News of the World

Wednesday, February 8, 2023

Watchdog rips press on Russiagate

In case you missed it, here is Jeff Gerth's Columbia Journalism Review piece on the Trump-press war that the press lost [despite its major contribution to his overthrow in 2020]:

The press versus the president
https://www.cjr.org/special_report/trumped-up-press-versus-president-part-1.php

Gerth is a former reporter for the New York Times.

Gerth targets the New York Times, under then Executive Editor Dean Baquet, for a failure to deal responsibly with the fact that Robert Mueller, special counsel during the Trump years, was not going to confirm the press's oft-repeated "Russiagate" allegations.

Robert S. Mueller III
Dean Baquet

Tuesday, February 7, 2023

Free? Is that a fact?

Ground News boasts that it alerts readers to the credibility of news sources.

Yet, it has a bit of a problem with its own factuality. One Ground News page urged that we "Subscribe now" and "Sign up for free." But when you hit the signup button you are directed to a page that requires paid subscriptions, with no free option. Evidently by "free," Ground News means you are free to click the link.

Yes, yes. Mere tawdry marketing. But when one considers all the trouble to which Ground News goes in order to rate the factuality and credibility of news, eyebrows are bound to go up.

Vitamin D seen to curb diabetes

Some 11.3 percent of U.S. adults are afflicted with adult-onset diabetes. But, according to Dr. John Campbell's analysis of a new study, use of vitamin D drastically reduces the risk of contracting the disease.

The study was led by Anastassios G. Pittas, MD, MS, Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism, Tufts Medical Center, Boston.

Vitamin D and Risk for Type 2 Diabetes in People With Prediabetes
https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M22-3018

Backup link:
https://youtu.be/KqzaKro5Bt0

Sunday, February 5, 2023

Vitamin D found to curb covid

Vitamin D strongly tends to keep hospitalized covid patients out of intensive care, according to an analysis of a group of studies. And death rates are kept substantially down, the analysts report.

The authors urged further studies.

Christiano Argano, Raffaella Mallaci Bocchio, Giuseppe Natoli, Salvatore Scibetta, Salvatore Corrao and Marika Lo Monaco are all associated with the Internal Medicine Department, National Relevance Hospital Trust, Palermo, Italy. Lo Monaco is also associated with the University of Palermo. All the authors have numerous scientific papers to their credit.

Protective Effect of Vitamin D Supplementation
on COVID-19-Related Intensive Care
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9864223/

The authors found:

The current evidence supports the benefits of vitamin D interventions in patients hospitalized with COVID-19 due to the protective effect provided by vitamin D against ICU admission and mortality. A meta-analysis per se does not allow us to state whether the results are truly positive or false-positive. In addition, the inclusion of studies with large effect sizes and significant heterogeneity separates us from the truth. For this reason, a TSA is mandatory to verify the reliability of meta-analysis results. In conclusion, the positive results highlighted again and now validated by TSAs suggest that an indisputable association between vitamin D supplementation and the protective effect on ICU admission can be considered definitive evidence. On the contrary, further studies are needed to assess the utilization of vitamin D regarding the risk of death in patients hospitalized with COVID-19.

A useful discussion of the vitamin D report is given by Dr. John Campbell, a sometimes controversial covid commentator. In the video he laments the fact that U.S., UK and Canadian health authorities do not recommend vitamin D as a preventive for covid and other viral infections, such as influenza.

Backup link:
https://youtu.be/x5sc7G4s4CY

Tuesday, January 24, 2023

Gates: Pandemic vaxes highly flawed

Bill Gates, the billionaire promoter of vaccination programs worldwide, has made a candid public admission that the current pandemic vaccines are largely ineffective, thus implicitly condemning the universal vaccination agendas of a number of countries and politicians.

Speaking before a think tank audience in Sydney, Australia, Gates said three major problems of vaccines need fixing. "The current vaccines are not infection-blocking. They're not broad, so that when new variants come up, you lose protection. And, they have very short duration, particularly in the people who matter, which are old people."

Aside from suggesting that covid vaccines and boosters don't provide much protection, Gates indicates that only older people (and the immuno-compromised) need the vaccines -- even tho they have been vigorously promoted for the general population, including for healthy children, by government health authorities, partisan political leaders and teacher unions.

Gates said that with sufficient funding, including from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, these flaws could be overcome.

He praised Australia's health authorities for keeping the covid rate low thru use of vaccinations and lockdowns, which he contrasted with high covid rates generally in rich countries. The billionaire did not seem to notice that his candor on vaccine problems contradicts much of his foundation's public policy.

You can find the relevant segment at 54:30.
Backup link:
https://youtu.be/038__DssSv0

Lowy Institute is a Sydney, Australia, think tank.

Video came to my attention via Jordan Schachtel at the Dossier