The Centers for Disease Control released another study showing no statistically significant decrease in "daily case" or "death growth" rates from COVID-19 in areas with mask mandates.  This comes after a similar CDC study in October indicated that mask mandates do not appear to have slowed or stopped the spread of the coronavirus at all.  Still, the CDC continues to recommend that all Americans wear masks, except in certain private settings when individuals are fully vaccinated, unless the goalpost-shifting Dr. Fauci gets his way.

This whole "masks don't seem to be having much effect, but wear them anyway" bureaucratic calculus may seem like a frivolous controversy to Americans preoccupied with the pandemic, but for Americans who are equally worried about the State's steady encroachment into the lives of families, mask mandates are the worst kind of noxious administrative abuse — another iteration of government coercion that constricts a person's freedom while accomplishing next to nothing.  It's government rule-making for the sake of rule-making whose chief purpose is to demonstrate that it is the government's job to command and each citizen's duty to readily obey.

Mask mandates are the perfect metaphor for a government that demands obedience:

Mask mandates are reminiscent of Barack Obama's belief that wealthy Americans should be taxed at higher rates, even if the imposition of those new taxes produces no net benefit for the federal treasury.  By his own admission, Obama's insistence on increasing taxes for wealthy Americans was not about generating government revenue or reducing government debt, but rather about punishing individual Americans for having acquired too much personal wealth.  It was a way for Obama to prove that he takes income inequality seriously while doing nothing about it.

In the same way, our American mask mandates are not really about reducing the spread of disease or "following the science," but rather about insisting that individual Americans prove through their attire that they take COVID-19 seriously, even if masks do nothing about it.

Just as Obama justifies the government's confiscation of wealth for confiscation's sake, the CDC justifies the imposition of mask mandates for imposition's sake.  It is the sartorial manifestation of the government's demand that an individual submit to its power and authority.

And it has unfortunately become the standard operating procedure for the American government.

In poll after poll, Americans have made it clear that they strongly oppose mass illegal immigration.  Ignoring their wishes, the Biden administration has set into place policies that have created a border crisis with no end in sight.

In poll after poll, Americans have made it clear that jobs and the economy are more important than recklessly combatting a global temperature change of a few hundredths of a degree over the next century in the name of "climate justice."  Ignoring their assessment, the Biden administration has killed off oil and gas jobs, increased the cost of gasoline at the pump, and handcuffed America's energy independence in the name of green dreams — strengthening the economies of Russia, China, and Iran while impoverishing millions of Americans.

In poll after poll, Americans have made it clear that they prefer increasing manufacturing and economic diversification at home to depending upon the supply chains and resources of an adversarial China.  Instead, the Biden administration has actively discarded the "America First" economic policies of President Trump and reoriented America back toward the globalist initiatives of the last half-century that benefit transnational banks and Wall Street traders while crippling Main Street businesses and making America vulnerable to her enemies.

For Americans who believe that the government spends most of its time doing the exact opposite of what America overwhelmingly prefers, a mask mandate that accomplishes so little in the way of public health seems like the perfect metaphor for the government's desire to shut up its own citizenry.  What Big Tech censorship fails to catch in its net, Big Government catches in its own.

"What were you saying about ending endless wars, America?  We couldn't hear you underneath two masks.  Now let's invade Syria and build democracies everywhere but here at home."

Mask mandates reflect the American government's descent toward socialism:

Mask mandates are also an illustration of the sharp philosophical divide straining Americans into two camps guided by conflicting worldviews.  In the one are true democrats who believe that all legitimate government power is derived from individual consent, and in the other are true socialists who sanctify the exercise of government power in pursuit of collectivist goals at the expense of individual liberty.

Alexis de Tocqueville contrasted these worldviews aptly: "Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom; socialism restricts it.  Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number.  Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality.  But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude."

When viewed alongside de Tocqueville's perceptive taxonomy, it is not hard to understand why mask mandates proving to have scant efficacy strike so many Americans as nothing more than the government's attempt to seek "equality in restraint and servitude."  Whether a scientific study actually supports the hypothesis that coronavirus transmission can be retarded through the use of masks has become irrelevant.  All that is important is that government functionaries deem the practice to be in the public's best interest.  An individual is forced to abandon personal reason and judgment for those of the government, a proposition that strikes a true democrat as inherently delegitimizing of any democratic system.

For Americans who believe that society should operate freely from government as much as possible and that government action should be reserved to handle only those problems that a cooperative society cannot accomplish on its own, relatively useless government dictates are absolute poison.  They reinforce President Reagan's biting observation that the "nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."  Americans with a healthy suspicion of government authority have no trouble understanding this joke.  They do not care about the government's "good intentions"; they detest the government's insistence on so casually and unnecessarily interjecting itself into the lives of private citizens.

In a sense, mask mandates have become nothing more than dress code loyalty oaths to the same state and local governments that have claimed for themselves the extraconstitutional powers to restrict free speech, religious liberty, personal commerce, and voluntary movement beyond the home in the name of a virus.  They represent Americans' symbolic acquiescence to government's mass lockdowns and economic shutdowns and their tacit acceptance that government's unconstitutional power grabs are somehow legitimate.

This symbolism, not the statistically insignificant decrease in infection and death rates in areas with strict mask mandates, is what actually animates those Americans who insist on controlling what covers other Americans' faces.  An American who refuses to participate in virus virtue-signaling is an American who refuses to believe that the economic, educational, and social carnage of the last year was justified.

And that repudiation is just too much for proponents of bigger and more intrusive government to take in stride.

Source: American Thinker

The Centers for Disease Control released another study showing no statistically significant decrease in "daily case" or "death growth" rates from COVID-19 in areas with mask mandates.  This comes after a similar CDC study in October indicated that mask mandates do not appear to have slowed or stopped the spread of the coronavirus at all.  Still, the CDC continues to recommend that all Americans wear masks, except in certain private settings when individuals are fully vaccinated, unless the goalpost-shifting Dr. Fauci gets his way.

This whole "masks don't seem to be having much effect, but wear them anyway" bureaucratic calculus may seem like a frivolous controversy to Americans preoccupied with the pandemic, but for Americans who are equally worried about the State's steady encroachment into the lives of families, mask mandates are the worst kind of noxious administrative abuse — another iteration of government coercion that constricts a person's freedom while accomplishing next to nothing.  It's government rule-making for the sake of rule-making whose chief purpose is to demonstrate that it is the government's job to command and each citizen's duty to readily obey.

Mask mandates are the perfect metaphor for a government that demands obedience:

Mask mandates are reminiscent of Barack Obama's belief that wealthy Americans should be taxed at higher rates, even if the imposition of those new taxes produces no net benefit for the federal treasury.  By his own admission, Obama's insistence on increasing taxes for wealthy Americans was not about generating government revenue or reducing government debt, but rather about punishing individual Americans for having acquired too much personal wealth.  It was a way for Obama to prove that he takes income inequality seriously while doing nothing about it.

In the same way, our American mask mandates are not really about reducing the spread of disease or "following the science," but rather about insisting that individual Americans prove through their attire that they take COVID-19 seriously, even if masks do nothing about it.

Just as Obama justifies the government's confiscation of wealth for confiscation's sake, the CDC justifies the imposition of mask mandates for imposition's sake.  It is the sartorial manifestation of the government's demand that an individual submit to its power and authority.

And it has unfortunately become the standard operating procedure for the American government.

In poll after poll, Americans have made it clear that they strongly oppose mass illegal immigration.  Ignoring their wishes, the Biden administration has set into place policies that have created a border crisis with no end in sight.

In poll after poll, Americans have made it clear that jobs and the economy are more important than recklessly combatting a global temperature change of a few hundredths of a degree over the next century in the name of "climate justice."  Ignoring their assessment, the Biden administration has killed off oil and gas jobs, increased the cost of gasoline at the pump, and handcuffed America's energy independence in the name of green dreams — strengthening the economies of Russia, China, and Iran while impoverishing millions of Americans.

In poll after poll, Americans have made it clear that they prefer increasing manufacturing and economic diversification at home to depending upon the supply chains and resources of an adversarial China.  Instead, the Biden administration has actively discarded the "America First" economic policies of President Trump and reoriented America back toward the globalist initiatives of the last half-century that benefit transnational banks and Wall Street traders while crippling Main Street businesses and making America vulnerable to her enemies.

For Americans who believe that the government spends most of its time doing the exact opposite of what America overwhelmingly prefers, a mask mandate that accomplishes so little in the way of public health seems like the perfect metaphor for the government's desire to shut up its own citizenry.  What Big Tech censorship fails to catch in its net, Big Government catches in its own.

"What were you saying about ending endless wars, America?  We couldn't hear you underneath two masks.  Now let's invade Syria and build democracies everywhere but here at home."

Mask mandates reflect the American government's descent toward socialism:

Mask mandates are also an illustration of the sharp philosophical divide straining Americans into two camps guided by conflicting worldviews.  In the one are true democrats who believe that all legitimate government power is derived from individual consent, and in the other are true socialists who sanctify the exercise of government power in pursuit of collectivist goals at the expense of individual liberty.

Alexis de Tocqueville contrasted these worldviews aptly: "Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom; socialism restricts it.  Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number.  Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality.  But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude."

When viewed alongside de Tocqueville's perceptive taxonomy, it is not hard to understand why mask mandates proving to have scant efficacy strike so many Americans as nothing more than the government's attempt to seek "equality in restraint and servitude."  Whether a scientific study actually supports the hypothesis that coronavirus transmission can be retarded through the use of masks has become irrelevant.  All that is important is that government functionaries deem the practice to be in the public's best interest.  An individual is forced to abandon personal reason and judgment for those of the government, a proposition that strikes a true democrat as inherently delegitimizing of any democratic system.

For Americans who believe that society should operate freely from government as much as possible and that government action should be reserved to handle only those problems that a cooperative society cannot accomplish on its own, relatively useless government dictates are absolute poison.  They reinforce President Reagan's biting observation that the "nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."  Americans with a healthy suspicion of government authority have no trouble understanding this joke.  They do not care about the government's "good intentions"; they detest the government's insistence on so casually and unnecessarily interjecting itself into the lives of private citizens.

In a sense, mask mandates have become nothing more than dress code loyalty oaths to the same state and local governments that have claimed for themselves the extraconstitutional powers to restrict free speech, religious liberty, personal commerce, and voluntary movement beyond the home in the name of a virus.  They represent Americans' symbolic acquiescence to government's mass lockdowns and economic shutdowns and their tacit acceptance that government's unconstitutional power grabs are somehow legitimate.

This symbolism, not the statistically insignificant decrease in infection and death rates in areas with strict mask mandates, is what actually animates those Americans who insist on controlling what covers other Americans' faces.  An American who refuses to participate in virus virtue-signaling is an American who refuses to believe that the economic, educational, and social carnage of the last year was justified.

And that repudiation is just too much for proponents of bigger and more intrusive government to take in stride.

Source: American Thinker

He even sneaks in an anti-climate change line. Well, anyway, that is how I am interpreting the song.

W'e took it on the chin
The numbers were so grim
Bossed around by pricks
Stiffen upper lips
Pacing in the yard
You’re trying to take the mick
You must think i'm really thick

Looking at the graphs with a magnifying glass
Cancel all the tours footballs fake applause
No more travel brochures
Virtual premieres
Ive got nothing left to wear

Looking out from these prison walls
You got to rob peter if you're paying paul
But its easy easy everything’s gonna get really freaky
Alright on the night
Soon it ll be be a memory you're trying to remember to forget

That's a pretty mask
But never take a chance tik tok stupid dance
Took a samba class i landed on my ass
Trying to write a tune you better hook me up to zoom
See my poncey books teach myself to cook
Way too much tv its lobotomising me
Think ive put on weight
Ill have another drink then ill clean the kitchen sink

We escaped from the prison walls
Open the windows and open the doors
But its easy easy
Everything s gonna get really freaky
Alright on the night
Its gonna be a garden of earthly delights
Easy sleazy its gonna be smooth and greasy
Yeah easy believe me
Itll only be a memory you're trying to remember
To forget

Shooting the vaccine bill gates is in my bloodstream
Its mind control
The earth is flat and cold its never warming up
The arctics turned to slush
The second comings late
There's aliens in the deep state

We'll escape from these prison walls
Now were out of these prison walls
You gotta pay peter if you're robbing paul
But its easy easy everything s gonna be really freaky
Alright on the night
Were all headed back to paradise
Yeah easy believe me
It'll be a memory you’re trying to remember to forget
Easy cheesy everyone sing please please me
It’ll be a memory you're trying to remember to forget

Source: Target Liberty

He even sneaks in an anti-climate change line. Well, anyway, that is how I am interpreting the song.

W'e took it on the chin
The numbers were so grim
Bossed around by pricks
Stiffen upper lips
Pacing in the yard
You’re trying to take the mick
You must think i'm really thick

Looking at the graphs with a magnifying glass
Cancel all the tours footballs fake applause
No more travel brochures
Virtual premieres
Ive got nothing left to wear

Looking out from these prison walls
You got to rob peter if you're paying paul
But its easy easy everything’s gonna get really freaky
Alright on the night
Soon it ll be be a memory you're trying to remember to forget

That's a pretty mask
But never take a chance tik tok stupid dance
Took a samba class i landed on my ass
Trying to write a tune you better hook me up to zoom
See my poncey books teach myself to cook
Way too much tv its lobotomising me
Think ive put on weight
Ill have another drink then ill clean the kitchen sink

We escaped from the prison walls
Open the windows and open the doors
But its easy easy
Everything s gonna get really freaky
Alright on the night
Its gonna be a garden of earthly delights
Easy sleazy its gonna be smooth and greasy
Yeah easy believe me
Itll only be a memory you're trying to remember
To forget

Shooting the vaccine bill gates is in my bloodstream
Its mind control
The earth is flat and cold its never warming up
The arctics turned to slush
The second comings late
There's aliens in the deep state

We'll escape from these prison walls
Now were out of these prison walls
You gotta pay peter if you're robbing paul
But its easy easy everything s gonna be really freaky
Alright on the night
Were all headed back to paradise
Yeah easy believe me
It'll be a memory you’re trying to remember to forget
Easy cheesy everyone sing please please me
It’ll be a memory you're trying to remember to forget

Source: Target Liberty

Injections of Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose coronavirus vaccine came to a sudden halt in much of the country on Tuesday after federal health agencies called for a pause in the vaccine’s use following the emergence of a rare blood clotting disorder in six recipients.

All six were women between the ages of 18 and 48 [ie, not at risk from the virus] and all developed the illness within one to three weeks of vaccination. One woman died and a second woman in Nebraska has been hospitalized in critical condition.

Nearly seven million people in the United States have received Johnson & Johnson shots so far, and about nine million more doses have been shipped out to the states, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“We are recommending a pause in the use of this vaccine out of an abundance of caution,” Dr. Peter Marks, director of the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, and Dr. Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the C.D.C., said in a joint statement. “Right now, these adverse events appear to be extremely rare.”

While the move was framed as a recommendation to health practitioners, the impact was immediate. By Tuesday afternoon, virtually every state and the District of Columbia had announced a pause in Johnson & Johnson vaccine injections.

The federal government temporarily halted administration of the shots by the U.S. military, providers at federally-run sites and CVS and Walgreens, two pharmacy giants that participate in a federal vaccination program, officials said.

Dr. Janet Woodcock, the acting commissioner of the F.D.A., said at a news conference Tuesday that the pause was only expected to last “a matter of days,” although she said the time frame depends on “what we learn in the next few days.” Dr. Schuchat said at the same briefing that the pause was enacted in part to “prepare the health care system to recognize and treat patients appropriately.”

Scientists with the F.D.A. and C.D.C. will jointly examine possible links between the vaccine and the disorder and determine whether the F.D.A. should continue to authorize use of the vaccine for all adults or modify the authorization, possibly limiting it to certain population groups. An emergency meeting of the C.D.C.’s outside vaccine advisory committee has been scheduled for Wednesday.

The move could complicate the nation’s vaccination efforts at a time when many states are confronting a surge in new cases and seeking to address vaccine hesitancy. Regulators in Europe and elsewhere are concerned about a similar issue with another coronavirus vaccine, developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University researchers, that has not been authorized for emergency use in the United States. At the news conference, Dr. Marks drew a connection between the two vaccines, saying the cases involving rare blood clots were very similar.

The vast majority of the vaccine supply in the United States comes from two other manufacturers, Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, which together deliver more than 23 million doses a week of their two-shot vaccines. Federal officials stressed Tuesday that there have been no significant safety concerns about either of those vaccines.

But while shipments of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine have been much more limited, the Biden administration had still been counting on using hundreds of thousands of doses every week. In addition to requiring only a single dose, the vaccine is easier to ship and store than the other two.

Mark D. Levine, a New York City councilman, lamented on Twitter that the pause would be a “huge setback” for the city’s vaccination program, which he said relies “entirely on J & J” to inoculate the homebound, reach small private doctors’ offices and supply mobile vaccination vans.

“NYC now has the biggest messaging challenge yet in vaccination,” he wrote. “We have to do everything possible to avoid a collapse in confidence in vaccination overall.”

Jeffrey D. Zients, the White House Covid-19 response coordinator, said Tuesday the pause “will not have a significant impact” on the nation’s vaccination program, and that the administration will still “reach every adult who wants to be vaccinated.”

With the Johnson & Johnson setback, federal officials expect there will only be enough to cover fewer than 230 million adults, roughly 30 million shy of the total adult population. But a certain percentage of adults are expected to refuse shots, despite public campaigns to convince them, so the supply may cover all the demand.

Federal officials are concerned that doctors may not be trained to spot or treat the rare disorder if recipients of the vaccine develop symptoms of it. They said on Tuesday morning that a standard treatment for blood clots — use of an anticoagulant drug — could be dangerous or even fatal in such cases.

Dr. Schuchat, the C.D.C. official, said that the risk of dangerous blood clots was “very low” for people who received Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine more than a month ago.

“For people who recently got the vaccine within the last couple of weeks, they should be aware to look for any symptoms. If you receive the vaccine and develop severe headaches, abdominal pain, leg pain or shortness of breath, you should contact your health care provider and seek medical treatment,” she said.

In a statement, Johnson & Johnson said, “We have been working closely with medical experts and health authorities, and we strongly support the open communication of this information to health care professionals and the public.”

The company also said it was reviewing these cases with European health authorities. “We have made the decision to proactively delay the rollout of our vaccine in Europe,” the company said in its statement.

In the United States alone, 300,000 to 600,000 people a year develop blood clots, according to C.D.C. data. But the particular blood clotting disorder that the vaccine recipients developed, known as cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, is extremely rare. Dr. Schuchat described the condition as “a severe strokelike illness linked to low platelet counts.”

All of the women developed the illness within about one to three weeks of vaccination, with a median time of nine days. The Nebraska woman who is now hospitalized is in her late 40s and developed blood clots two weeks after her shot, state health officials said.

Government experts are concerned that the blood clots are linked to an immune system response triggered by the vaccine. Federal officials said there was broad agreement in the senior ranks of the administration about the need to pause use of the vaccine while the cases are investigated.

Dr. Marks said that the federal government was not issuing an order to suspend the vaccine, adding that health providers may decide that for a particular patient, the benefits of a shot outweigh the risks. “We’re not going to stop that provider from administering the vaccine because it could be right,” he said.

The decision is a fresh blow to Johnson & Johnson. Late last month, the company discovered that workers at a Baltimore plant run by its subcontractor had accidentally contaminated a batch of vaccine, forcing the firm to throw out the equivalent of 13 million to 15 million doses. That plant was supposed to take over supply of the vaccine to the United States from Johnson & Johnson’s Dutch plants, which were certified by federal regulators earlier this year.

The Baltimore plant’s certification by the F.D.A. has now been delayed while inspectors investigate quality control issues, sharply reducing the supply of Johnson & Johnson vaccine. The sudden drop in available doses led to widespread complaints from governors and state health officials who had been expecting much bigger shipments of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine this week than they got.

States have been using the vaccine in a broad range of settings, including at mass vaccination sites and on college campuses. The vaccine’s one-shot approach has proved popular, and officials have directed it to transient, rural and isolated communities where following up with a second dose is more complicated.

It is common for regulators to investigate “safety signals” in new vaccines and other medical products. Very often, the signals prove not to be of concern. But the concerns about Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine mirror concerns about AstraZeneca’s, which European regulators began investigating last month after some recipients developed blood clots.

Out of 34 million people who received the vaccine in Britain, the European Union and three other countries, 222 experienced blood clots that were linked with a low level of platelets. The majority of these cases occurred within the first 14 days following vaccination, mostly in women under 60 years of age.

On April 7, the European Medicines Agency, the main regulatory agency, concluded that the disorder was a very rare side effect of the vaccine. Researchers in Germany and Norway published studies on April 9 suggesting that in very rare cases, the AstraZeneca vaccine caused people to make antibodies that activated their own platelets.

Nevertheless, the regulators argued, the benefit of the vaccine — keeping people from being infected with the coronavirus or keeping those few who get Covid-19 out of the hospital — vastly outweighed that small risk. Countries in Europe and elsewhere continued to give the vaccine to older people, who face a high risk of severe disease and death from Covid-19, while restricting it in younger people.

Both AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson use the same platform for their vaccine, a virus known as an adenovirus.

On Tuesday, the Australian government announced it would not purchase Johnson & Johnson vaccines. They cited Johnson & Johnson’s use of an adenovirus. But there is no obvious reason adenovirus-based vaccines in particular would cause rare blood clots associated with low platelet levels.

AstraZeneca has not yet applied for an emergency use authorization in the United States.

The Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines use a different technology to produce immunity.

The first sign of concern about Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine came on April 9, when the European Medicines Agency announced that it was investigating reports of four cases of blood clots in people who received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in the United States. One case occurred in the clinical trial that took place before the vaccine was authorized. Three occurred in the vaccine rollout. One of them was fatal, the agency said.

The regulators described these reports as a “safety signal” — a cluster of cases requiring further investigation. But they said it wasn’t clear if the vaccine caused the clots.

Source: The New York Times

Injections of Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose coronavirus vaccine came to a sudden halt in much of the country on Tuesday after federal health agencies called for a pause in the vaccine’s use following the emergence of a rare blood clotting disorder in six recipients.

All six were women between the ages of 18 and 48 [ie, not at risk from the virus] and all developed the illness within one to three weeks of vaccination. One woman died and a second woman in Nebraska has been hospitalized in critical condition.

Nearly seven million people in the United States have received Johnson & Johnson shots so far, and about nine million more doses have been shipped out to the states, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“We are recommending a pause in the use of this vaccine out of an abundance of caution,” Dr. Peter Marks, director of the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, and Dr. Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the C.D.C., said in a joint statement. “Right now, these adverse events appear to be extremely rare.”

While the move was framed as a recommendation to health practitioners, the impact was immediate. By Tuesday afternoon, virtually every state and the District of Columbia had announced a pause in Johnson & Johnson vaccine injections.

The federal government temporarily halted administration of the shots by the U.S. military, providers at federally-run sites and CVS and Walgreens, two pharmacy giants that participate in a federal vaccination program, officials said.

Dr. Janet Woodcock, the acting commissioner of the F.D.A., said at a news conference Tuesday that the pause was only expected to last “a matter of days,” although she said the time frame depends on “what we learn in the next few days.” Dr. Schuchat said at the same briefing that the pause was enacted in part to “prepare the health care system to recognize and treat patients appropriately.”

Scientists with the F.D.A. and C.D.C. will jointly examine possible links between the vaccine and the disorder and determine whether the F.D.A. should continue to authorize use of the vaccine for all adults or modify the authorization, possibly limiting it to certain population groups. An emergency meeting of the C.D.C.’s outside vaccine advisory committee has been scheduled for Wednesday.

The move could complicate the nation’s vaccination efforts at a time when many states are confronting a surge in new cases and seeking to address vaccine hesitancy. Regulators in Europe and elsewhere are concerned about a similar issue with another coronavirus vaccine, developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University researchers, that has not been authorized for emergency use in the United States. At the news conference, Dr. Marks drew a connection between the two vaccines, saying the cases involving rare blood clots were very similar.

The vast majority of the vaccine supply in the United States comes from two other manufacturers, Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, which together deliver more than 23 million doses a week of their two-shot vaccines. Federal officials stressed Tuesday that there have been no significant safety concerns about either of those vaccines.

But while shipments of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine have been much more limited, the Biden administration had still been counting on using hundreds of thousands of doses every week. In addition to requiring only a single dose, the vaccine is easier to ship and store than the other two.

Mark D. Levine, a New York City councilman, lamented on Twitter that the pause would be a “huge setback” for the city’s vaccination program, which he said relies “entirely on J & J” to inoculate the homebound, reach small private doctors’ offices and supply mobile vaccination vans.

“NYC now has the biggest messaging challenge yet in vaccination,” he wrote. “We have to do everything possible to avoid a collapse in confidence in vaccination overall.”

Jeffrey D. Zients, the White House Covid-19 response coordinator, said Tuesday the pause “will not have a significant impact” on the nation’s vaccination program, and that the administration will still “reach every adult who wants to be vaccinated.”

With the Johnson & Johnson setback, federal officials expect there will only be enough to cover fewer than 230 million adults, roughly 30 million shy of the total adult population. But a certain percentage of adults are expected to refuse shots, despite public campaigns to convince them, so the supply may cover all the demand.

Federal officials are concerned that doctors may not be trained to spot or treat the rare disorder if recipients of the vaccine develop symptoms of it. They said on Tuesday morning that a standard treatment for blood clots — use of an anticoagulant drug — could be dangerous or even fatal in such cases.

Dr. Schuchat, the C.D.C. official, said that the risk of dangerous blood clots was “very low” for people who received Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine more than a month ago.

“For people who recently got the vaccine within the last couple of weeks, they should be aware to look for any symptoms. If you receive the vaccine and develop severe headaches, abdominal pain, leg pain or shortness of breath, you should contact your health care provider and seek medical treatment,” she said.

In a statement, Johnson & Johnson said, “We have been working closely with medical experts and health authorities, and we strongly support the open communication of this information to health care professionals and the public.”

The company also said it was reviewing these cases with European health authorities. “We have made the decision to proactively delay the rollout of our vaccine in Europe,” the company said in its statement.

In the United States alone, 300,000 to 600,000 people a year develop blood clots, according to C.D.C. data. But the particular blood clotting disorder that the vaccine recipients developed, known as cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, is extremely rare. Dr. Schuchat described the condition as “a severe strokelike illness linked to low platelet counts.”

All of the women developed the illness within about one to three weeks of vaccination, with a median time of nine days. The Nebraska woman who is now hospitalized is in her late 40s and developed blood clots two weeks after her shot, state health officials said.

Government experts are concerned that the blood clots are linked to an immune system response triggered by the vaccine. Federal officials said there was broad agreement in the senior ranks of the administration about the need to pause use of the vaccine while the cases are investigated.

Dr. Marks said that the federal government was not issuing an order to suspend the vaccine, adding that health providers may decide that for a particular patient, the benefits of a shot outweigh the risks. “We’re not going to stop that provider from administering the vaccine because it could be right,” he said.

The decision is a fresh blow to Johnson & Johnson. Late last month, the company discovered that workers at a Baltimore plant run by its subcontractor had accidentally contaminated a batch of vaccine, forcing the firm to throw out the equivalent of 13 million to 15 million doses. That plant was supposed to take over supply of the vaccine to the United States from Johnson & Johnson’s Dutch plants, which were certified by federal regulators earlier this year.

The Baltimore plant’s certification by the F.D.A. has now been delayed while inspectors investigate quality control issues, sharply reducing the supply of Johnson & Johnson vaccine. The sudden drop in available doses led to widespread complaints from governors and state health officials who had been expecting much bigger shipments of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine this week than they got.

States have been using the vaccine in a broad range of settings, including at mass vaccination sites and on college campuses. The vaccine’s one-shot approach has proved popular, and officials have directed it to transient, rural and isolated communities where following up with a second dose is more complicated.

It is common for regulators to investigate “safety signals” in new vaccines and other medical products. Very often, the signals prove not to be of concern. But the concerns about Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine mirror concerns about AstraZeneca’s, which European regulators began investigating last month after some recipients developed blood clots.

Out of 34 million people who received the vaccine in Britain, the European Union and three other countries, 222 experienced blood clots that were linked with a low level of platelets. The majority of these cases occurred within the first 14 days following vaccination, mostly in women under 60 years of age.

On April 7, the European Medicines Agency, the main regulatory agency, concluded that the disorder was a very rare side effect of the vaccine. Researchers in Germany and Norway published studies on April 9 suggesting that in very rare cases, the AstraZeneca vaccine caused people to make antibodies that activated their own platelets.

Nevertheless, the regulators argued, the benefit of the vaccine — keeping people from being infected with the coronavirus or keeping those few who get Covid-19 out of the hospital — vastly outweighed that small risk. Countries in Europe and elsewhere continued to give the vaccine to older people, who face a high risk of severe disease and death from Covid-19, while restricting it in younger people.

Both AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson use the same platform for their vaccine, a virus known as an adenovirus.

On Tuesday, the Australian government announced it would not purchase Johnson & Johnson vaccines. They cited Johnson & Johnson’s use of an adenovirus. But there is no obvious reason adenovirus-based vaccines in particular would cause rare blood clots associated with low platelet levels.

AstraZeneca has not yet applied for an emergency use authorization in the United States.

The Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines use a different technology to produce immunity.

The first sign of concern about Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine came on April 9, when the European Medicines Agency announced that it was investigating reports of four cases of blood clots in people who received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in the United States. One case occurred in the clinical trial that took place before the vaccine was authorized. Three occurred in the vaccine rollout. One of them was fatal, the agency said.

The regulators described these reports as a “safety signal” — a cluster of cases requiring further investigation. But they said it wasn’t clear if the vaccine caused the clots.

Source: The New York Times

Almost a quarter of registered Covid deaths are people who are not dying from the disease, new official figures show, as the Government was urged to move faster with the roadmap in the light of increasingly positive data.

The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that 23 per cent of coronavirus deaths registered are now people who have died "with" the virus rather than "from" an infection.

This means that, while the person who died will have tested positive for Covid, that was not the primary cause of their death recorded on the death certificate.

Other data also shows an increasingly positive picture of the state of the pandemic in the UK.

Daily death figures by "date of death" reveal that Britain has had no more than 28 deaths a day since the beginning of April, even though the government-announced deaths have been as high as 60.

This is because the Government gives a daily update on deaths based on the number reported that day, which can include deaths from days or weeks previously and therefore may not reflect the true decline in deaths. On Tuesday, the Government announced that there had been 23 further deaths.

Likewise, Oxford University has calculated that the number of people in hospital with an active Covid infection is likely to be around half the current published daily figure. Tuesday's official figure showed there were 2,537 Covid patients in hospital, with 230 new admissions.

However, despite the positive statistics, Boris Johnson issued a warning over the lifting of lockdown as he said it was the restrictions, not the vaccine rollout, that had predominantly kept Covid numbers low.

"It is very, very important for everybody to understand that the reduction in these numbers – in hospitalisations and in deaths and in infections – has not been achieved by the vaccination programme," he said.

"People don't, I think, appreciate that it's the lockdown that has been overwhelmingly important in delivering this improvement in the pandemic and in the figures that we’re seeing. So yes of course the vaccination programme has helped, but the bulk of the work in reducing the disease has been done by the lockdown."

The Prime Minister cautioned that case numbers will rise in the coming weeks as people gather in pub gardens and visit shops again [No they won't, as they haven't in Texas, Arkansas...],  with Number 10 carefully watching changes in the data. But he added that "at the moment I can't see any reason for us to change the road map, to deviate from the targets that we have set ourselves".

Tory MPs privately noted that Mr Johnson's comments on the vaccine struck a more cautious note than those used by Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, in a letter issued on Tuesday to MP colleagues.

In that letter, parts of which The Telegraph has seen, Mr Hancock said "it is because of the success of the vaccination rollout", alongside falling infection cases and hospitalisations, that "we are able carefully to lift restrictions" across the UK.

Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish First Minister, brought forward the reopening of non-essential shops. The speeding up of her reopening timetable comes after Mark Drakeford, the First Minister of Wales, brought forward indoor mixing by a week.

MPs urged Mr Johnson to also be driven by the positive data. Steve Baker, the deputy chairman of the Covid Research Group of Tory MPs sceptical about lockdown, told The Telegraph: "I know the Prime Minister is worried about case data in other countries. But we were promised the vaccine would break the link between cases, hospitalisations and deaths.

"We've been told repeatedly it has done. So of course we're looking to the Prime Minister to follow the data so that we can end the other harms that come with restrictions and lockdown. The sooner we're talking about the crisis in cancer care, the sooner we'll be solving it."

Covid deaths now make up just 4.9 per cent of deaths registered in England and Wales, compared with 45 per cent in mid-January, according to the ONS.

Prof Carl Heneghan, the director of the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine at Oxford University, said: "All the data is highly reassuring. There is becoming a case over the next couple of weeks to bring forward the reopening of hospitality, but that's offset with caution around big events.

"The issue is as we go about our daily lives there will be a slight increase in cases, but the key is not to panic. I think this over-cautiousness can be overcome by using a data-driven approach."

Experts also said it was clear that vaccination was having a "major" impact, with the death rate for over-60s now close to that of the under-60s despite being 43 times higher at the January peak.

Kevin McConway, emeritus professor of applied statistics at the Open University, said: "There's nothing in the death registration data that proves for certain that the differences in trends between older and younger people are caused by the vaccination, but vaccination must surely be playing a very major role.

"I'm not complacent, and we must still be careful now that restrictions on what we can do are being lifted. But the news so far is good."

More than 32 million people have now had a vaccine in the UK, with the Government announcing on Monday that the target of offering a jab to all those over 50, care home residents, those who are classed as vulnerable and those who work in health or social care had been reached.

However, a new analysis based on the fact that NHS England has said 19 out of 20 of those most at risk have had the jab suggests 1.3 million vulnerable people have not yet taken up the offer of a vaccine.

It is believed Mr Johnson's cautious message is being deliberately stressed now so that people will not be overly alarmed if Covid cases numbers begin to rise again throughout April.

He has said since first announcing his reopening roadmap in February that Covid cases would rise as restrictions eased. Downing Street believes the correct balance has been struck between limiting virus spread and helping businesses.

A well-placed senior government source downplayed any quickening of the reopening roadmap for England, stressing the current "earliest date" targets remained.

Source: The Telegraph

Almost a quarter of registered Covid deaths are people who are not dying from the disease, new official figures show, as the Government was urged to move faster with the roadmap in the light of increasingly positive data.

The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that 23 per cent of coronavirus deaths registered are now people who have died "with" the virus rather than "from" an infection.

This means that, while the person who died will have tested positive for Covid, that was not the primary cause of their death recorded on the death certificate.

Other data also shows an increasingly positive picture of the state of the pandemic in the UK.

Daily death figures by "date of death" reveal that Britain has had no more than 28 deaths a day since the beginning of April, even though the government-announced deaths have been as high as 60.

This is because the Government gives a daily update on deaths based on the number reported that day, which can include deaths from days or weeks previously and therefore may not reflect the true decline in deaths. On Tuesday, the Government announced that there had been 23 further deaths.

Likewise, Oxford University has calculated that the number of people in hospital with an active Covid infection is likely to be around half the current published daily figure. Tuesday's official figure showed there were 2,537 Covid patients in hospital, with 230 new admissions.

However, despite the positive statistics, Boris Johnson issued a warning over the lifting of lockdown as he said it was the restrictions, not the vaccine rollout, that had predominantly kept Covid numbers low.

"It is very, very important for everybody to understand that the reduction in these numbers – in hospitalisations and in deaths and in infections – has not been achieved by the vaccination programme," he said.

"People don't, I think, appreciate that it's the lockdown that has been overwhelmingly important in delivering this improvement in the pandemic and in the figures that we’re seeing. So yes of course the vaccination programme has helped, but the bulk of the work in reducing the disease has been done by the lockdown."

The Prime Minister cautioned that case numbers will rise in the coming weeks as people gather in pub gardens and visit shops again [No they won't, as they haven't in Texas, Arkansas...],  with Number 10 carefully watching changes in the data. But he added that "at the moment I can't see any reason for us to change the road map, to deviate from the targets that we have set ourselves".

Tory MPs privately noted that Mr Johnson's comments on the vaccine struck a more cautious note than those used by Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, in a letter issued on Tuesday to MP colleagues.

In that letter, parts of which The Telegraph has seen, Mr Hancock said "it is because of the success of the vaccination rollout", alongside falling infection cases and hospitalisations, that "we are able carefully to lift restrictions" across the UK.

Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish First Minister, brought forward the reopening of non-essential shops. The speeding up of her reopening timetable comes after Mark Drakeford, the First Minister of Wales, brought forward indoor mixing by a week.

MPs urged Mr Johnson to also be driven by the positive data. Steve Baker, the deputy chairman of the Covid Research Group of Tory MPs sceptical about lockdown, told The Telegraph: "I know the Prime Minister is worried about case data in other countries. But we were promised the vaccine would break the link between cases, hospitalisations and deaths.

"We've been told repeatedly it has done. So of course we're looking to the Prime Minister to follow the data so that we can end the other harms that come with restrictions and lockdown. The sooner we're talking about the crisis in cancer care, the sooner we'll be solving it."

Covid deaths now make up just 4.9 per cent of deaths registered in England and Wales, compared with 45 per cent in mid-January, according to the ONS.

Prof Carl Heneghan, the director of the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine at Oxford University, said: "All the data is highly reassuring. There is becoming a case over the next couple of weeks to bring forward the reopening of hospitality, but that's offset with caution around big events.

"The issue is as we go about our daily lives there will be a slight increase in cases, but the key is not to panic. I think this over-cautiousness can be overcome by using a data-driven approach."

Experts also said it was clear that vaccination was having a "major" impact, with the death rate for over-60s now close to that of the under-60s despite being 43 times higher at the January peak.

Kevin McConway, emeritus professor of applied statistics at the Open University, said: "There's nothing in the death registration data that proves for certain that the differences in trends between older and younger people are caused by the vaccination, but vaccination must surely be playing a very major role.

"I'm not complacent, and we must still be careful now that restrictions on what we can do are being lifted. But the news so far is good."

More than 32 million people have now had a vaccine in the UK, with the Government announcing on Monday that the target of offering a jab to all those over 50, care home residents, those who are classed as vulnerable and those who work in health or social care had been reached.

However, a new analysis based on the fact that NHS England has said 19 out of 20 of those most at risk have had the jab suggests 1.3 million vulnerable people have not yet taken up the offer of a vaccine.

It is believed Mr Johnson's cautious message is being deliberately stressed now so that people will not be overly alarmed if Covid cases numbers begin to rise again throughout April.

He has said since first announcing his reopening roadmap in February that Covid cases would rise as restrictions eased. Downing Street believes the correct balance has been struck between limiting virus spread and helping businesses.

A well-placed senior government source downplayed any quickening of the reopening roadmap for England, stressing the current "earliest date" targets remained.

Source: The Telegraph

The US government ran a budget deficit of $659.59 billion in March, pushing the budget shortfall to a record $1.7 trillion through the first half of fiscal 2021, according to the Treasury Department’s Monthy Treasury Statement.

The March budget deficit ranks as the third biggest monthly shortfall in US history, driving Uncle Sam the biggest half-year deficit ever.

Prior to last year’s stimulus-fueled $3.13 trillion deficit, the US government had only run annual deficits over $1 trillion four times, all during the Great Recession. Uncle Sam is already on the fast track to $2 trillion with six months left in the fiscal year. The previous record deficit for the first six months of a fiscal year was $829 billion set back in 2011.

Uncle Sam spent nearly a trillion dollars in March. The $927.21 billion in outlays last month brought total fiscal 2021 spending to a staggering 3.41 trillion.

Meanwhile, Treasury receipts in March came in at just $267.61 billion. That was a 13% increase over last year but didn’t come close to covering the massive spending spree.

And keep in mind, we’ve only just begun to see spending approved in the $1.9 trillion “American Rescue Act” come down the pipeline.

On March 1, the US national debt eclipsed $28 trillion for the first time. Currently, that represents $85,255 of debt for every American citizen.

According to the National Debt Clock, the debt to GDP ratio stands at 130.02%. Despite the lack of concern in the mainstream, debt has consequences. Studies have shown that a debt to GDP ratio of over 90% retards economic growth by about 30%. This throws cold water on the conventional “spend now, worry about the debt later” mantra, along with the frequent claim that “we can grow ourselves out of the debt” now popular on both sides of the aisle in DC.

As Peter Schiff put it in a tweet, all of this government comes at a price.

We didn’t get $659 billion worth of government spending for free. The public will pay the balance through the inflation tax. That means consumer prices are headed much higher.”

The inflation tax will hit us as the Federal Reserve monetizes this massive debt.  That means more bond purchases and more money printing.

The Federal Reserve makes all of this borrowing and spending possible by backstopping the bond market and monetizing the debt. The central bank buys US Treasuries on the open market with money created out of thin air (debt monetization). This creates artificial demand for bonds and keeps interest rates low. All of this new money gets injected into the economy, driving inflation higher. We see this playing out before our eyes as the Fed continues to expand the money supply by record amounts.

The Fed had worked itself between a rock and a hard place. It has to print trillions of dollars to monetize the massive deficits. But that is causing inflation expectations to run hot. That is putting upward pressure on interest rates. But you can’t have rising rates when your entire economy is built on debt. The only way the Fed can hold rates down is to buy more bonds, which means printing more money, which means even more inflation. You can see the vicious cycle. At some point, there is a fork in the road and the Fed will have to choose. Step up and address inflation and let rates rise, which will burst the stock market bubble and collapse the debt-based economy, or just keep printing money and eventually crash the dollar.

Source: Schiff Gold

The US government ran a budget deficit of $659.59 billion in March, pushing the budget shortfall to a record $1.7 trillion through the first half of fiscal 2021, according to the Treasury Department’s Monthy Treasury Statement.

The March budget deficit ranks as the third biggest monthly shortfall in US history, driving Uncle Sam the biggest half-year deficit ever.

Prior to last year’s stimulus-fueled $3.13 trillion deficit, the US government had only run annual deficits over $1 trillion four times, all during the Great Recession. Uncle Sam is already on the fast track to $2 trillion with six months left in the fiscal year. The previous record deficit for the first six months of a fiscal year was $829 billion set back in 2011.

Uncle Sam spent nearly a trillion dollars in March. The $927.21 billion in outlays last month brought total fiscal 2021 spending to a staggering 3.41 trillion.

Meanwhile, Treasury receipts in March came in at just $267.61 billion. That was a 13% increase over last year but didn’t come close to covering the massive spending spree.

And keep in mind, we’ve only just begun to see spending approved in the $1.9 trillion “American Rescue Act” come down the pipeline.

On March 1, the US national debt eclipsed $28 trillion for the first time. Currently, that represents $85,255 of debt for every American citizen.

According to the National Debt Clock, the debt to GDP ratio stands at 130.02%. Despite the lack of concern in the mainstream, debt has consequences. Studies have shown that a debt to GDP ratio of over 90% retards economic growth by about 30%. This throws cold water on the conventional “spend now, worry about the debt later” mantra, along with the frequent claim that “we can grow ourselves out of the debt” now popular on both sides of the aisle in DC.

As Peter Schiff put it in a tweet, all of this government comes at a price.

We didn’t get $659 billion worth of government spending for free. The public will pay the balance through the inflation tax. That means consumer prices are headed much higher.”

The inflation tax will hit us as the Federal Reserve monetizes this massive debt.  That means more bond purchases and more money printing.

The Federal Reserve makes all of this borrowing and spending possible by backstopping the bond market and monetizing the debt. The central bank buys US Treasuries on the open market with money created out of thin air (debt monetization). This creates artificial demand for bonds and keeps interest rates low. All of this new money gets injected into the economy, driving inflation higher. We see this playing out before our eyes as the Fed continues to expand the money supply by record amounts.

The Fed had worked itself between a rock and a hard place. It has to print trillions of dollars to monetize the massive deficits. But that is causing inflation expectations to run hot. That is putting upward pressure on interest rates. But you can’t have rising rates when your entire economy is built on debt. The only way the Fed can hold rates down is to buy more bonds, which means printing more money, which means even more inflation. You can see the vicious cycle. At some point, there is a fork in the road and the Fed will have to choose. Step up and address inflation and let rates rise, which will burst the stock market bubble and collapse the debt-based economy, or just keep printing money and eventually crash the dollar.

Source: Schiff Gold