minister.

    At the time of the attack, Amra was on his way from Évreux prison to court for a commital hearing that would have been made public. This would have made the route relatively easy to work out.

    Prosecutors working for the National Jurisdiction for the Fight against Organised Crime (JUNALCO) have opened an enquiry into ‘murder and attempted murder by an organised gang’ – offences punishable with a life sentence.

    They are also investigating ‘escape in an organised gang’, ‘acquisition and possession of weapons of war’ and ‘criminal association with a view to the commission of a crime,’ said Moretti.

    Laure Beccuau, the Paris public prosecutor, confirmed that Amera had previously been indicted by the Specialised Inter-regional Jurisdiction (JIRS) of Marseille for ‘kidnapping and sequestration leading to death’.  

    The two guards killed were identified as agents from the Regional Centre for Judicial Extractions (PREJ), based in Caen, without their names being disclosed.

    One was a 21-year-old father of two who leaves a widow, and the other an expectant father whose wife was five months pregnant.

Mysterious L-Shaped Structure Found Near Great Pyramid

Livescience reports on a "Mysterious L-shaped structure found near Egyptian pyramids of Giza baffles scientists." It was found using a remote sensing technique called "electrical resistivity tomography (ERT), in which electrical currents are sent into the ground and resistance is measured to detect remains, along with ground-penetrating radar (GPR), a technique that sends radar into the ground and, after it bounces back, maps the underlying structures." 

    The team found an anomaly roughly 6.5 feet (2 meters) beneath the surface. It appears to be an L-shaped structure measuring at least 33 feet (10 m) in length, the team wrote in their paper, published May 5 in the journal Archaeological Prospection. From the readings, the L-shaped structure "seems to have been filled with sand, which means it was backfilled after it was constructed," the team wrote in the study. 

    The deeper structure was a "highly resistive anomaly" according to the readings, suggesting it could be a mix of sand and gravel, or perhaps an air void, the team said. 

    Excavations to determine what the L-shaped structure is are now underway, study first author Motoyuki Sato, a professor in the Center for Northeast Asian Studies at Tohoku University in Japan, told Live Science in an email. Sato said he is confident that the structure is not a natural phenomenon, as "the shape is too sharp." 

 It is hypothesized that the structure is the entrance to another tomb or other structure below it.

CDC Says Drowning Rates Increased Due To Covid Lockdowns

 The Daily Mail reports that "[f]igures released Tuesday by the CDC found that rates of accidental drowning increased by nearly 30 percent from 2020 to 2022, the latest data available." 

    American Indian and Alaska natives had the highest rates of drowning, though Dr Houry said there was no significant increase during the study period. 

    However, drowning deaths for black Americans, the second-highest group, increased by 28 percent. 

    In 2022, there were 4,509 drowning deaths total, and 780 of those were in black people. 

    Additionally, one third of black Americans reported not knowing how to swim, and two-thirds said they never had a formal swim lesson. 

    Three out of four Hispanic adults also said they never had swim lessons.

And, contra to the anti-gun propaganda normally shovelled out by the CDC and other groups, "accidental drowning is most common in children ages one to four, and this is the number one cause of death among this age group."

    The increase is being blamed on the Covid lockdowns which reduced access to public swimming pools and swimming lessons. 

Freudian Slip: Biden Calls Illegals "Hispanic Voters"

Modernity News reports that "[d]uring an interview with a Spanish radio show [last week], Biden was talking about the border crisis, and stated 'It’s even a bigger influx now in terms of Hispanic voters, or Hispanic – Hispanic citizens, who want to become citizens.'" 

Related: 

• "Democrats Vote to Include Foreigners in Congressional Apportionment"--Breitbart. From the article:

    House Democrats voted unanimously to continue including foreign nationals, illegal aliens among them, when apportioning congressional districts in states.

    Late on Wednesday, the House voted along party lines, 206-202, for Rep. Chuck Edwards’ (R-NC) Equal Representation Act, with all Republicans supporting the bill and all Democrats opposing[.]

    The Equal Representation Act would require the decennial census, to be taken in 2030, to include a question whereby respondents certify whether they are an American citizen or a foreign national, such as a green card holder, visa holder, or illegal alien.

    The Department of Commerce, following the census, would be required to make public the number of American citizens and foreign nationals throughout the United States. 

    Likewise, the bill would require that congressional apportionment — which decides how many House seats each state receives — only relies on the number of American citizens in each state rather than including foreign nationals, with illegal aliens in the mix as well.

    Edwards’ ultimate goal with the bill is to ensure that states with small foreign populations are not underrepresented in Congress as opposed to states with vast foreign populations. 

• "Chilling warning from Border Patrol agent as he claims 'cartels control the border' NOT the government"--Daily Mail.
• "Narrative Collapse: Mass Migration Not Driving Economic Growth, Report Finds"--Breitbart. From the lede: "In a rebuke of the neo-liberal orthodoxy which has dominated both major political parties in Britain, a study has found that mass migration has not actually stimulated the economy and has been a major drag on public services and the housing sector."

Like A Dog To Its Vomit...

"CISA, FBI resuming talks with social media firms over disinformation removal, Senate Intel chair says," reports Nextgov. 

    Key federal agencies have resumed discussions with social media companies over removing disinformation on their sites as the November presidential election nears, a stark reversal after the Biden administration for months froze communications with social platforms amid a pending First Amendment case in the Supreme Court, a top senator said Monday.

    Mark Warner, D-Va., who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters in a briefing at RSA Conference that agencies restarted talks with social media companies as the Supreme Court heard arguments in Murthy v. Missouri, a case that first began in the Fifth Circuit appellate court last July. The case was fueled by allegations that federal agencies like the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency were coercing platforms to remove content related to vaccine safety and 2020 presidential election results.

    The Supreme Court is expected to decide whether agencies are allowed to stay in touch with social media firms about potential disinformation. Missouri's then-Attorney General Eric Schmitt filed the suit on the grounds that the Biden administration violated First Amendment rights pertaining to free speech online in a bid to suppress politically conservative voices.

    According to Warner, communications between agencies and social platforms resumed roughly around the same time that multiple justices appeared to favor the executive branch’s stance on the issue, he said. 

So what do you think? Coordinating against because they think the Court will side with them, or coordinating before an adverse opinion makes it illegal? 

The Bond Gun Is Back--Walther To Release .32 PPK

    The Walther PPK was first released in 1931, being a variant of Walther's PP (Polizeipistole, or "police pistol") handgun which was intended as a duty sidearm for police officers. The PPK (Polizeipistole Kriminal or "police pistol criminal") had smaller dimensions that made it more suitable for plain clothes or undercover work. It was offered in both .32 ACP and .380 ACP, but the .32 ACP apparently was the more popular chambering. 

    It is also the handgun carried by the fictional James Bond, 007, starting with both the novel and movie, Dr. No. And it appears to have been a somewhat popular import into the United States until the passage of the Gun Control Act in 1968. 

     Among other things, the 1968 Gun Control Act was intended to foreclose the importation of small, foreign made handguns under the "sporting purpose" part of the Act. One of the victims of the "sporting purpose" test was the Walther PPK. To get around the restriction, Walther took the frame of the larger PP pistol and put on the shorter slide and barrel of the PPK, creating the PPK/s (or "Sport" version). This meant that the handgun carried one more round in the magazine, but also made it just a tad too big to be a pocket pistol, which was the point of the "sporting purpose" requirements for handguns.

    Although Walther was able to import PPK/s handguns into the U.S., Walther eventually licensed production in the United States for the PPK/s and, a few years later, the PPK. Ranger Arms produced them from 1980 (1983 for the PPK) to 1999 (they were marketed through Interarms during this time), and Smith & Wesson did so from 2001 to 2012. Except for a brief 2-year period when the .32 was available, these were only offered in .380 ACP.

    Eventually, however, Walther moved some of its manufacturing into the U.S. and, in 2019, Walther released the PPK and PPK/s. Unfortunately, for the collector, the Walther manufactured PPK and PPK/s were only released in .380 ACP, whereas the PPK carried by the fictional James Bond (at least in the novels) was the .32 ACP version. 

    Word is now out that Walther is reintroducing the .32 ACP versions of the PPK and PPK/s. Like its larger .380 versions, it will be offered in bare stainless steel and a black coated stainless steel. The advantage for someone wanting to carry or shoot these is that it offers an additional round of capacity over the .380 versions, and it should have more mild recoil. And, of course, this will be the correct caliber for a "Bond gun". Per the article cited above, both are now shipping and have an MSRP of $969, although I expect the street prices will be less. 

The Coming Population Collapse In East Asia

The relevant article is "East Asia’s Coming Population Collapse: And How It Will Reshape World Politics" by Nicholas Eberstadt at Foreign Policy. Eberstadt begins:

In the decades immediately ahead, East Asia will experience perhaps the modern world’s most dramatic demographic shift. All of the region’s main states—China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan—are about to enter into an era of depopulation, in which they will age dramatically and lose millions of people. According to projections from the Population Division of the UN Department of Economic Social Affairs, China’s and Japan’s populations are set to fall by eight percent and 18 percent, respectively, between 2020 and 2050. South Korea’s population is poised to shrink by 12 percent. And Taiwan’s will go down by an estimated eight percent. The U.S. population, by contrast, is on track to increase by 12 percent.

I think that the UN projections are overly optimistic; they have consistently underestimated population declines for the past couple decades. 

    In any event, Eberstadt notes that for East Asia, "the realm of the possible for its states will be radically constricted by the coming population drop."

They will find it harder to generate economic growth, accumulate investments, and build wealth; to fund their social safety nets; and to mobilize their armed forces. They will face mounting pressure to cope with domestic or internal challenges. Accordingly, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan will be prone to look inward. China, meanwhile, will face a growing—and likely unbridgeable—gap between its ambitions and capabilities.  

 Also:

    This is not the first time East Asia has lost inhabitants. According to historical records, China has undergone at least four long-term depopulations over the past two millennia. Some of these bouts lasted for centuries. After AD 1200, for example, China’s population shrank by more than half. It took the country almost 350 years to recover. Japan and Korea also endured long-term depopulations before they began modernizing.

    But the impending depopulation is different from all the ones before it. In the past, East Asia’s (and every region’s) prolonged contractions were a consequence of dreadful calamity—such as war, famine, pestilence, or upheaval. Today, the decline is taking place under conditions of orderly progress, improvements in health conditions, and spreading prosperity. The coming depopulation, in other words, is voluntary. It is happening not because people are dying en masse but because they are choosing to have fewer children. China provides perhaps the starkest illustration of this fact. The country suspended its coercive one-child policy in 2015, yet in the years since, annual births have fallen by more than half.

And, unlike past population declines where the populations eventually recovered due to subsequent high birth rates, Eberstadt does not see any recovery this time.

    The population decline this time will have other impacts. For instance, the inversion of the age distribution:

    ... By 2050, the population in every one of the region’s countries will be smaller and older than it is now. The China of 2050, for example, will have many fewer people under 60 than does today’s China. But it will have two and a half times as many septuagenarians, octogenarians, and nonagenarians as today—another 180 million of them—even though the country’s total population will decline. In other countries, the changes will be even more drastic. In 2050, Japan will likely have fewer people than it does today in every age cohort under 70. Taiwan will have more people over 75 than under 25. In South Korea, there will be more people over 80 than under 20.

    This demographic shift will cost these countries more than just their youth. It also threatens to sap them of economic vitality. As a rule of thumb, societies with fewer people tend to have smaller economies, as do societies where the elderly make up a disproportionate share of the population. The elderly work less than the young and the middle-aged: there is a reason why demographers conventionally refer to people between 15 and 64 as the “working age” population. And although East Asia’s working-age cohort grew until 2015, the region’s labor pool is now shrinking. If projections hold, China’s working-age population will be more than 20 percent smaller in 2050 than in 2020. Japan’s and Taiwan’s will be about 30 percent smaller, and South Korea will be over 35 percent smaller.

Thus, for instance, "[b]y 2050, all of East Asia will have more people over 80 than children under 15." This obviously means, as explained in more detail in the article, that the pool of military age men will also shrink for these countries, whereas it is expected to increase in the U.S. over the same period. 

To be sure, China will remain an enormous country with a huge economy and military force. It can hardly help but remain a formidable power—indeed, it will be difficult for China to drop out of second place. The Chinese government may also be able to compensate for some unfavorable military demography with technology, such as artificial intelligence and autonomous weapons. But in a real military crisis, there is usually no true substitute for manpower. Fielding and funding a competitive military force is about to get much harder for Beijing relative to Washington, almost regardless of what the Chinese government decides.

Of course, this cuts both ways. As Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan see their recruitment pool shrink, they will become more dependent on the U.S. for military aid and assistance. Nevertheless, Eberstadt see great potential for the United States in the Asia-Pacific region due to China weakening.

    I'm not as sure about the United State's prospects as is Eberstadt. Although not discussed in his article, the only reason that the U.S. will see continued population growth is through immigration. It's possible to advance arguments both in favor or in opposition to immigration, but my personal opinion is that over the long term it is going to introduce severe social and political instability and result in the technological decline of the United States. "E pluribus unum"--out of many, one--referred to the union of the original 13 colonies. Colonies that, I would note, had been British and predominantly populated by people from (or descended from) the British isles and the Low Countries (contrary to the propaganda, blacks slaves were not a significant part of the populations of the southern colonies at that time--that would have to wait until after the invention of the cotton gin). And up until the 1970s, the U.S. was still predominantly of Western or Northern European heritage. Now the United States is a toilet full of the refuse from countries all over the world that not only are incapable of being one people, but have no desire to be one people. 

    Eberstadt also implicitly assumes that the U.S. will continue to attract immigrants at the same rates. It's possible, but there are two factors working against it. First, fertility rates are falling all over the world, which means that many countries that had significant surpluses of people historically will soon cease to have those surpluses to send to more developed countries. Second, hand-in-hand with this is that many of the countries that formerly provided us with hordes of cheap labor are becoming industrialized and will need those workers. George Friedman, in his book The Next 100 Years, predicted that by the middle or end of the 21st century the migrant tide would turn and the U.S. would actually have to start competing against other countries for migrant labor. Perhaps even China or Mexico.

Safe and Effective News Update

 As we were told by health officials, politicians, and religious leaders, the Covid vaccines were completely safe and effective (wink, wink). So here are a collection of articles discussing Covid and the vaccines:

• "New research reports on financial entanglements between FDA chiefs and the drug industry"--MedExpress. Nothing to see here, move along.
• "AstraZeneca pulls COVID-19 vaccine from global markets"--UPI. It has to do with declining sales, not because it has been shown to cause blood clots.
• "True toll of blood clot side effect victims of AstraZeneca's Covid vaccine may NEVER be known, lawyers claim"--Daily Mail. Because no one started to look for a connection between the vaccine and blood clots until March 2021. And this:

[U.K.] Taxpayers will foot the bill of any potential settlement because of an indemnity deal AstraZeneca struck with the [U.K.] Government in the darkest days of Covid to get the jabs produced as quickly as possible while the country was paralysed by lockdowns. 

• "This strong evidence of the link between covid vaccines and cancer can no longer be ignored"--The Conservative Woman. From the lede:

WE ARE now facing a tsunami of mounting evidence that the mRNA based covid vaccines not only cause cancer progression but also inhibit current treatments in controlling so-called ‘turbo cancers’, sudden and aggressive either first time or relapsed cancers, which are on the rise.

• "Massive cancer deaths study vindicates my warnings over covid boosters"--The Conservative Woman.
• "Systematic Review Reveals Many COVID-19 Vaccine Recipients Experienced New-Onset Psychosis"--Zero Hedge. 
• "People who got COVID jabbed now displaying major personality changes stemming from vaccine-induced neurological damage, experts warn"--NaturalNews.com. And excerpt:

Not only do COVID jabs cause profound physical damage to bodily organs as we have been covering for many months now, but they also damage and destroy the tiny capillaries that exist in the brain as part of the critically important blood-brain barrier.

• "US: Pfizer-Funded Study Shows Poor Effectiveness for COVID-19 Vaccine in Young Children"--Gulf Insider.
• "Pfizer Knew of COVID-19 Vax Risks to Breastfeeding Babies in April 2021"--PJ Media.
• "Canadian Officials Reportedly Knew COVID Vaccine Wasn’t Effective Pre-Mandates"--PJ Media.
• "Certain Covid vaccines might TREBLE risk of sudden cardiac death in women under 30, official data shows"--Daily Mail. 
• "CDC confirms 100% of reported Covid-19 Vaccine Deaths were caused by just 5% of batches produced & the majority were sent to red Republican States across the USA"--2nd Smartest Guy In The World.
• "Covid vaccine may have killed hundreds of thousands in the US alone"--The Conservative Woman. An excerpt:

    Yet according to a fresh analysis by the former BlackRock Wall Street executive Ed Dowd, far from saving millions, the jabs may have cost hundreds of thousands of lives in the US alone.

    In addition, a preprint of a new study among nearly 50,000 employees at an Ohio clinic, posted last month, says that those who received more than one dose of the covid jab were found to be more rather than less likely to contract the illness. 

• "New Study From Czech Republic Confirms Covid Vaccines Have Around Zero Efficacy Against Death"--The Daily Sceptic.
• "An Honest Doctor's Experiences on the Front Lines During COVID-19"--The Forgotten Side of Medicine. Exposing the lie that hospitals were being overwhelmed during the height of the pandemic--it was just propaganda to frighten the masses. 
• "Medical Staff Ordered to Euthanize ‘Covid’ Patients: Leaked Docs"--Slay News. It's become apparent to me over the last several years that Britain may have won against Nazi Germany on a physical level, but lost on an ideological level, adopting many Nazi attitudes and policies after WWII.
• Disinformation: "Now Anthony Fauci's former boss Francis Collins concedes Covid lab leak was NOT a conspiracy - despite spearheading attacks against scientists who touted theory"--Daily Mail.
• Related: "Bombshell emails show a top Fauci aide used his personal Gmail to 'intentionally' HIDE discussions about COVID origins... and would delete anything 'incriminating'"--Daily Mail.
• Related: "Breaking: Emerging Evidence Suggests COVID-19 Originated in a Lab"--SciTech Daily. 
• More disinformation: "Fauci to Congress: 6-Foot Social Distancing Guidance Likely Not Based on Data"--Reason. He admits that he doesn't even know the source of the rule (which was from a junior high school science project). And he also agreed that the lab leak theory was likely true and that health officials believed it to be true even while demonizing anyone advancing the theory. 
• Related: "Four years on, COVID damage remains while Fauci & Co. pay no price"--New York Post.
• "Bombshell Testimony Reveals WHO Pushed for COVID Vaccine Passports Despite Knowing They Were a Scam"--Town Hall.
• "America's Covid shame: Damning BMJ report slams US for shutting schools too long and masking outside - while warning it pandemic response was a 'zip code lottery'"--Daily Mail.
• Out of Germany: "Judge who struck down government rules that children must wear COVID masks in German schools is given two-year sentence for 'perverting the law'"--Daily Mail. 
• "Bill Maher Exposes How Dumb the Medical Elite Was About COVID"--Town Hall.
• "Is this the smoking gun for the Covid lab leak? Blueprint for creating a 'SARS-CoV' virus with an altered spike protein in Wuhan was published in 2018, bombshell new records show"--Daily Mail. From the lede:

    A newly-uncovered trove of documents detailing plans to create a Covid-like virus in China months before the pandemic make the 'lab leak almost certain', experts say.

    The records - obtained now by FOIA requests - lay out a plan to 'engineer spike proteins' to infect human cells that would then be 'inserted into SARS-Covid backbones' at the infamous Wuhan virology lab from December 2018.

    Just a year later, in late 2019, the Covid-19 virus emerged with a uniquely adept ability to infect humans, going on to cause a global pandemic. 

• More: "U.S., Chinese Researchers Wanted to Engineer Virus Similar to Covid One Year before Pandemic Outbreak, Internal Docs Show"--National Review.
• "Why Are So Many Californians Dying?"--Zero Hedge. A good article on the excess deaths apparently related to the Covid response by our stupid and thoughtless overlords. 
• "A beginners’ guide to the Great Covid Con, Part 1: Could it happen again?"--The Conservative Woman.
• "A beginners’ guide to the Great Covid Con, Part 2: The fraudulent excess deaths of 2020"--The Conservative Woman. Death statistics show that there were no excess deaths due to Covid in 2020 in the UK.
• "A beginners’ guide to the Great Covid Con, Part 3: Manufacturing excess deaths"--The Conservative Woman. Scaring the public into accepting the Covid lockdowns and other restrictions.
• "A beginners’ guide to Covid, Part 9: Did lockdown work?"--The Conservative Woman. According to the author, no. Not only did the people deemed "essential workers" not die in excess numbers (demonstrating that Covid was not as deadly as we were told) but also because the lockdowns kept a lot of people from receiving medical care and the lockdowns left the working class destitute.

Bombs & Bants Episode 127 (Streamed 5/9/2024)

John Wilder, his wife, and I mock Clown World and the head clowns.

VIDEO: "Episode 127" (38 min.)