Tag: COVID-19

Commentary: Pediatrician Is Fighting Back as Her Medical License Is Being Investigated for COVID-19 ‘Misinformation’

Minnesota Sun Staff
Renata Moon

Once she saw the data, pediatrician Dr. Renata Moon knew she had to speak out. Over her more than 20 years of practicing medicine, including more than 17 years of treating high-risk patients, Dr. Moon had never been anti-vaccine—until she saw what was happening with the COVID-19 vaccines.

In Dr. Moon’s words: “As the data rolled out on the vaccine and COVID-19, it became clear that children had basically a zero risk of death from infection by COVID [whereas] they have potential serious risk from taking the COVID-19 shots.”

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Journalists, Medical Groups, Big Business Emerge as Biden Allies in Social Media Censorship Case

Just the News
Journalists Press

President Joe Biden’s administration is getting some big-name allies as it defends against a landmark free speech infringement lawsuit. Their argument: protecting Americans from indirect censorship by government officials undermines the First Amendment, national security, and public health.

Advocacy groups for journalists, academics, doctors, technologists, and big business, and a powerful senator, made various forms of these arguments in friend-of-the-court briefs to the Supreme Court in the days before and after Christmas. 

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Only Three Percent of Soldiers Who Refused COVID Vaccine Rejoin Army

Minnesota Sun Staff
Vaccine Military

More and more Army soldiers are reenlisting after being discharged for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine, according to information shared exclusively with The Daily Signal.

The increase comes after Congress repealed the Pentagon’s vaccine mandate and conservative lawmakers applied pressure to Defense Department leaders to be more welcoming of 8,400 service members who were “fired” for their refusal to get the COVID-19 shot.

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Commentary: COVID Redux

Minnesota Sun Staff
Masks People

Life is hard if you do not learn from your mistakes. With Covid, political leaders and public health authorities engaged in a series of missteps, miscalculations, and manias that amounted to an extreme overreaction to the disease.

First, statistical models overstated the risk of the disease by an order of magnitude. Then, even after these miscalculations became apparent, other extreme measures like lockdowns, mandatory masking, coercive vaccine mandates, and a million other indignities ensued. In the end, almost everyone got Covid, almost everyone survived, and, while the economic countermeasures increased our national debt by 30%, the economy soon recovered too.

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Commentary: Government Cannot Become Big Brother

RealClearWire

Anyone who lived through 2020 observed that some messages received treatment online that stood in stark contrast to other messages. Conservative voices and messages were censored and banned, while progressive voices and messages flowed freely. If a person spoke against COVID-19 lockdowns—and later vaccines—there was a good chance that a social media platform would take down the post. If one were to suggest that suspicious activities occurred surrounding the 2020 election, the label “misinformation” might appear.

The primary vehicle to censor internet speech is to label disfavored messages as dis-, mis-, or mal-information. While the category of malinformation is seemingly the most offensive – true information that government censors believe lacks sufficient “context” – the other categories can be just as malignant. Mis- and disinformation require someone to determine what is true and what is not.

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Former Army Medical Officer Files Complaint Against Commanding General for Unlawful Retaliation over Vaccine Whistleblowing

Minnesota Sun Staff

A former Army medical officer has filed a criminal complaint against his commanding officer, alleging that the major general unlawfully retaliated against him after he made protected whistleblower disclosures about the COVID-19 shots.

After the COVID-19 vaccine mandate was imposed on the military, First Lieutenant Mark Charles Bashaw sent communications up the chain of command alleging violations of military regulations and federal law, and warned of the health risks associated with the shots, the Epoch Times reported.

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Sen. Joni Ernst Releases List of Federal Agencies with High Employee No-Show Rates Post-COVID

Just the News
Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA)

With Christmas fast-approaching, Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa put out a “naughty list” of government agencies that have high no-show rates of employees who have not returned to the office after the COVID-19 pandemic ended.

According to Ernst’s list, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Social Security Administration top the list with just 7 percent office occupancy rates.

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FDA Inspections of Foreign Drug Facilities Plummeted Since Before COVID-19, Study Shows

Minnesota Sun Staff

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has inspected fewer pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities compared to before the COVID-19 pandemic, with foreign facilities, including those from China, seeing the largest decreases, according to a study released in December.

In 2022, the total number of inspections of drug manufacturing establishments by the FDA decreased by 79% for foreign and 35% for domestic facilities compared to 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a study by Emily Cuddy, Yun Peng Lu and David B. Ridley using data acquired through Freedom of Information Act requests. Despite the drop in inspections, there was no corresponding decrease in imports or manufacturing, while resources allocated by the FDA toward inspections surged per inspection.

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Prestigious Science Journals Confirm Censored Views: Masks at Best Don’t Reduce COVID Infection

Just the News

The best-case scenario for one of the most common COVID-19 interventions may be that it has no measurable effect on infection, recent studies suggest.

A systematic review of studies of mask mandates for children, published Saturday in the British Medical Journal’s Archives of Disease in Childhood, found “no association” with infection or transmission in 16 of the 22 observational studies and “critical” or “serious” risk of bias in the six countervailing studies. It got the attention of Elon Musk, owner of X, formerly Twitter.

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Texas AG Ken Paxton Sues Pfizer for Misrepresenting Efficacy of the COVID-19 Jabs and Conspiring to Censor Public Discourse

Minnesota Sun Staff
AG Ken Paxton

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Thursday that he is suing Pfizer for “unlawfully misrepresenting” Covid-19 vaccine efficacy and conspiring to censor public discourse.

“Pfizer engaged in false, deceptive, and misleading acts and practices by making unsupported claims regarding the company’s COVID-19 vaccine in violation of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act,” Paxton said in a press release.

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Anthony Fauci to Testify Before Congress on U.S. Response to COVID-19

Minnesota Sun Staff
Fauci Hearing

Former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Dr. Anthony Fauci is set to testify before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic in early January, the subcommittee announced Thursday.

Fauci will take part in a two-day interview on Jan. 8 and Jan. 9, making his first appearance before the 118th Congress, according to the subcommittee. Fauci also agreed to testify in a public hearing, though the date of that hearing has yet to be announced.

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Commentary: One in Every 39 Americans Will Die of a Drug Overdose at Current Rate

The Center Square
Person Taking Pills

Despite the passage of state and federal laws that were supposed to reduce fatal drug overdoses, the annual U.S. drug overdose death rate has quintupled over recent decades:

Over the most current year of available data, more than 110,000 people in the U.S. died of drug overdoses, a rate of 33 per 100,000 population.

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Air Force Begs Troops Booted over COVID-19 Vax to Come Back

Minnesota Sun Staff

The U.S. Air Force sent out a letter telling an airman booted from the service over the now-rescinded COVID-19 vaccine mandate of an opportunity to rejoin the service, mirroring similar letters sent to former Army service members, according to a copy of one Air Force letter obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

A former Air Force service member who was separated for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine received the letter Sunday addressed with the recipient’s name, according to a source familiar with the matter. The letter tells former airmen they can request to have their service records amended to show that they received honorable discharges and seek reentry into the service amidst the service’s failure to meet recruiting goals.

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Moms for Liberty Revenue Grows by 500 Percent in One Year

Minnesota Sun Staff
Tina Descovich/ Moms for Liberty

The parental rights group Moms for Liberty’s revenue has grown by more than 500% in its second year, according to the Form 990 it filed with the IRS.

According to the Form 990, exclusively provided first to The Daily Signal, Moms for Liberty brought in $2.14 million in total revenue in 2022, while it brought in $370,029 in total revenue the year before. A significant majority of that money (92.3%) came from donations—contributions and grants. Expenses for 2021 totaled a mere $163,647, while in 2022 they rose to $1.7 million.

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Schools Spent Millions in COVID Bucks on Educational Software That Was Barely Used

Minnesota Sun Staff

School districts across the country spent millions in federal relief funds on educational software intended to mitigate pandemic learning loss, but in many cases, much of the technology wasn’t used, according to The Associated Press.

Schools received billions in COVID-19 relief funds from Congress, and tech companies engaged in aggressive marketing to get districts to purchase their products. School districts used these federal funds to enter multi-million dollar contracts for software licenses that often went unused by students, the AP reported. Moreover, some products were found to not be particularly effective.

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Virginia Representative Proposes Defunding Colleges with Vax Mandates

Minnesota Sun Staff

The COVID-19 pandemic is over, but vaccine mandates imposed by colleges and universities are not. Now a Virginia congressman has introduced a bill to withhold federal funds from institutions of higher education that require vaccinations against the disease.  

President Joe Biden declared the pandemic over in ending the public health emergency May 11. Despite this, nearly 100 colleges and universities currently require students to be vaccinated against COVID-19 for the 2023-2024 school year.  

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Researchers Question One-Size-Fits-All COVID Booster Strategy as FDA Circumvents Advisors

Just the News

Federal health officials face a growing hurdle in their quest to persuade Americans of all ages and risk profiles to get updated COVID-19 boosters: strong proponents of vaccination.

From New England to the Bay Area, researchers voiced concerns to mainstream science and health publications in recent days that the one-size-fits-all model may be backfiring.

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Schools and Universities Nationwide Are Bringing Back Mask Mandates and Shutdowns

Minnesota Sun Staff

Schools and universities around the U.S. are bringing back mask mandates and shutdowns as COVID-19 numbers rise, according to public records reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Runge Independent School District (ISD) in Texas, Magoffin County (MC) Schools in Kentucky, Lee County School District in Kentucky and Rosemary Hills Elementary School in Maryland are all reimplementing some form of COVID-19 measures, according to public records reviewed by the DCNF. Some universities are reimplementing mask mandates, such as Dillard University in Louisiana and Morris Brown College (MBC) in Georgia, though MBC backtracked on its mandate.

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NIH-Funded Research Collaborative Redacts Emails on Why It Disavowed ‘Gold Standard’ Mask Study

Just the News

As public and private institutions resume or consider mask mandates in the wake of a small uptick in COVID-19 hospitalizations and new viral variants, an international research collaborative funded by the National Institutes of Health is facing new scrutiny for how it came to publicly downplay its 17 years of research finding that masks make “little to no difference.”

U.K-based nonprofit Cochrane, often described as the “gold standard” of evidence-based medicine, heavily redacted its internal discussions on how to respond to questions about alleged conflicts of interest that may have shaped its March statement deeming the systematic review’s results “inconclusive” without changing its content.

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Hospital Systems Around America Are Bringing Back Mask Mandates

Minnesota Sun Staff

Several hospital systems in the United States are slowly bringing back mask mandates as fears over COVID-19 reemerge, according to public websites and reports reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

United Health Services in New York, Kaiser Permanente Santa Rosa Medical Center in California, Auburn Community Hospital in New York, UMass Memorial Health in Boston, Massachusetts and University Hospital in Syracuse, New York, have all reinstated mask mandates in the past several weeks, with some requiring staff only to wear masks and others requiring everyone to wear masks, according to public websites and reports reviewed by the DCNF. Moreover, several doctors are calling for renewed masked mandates, despite evidence suggesting that mandates may not be as effective as their proponents claim.

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‘Total Lack of Critical Thinking’: Experts Question COVID Vax, Mask Mandates amid ‘Surge’

Just the News

by Greg Piper   Governments and private entities are using a small rise in COVID-19 hospitalizations and new viral variants to juice interest in bivalent boosters that only 1 in 6 Americans have taken and to urge a return to routine masking, if not outright mandating new jabs and face coverings. What they aren’t…

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Over 40 Percent of Colleges Closed Since COVID-19 Are Christian

Minnesota Sun Staff

Over 40% of the colleges that have closed or consolidated since the start of the pandemic are Christian colleges, according to a report

Christian college closures noted in Higher Ed Dive’s public and private nonprofit college tracker include Cabrini University in Pennsylvania and Alliance University (AU) in New York, which will close Aug. 31.

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Researchers Flay Medical Journals for COVID ‘Misinformation’ Claims

Just the News

Three and a half years after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, American medical journals are still calling out what they consider commonly shared misinformation on vaccines, masks, transmission and viral origins, sometimes promoted by health professionals.

Yet voluminous research and real-world experiences over that span suggest the journals themselves are promoting outdated, unsupported or exaggerated COVID claims, if not outright misinformation.

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Politico: Democrats Say Republicans Have Failed in Proving Teachers’ Union Colluded with CDC on School Reopening Guidance

Susan Berry, PhD

A report at the German-owned Politico Monday stated Democrats are now claiming Republicans have failed to provide evidence that the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), led by Randi Weingarten, exerted extraordinary influence over government school reopening policy during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Democratic staff said in a memo obtained by Politico,” the news outlet stated, that “[d]espite a lengthy investigation, Republicans still can’t prove one of the nation’s largest teachers unions had undue influence over the Biden administration’s school reopening guidance.”

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Commentary: Thanks to Hacks and Henchmen, ‘Misinformation’ Is Now Code for Doing Government Dirty Work

Minnesota Sun Staff

Louisiana federal Judge Terry A. Doughty shocked Americans with his July 4th restraining order against Biden’s digital team which was supposed to be fighting “disinformation” but was in reality just banning views online it didn’t like.

Doughty’s opinion is a jaw dropping expose of how White House staff bullied Facebook, Twitter and other platforms to remove content about election fraud, COVID concerns and other matters of public interest in blatant violation of the First Amendment.  Governmental actors cannot demand that others do what they cannot under the Constitution, just as you can’t have proxies break the law for you. Yet that’s exactly what Biden officials did and that’s exactly what Judge Doughty stopped.

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Attempt to Reinstate Pilots Fired over COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate Fails in Congress

The Center Square

Eighty-three House Republicans voted against a measure that would have required commercial airlines receiving federal money to reinstate pilots who were fired for not complying with a federal COVID-19 vaccine mandate since ruled illegal.

Among them were eight Republicans who opposed the measure from Texas, a state that has consistently fought federal mandates. A federal judge in Texas was the first to rule the Biden administration’s federal vaccine mandate was illegal, blocking it in January 2022. The case went to the Supreme Court, which also ruled against the mandate.

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Commentary: Taxation Without Representation Meets the 21st Century

Admin

Who is authorized to tax the income of a commuter who doesn’t commute? This question—born of the pandemic and currently pending before the Supreme Court of Ohio—could be coming to a tax bill near you, and soon.

Following the outbreak of Covid-19 in 2020, government orders forced millions of employees to work from home instead of at their usual offices. These orders accelerated a trend which had already begun toward remote and hybrid work and—three years later—is all but entrenched.

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New Jersey Rep. Chris Smith Chairs Hearing on Biden’s Push to Cede U.S. Sovereignty to World Health Organization

Susan Berry, PhD

New Jersey Representative Chris Smith (R) announced Monday he will chair a congressional hearing on the Biden administration’s push to enter into an international pandemic treaty that could cede U.S. sovereignty to the World Health Organization (WHO).

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U.S. to End COVID-19 Vaccine Requirements on May 11th

Minnesota Sun Staff

On Monday, the Biden White House announced that it will finally put an end to national COVID-19 vaccine mandates for federal employees and federal contractors.

As reported by Fox News, May 11th is also the date that the Chinese coronavirus public health emergency will expire, and the Biden Administration has no plans to renew it. The mandate for federal employees and contractors, as well as international air travelers, is the last national vaccine mandate that remained in place after legal challenges brought down similar mandates for private businesses.

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Moderna Under Fire as CEO Earned Nearly $400 Million in Stock Options and a 50 Percent Raise Last Year

Just the News

Moderna is under fire after financial records showed the biotech company’s CEO Stephane Bancel earned around $393 million in 2022 from stock options he exercised as he received a 50% raise.

Bancel, whose firm is known for producing the COVID-19 vaccine, received $1.5 million in 2022, an increase of 50% from 2021, and Moderna increased his target cash bonus, a March securities and exchange commission filing shows.

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Arkansas Gov. Sarah Sanders Vetoes $5 Million in Pandemic Expenses for State Agency: ‘COVID-19 Pandemic Is Over’

The Center Square

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders issued a line-item veto Friday for $5 million in pandemic expenses included in the Department of Corrections budget.

“During my first days in office, I terminated several existing Executive Orders related to the COVID-19 pandemic,” Sanders said in her veto letter. “I believe in freedom and personal responsibility – not COVID mandates or shutdowns. The COVID-19 pandemic is over.”

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Switzerland Not Recommending COVID-19 Vaccine, Including for High-Risk Individuals

Admin

Switzerland’s Federal Office of Public Health said no COVID-19 vaccination is recommended this spring/summer season, including for people at high risk of becoming seriously sick from the virus. 

“Nearly everyone in Switzerland has been vaccinated and/or contracted and recovered from COVID-19. Their immune system has therefore been exposed to the coronavirus,” the Swiss health agency said.

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Judge Halts Biden Admin Program That Required 2-Year-Olds to Wear Masks

Minnesota Sun Staff
young girl getting face mask put on her face

A Texas federal judge halted the U.S. Health and Human Services Department (HHS) program that required children as young as 2 years old to wear masks.

Judge James Wesley Hendrix of the Northern District of Texas ruled that the HHS lacked the authority to mandate masks and the COVID-19 vaccine for any Head Start program staff and volunteers. Under Hendrix’s ruling, the HHS cannot enforce either mandate nationwide in its Head Start program, a federal early education program for low income families with children as old as 5 years old.

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Commentary: The Post-Normal World After COVID

Minnesota Sun Staff

Like most polls, Gallup polls are usually paid advertisements for whomever commissions them and therefore deserving of as little attention. However, the indefatigable Sharyl Attkisson recently reported on the results of one such survey and that did draw my attention. Evidently, 47 percent of Americans say life will never go back to pre-pandemic normal. I was somewhat stunned! How could 53 percent be thinking we could go back? 

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‘Unacceptable Incompetence’: CDC Made Dozens of Basic Data Errors on COVID, Epidemiologists Find

Just the News
Sick person talking to CDC employee

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found itself hoist with its own petard by making 25 basic statistical and numerical errors related to COVID-19, particularly with regard to children, while purporting to expose COVID vaccine misinformation, according to an analysis led by University of California San Francisco epidemiologists.

The preprint, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, documented 20 errors that “exaggerated the severity of the COVID-19 situation” and three that “simultaneously exaggerated and downplayed” severity, while one each was neutral or exaggerated vaccine risks.

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Sen. Rand Paul on Child COVID Vaccines: ‘Risks of the Vaccine Are Greater than Risks of the Disease’

Susan Berry, PhD

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said Thursday he would not have his own children receive the COVID vaccines because of the risk of heart inflammation associated with them. “I, frankly, wouldn’t vaccinate my children for COVID,” Paul, an ophthalmologist, told The Hill’s Rising. “I think the risks of the vaccine are greater than the risks of the disease. The risks of the disease are almost non-existent.”

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‘Six Smoking Guns’: Doctor-Turned-US-Senator Roger Marshall’s Reasons for His Wuhan Lab Leak Theory

Just the News

Long before key components of the intelligence community acknowledged they believed COVID-19 came from a lab leak, Kansas Republican Sen. Roger Marshall had drawn a bull’s-eye around the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Marshall, a doctor turned politician, argued early and often that the virus’ emergence and genetic characteristics did not seem like those of a naturally evolving animal-to-human virus. But senators like him and Kentucky Republican Rand Paul were marginalized and even demeaned early on by detractors ranging from Dr. Anthony Fauci to TV comedian Stephen Colbert.

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Commentary: Connecting Dots from COVID to SVB and Beyond

Admin

A collection of seemingly random crises can spell out a sinister “conspiracy theory” when you consider their connections and where they are leading. An overplayed plot? Perhaps, but how many so-called conspiracy theories have proven to be reality recently?

First, the world economy shut down with the COVID lockdown. Manufacturing stopped and capital construction projects were put on hold. No one was making anything, and consumers were buying very little. 

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U.S. Congress Asks Biden to Declassify Reports on COVID-19’s Orgin

ADN America

by John Palomino   The United States Congress approved this Friday a bill that calls for the declassification of information from the country’s intelligence services on the origins of Covid-19. The bipartisan initiative goes to the table of President Joe Biden. After its authorization in the Senate on March 1, the House of…

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Former New York Times Science Editor Testifies Fauci ‘Not Too Pleased to Hear’ Virus May Have ‘Escaped from Research His Agency Had Funded’

Susan Berry, PhD

The former science editor at The New York Times testified Wednesday morning before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic there is now strong evidence the COVID-19 virus escaped from a Wuhan lab, but that “powerful scientific officials, such as [Anthony] Fauci and [National Institutes of Health Director] Francis Collins, kept researchers “in line” with their natural origins narrative with the knowledge the scientists were dependent on government grants to continue their research.

In his testimony, Nicholas Wade, who not only served as former science and health editor at the Times, but also as former editor at Science and at Nature, quickly got to the heart of the matter: the campaign to suppress the lab leak narrative.

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Bill Aims to Protect American Sovereignty Against World Health Organization’s Pandemic Plan

M.D. Kittle

As negations move forward on an international pandemic treaty, Republican House members are pushing a bill that would check the pandemic powers of the World Health Organization. 

U.S. Representatives Tom Tiffany (R-WI-07) and Andy Biggs (R-AZ-05) joined a dozen of their Republican colleagues in introducing the No WHO Pandemic Preparedness Treaty Without Senate Approval Act.

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Ohio U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan Demands Transparency: Why Was Dr. Fauci ‘So Consumed’ with Refuting COVID Wuhan Lab Leak Narrative?

Susan Berry, PhD

Ohio U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH-04) said Sunday he is determined to obtain transparency on the origins of the COVID-19 virus, specifically why Dr. Anthony Fauci insisted on a dismissal of the narrative that the virus originated from a lab leak in Wuhan, China.

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Lawmakers Demand Biden Declassify COVID Origins Investigations

The Center Square

Lawmakers are demanding that President Joe Biden declassify documents related to the origins of COVID-19, in particular federal investigations into the matter.

The Senate passed a bill by unanimous consent that would require Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines to declassify documents related to COVID’s origins. Republicans have a majority in the House, giving the legislation a chance, but whether Biden would sign it is in doubt.

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FBI Confirms COVID-19 Likely Came from Wuhan Lab

The Center Square

The FBI has confirmed initial reports that the Biden administration is now saying the most likely source of COVID-19 is the virology lab in Wuhan, China.

The news comes after the Wall Street Journal reported that the Department of Energy gave classified briefings to key lawmakers and the White House saying the most likely origin of the virus was the lab in China.

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Researchers: City-Wide Vaccine Mandates Did Nothing to Stop the Spread of COVID-19

The Center Square

A slew of city-wide vaccine mandates announced in 2021 across parts of the U.S. made virtually no difference in stopping the spread of COVID-19, newly released research found.

“These mandates imposed severe restrictions on the lives of many citizens and business owners,” the study, conducted through George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, says. “Yet, we find no evidence that the mandates were effective in their intended goals of reducing COVID-19 cases and deaths.”

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Despite Comprehensive Study Showing Masks Ineffective Against COVID and Flu, CDC Director Tells Congress, ‘Our Masking Guidance Doesn’t Really Change With Time’

Susan Berry, PhD

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky testified during a recent House committee hearing that, despite the recent release of an international research review that found masks are ineffective against COVID-19 and the flu, her agency’s masking guidance “doesn’t really change with time.”

During a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) asked Walensky to explain how the CDC uses evidence to update or change its guidance.

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