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Peter Myers Digest: Jewish economists lobby Biden against Infrastructure Investment

(1) Jewish economists lobby Biden against Infrastructure Investment(2) An Easter reflection from Jerusalem(3) Alternative Social Media(4) Don't vaccinate people who already had COVID; it could cause harm or death(1) Jewish economists lobby Biden against Infrastructure InvestmentFrom: leo schmit <leoschmit@yahoo.com>Subject: Re: WaPo: Biden Advisors fear Infrastructure Investments may help  White Working-Class Men  Peter,I quote from your first post re. WAPO on Biden’s infrastructure vs care investments with a lot of gibberish: like this sample below: > https://www.informationliberation.com/?id=62135"On a private Zoom call earlier this month, economists Heidi Shierholz, Darrick Hamilton and Larry Katz presented Rouse, Boushey and other senior Biden officials with evidence that federal investments in care work would do more to generate jobs and economic growth than physical infrastructure, Shierholz said."  I just checked:Heidi Shierholz (Jew):https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=Heidi+Shierholz+jewLarry Katz (Jew):https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=Larry+Katz+jewDarrick Hamilton (Jew):https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=Darrick+Hamilton+jewThis also pertains to your item 2 where these people are identified by WAPO as 'liberal economists' > https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2021/03/29/biden-infrastructure-taxes-spending-plan/I am not going to bother about  Rouse, Boushey as senior Biden officials; a highly likely Jewishness.Yours,Leo(2) An Easter reflection from Jerusalem From alfred giannantonio <alfredgg@hotmail.it>https://mondoweiss.net/2021/04/an-easter-reflection-from-the-holy-city-of-jerusalem/An Easter reflection from the Holy City of JerusalemWe pray that the world will come together to fight the pandemic and then face all the other pandemics —especially racism, hatred, injustice, occupation, oppression, and degradation of human dignity.BY ARCHBISHOP ATALLAH HANNA  APRIL 4, 2021Orthodox Christians take part in the Easter "Holy Fire" celebrations on the eve of Easter Sunday on April 23, 2011, at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, built over the sites where Christians believe Christ was crucified and buried in Israeli annexed east Jerusalem's Old City. (Photo: Sliman Khader/APA Images)ORTHODOX CHRISTIANS TAKE PART IN THE EASTER "HOLY FIRE" CELEBRATIONS ON THE EVE OF EASTER SUNDAY ON APRIL 23, 2011, AT THE CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE, BUILT OVER THE SITES WHERE CHRISTIANS BELIEVE CHRIST WAS CRUCIFIED AND BURIED IN ISRAELI ANNEXED EAST JERUSALEM'S OLD CITY. (PHOTO: SLIMAN KHADER/APA IMAGES)"The Feast of All Feasts, the Season of All Seasons"Jerusalem is the venerated city for the three monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. No one faith or people has an exclusive right to claim Jerusalem as theirs alone. It is the City of Peace.But peace is denied the people because there is no justice in the city. There is, instead, injustice and the targeting of Christian and Muslim Palestinians regarding our holy sites, our endowment properties, and our historic, deeply rooted presence in this holy place. We Palestinians think of Jerusalem as our capital. But we are treated as strangers in the holy city, the cradle of Christianity's most important holy sites.Trump's declaration naming Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, his decision to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, and his cutting of U.S. Aid to Palestinians exposed the unfair and arbitrary measures taken against our people over many decades, the consequences of which affect every aspect of our daily life. We do not know whether the new American president will reverse these unjust decisions, but it doesn't seem promising. We should not be overly optimistic about drastic changes in U.S. positions under the new administration, both in relation to Jerusalem in particular and toward the Palestinian question in general.Apart from politics, I say from Jerusalem during this holy season of Easter: Jerusalem is the City of Resurrection for Palestinians, our treasured home. No place in our faith is more prominent or sacred than the city that embraces the Holy Tomb, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher—the site of Jesus' death and resurrection. Our Lord's resurrection is a main pillar of our faith. We remember how our Lord carried His Cross and walked up to the Golgotha, where he was crucified and buried. Yet, he vanquished death and rose up from the dead on the third day.This is the feast that we celebrate. In our liturgy, we call it "the feast of all feasts, the season of all seasons." On this glorious day, the most significant Christian celebration, we kneel before the empty tomb and hail our Lord who rose up from the dead.We pray to God that justice—so long missing—will prevail in our country, that the peace we so desire will prevail, that all injustices our people have suffered and continue to suffer will be lifted.Palestinians deserve freedom, deserve life. The vast majority are educated, have a high sense of belonging to our homeland, and have always been true defenders of our just cause, making major sacrifices to promote it. Our sacrifices will never go in vain, no matter how long it takes.PALESTINIAN CHRISTIANS FROM THE GREEK ORTHODOX CHURCH CHANT AND SING IN THE STREETS WITH CANDLES AND CROSSES DURING THE EASTER HOLY FIRE RITUAL IN THE OLD CITY OF JERUSALEM ON APRIL 14, 2012. (PHOTO: MAHFOUZ ABU TURK/APA IMAGES)Our Easter message to Christians in our country and to our people in general is this: never lose hope regardless of the severity of hardships, conspiracies, suspicious plots and empty proposals aiming to liquidate our cause.Our Easter message is one of hope during difficult times, especially now under the pandemic conditions we are facing and despite all the injustice and degradation of human dignity to which our people are subjected.Inspired by the holy feast of resurrection, I tell Palestinians, "Fear not, never surrender, and refuse to be forced into frustration, desperation, and hopelessness. Keep up your morals high, your will strong, and love each other. Reject all divisions and be united in defending your cause, the cause of all free men and women in our world."I greet all Christians celebrating Easter, saying, "This is the Day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it."May we experience a new and renewed resurrection for this holy land and for all of humanity. We pray to God that the whole world will come together to fight the pandemic and then continue to be united in facing all the other pandemics in our universe—especially racism, hatred, injustice, occupation, oppression, and degradation of human dignity.Jesus has Risen. He is Risen!(3) Alternative Social Mediahttps://reclaimthenet.org/free-speech-friendly-and-privacy-focused-social-networks/Free speech friendly and privacy-focused social networksUse a platform that's not controlled by a Big Tech giant.If you're tired of the destruction of digital civil liberties subscribe to Reclaim The Net.Mass censorship and the invasion of privacy are mainstays of modern social media, killing the idea of the open and free web.There are several alternatives to major Big Tech platforms. Some are privacy-focussed, some are more about liberty and free speech. Some are both.Check out some of these alternatives to the likes of Facebook and Twitter:GabAn open source social network that champions free speech, individual liberty, and the free flow of information.Gab uses the First Amendment of the United States constitution as its standard for content moderation and allows written expression that is protected political, religious, symbolic, or commercial speech under the First Amendment.Gab is one of the few social networks that owns its servers which means it isn’t dependent on third-party hosting companies to stay online.The platform’s features include groups, lists, and custom emojis. Pro users can also unlock additional features such as the ability to schedule posts, bookmark posts, and create self-destructing posts.It integrates seamlessly with Gab’s other products which means you can use your Gab account to interact with GabTV (Gab’s video sharing platform), Gab Trends (Gab’s news aggregator), and more.WebsiteMindsAn open source, free speech-friendly social network that’s built on a decentralized, open source infrastructure.Minds’ content moderation policy is based on the First Amendment and you can also appeal some content moderation decisions to a Minds Jury which has the power to vote on and overturn these decisions.In addition to this, you can make your posts resilient to censorship by taking advantage of Mind’s integration with the Permaweb – a blockchain-based, decentralized content storage system from which posts cannot be removed.Minds lets you monetize your content via tips, memberships, and a rewards pool. All Minds users are paid in Minds Tokens but if you upgrade to Minds Pro, you can also get paid in US dollars, Bitcoin, and Ethereum.Other notable features include end-to-end encrypted chat and the ability to boost your content with Minds Tokens.WebsiteOverviewParlerA social network that vows to let its users speak freely without fear of being deplatformed for their views.Parler states that it’s built upon a foundation of respect for free speech and that its community guidelines are based on Supreme Court and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) precedence.The platform also vows to protect its members’ privacy and states that all personal data is kept confidential and never sold to third parties.Additionally, Parler promises that it will not curate your feed. Instead, it gives you the tools to filter your own feed which include the ability to mute or block users and the ability to mute or block specific keywords in comments.Other features include dark mode, the ability to make your account private, and content discovery tools that make it easy to find new content by username or hashtag.WebsiteMeWeA privacy-focused social network that promises there are no ads or spyware on the platform. It also has a "Privacy Bill of Rights" that promises users of the site full control over their personal information, content, privacy settings, and more.MeWe’s privacy-enhancing features include Secret Chats with double-ratchet encryption and enhanced permissions that give users granular control over who sees what.The platform is also a pioneer in other areas and was the first social network to launch dual-camera support which allows users to simultaneously record using the phone’s inward-facing selfie camera and the outward-facing camera to create a unique double-view video.Some of its other features include full control of the order of posts in your feeds, the ability to customize your profile based on the groups you’re interacting with, voice messages, and universal tags (which can be used to organize all the content you receive and share).WebsiteCloutHubA platform that’s focused on social, civic, and political networking.CloutHub has publicly committed to supporting free speech and vowed that it won’t suppress reach or manipulate what users see on its platform.One of the platform’s main differentiating factors is that it doesn’t focus the user experience on gaining likes and followers. Instead, it brings people together based on the issues they care about.CloutHub has also committed to the privacy of its members and states that there’s no scraping of internet protocol (IP) addresses or device IDs, no data mining, no tracking where you go, and no sharing of users’ data to outside parties except when complying with lawful orders.WebsiteMastodonA free, open source, decentralized, peer-to-peer, federated social network that’s powered by the ActivityPub protocol.The distributed setup means that there’s no centralized authority to censor content. Instead, anyone can start an instance and set their own rules. If you aren’t happy with the rules on a particular instance, you can move to another instance or start your own.All Mastodon instances are interoperable and can connect with other Mastodon instances and other platforms that support ActivityPub such as Friendica and the video-sharing platform PeerTube. Once connected, users on one instance can interact with posts and accounts from these other instances.Since Mastodon uses open standards, you can choose from a selection of apps with Tusky, Amaroq, Pinafore, and Whalebird being some of the many that are available.Mastodon’s standout features include custom emojis, spoiler warnings, the ability to redraft posts, and the ability to set focal points on any images you post.WebsiteTwetchA decentralized social network that’s focused on letting you own your data and earn money for your content through micropayments.Micropayments on the platform are direct, instant, and can be made without a middleman which makes them resilient to censorship.These micropayments also serve as a unique content moderation tool by allowing you to charge users to interact with you. If there are accounts that you don’t want to interact with, simply set a high interaction fee to make it expensive for them to bother you.Twetch also lets you send encrypted messages to other users via Twetch Chat. These encrypted messages aren’t reliant on a middleman and are encrypted with Bitcoin, AES, and ECIES.WebsiteFloteAn open source, crypto-enhanced social network which is based on five freedom principles – free speech, free trade, individual liberty, privacy, and security.Flote has adopted these principles in response to Big Tech’s censorship and use of personal data for monetary gain. It adds that these values have been "proven to maximize freedom and prosperity throughout history."One of Flote’s standout features is that Bitcoin wallets are integrated into its app. Flote takes no platform fees which means everything you earn on the platform is deposited into this wallet.This integrated wallet makes it easy to monetize your content via one-time tips, monthly subscriptions, and paid posts.Some of Flote’s other notable features include live streaming, live chat, encrypted messaging, and lists.WebsiteHiveAn open source, decentralized blockchain ecosystem that serves as the foundation for Hive’s decentralized social networking apps (dapps).Hive is sustained by geographically distributed servers and nodes which makes it censorship-resistant by design.Since Hive’s dapps are all built on the Hive blockchain, you aren’t limited to a single interface. Your public account details and public posts are stored on the Hive blockchain and are interoperable with all of Hive’s dapps.Some of the most popular Hive dapps are PeakD and D.Buzz. PeakD is feature-rich and offers topic-based communities, a selection of curated feeds, trending topics, and more whereas D.Buzz is more lightweight and features a single feed with the ability to filter by hashtags.Hive also has a native Hive Backed Dollar (HBD) cryptocurrency which can be used to send and receive tips via any of Hive’s dapps.(4) Don't vaccinate people who already had COVID; it could cause harm or deathhttps://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/scientists-challenge-health-officials-on-vaccinating-covid/ 04/05/21Scientists Challenge Health Officials on Vaccinating People Who Already Had COVIDScientists warn vaccinating people who already COVID could potentially cause harm, or even death.By  Megan Redshaw"This indiscriminate vaccination is a clear and present danger to a subset of the already infected ..."Since the first COVID-19 vaccine received Emergency Use Authorization in the U.S., some physicians and scientists have challenged the recommendation by U.S. health agencies that people who have already had COVID and as a result acquired natural immunity still get the vaccine.Some experts say the science to support vaccinating those primed with COVID doesn’t exist and there’s a potential risk of harm, including death, in vaccinating those who’ve already had the disease or were recently infected.In December 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices issued a report authored by 15 scientists that falsely claimed a Pfizer study proved the vaccine was highly effective or showed "Consistent high efficacy" for people who’d already had coronavirus — "SARS-CoV 2."Award-winning scientist and Congressman Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) called out the CDC when he found that vaccine studies showed no benefit to people who had coronavirus and that getting vaccinated didn’t change their odds of getting reinfected.The CDC claimed "the COVID vaccine would save your life or save you from suffering, even if you’ve already had the virus and recovered, which has not been demonstrated in either the Pfizer or Moderna trials," Massie said in an interview with Full Measure.  Massie contacted officials at the CDC about the misinformation. They acknowledged it was false, but instead of correcting it, tried to rephrase their mistake. Massie and other scientists said the new wording still wrongly implies vaccines work in people who previously had COVID.   "And instead of fixing it, they proposed repeating it and just phrasing their mistake differently. So, at that point, right now I consider it a lie. I think the CDC is lying about the efficacy of the vaccine based on the Pfizer trials, for those who have already had the coronavirus," Massie said.The CDC recommends people get vaccinated even if they’ve already had COVID, as experts do not know how long "you are protected from getting sick again after recovering from COVID, and it is possible — although rare — that you could be infected with the virus that causes COVID again."On Feb. 23, Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), published a blog post stating that people who’ve had COVID still needed the vaccine, while referencing a study that suggested they didn’t.  Citing a pre-print published on medRxiv, Collins wrote that the immune response to the first vaccine dose in a person who’s already had COVID is equal to, or in some cases better, than the response to the second dose in a person who hasn’t had COVID. He said the "results raise the possibility that one dose might be enough for someone who’s been infected with SARS-CoV-2 and already generated antibodies against the virus."Yet, Collins made the case that people who have already had COVID would have a robust antibody response when later exposed to the virus — whether that’s through natural exposure or via the spike protein from a COVID vaccine.To better understand immune memory of SARS-CoV-2, researchers led by Drs. Daniela Weiskopf, Alessandro Sette and Shane Crotty from the La Jolla Institute for Immunology analyzed immune cells and antibodies from nearly 200 people who had been exposed to COVID and recovered.  The results, published in Science, showed the immune systems of more than 95% of people who recovered from COVID had durable memories of the virus up to eight months after infection. Previous studies showed that natural infection induced a strong response, but this study showed that response lasted, Weiskoph said.Another study in Nature assessed the lasting immunogenic effect of T-cell reactivity to SARS and SARS-2. Data showed that natural immunity was very robust — and likely more robust than any immunity derived from a vaccine.Increased risk of vaccine injury in those with previous infectionOn March 19, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued an emergency authorization for a new test to detect COVID infections — one that stands apart from the hundreds already authorized, reported STAT. Developed by Seattle-based Adaptive Biotechnologies in partnership with Microsoft, the new test, called T-Detect COVID, looks for signals of past infections in the body’s adaptive immune system — specifically, the T cells that help the body remember what its viral enemies look like. Adaptive’s approach involves mapping antigens to their matching receptors on the surface of T cells, which would help scientists unlock information to help diagnose past COVID infections.Dr. Dara Udo, urgent and immediate care physician at Westchester Medical Group, received the COVID vaccine a year after having the disease and had a very strong immune response very similar to what she experienced while having COVID.  In an opinion piece published by The Hill, Udo explained that infection from any organism, including COVID, activates several different arms of the immune system, some in more robust ways than others and that this underlying activation due to infection or exposure, combined with a vaccination, could lead to overstimulation of the immune response.  Udo thought this might explain the symptoms she had, as well as her frontline colleagues who had high rates of COVID antibodies (known as seroprevalence) prior to becoming vaccinated."For high-risk, vulnerable groups, emerging data suggest that seroprevalence of COVID-19 infection is likely higher than tested and reported. Therefore, a natural question arises of whether there may be a smarter way to administer the vaccines in high seroprevalent groups," Udo wrote.Udo called for an intentional, well-planned approach to avoid eliciting adverse immune responses in those who had COVID and subsequently get vaccinated.  Udo suggested a person already "COVID-primed" may be better off with a one-dose rather than a two-dose vaccine, or that the vaccine administered should be dependent on whether the person already had COVID. For example, someone who is "COVID-naive" might do better with a vaccine like Pfizer or Moderna, while the COVID-primed might need a less robust immune response from the one-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine.  In order to implement this protocol, rigorous, effective and efficient antibody prescreening tools to identify these individuals would be required, Udo said.Dr. Hooman Noorchashm, an accomplished surgeon, patient safety advocate and staunch supporter of the new COVID vaccines, has written several letters to the FDA urging the agency to require pre-screening for SARS-CoV-2 viral proteins in order to reduce COVID vaccine injuries and deaths.  According to Noorchasm, it is scientifically established that once a person is naturally infected by a virus, antigens from that virus persist in the body for a long time after viral replication has stopped and clinical signs of infection have resolved. When a vaccine reactivates an immune response in a recently infected person, the tissues harboring the persisting viral antigen are targeted, inflamed and damaged by the immune response."In the case of SARS-CoV-2, we know that the virus naturally infects the heart, the inner lining of blood vessels, the lungs and the brain," explained Noorchasm. "So, these are likely to be some of the critical organs that will contain persistent viral antigens in the recently infected — and, following reactivation of the immune system by a vaccine, these tissues can be expected to be targeted and damaged."Colleen Kelley is an associate professor of infectious diseases at Emory University School of Medicine and principal investigator for Moderna and Novavax phase 3 vaccine clinical trials in Atlanta. In an interview with Huffington Post, Kelley said there have been reported cases in which those who previously had the virus endured harsher side effects after they received their vaccines."Anecdotally, it does appear that people who may have had COVID-19 before their vaccine do tend to have those longer duration of symptoms," Kelley added. "But we’re still gathering additional scientific data to really support this."In a public submission to the FDA, J. Patrick Whelan M.D. Ph.D., expressed similar concern that COVID vaccines aimed at creating immunity against the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein could have the potential to cause microvascular injury to the brain, heart, liver and kidneys in a way that does not currently appear to be assessed in safety trials of these potential drugs.  Based on several studies, Whelan said it appeared that the viral spike protein in the SARS-CoV02 vaccines is also one of the key agents causing damage to distant organs that may include the brain, heart, lung and kidney."Before any of these vaccines are approved for widespread use in humans, it is important to assess in vaccinated subjects the effects of vaccination on the heart," wrote Whelan. "As important as it is to quickly arrest the spread of the virus by immunizing the population, it would be vastly worse if hundreds of millions of people were to suffer long-lasting or even permanent damage to their brain or heart microvasculature as a result of failing to appreciate in the short-term an unintended effect of full-length spike protein-based vaccines on these other organs."At the very minimum, Noorchasm said in a letter to FDA officials, "Pfizer and Moderna should "institute clear recommendations to clinicians that they delay immunization in any recently convalescent patients, as well as, any known symptomatic or asymptomatic carriers — and to actively screen as many patients with high cardiovascular risk as is reasonably possible, in order to detect the presence of SARS-CoV-2, prior to vaccinating them."On March 19, 32-year-old Benjamin Goodman died after receiving Johnson & Johnson’s experimental COVID vaccine. According to a Facebook post by his step-mother, Goodman knew his family’s difficult history with vaccines but got vaccinated at a pop-up vaccine site at a local Walgreen’s because people were pushing the travel pass.  Goodman felt ill, experienced a headache, woke up with a fever and chills at 1 a.m., went into cardiac arrest at 4 a.m. and was declared dead two hours later.Like many others, Goodman had not been tested to see if he had previously had COVID or was recently infected.  Noorchasm sent a third communication to the FDA warning that deaths like Goodman’s could have been prevented, and that there will be more deaths unless people are screened before being vaccinated. As The Defender reported earlier this month, Noorchashm believes that a #ScreenB4Vaccine campaign could save millions from vaccine injuries."We are deploying this defensive weapon [the COVID vaccine] wildly indiscriminately in the midst of a pandemic outbreak, while many are ‘the recently infected.’ It is my professional opinion as an immunologist and physician that this indiscriminate vaccination is a clear and present danger to a subset of the already infected," Noorchasm told The Defender.  The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Children's Health Defense.Lockdowns delay Herd Immunityhttps://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/rob-verkerk-knut-wittkowski-herd-immunity/04/05/21Epidemiologist: We Could Have Reached Natural Herd Immunity in 6 WeeksIn an interview with Alliance for Natural Health International, epidemiologist Knut Wittkowski, Ph.D., says shielding the most vulnerable from a virus, while letting the infection run its course through healthy populations, is the fastest way to achieve herd immunity.By Alliance for Natural Health International"The virus hasn’t behaved differently from any other respiratory disease virus."Why do governments persist with lockdowns, or the threat of lockdowns, given a growing body of evidence showing that lockdowns don’t save lives? Will lockdowns that were meant to only ‘flatten the curve’ now be sidelined because COVID vaccines are considered the panacea?This week on Speaking Naturally, we interview Knut Wittkowski, Ph.D. He is an eminent scientist with a long track record as a biostatistician and epidemiologist. He was one of the earliest to call out the folly of lockdowns. His main recommendations to shield or treat early the most vulnerable, while letting the infection run its normal course through healthy populations — stated as early as March 2020 — subsequently became the basis of the Great Barrington Declaration.Ask Congress to Investigate COVID Origins - Take ActionANH-Intl founder and scientific director, Rob Verkerk Ph.D., caught up with Wittkowski a year on, asking whether he felt censored as a scientist, where we were in the epidemic, what role vaccines may or not play, what concerns we should have over new variants — and what solutions he felt might help us navigate out of our current predicament.Below are excerpts from the interview, organized by topic.On censorshipWittkowski doesn’t feel censored. But like many other scientists who haven’t parroted the mainstream narrative, he also doesn’t feel heard.Is COVID just a bad flu?Wittkowski:"The virus hasn’t behaved differently from any other respiratory disease virus. If we had not had the capability to sequence the virus in January, and have identified — ooops! — it’s not influenza, it’s corona, we wouldn’t even have noticed. It would have been just another flu."So people got very confused and fearful about it. Especially after having seen…a lot of older people dying in nursing homes."Lockdowns were intended to the flatten the curve, right?Wittkowski:"The idea of flattening the curve — well, I was never convinced — but I understand why politicians would resort to that after having seen the hospital system in Italy having been under severe duress. But a month later, in the U.S., on April 17 [2020], the then director of the CDC, Robert Redfield presented data at the White House — and the data that this was the third flu that year — there was the one of influenza B, then of influenza A, then of COVID. And hospital admissions — or people showing up at hospitals — had already ceased — was down to normal levels.Wittkowski goes on to propose that if the vulnerable had been shielded and the virus had been allowed to be exposed, naturally acquired herd immunity would have been reached in around six weeks.What lockdowns did was treat everyone in the same way so that people with vulnerabilities have an equal chance of being exposed — so those who are most vulnerable become more heavily infected and consequently "they are the people who die."Wittkowski says "Lockdowns are not saving lives, they’re costing lives. Every respiratory disease … virus epidemic … every one one of them, ends with herd immunity. There is no other way for an epidemic to end. So it’s not an invention — a strategy — it’s just the way nature regulates respiratory disease epidemics."Non-compatibility of vaccine and lockdown strategiesWittkowski:"There are two things you can do. If you have a vaccine which is very difficult — we know this from influenza — influenza vaccines never fit or they come too late — there are no good vaccines. But if you have a vaccine, even if it’s only partially effective, you can reduce the time it takes to reach herd immunity because you don’t have to wait for people to get infected — you just vaccinate them. That makes sense — there’s no reason against that. The problem is that if you, at the same time, you do mitigation — you do lockdowns — you’re doing something that does the exact opposite … you’re delaying the time it takes to achieve herd immunity. It makes as much sense as sitting in a car and hitting the brake and the gas at the same time. You’re not getting anywhere."The problem is that if at the same time [as vaccination] you do mitigation — you do lockdowns — you’re doing something that does the exact opposite … It makes as much sense as sitting in a car and hitting the brake and the gas at the same time. You’re not getting anywhere."The problem is that politicians somehow invested a lot of their ego into lockdowns as the thing that has to be done until we have vaccines and now the vaccines don’t work the way it was hoped they’d work….not that any scientist would have believed it…Now the politicians are somewhere in a deadlock…They can’t say "now we can give up the lockdowns now we have the vaccines, because the vaccine doesn’t work – not in that sense. Because the vaccine comes too late. There is always a new virus or version that escapes. You have to wait a couple of months until you have a new vaccine against it. And by the time you have a new vaccine you have yet another new strain.  So that is a never-ending story."…because the vaccine comes too late. There is always a new virus or version that escapes. You have to wait a couple of months until you have a new vaccine against it. And by the time you have a new vaccine you have yet another new strain.  So that is a never-ending story."On vaccines and herd immunityWittkowski considered "absurd" the idea of getting to 70-90% coverage with the vaccine, the stated target of some governments such as the U.S., UK and some EU countries."As early as a year ago in March (2020), Sunetra Gupta said we probably need to have about 50% of the population being immune because the basic reproduction number is somewhere around 2. However about 25% of people have cross-immunity from previous coronavirus infections. So we need only 25% of people to get infected or vaccinated."He goes on to say that when new infections dropped to zero or near zero in June, 2020 in New York, 25% of the New York population were already antibody positive."So a reasonable strategy would have been to test people who have antibodies and vaccinate those people who don’t have antibodies. And then we would have reached that point where people want to reach much earlier."The problem we have with respiratory diseases is at the time the vaccine was developed and came to market, after the election on Nov. 4 – surprisingly [stated with sarcasm] — the Wuhan-Milano virus strain against which the vaccine had been developed was not circulating anymore. At that time we [USA] had the strains that were incubated in Spain and France … So the vaccines were designed to create immunity against a strain that didn’t exist anymore and had been replaced by strains that evolved to escape natural immunity and likely at least part of the vaccine-induced immunity."It’s a typical situation where the vaccines come at a time the disease isn’t there anymore."There is a discussion right now whether mass vaccination is bad. And it definitely is not. There is no reason to be afraid of vaccination other than the usual adverse events that we have. You may say ‘I fear the adverse events more than the disease because it tends to be very mild.’ People can have that position. But there is no evidence that vaccination causes new strains."It’s just that we’re adding a couple of antibodies to the repertoire that we have. And having more antibodies makes us a bit more resistant to infections … And that reduces the time we reach herd immunity and reduces the risk of resistant strains emerging. So vaccines are good but probably not as good as the politicians were hoping they’d be."When Wittkowski is asked about his views on the current crop of novel synthetic biology vaccines, he responds: "I have no fundamental problems with that. The only problem is if we engineer these artificial envelopes … to protect the mRNA that we want to get into cells — to infect the cells — kind of — that mechanism is not very well understood yet. So there could be adverse events coming from this creation of an artificial enclosement that we want to put the mRNA in."On Anthony FauciWittkowski:"Let’s talk about real numbers like American politicians like Anthony Fauci spill at any point in time … it’s a different number every month because the politics are changing … At some point in time he was a scientist, but he has been in a highly political administrative position now for — how long? — 40 years."So it was politically importune to say what I’m saying now — so It’s politics, it’s not science."Mutant variantsWittkowski is resolute that it is lockdowns that give the greatest chance of creating new variants. The more stringent and longer the lockdown and the longer it takes to achieve herd immunity, the greater the risk. Spain, he says, the country that had one of the most draconian lockdowns, incubated the first resistant strain. It then came to the UK in October or November 2020."Viruses mutate … they have evolutionary pressure to mutate in two dimensions. One is the disease gets milder because a virus that kills the host can spread less. So disease severity is not good for the spread of the virus … so that more and more people get infected, remain alive, spread the virus. It can become more infectious and in the end everyone gets infected and no-one knows about it anymore because there’s no phenotype anymore … that is the normal course of evolution."Originally published by Alliance for Natural Health International.