Today's Must-Reads - 8 April 2023

A selection of the latest news, studies, reports and articles

I spend a lot of time each day gathering together new information and interesting articles. I then pick one or two of the most interesting topics and write about them. However, that leaves a lot of missed out information that I’m not sharing.

Below is a summary of all the latest articles and information that I’ve found. Today, this is a slimmed down version for all subscribers but will be for paid subscribers only a lot of the time in the future.

Please consider taking out a paid subscription because it enables me to spend longer reporting on the news that isn’t, but should be reported.

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Climate Change

• Of course it was never going to end with Covid. Brazil are considering the possibility of declaring a permanent state of climate emergency in 1,038 municipalities mapped as most vulnerable.

Covid

• A University of Miami research project found that the SARS-CoV-2 virus breached a mother’s placenta and caused brain damage to two newborn babies. The study was published in the Journal of Pediatrics and is the first case report to confirm cross-placental COVID-19 transmission leading to brain injury in newborns.

• The Covid spike protein also causes negative impacts on aquatic animals. In this experiment, the spike didn’t do good things to tadpoles so who knows why people thought it was a good idea to get human cells to grow this stuff.

Covid Mandates & Lockdowns

• Another unshocking revelation - masks in hospitals were a waste of time. A new study finds that the mask policy made no difference to Covid infection rates.

• Fauci doesn’t seem to recall a lot. However, here he is forced to admit that masks don’t work and recommended that his friend not wear a mask.

  TexasLindsay™ @TexasLindsay_

  NEW: Fauci forced to admit he told his friend, Sylvia Burrell a former HHS Official, why she didn’t need to wear a mask in a 2020 email reply.

• Detectives from the Covid-19 National Death Enquiry Team in Scotland are looking into calls for former SNP Ministers to be prosecuted over avoidable deaths caused by pandemic blunders. They believe Scottish Government figures can be prosecuted for corporate manslaughter under the Health and Safety at Work Act.

• Will you forget what happened to you over the last few years? According to ABC News, people may be forgetting their COVID pandemic memories. I won’t be forgetting any time soon.

• On the other hand, others are missing lockdowns! Nostalgia for 2020 is sweeping TikTok as GenZ-ers insist the pandemic was their ‘best year ever’ and a welcome break from reality.

• America’s pandemic response may be winding down but the number of children being treated for mental health disorders isn’t slowing down. Doctors are concerned that the worst effects of the pandemic could still be ahead.

• Long Covid or Long masks? A new study says masks interfered with O2-uptake and CO2-release and compromised respiratory compensation. So far, several mask related symptoms may have been misinterpreted as long COVID-19 symptoms. In the absence of strong empirical evidence of effectiveness, mask wearing should not be mandated let alone enforced by law.

• The NY Times looks at the school where the pandemic never ended. As the nation’s schools ‘return to normal,’ teachers in an LA neighbourhood hit hard by Covid are left to mange their students’ grief - and their own.

• Epidemiologist Gerald Gartlehner on the benefits of quarantine for the unvaccinated: "It was a purely political decision. They wanted to somehow satisfy the vaccinated population by making life difficult for the unvaccinated. From an epidemiological point of view, it had no real effect at all.

  NinnyD 🇬🇧❤️🇺🇸 Waiting~4~the Revolution @ninnyd101

  The COVID-19 house of cards continues to crumble. Epidemiologist Gerald Gartlehner on the benefits of quarantine for the unvaccinated: "It was a purely political decision. They wanted to somehow satisfy the vaccinated population by making life difficult for the unvaccinated.… https://t.co/JJOWucufv3

Economy/Energy/Finance

• Banks in the US kept tightening lending terms for business and consumer loans over the past three months out of concern about a weakening economic outlook. Demand for loans from businesses and consumers was also weaker. US bank lending contracted by the most on record in the last two weeks of March.

• The Fed is getting worried and having to play defence. In a statement about FedNow they say it is not related to a digital currency nor a step to eliminating cash. Later on they say a CBDC would not replace cash or other payment options.

• China is continuing to boost its gold reserves. In March it added around 18 tons to its reserves as central banks globally continue to pile up gold in the face of high inflation and heightened geopolitical risks.

Health

• Moderna is back to save us all. They are confident that their jabs for cancer, cardiovascular and autoimmune diseases, and other conditions will be ready by 2030. 15 years worth of progress has been “unspooled” in 12 to 18 months thanks to the success of the Covid jab, says Moderna.

• Surprise surprise, hydroxychloroquine does protect patients from COVID-19 related death. I wonder why they said it didn’t…hmmm.

Technology

• Return of the Luddites - One of the world’s loudest artificial intelligence critics has issued a stark call to not only put a pause on AI but to militantly put an end to it by bombing data centres - before it ends us instead. He says that after AGI, “literally everyone on Earth will die”.

• Can we no longer believe anything we see? DNYUZ says advancements in AI are already fuelling disinformation and being used to stoke political divisions. Authoritarian governments have created seemingly realistic news broadcasters to advance their political goals.

• It definitely wasn’t a bubble financed by cheap money - tech workers say they were hired to do nothing. Amid layoffs, former workers in tech are venting about jobs with little to do; ‘hoarding us like Pokémon cards’.

Vaccines

• Pfizer hid data on waning immunity. They gave no explanation for why they delayed the publication of its data but in that four-month delay, approximately 90 million Americans got vaccinated, unaware that data were already in hand, hinting that two doses may not be the final ask.

• Go on have another booster. But make it quick because you need another one in June. The NHS are telling over 75s to have their first booster (of 2023) before 5 May so that they can have a second before 30 June.

• Babies and under 5s in the UK are to be given the Covid vaccine for the first time. Parents of vulnerable children are to be contacted from mid-June after new advice is issued.

• Switzerland has withdrawn all Covid vaccination recommendations. Doctors can only administer the controversial vaccines in individual cases under certain conditions but then bear the risk of liability for vaccination damage.

• Professor Angus Dalgleish, Professor of Oncology at St Georges Hospital Medical School in London writes in the Express saying that the Covid vaccine booster now does more harm than good.