The Post-Partisan Emporium

Is Vaccine Effectiveness Against Death Mostly a Statistical Illusion? One of the big challenges in analysing the data on Covid has been definitions. What is a Covid death, what is a Covid case or infection? What the data appears to say can change radically depending on the definitions adopted. This has been a particular issue with vaccination, as vaccination status is subject to a variety of conflicting definitions. In particular, when does someone count as vaccinated? Is it as soon as they have the needle in their arm, or do they remain ‘unvaccinated’ after that for a period of time, say seven, 14 or 21 days? For instance, the recent  ICNARC report  stated the number of ICU admissions by vaccination status. But it also clarified that ‘unvaccinated’ includes those who received a jab less than 14 days prior to testing positive. This means that some (an unknown number) who were counted as unvaccinated had in fact received a dose. This may be more than just a minor problem. For o...

WHITE GIRLS’ SACRIFICE By  Poppy Coburn GROOMING GANGS: A STATE WITHIN THE UK STATE In 2017, the BBC premiered a three-part mini-series entitled  Three Girls . The program was centred around the Rochdale grooming gangs, dramatising the abuse and subsequent court case from the perspective of three underage victims. Perhaps even more harrowing than the depiction of sexual violence was the institutional unwillingness of the police and the local council to grapple with the scale of the organised child abuse.  The drama was showered in accolades: the three young actresses portrayed the agony of the abused children with skill and sensitivity, and the decision to show on-screen sexually violent acts hammered home the horror of the Rochdale scandal. I found myself both horrified and relieved — horrified that such a miscarriage of justice had been allowed to happen, yet relieved that the national attention the incidents had received would prevent such repugnant crimes from happeni...

Original Antigenic Sin is a Real and Very Serious Reason to Stop Vaccinating Everyone Two papers discover that cross-reacting antibodies from common coronavirus infections can hinder effective antibody response to SARS-CoV-2. eugyppius In September,  a small study conducted by researchers at the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam  looked at the antibody response of 20 severely ill Corona patients admitted to the ICU, comparing their cases to 12 mild infections and 6 negative controls. They found that the immune response of the severely ill, unlike that of the mild patients, was dominated by IgG antibodies against ordinary seasonal coronaviruses. In other words, the most severely ill patients had fewer naive B cells imprinting on SARS-CoV-2, and more memory B cells producing antibodies against the somewhat similar common coronaviruses these patients had recovered from in the past. As the authors note,  this is the phenomenon of Original Antigenic Sin . The immune systems ...

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Thanks to CoCoLuv9491 for recommending this article... Julian Assange Loses Appeal: British High Court Accepts U.S. Request to Extradite Him for Trial Press freedom groups have warned Assange's prosecution is a grave threat. The Biden DOJ ignored them, and today won a major victory toward permanently silencing the pioneering transparency activist. Glenn Greenwald 10 hr ago 382 456 WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange speaks to the media outside the High Court in London on December 5, 2011 where he attended a ruling in his long-running fight against extradition to Sweden (Photo by GEOFF CADDICK/AFP via Getty Images) In a London courtroom on Friday morning,  Julian Assange suffered a devastating blow to his quest for freedom. A two-judge appellate panel of the United Kingdom's High Court ruled that the U.S.'s request to extradite Assange to the U.S. to stand trial on espionage charges is legally valid. As a result, that extradition request will now be sent to British Home Secreta...

All freedom will be lost when the war is won War in Ukraine (or anywhere else) will usher in the digital Dark Ages Edward Slavsquat If war comes you can bet your Ugg boots that your “temporary” QR code will remain with you forever Recently there has been much hand-wringing over the possibility of a major military escalation in Ukraine. Many respected thinkers and analysts are warning that the unresolved conflict in Donbass could spark full-scale war—perhaps even a direct confrontation between Ukraine and the Russian Federation. Even the truly unthinkable—American and Russian soldiers blowing each other up—now seems vaguely possible. Crazier things have happened. Your humble Moscow correspondent is not a military analyst. We visited Donetsk twice and saw many terrible things but we do not pretend to have a deep understanding of what is happening there right now. Your correspondent at an East Ukraine kindergarten, circa April 2015 But here’s what we can say with near 100% certainty: If t...