The White Person’s Guide to Surviving Black History Month at Work

February 13, 2023 Winter Watch Around the Web, Culture 0

Peachy Keenan | Feb. 3, 2023

Identity groups are to the calendar what washed-up celebrities are to the Hollywood Walk of Fame: everybody is gifted a little piece of real estate.

February, of course, is Black History Month; many blessings to all who celebrate!

I know this because it popped up on my iPhone Calendar on February 1st, like all the new federal holidays you can’t delete.

Although I bet Apple wishes it could delete it now. Here’s a fun Black History Month cautionary tale, told in 3 acts.

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The nine shocking replies that highlight ‘woke’ ChatGPT’s inherent bias — including struggling to define a woman, praising Democrats but not Republicans and saying nukes are less dangerous than racism

Daily Mail | Feb. 12, 2023

ChatGPT has become a global obsession in recent weeks, with experts warning its eerily human replies will put white-collar jobs at risk in years to come.

But questions are being asked about whether the $10billion artificial intelligence has a woke bias. This week, several observers noted that the chatbot spits out answers which seem to indicate a distinctly liberal viewpoint.

Elon Musk described it as ‘concerning’ when the program suggested it would prefer to detonate a nuclear weapon, killing millions, rather than use a racial slur.

The chatbot also refused to write a poem praising former President Donald Trump but was happy to do so for Kamala Harris and Joe Biden. And the program also refuses to speak about the benefits of fossil fuels.

Experts have warned that if such systems are used to generate search results, the political biases of the AI bots could mislead users.

Below are 10 responses from ChatGPT that reveal its woke biases:

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I’m forming a Super PAC to Draft RFK Jr. to run for President

Amazon.com: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: books, biography, latest update

The federal agencies are so brain damaged it will take major surgery to fix them. Congress clearly isn’t up to the task. We need new leadership in the White House.

I can’t think of anyone more qualified to clean up the mess and unite the country than RFK Jr.

So I’m putting together a Super PAC to encourage him to run for President on the Democratic side against Biden.

If you’d like to help out, please fill out the form here. There will be both volunteer and paid opportunities available.

If you have worked for a Super PAC before, it’s especially helpful to me if you register, even if your time is limited.

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The Cost of Ignorant ‘Expert’ Policy Makers During COVID

  • The Cochrane Library recently updated its 2020 systematic review of physical interventions to reduce respiratory illnesses. The update included an additional 11 randomized controlled trials, bringing the total number of RCTs included to 78

  • As in its 2020 review, they found no evidence to support the use of surgical face masks or N95 respirators to prevent influenza or COVID-19 infection

  • The relative risk reduction of using surgical masks in the general population (within hospitals and communities at large) to reduce symptoms of flu-like/COVID-like illness (not lab confirmed) was a statistically insignificant 0.95

  • The same goes for reducing laboratory-confirmed influenza and COVID. Here, the relative risk reduction was 1.01 with a confidence interval of 0.72 to 1.42. In other words, it’s a wash. On average, it raises your risk of lab-confirmed infection by 1%. Range-wise, it may lower your risk by 28% or raise it by as much as 42%

  • The review also found “no clear differences between the use of medical/surgical masks compared with N95/P2 respirators”

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The question of whether we should wear face masks or not to prevent the spread of COVID-19 has been a hotly contested issue ever since our so-called health authorities came out with the recommendation in early 2020. Some of us were quick to point out the obvious, namely that masks cannot filter out viruses due to the virus being far smaller than the holes in the fabric.

Surgical masks have only ever been used to prevent droplets of saliva to drip into open wounds during surgery, potentially causing an infection. That’s all they were ever designed to do.

Numerous studies looking at mask-wearing during cold and flu season in years past came up empty, showing masks are not a viable prevention method. Yet the narrative we were fed was that masks will somehow prevent respiratory infection, and not wearing one meant you had no regard for the health and safety of others.

Never mind the fact that a healthy person cannot transmit disease in the first place. The asymptomatic spread fallacy was still used to reinforce the idea that everyone had to wear a mask, regardless of whether they were ill or not. You couldn’t even debate the issue. The propaganda angle was the only viewpoint allowed to circulate.

Today, three years later, mask policies are cropping up yet again, especially in schools,

and health care facilities. In December 2022, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) submitted a final rule to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs and Office of Management and Budget for review which, if approved and implemented, would make universal masking in health care facilities a PERMANENT rule.

The largest nursing union in the U.S., National Nurses United, is also pushing to include permanent rules for “screening and testing of patients, visitors and staff, measures ensuring optimal PPE, exposure notifications for healthcare workers and paid leave for those exposed or infected with COVID-19,” according to Health Care Dive.

All of this despite the fact that the scientific underpinnings are now even shakier than they were in 2020.

The AARP (formerly the American Association of Retired Persons) is even going so far as to claim mask wearing can help prevent heart attacks!

Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo had the following to say about the AARP’s attempt to invent benefits for mask wearers:

claim mask prevent heart attacks

The latest of these studies is a meta-analysis and systematic review by the Cochrane Library,

an independent research organization that has been reviewing the use of physical interventions to reduce respiratory illnesses since 2010.

Cochrane reviews have long been recognized as the gold standard in evidence-based health care as their analyses look at the whole body of published science, and every few years, reviews are updated to include the latest research findings.

For example, reports on “Physical Interventions to Interrupt or Reduce the Spread of Respiratory Viruses” were published in 2010, 2011, 2020 and January 30, 2023.

In the video above, Dr. Vinay Prasad, a hematologist-oncologist, health researcher and professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, reviews

the latest Cochrane review, which added 11 new randomized controlled trials (RTCs) and cluster-RCTs to their previous 2020 analysis.

That brings the total number of RCTs included in the systematic review to 78. Six of the 11 new RCTs were conducted during the COVID pandemic and looked at the spread of COVID-19 specifically.

The Cochrane investigators concluded that, while there’s “uncertainty about the effects of face masks” due to trial bias and low adherence by participants, the pooled results of randomized controlled trials (RTCs) “did not show a clear reduction in respiratory viral infection with the use of medical/surgical masks.” Here’s an excerpt from the review:

“Medical or surgical masks — Ten studies took place in the community, and two studies in healthcare workers.

Compared with wearing no mask in the community studies only, wearing a mask may make little to no difference in how many people caught a flu‐like illness/COVID‐like illness (9 studies; 276,917 people); and probably makes little or no difference in how many people have flu/COVID confirmed by a laboratory test (6 studies; 13,919 people).”

The relative risk reduction of using surgical masks in the general population (within hospitals and communities at large) to reduce symptoms of flu-like/COVID-like illness (not lab confirmed) was 0.95.

A value below 1 indicates the intervention improved outcomes, whereas a value above 1 shows it made it worse. So, here, surgical masks was associated with a relative risk reduction of 5%.

However, it’s not statistically significant, as the confidence interval ranges from 0.84 to 1.09.

So, it may lower your risk by as much as 16% or raise it by 9%. As noted by Prasad, the most accurate way to describe this finding is that “we have not proven there is an effect.”

“This is conclusive … This is the reality … You just don’t have credible evidence [for masking], and the science didn’t change … This is what the science has always shown.” ~ Dr. Vinay Prasad

The same goes for reducing laboratory-confirmed influenza and COVID. Here, the relative risk reduction was 1.01 with a confidence interval of 0.72 to 1.42. In other words, it’s a complete wash. On average, it raises your risk of lab-confirmed infection by 1%. Range-wise, it may lower your risk by 28% or raise it by as much as 42%.

So, masking really has no effect on confirmed infection rates (which, by the way, is more important than reports of perceived symptoms). As noted by the authors, the analysis “suggests that wearing a medical/surgical mask probably makes little or no difference compared to not wearing a mask for this outcome.”

“This is conclusive,” Prasad says. “This is the reality … You just don’t have credible evidence [for masking], and I want to tell you this: The science didn’t change … This is what the science has always shown.”

The review also found “no clear differences between the use of medical/surgical masks compared with N95/P2 respirators.” As detailed by the authors:

“N95/P2 respirators — Four studies were in healthcare workers, and one small study was in the community. Compared with wearing medical or surgical masks, wearing N95/P2 respirators probably makes little to no difference in how many people have confirmed flu (5 studies; 8407 people); and may make little to no difference in how many people catch a flu‐like illness (5 studies; 8407 people), or respiratory illness (3 studies; 7799 people).”

So, in conclusion, none of the new studies that were added made one iota of difference. Masks were unable to prevent influenza transmission before the pandemic, and they still fail to prevent respiratory infections, be it the flu or COVID.

But, if there was no evidence to back masking in the first place, how did we end up with mask mandates? In short, our public health authorities started lying. As noted by Prasad: “Anthony Fauci told the truth on ’60 Minutes’ — the first time. The second time when he said you have to wear a cloth mask … he was lying.”

Yet somehow, they managed to convince everyone that the truth was the lie and the lie was the truth.

A clip from Fauci’s “60 Minutes” appearance is featured in “The Jimmy Dore Show” video above, as are some of his later public announcements where he suddenly promotes mask wearing and defends mask mandates.

In a February 3, 2023, article in The Spectator,

lead author Tom Jefferson and Carl Heneghan, director of the University of Oxford’s Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine and former editor-in-chief of BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine, explained why the 2020 Cochrane review was unable to influence public health policy on masking:

“This is the second update of the review since the start of the pandemic. The first update was delayed by seven months due to unexplained editorial decisions. It was too late when it came out in November 2020 to make a difference to national COVID policy; by then, activism, low-quality observational evidence and government policy had set the agenda for mask mandates, and the damage had been done.

Often these government policies relied on observational studies on mask usage and the spread of COVID. But there are lots of flaws in observational evidence.

For example, in the absence of a study protocol setting out methods before the study is done, it is possible to shift the dates of an observational analysis to suit the rise and fall in infections. So if you time your analysis near the peak of infections, the results will favor mask interventions as the infection rate quickly decreases.

But when we pointed out in November 2020

the troubling lack of robust evidence on face masks and the problems with observational studies, we were shouted down, removed from Facebook and put on the government’s secret watchlist …

Mandates that affected the whole population never made sense … even in high adherence populations such as Japan, they have not stemmed an inevitable rise in infections. Part of the problem may be that during the pandemic the government had to be seen to be doing something. Interventions like handwashing and vaccines are invisible, but masks acted as a visible sign of compliance.

What we have witnessed in this pandemic are strong beliefs about what works and what doesn’t … Several policies such as mask mandates, restrictions, and unproven interventions now seem absurd in hindsight. And as the culture of fear has lifted, the population has become all too aware of their detrimental effects.

We failed to follow an evidence-based approach during the pandemic. We are now left with the human, social and economic aftermath of evidence-free policies.”

As noted by Prasad in an accompanying Substack post:

“Who should we be angry with? Obviously there is a class of twitter expert that doesn’t understand how to read evidence. Some of them have even been promoted to be deans for public health schools. So much for public health.

But the real failure is NIAID [National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases] and CDC [U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention]. It is Tony Fauci.

Fauci controlled NIAID budget. He could have run 10 RCTs of masking — different masks, different ages, different settings. He chose to run zero. Instead he went on TV 1,000 times and lied about effectiveness of cloth masks …

CDC and AAP [American Academy of Pediatrics] are also steeped in failure. These agency forced 2 year olds to mask. Against the advice of the World Health Organization and UNICEF.

The Cochrane review fails to identify any data that pertains to 2 year olds. The CDC should be ashamed of themselves. Tens of thousands of people working from home, and no one inside the organization with the ability to stop this policy.”

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this masking debacle has been the massive censorship and shutting down of healthy scientific debate, not just among laypeople but among scientists themselves.

Only the yes-men were ever given room to air their perfectly scripted views, while those who had concerns were silenced, regardless of their credentials. YouTube even censored a roundtable discussion with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and several medical experts. Why? Because in multiple instances, the doctors said children didn’t need to wear masks, and this position violated YouTube’s “COVID-19 medical misinformation” policy.

In a February 6 Substack article, Jefferson describes the propaganda effort to twist the findings of the 2023 Cochrane review on masking and other physical interventions against COVID-19:

“We, the co-authors of the Cochrane review … have received several … ‘can I please check the main facts and, by the way, tell me what your review says because I cannot be bothered to do my job’ type of messages. However, we recently got another query … This request comes from a very powerful press syndicate:

‘I’m reaching out because I’ve been seeing some posts [links redacted by TJ] spreading widely on social media that seem to be misrepresenting the conclusions of your recently published study on physical interventions and respiratory viruses.

Do you think it is a misrepresentation to claim (as the tweets I link to above do) that your study definitively proves that masks don’t work in preventing the spread of viruses such as COVID-19 and the flu? If so, I’d be interested in debunking these claims to set the record straight and would love to speak with you more about the study.’

The disturbing aspect of this request is as follows: the stringer is making contact with one of us. After exchanging pleasantries, he/she will ask a few superfluous questions.

We have an abstract, a plain language summary, TTE [Trust the Evidence] posts and a podcast, and Carl and I have written a Spectator piece covering the review. If you are a real masochist, you can read all the 300-plus pages of the review …

So there is nothing to explain or fact-check. But the stringer is not really interested in checking facts. What they want to do is to write truthfully that they have spoken to one of us and then put the spin required in the release to ensure the ‘misinterpretation’ of twitterati is set straight. ‘Debunking’ is the term used, and it will be actioned if the stringer thinks the Twitterati have ‘misinterpreted’ our findings …

What disturbs me … is the idea of ‘debunking’ or ‘normalization’ of the information flow. We have done the tough work over two decades, reporting results separately from our interpretation, as in all Cochrane reviews. The studies’ results are the results reported by the authors of the single studies included in the reviews.

Our interpretation is one you can — and should if you want — challenge. However, successfully challenging our interpretation requires hard work, elbow grease, graft, focus, and application. So picking up the phone and speaking to someone, then deciding how to ‘debunk’ or normalize the message, is so much easier.

The reach of this particular press syndicate is global and powerful. I wonder why the stringer wanted to ‘debunk’ the interpretation of the twitterati mentioned in the text. To ensure ‘truth’ triumphed? Or to ensure no more waves in the official narratives were made by a bunch of academics or Twitter dwellers?”

While Jefferson now avoids interactions with the mainstream media, he did agree to an interview with investigative journalist Maryanne Demasi, which you can read here.

He also granted an interview with Paul D. Thacker, which you can read on Thacker’s Substack.

In addition to the many health problems associated with prolonged mask wearing, which I’ve addressed previously, mask policies have also created a massive pollution problem. Ironically, many pro-mask activists also claim to be environmentalists, yet they completely ignore the environmental effects of mask mandates.

According to UNICEF, the world used and discarded an estimated 2.4 billion masks in 2020.

Another estimate, calculated by the University of Southern Denmark,

put that number at 129 billion face masks EACH MONTH. As reported by Business Insider:

“Since the very first lockdowns of 2020, these plastic-based coverings have … been an environmental disaster in the making … [The] rapid adoption of face masks … means their waste can now be found everywhere …

Discarded masks have seeped into every corner of our lives, from city sidewalks to solemn niches of the internet.

They’ve washed up on the shores of Hong Kong’s deserted Soko Islands and cloaked octopi off the coast of France.

Scientists and environmental advocates expressed alarm

about this tsunami of waste … They foresaw the dire ecological ramifications of our mask waste — especially once those masks made their inevitable way into the earth’s waterways.

Elastic loops pose entanglement hazards for turtles, birds, and other animals. Fish could eat the plastic-fiber ribbons that unfurl from a discarded mask’s body. Then, there is the untold menace to human health that would likely present, at the microscopic level, once masks began to disintegrate.”

The global consumption of other single-use plastics also increased by a whopping 300% in the last three years, further adding to the problem of plastic pollution. You’d think governments that claim to be so concerned about “saving the planet” would address the issue, but no. As noted by Business Insider:

“[W]orld leaders have ignored the problem. And once the immediate public-health emergency superseded ecological concerns — the heads of Big Plastic made sure it stayed that way.”

Research

from Swansea University in Wales reveals single-use masks readily disintegrate when submerged in water, releasing both micro- and nanoplastic particles, even after relatively brief periods of submersion.

As if that’s not bad enough, the masks also release nanoparticles of heavy metals like lead, cadmium, copper and arsenic. Not only can this mask litter result in contaminated drinking water, but the particles can also disrupt entire marine food chains.

Nanoparticles are particularly troublesome as they can penetrate cell walls and damage DNA, and this is true not just in animals and humans but also in plants. As reported by Business Insider:

“Recent research

on silicon nanoparticles, in particular, has shown that if a particle is very small in nano scale, it can act almost as a tiny, carcinogenic bomb. Multiply that by a minimum of several hundred per mask, at a rate of 50,000 masks disposed per second, and the scope of the dilemma grows vivid.”

According to research

published in Science of the Total Environment in September 2021, the polypropylene in medical face masks could be recycled either by mechanical or thermal means, and biodegradable mask options are also available. Yet no one in a position of power is advocating for these solutions.

It’s time to put an end to the false narratives that mask wearing lowers infection rates and/or that it “protects others.” They protect no one. Not the wearer and not those around the wearer.

And, as noted by Prasad in the featured video, the burden of proof lays on the proponent of a given intervention. In this case, those claiming we should mask up to protect others are the ones who have the responsibility to prove they’re correct. The burden of proof is not on those who object, based on logical and existing evidence.

Universal mask wearing is also resulting in environmental pollution that is completely unnecessary and avoidable. So, please, just stop wearing disposable masks. It’s time. The record has been set straight. There are no benefits, and plenty of risks and negative impacts.

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How a Vegetarian Eating Plan Could Affect a Pregnancy

  • Heart & Soil, a company founded by Dr. Paul Saladino to help people return to the way our ancestors ate, produced a 20-minute video discussing the health benefits of eating an animal-based diet when women are pregnant or want to become pregnant

  • Returning to the nutritional roots of eating fewer carbohydrates, no processed foods and an animal-based diet can help mitigate the effects of environmental toxins, such as ubiquitous plasticizers, are the core components of Heart & Soil

  • Data show that infertility rates have been rising for decades in what Shanna Swan, Ph.D., calls “the 1% effect,” describing declining sperm count, testosterone and fertility and rising testicular cancer and miscarriage — all at about 1% per year

  • It is crucial to note that fake meat is not meat but ultraprocessed food with genetically engineered components; the industry claims it has a smaller carbon footprint than CAFO meat, but exchanging one broken system for another is not the answer

  • Ultraprocessed foods are high in toxic chemicals, lack nutrition and are high in carbohydrates, all of which negatively impact pregnancy outcomes. They also contain linoleic acid that damages insulin sensitivity and produces heart disease, dementia and obesity

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In this 20-minute video, Dr. Paul Saladino, founder of Heart & Soil, a company that helps people return to the way our ancestors ate,

discusses the relationship between a decline in fertility and the food that most men and women are eating today. The diet is often referred to as the standard American diet (SAD), which is composed of highly processed, high-carbohydrate foods.

One of the biggest health struggles in the U.S. is weight. According to the CDC,

73.6% of adults over 20 are overweight, including obesity, even though most people are seeking to be slim and within a healthy weight range.

I have long written about the benefits of eating a cyclical ketogenic diet that focuses on a minimal carbohydrate intake, which can help attain, and maintain, a healthy weight. In addition to lowering the risk of being overweight and obese, a ketogenic diet also reduces chronic inflammation and produces far fewer reactive oxygen species.

Eliminating sugar and carbohydrates also helps reduce your risk of chronic inflammation that is at the heart of many chronic diseases, which “collectively represent the leading causes of disability and mortality worldwide.”

While I recommend that carbohydrates comprise no more than 5% carbohydrates, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,

the average carbohydrate intake for men is 45.9% of their diet; the average carbohydrate intake for women is 47.4% of their diet.

In her book “The Obesity Epidemic: What Caused It? How Can We Stop It?” Zoe Harcombe notes the fundamental error made in diet plans is misunderstanding the law of thermodynamics. She believes there’s an intricate biochemical dynamic that’s unaccounted for when you only count calories in and calories out.

Thermodynamics refers to the movement of energy. For example, the energy used in making protein available to the body is from 25% to 30%. However, that same effect in carbohydrates is from 6% to 8%. While obesity is a significant health problem, it’s not the only health challenge triggered by eating a diet high in carbohydrates.

In the video above, Saladino and midwife Lindsey Meehleis discuss the lack of nutrients in the SAD and how it affects fertility and pregnancy outcomes. Saladino and Meehleis propose, and have seen, that moving back to a nutrient-dense animal-based diet can help mitigate exposure to glyphosates and endocrine- and fertility-disrupting microplastics in the environment.

In the video, one mother of two, who was pregnant with her third child during filming, recounts her time as a vegetarian for seven years. She describes herself as “close-minded” after reading the headlines, but not really investigating the information herself.

It wasn’t until she met her husband, and he began asking questions about her low energy and chronic napping, that she began to think maybe a vegetarian diet high in grains and meat alternatives was not providing her with the right nutrition. Another mother tells her story of being in her early 30s and learning that 40% of her eggs may not be viable because of her age.

Yet, after moving to an animal-based diet, she easily became pregnant and felt incredibly healthy throughout the pregnancy. Saladino, the midwife and the mothers who were interviewed all stressed the need to include organ meat in the diet, sharing that they are considered delicacies around the world because they are “some of the most nutrient-dense foods on the planet.”

Organ meats contain critical nutrients like choline, selenium, magnesium, vitamin A, zinc and iron. And, different from lab-produced nutritional supplements, they are more bioavailable. Meehleis recounts her interactions with a 30-week pregnant woman who she put on a supplement of heart and liver. Just one week later, the woman texted Meehleis that it was the best she felt through the whole pregnancy after only one week of adding “Nature’s best multivitamin.”

Saladino’s concern is that prenatal vitamins are not as bioavailable as organ meats and “cause more harm than good because they give people a false sense of security. They have this idea that I don’t have to think about what I’m eating,” he says. “I can continue eating junk food or not eating enough animal foods.”

Meehleis explains the importance of the placenta as an organ that supplies the baby with nutrients throughout growth and development. “This is what nourishes the baby. This is the baby’s home, and we have to look at what we’re putting into our bodies today.” It is at this point in the video that she is viewing two placentas side by side.

One is that of a mother who ate a purely vegetarian diet throughout the pregnancy and the other ate a nutrient-dense animal-based diet. The placenta of the mother eating a vegetarian diet is noticeably lighter and more anemic in color and not as dense or healthy looking.

“I cannot believe the difference in the quality of the placenta and not just the quality of the placenta, but in turn the nutrition of what the baby was growing in and what the baby received throughout the whole pregnancy.” She goes on to explain the differences that she can feel in the different organs.

“It’s just obvious there is such a huge substantial difference in the quality and consistency of these placentas.” She pushes several areas of the placenta, saying, “This is called calcification. If you feel it, it’s hard and there’s a little bit of sand consistency. This is throughout the entire placenta and it’s not what we would want to see in pregnancy.”

In the video, Saladino and Meehleis reference the impact that endocrine-disrupting microplastics and phthalates have on fertility. Researchers have noted the reduction in fertility in the last decades and understand the implications this has for the future of humanity. In 1992, Shanna Swan, Ph.D., from Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, first heard about the potential decline in fertility.

She is a reproductive epidemiologist and professor of environmental medicine and public health. She read a study

showing evidence of declining quality in semen from the past 50 years and thought it sounded extreme. She spent six months evaluating the 61 studies that were included in the review and thus began her decades-long journey into unraveling this disturbing trend.

Through years of careful research, she found the smoking gun behind declining fertility is a class of chemicals called phthalates, which are so ubiquitous that the CDC has stated “phthalate exposure is widespread in the U.S. population.”

An estimated 8.4 million metric tons of plasticizers, including phthalates, are used worldwide each year.

Swan’s book “Count Down” is based on a 2017 study

she co-wrote, which found sperm counts dropped by 59.3% from 1973 to 2011. The most significant declines were found in men from North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, where many had sperm concentrations below 40 million per milliliter, which is considered the cutoff point at which a man will have trouble fertilizing an egg.

Men in these countries had a 52.4% decline in sperm concentration and a 59.3% decline in total sperm count, which is the sperm concentration multiplied by the total volume of an ejaculate. Swan dubs the apparent synergy between fertility and reproductive health “the 1% effect” as data show sperm count, testosterone and fertility are dropping, while testicular cancer and miscarriage are rising — all at about 1% per year.

In the video, Meehleis and Saladino talk about their patients whose struggle with fertility was reversed after moving away from processed foods and concentrating on an animal-based diet. However, it’s important to note that no matter how much the processed meat industry tries to make its products look and feel like real meat, fake meat is not meat. Far from it.

In fact, fake meat perfectly fits the definition of ultraprocessed foods, which typically have five or more ingredients, many of which are not commonly used in home kitchens.

Fake meat products also include fake blood processed from genetically engineered yeast to mimic the taste and texture of real beef.

While the FDA has classified the Impossible Burger as generally recognized as safe (GRAS) using data provided by the University of Nebraska and the University of Wisconsin,

other experts are not convinced.

According to the Center for Food Safety,

94% of the soybean crops grown in the U.S. are genetically altered. There is not enough data

to determine human safety when consuming chemical compounds, as these compounds are produced from genetically altered yeast harvested from genetically altered soybeans.

Ultraprocessed foods have contributed to obesity,

rising rates of cardiovascular disease and an increased risk of all-cause mortality.

The industry has used strategies to position this product as healthier and better for the environment, which has led many to believe the food they’re eating is protecting their local air and water supply. One of the claims is that the products are sustainable and leave a smaller carbon footprint than that of traditional beef production.

When this is compared to CAFO facilities, where animals are treated inhumanely, antibiotic use contributes to widespread antibiotic resistance and the waste products damage air and water supplies, they may rank a little better. However, as has been proven in the past, moving from one broken system to another is not the answer.

To assess and compare the environmental impact of typical beef production against fake meat, Impossible Burger commissioned a study from Quantis

and Beyond Meat commissioned one from the University of Michigan.

Both companies found similar results. The executive summary published on Impossible Foods

showed their product reduced environmental impact between 87% and 96% in the categories studied.

White Oaks Pasture in Bluffton, Georgia, responded, and commissioned and published the same analysis by Quantis,

which showed the ranch had a net total emission in the negative numbers as compared to CAFO meat. Emissions at White Oaks were also much lower than the average production of soybeans, which is the base for plant-based burgers and fake blood.

Additionally, emissions by White Oaks Pastures included a large negative soil carbon sequestration, which I’ve explained in many articles is essential to protect against air pollution and climate change. In other words, regenerative farming techniques are healthier for the environment, produce healthy products for human consumption and feed the soil so the land continues to produce year after year.

In my 2021 interview [Bitchute, March 10, 2021] with Saladino, we discussed the nose-to-tail animal-based diet of the African Hadza tribe, who are among the best still-living representations of the way early humans lived. Their diet is primarily meat and includes organ meats and connective tissue, tubers, berries and fruit and honey from the baobab tree. Chronic disease is rare, and many remain vital well into old age.

The problems with ultraprocessed foods during pregnancy don’t end with toxic chemicals, lack of nutrition and high carbohydrates. Most processed foods are also high in omega-6 fatty acids, namely linoleic acid. Every man, woman, child and baby experiences the damaging effects of linoleic acid.

Processed seed oils, also referred to as vegetable oils, are damaging to your immune system, which in turn plays an important role in fetal and maternal protection during pregnancy. Researchers

have discovered there is a unique three-way communication between the immune system, pregnancy hormones and the gut microbiota that play a role in adverse pregnancy outcomes.

In 2022, an immunologist with CNBC News named sugar “the worst food ingredient for your immune system,”

in large part because it contributes to insulin resistance and obesity, which increases inflammation and causes damage to blood vessels. But what most health “experts” simply do not understand is that seed oils are even worse than sugar.

Not only are most of the omega-6s you eat, including seed oils, damaged and oxidized through processing, but even if they are unheated and pristine when consumed in any but small amounts, your body degrades them into free radicals that damage virtually every tissue in your body.

Saladino explained in a podcast that linoleic acid “breaks the sensitivity for insulin at the level of your fat cells,”

essentially making them more insulin sensitive — and, since your fat cells control the insulin sensitivity of the rest of your body by releasing free fatty acids, you end up with insulin resistance.

Insulin resistance and high blood glucose have a detrimental effect on a growing fetus.

It increases the risk the baby is born early, has breathing issues, weighs too much or has low blood glucose. High blood glucose levels during early pregnancy can affect the development of the child’s heart, brain, lungs and kidneys.

In adults, seed oils are responsible for heart disease, age-related macular degeneration, diabetes, obesity and dementia.

During an interview with Tucker Goodrich,

who moved from IT risk management systems where he developed a program used by two of the largest hedge funds in the world to medical research, he explained that animals typically develop cancer when linoleic acid reaches 4% to 10% of their dietary intake.

Yet, most Americans consume approximately 8% of their calories from seed oils. This means we are well over the safety threshold developed in the lab. Data

also indicates that COVID-19 mortality rates are heavily influenced by the amount of unsaturated fats eaten. Unsaturated fat intake is associated with increased mortality from COVID-19, while saturated fat intake found in an animal-based diet lowers your risk of death.

The authors noted that unsaturated fats “cause injury [and] organ failure resembling COVID-19.”

All told, the data indicate that women who are pregnant or want to become pregnant have a better health experience when they eat an animal-based diet and steer clear of ultraprocessed foods.

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Disclaimer: The entire contents of this website are based upon the opinions of Dr. Mercola, unless otherwise noted. Individual articles are based upon the opinions of the respective author, who retains copyright as marked.

The information on this website is not intended to replace a one-on-one relationship with a qualified health care professional and is not intended as medical advice. It is intended as a sharing of knowledge and information from the research and experience of Dr. Mercola and his community. Dr. Mercola encourages you to make your own health care decisions based upon your research and in partnership with a qualified health care professional. The subscription fee being requested is for access to the articles and information posted on this site, and is not being paid for any individual medical advice.

If you are pregnant, nursing, taking medication, or have a medical condition, consult your health care professional before using products based on this content.

How Does COVID-19 Compare to the Spanish Flu?

  • While COVID-19 meets the technical definition of a pandemic, the death toll is nowhere near that of earlier serious pandemics that would legitimately justify the extraordinary measures being deployed by the U.S. government

  • An estimated 75 million to 200 million people in Eurasia and as much as 60% of the European population in rural areas were wiped out by the Black Death (bubonic plague) between 1347 and 1351

  • The Spanish flu (swine flu), which hit during World War I in 1918, infected 500 million people worldwide, killing an estimated 50 million, or 2.7% of the global population

  • Using the higher of two prominent COVID-19 trackers, 238,950 people had died, globally, from COVID-19 as of the afternoon on May 2, 2020. Based on a global population of 7.8 billion, 238,950 deaths amount to 0.003% of the global population

  • Mid-March predictions said COVID-19 would kill 2.2 million Americans if allowed to run its course. April 8, 2020, the Murray Model downgraded the threat to 60,000 dead by August, which is lower than the death toll for the seasonal flu of 2017/2018

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ℹ️ From Dr. Joseph Mercola

Since COVID-19 first entered the scene, exchange of ideas has basically been outlawed. By sharing my views and those from various experts throughout the pandemic on COVID treatments and the experimental COVID jabs, I became a main target of the White House, the political establishment and the global cabal.

Propaganda and pervasive censorship have been deployed to seize control over every part of your life, including your health, finances and food supply. The major media are key players and have been instrumental in creating and fueling fear.

I am republishing this article in its original form so that you can see how the progression unfolded.

Originally published: May 2, 2020

While COVID-19 meets the technical definition

of a pandemic (i.e., “an epidemic occurring worldwide, or over a very wide area, crossing international boundaries and usually affecting a large number of people”), the death toll is nowhere near that of earlier serious pandemics

that would legitimately justify the extraordinary measures being deployed by the U.S. government and others around the globe.

For comparison, the “Black Death,” which swept through Europe between 1347 and 1351 and kept resurfacing at intervals for the next 300 years, decimated up to one-third of the population with each recurrence.

While the Black Death was long thought to be the same as the bubonic plague, in more recent years, researchers have questioned this assumption,

and at least some of the evidence suggests they were not the same disease.

Either way, the plague killed 75 million to 200 million people in Eurasia, with deaths peaking in Europe from 1347 to 1351.

As much as 60% of the European population in rural areas were wiped out by the Black Death in the first four-year-long pandemic wave. People died within days of having symptoms.

This horrific lethality is typically what people think of when they hear the word “pandemic.”

Similarly, the Spanish flu (aka, swine flu), which hit during World War I in 1918, infected 500 million people worldwide, killing an estimated 50 million, or 2.7% of the global population.

It killed 675,000 in the U.S. alone — more than died in combat during World War I, World War II, the Korean, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined, according to the historical documentary above.

Like the bubonic plague, the Spanish flu was a very rapid killer, causing death in as little as 12 hours. Like the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, the virus also spread very easily and rapidly. Unlike COVID-19, however, people between the ages of 20 and 40 were most susceptible to the infection.

With COVID-19, it’s the elderly and immune compromised that are at greatest risk, but even in these high-risk groups, the mortality rate is nowhere near that of the Spanish flu.

Data points vary, and mortality statistics differ widely depending on the country and area you’re looking at, but using the higher of two prominent COVID-19 trackers — Worldometer,

opposed to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center

— 238,950 people had died, globally, from COVID-19 as of the afternoon on May 2, 2020.

Based on a global population of 7.8 billion,

238,950 deaths amount to 0.003% of the global population. Even if this tally is off by hundreds of thousands, we’re still only looking at a fraction of a percent of the global population succumbing to COVID-19 in three and a half months.

April 15, there were also 1,403,420 active cases, 96% of which were mild and only 4% of which were serious or critical,

so clearly, a vast majority of people who are infected make it through and end up having antibodies that will confer long-term immunity.

I for one could see shutting down the global economy for a true plague or something much like the Spanish flu, but COVID-19 simply doesn’t warrant the draconian elimination of personal freedom and liberty we’re currently seeing. Nor is it serious enough to warrant the kinds of long-term surveillance strategies suggested by Bill Gates.

what no one is saying about the corona crisis

The Corbett Report above is well worth listening to if you’re still on the fence and think the way we’re going is a good idea to safeguard the vulnerable. Remember, infectious diseases have been with us since the dawn of mankind, and are not going to stop. Ever.

Right now, we’re being told that we have to forgo our civil liberties because we might spread a virus to a potentially vulnerable individual, and if that happens, we’re culpable in their death. So, to prevent “mass homicide” from occurring by people moving about freely, we’re told we have to isolate ourselves and stop living.

Yet every single flu season throughout history, people have moved about, spreading the infection around. Undoubtedly, most people who have ever left their house with a cold, stomach bug or other influenza at any point in the past has unwittingly spread the infection to others, some of which may have ended up with a serious case of illness and some of which may ultimately have died from it.

There is simply no way to prevent such a chain of events in perpetuity. Giving up our civil liberties in an effort to prevent all future deaths from infectious disease is profoundly misguided, and ultimately will not work anyway.

From my perspective, the only mitigating factor in this analysis is that there appears to be solid, well-documented evidence that this is an engineered virus, one that was constructed in biosafety level 3 and 4 labs that are focused on offensive biological weapons research. This may result in unprecedented adverse biological adaptions that impair innate immunity. But at this time, I seriously doubt it.

Mid-March predictions said COVID-19 would kill 2.2 million Americans if allowed to run its course.

By the end of March, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, downgraded the projected death toll, saying we were probably looking at 100,000 to 240,000 Americans dying.

April 8, 2020, a new model referred to as the Murray Model

downgraded the threat further, predicting COVID-19 will kill 60,000 in the U.S. by August

— a number that is still 20,000 lower than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s death toll numbers attributed to the seasonal flu the winter of 2017/2018.

In the Liberty Report video above, Dr. Ron Paul, former GOP congressman, also points out that Fauci’s “doom and gloom predictions” have completely collapsed, “with the new official prediction coming in under the normal flu numbers for 2018.”

If COVID-19 is not causing any greater death toll than the regular flu season two years ago, why are we now asked to end society as we know it well into the foreseeable future? There’s no doubt in my mind that there will be far more deaths attributable to the financial collapse and isolation than there will be from the actual infection.

Note: This video may not play on some devices.

The H1N1 swine flu of 2009 was the most recent pandemic of note, and considering Fauci and Gates are both saying we won’t be able (read, allowed) to go back to any semblance of normalcy until or unless we have a vaccine and enforce mandatory vaccination of the global population, it’s worth remembering what happened during the 2009 swine flu pandemic.

The CDC estimates that from April 12, 2009, to April 10, 2010, there were 60.8 million cases of H1N1 infection, 274,000 hospitalizations, and 12,469 deaths (0.02% infection fatality rate/mortality rate) in the United States.

June 11, 2009, the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic of novel influenza A (H1N1).

A vaccine was rapidly unveiled, and within months, cases of disability and death from the H1N1 vaccine were reported in various parts of the world.

In the aftermath, the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) questioned the WHO’s handling of the pandemic. In June 2010, PACE concluded “the handling of the pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO), EU health agencies and national governments led to a ‘waste of large sums of public money, and unjustified scares and fears about the health risks faced by the European public.’”

Specifically, PACE concluded there was “overwhelming evidence that the seriousness of the pandemic was vastly overrated by WHO,” and that the drug industry had influenced the organization’s decision-making.

As reported by the Natural Society in 2014:

“… a joint investigation by the British Medical Journal (BMJ) and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ) has uncovered some serious conflicts of interest between the World Health Organization (WHO), who proposed … heavy vaccinations, and the pharmaceutical companies which created them.

The joint-investigation’s report explains that the WHO profited immensely

from the scare tactics they utilized to promote the use of a swine flu vaccine.

Creating mass hysteria was the WHO’s emergency advisory committee’s goal … The WHO told the world that up to 7 million people could die without the vaccines they were pushing … The advisory panel was choked with individuals highly connected to the pharmaceutical companies with vested interests in both antiviral and influenza vaccines.

An over $4 billion stake was invested in developing these vaccines, and without a pandemic there would be no use for them. Utilizing propaganda and fear, the drugs were pushed on unsuspecting people, and the money was made.”

Disturbingly, while the WHO was found to have had serious conflicts of interest with the drug industry, nothing has actually changed since then, which makes one wonder whether the WHO’s COVID-19 pandemic response can actually be trusted.

On the upside, U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams stated in an April 13 radio interview

with Breitbart News Daily that the White House Coronavirus Task Force is no longer relying on predictive projection models at this point, for the simple reason that we now have sufficient real-time data that provide a far more accurate overview of the situation.

According to Adams, the reopening of American communities will be based on actual infection rates (derived from testing) rather than predictive modeling, and communities’ ability to handle the real-world medical case load.

April 14, 2020, President Trump also halted funding to WHO until a White House review of the organization’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic has been completed. As reported by Politico:

“Trump … accused WHO of ‘severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus’ and called its opposition to U.S. travel restrictions on China in the outbreak’s early months ‘disastrous.’

While WHO did call such travel bans ‘ineffective in most situations’ at the time, the group did acknowledge that they could buy countries time to ‘to initiate and implement effective preparedness measures.’”

Considering WHO is acting like little more than a front group for Big Pharma, just like the Gates Foundation (which is now the largest funder of WHO), this may actually be a good thing. WHO really needs to decide whether it’s going to do what’s right for public health or take its direction from Gates and the drug industry.

Gates, through his massive involvement with WHO — detailed in “Bill Gates — Most Dangerous Philanthropist in Modern History?” — is both calling the shots during this pandemic and stands to gain handsomely from it, seeing how the Gates Foundation Trust is invested in vaccine development companies that in turn receive “charitable donations” from the Gates Foundation.

Gates has gone on record saying the U.S. needs a national tracking system

that could involve vaccine records embedded on our bodies (such as invisible ink quantum dot tattoos described in a Science Translational Medicine paper

) and mandatory COVID-19 vaccination for anyone wanting to move about and travel freely in the future.

Limiting Gates influence, even if that means defunding the WHO, is likely going to be imperative if we want to avoid the dystopian surveillance state he proposes.

Even if a COVID-19 vaccine comes out in a year, we will have no proof that it’s safe since researchers are foregoing some of the normally required safety testing in order to get a vaccine out as soon as possible.

What if it turns into a repeat of the fast-tracked H1N1 swine flu vaccine released in Europe during the swine flu pandemic of 2009-2010?

Even more important would be how effective it is. The effectiveness of influenza vaccines has historically been abysmal, so what good would administering the vaccine do if it doesn’t work?

In July 2009, the U.S. National Biodefense Safety Board unanimously decided to forgo most safety and efficacy tests to get the vaccine out by September of that year.

Europe also accelerated its approval process, allowing manufacturers to skip large-scale human trials

— a decision that turned out to have tragic consequences

for an untold number of children and teens across Europe.

Over the next few years, the ASO3-adjuvanted swine flu vaccine Pandemrix (used in Europe but not in the U.S. during 2009-2010) was causally linked

to childhood narcolepsy, which abruptly skyrocketed in several countries.

Children and teens in Finland,

the U.K.

and Sweden

were among the hardest hit. Further analyses discerned a rise in narcolepsy among adults who received the vaccine as well, although the link wasn’t as obvious as that in children and adolescents.

A 2019 study

reports finding a “novel association between Pandemrix-associated narcolepsy and the non-coding RNA gene GDNF-AS1” — a gene thought to regulate the production of glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor or GDNF, a protein that plays an important role in neuronal survival.

They also confirmed a strong association between vaccine-induced narcolepsy and a certain haplotype, suggesting “variation in genes related to immunity and neuronal survival may interact to increase the susceptibility to Pandemrix-induced narcolepsy in certain individuals.”

As of right now, one of the main contenders for a COVID-19 vaccine is using synthetic mRNA to instruct DNA to produce the same kind of proteins COVID-19 uses to gain access into our cells. The idea is that your immune system will learn to recognize and kill the real virus.

What the limited human trials on this vaccine will NOT tell us is whether it might have devastating genetic effects. No one expected Pandemrix to have genetic effects. Yet it did.

The pandemic H1N1 vaccine was largely voluntary. Had it been mandated across the entire world, which is what they’re considering for COVID-19, the health ramifications would have been absolutely devastating, and that’s the risk we’re facing if a COVID-19 mandate goes through.

Last but not least, we can look at and learn from the swine flu fiasco of 1976 as well, detailed in this 1979 60 Minutes episode. Fearing a repeat of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, “the government propaganda machine cranked into action,” 60 Minutes says, telling all Americans to get vaccinated.

According to 60 Minutes, 46 million Americans were vaccinated against the swine flu at that time. Over the next few years, thousands of Americans filed vaccine damage claims with the federal government.

As reported by Smithsonian Magazine in 2017:

“In the spring of 1976, it looked like that year’s flu was the real thing. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t, and rushed response led to a medical debacle that hasn’t gone away.

‘Some of the American public’s hesitance to embrace vaccines — the flu vaccine in particular — can be attributed to the long-lasting effects of a failed 1976 campaign to mass-vaccinate the public against a strain of the swine flu virus,’ writes Rebecca Kreston for Discover.

‘This government-led campaign was widely viewed as a debacle and put an irreparable dent in future public health initiative, as well as negatively influenced the public’s perception of both the flu and the flu shot in this country.’”

A 1981 report by the U.S. General Accounting Office to Senator John Durkin reads, in part:

“Before the swine flu program there were comparatively few vaccine-related claims made against the Government. Since 1963, Public Health Service records showed that only 27 non-swine flu claims were filed.

However, as of December 31, 1979, we found that 3,839 claims and 988 lawsuits had been filed against the Government alleging injury, death, or other damage resulting from the 45 million swine flu immunizations given under the program.

A Justice official told us that as of October 2, 1980, 3,965 claims and 1,384 lawsuits had been filed. Of the 3,965 claims filed, the Justice official said 316 claims had been settled for about $12.3 million …”

According to 60 Minutes, the claims amount for the nearly 4,000 claimants totaled $3.5 billion. Two-thirds of the claimants suffered neurological damage and at least 300 of them died.

As explained by 60 Minutes, Americans who got the vaccine were told the vaccine had been field tested. What they were not told was that the vaccine they received was not the actual vaccine that had undergone testing.

According to Dr. Michael Hattwick, who directed the surveillance team for the 1976 swine flu vaccination program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there was evidence showing influenza vaccinations could, and had, caused neurological complications in the past.

He claims he warned his superiors of this possibility, as it pertained to the swine flu campaign. Yet the CDC denied the evidence and the American public was never informed of this risk. 60 Minutes also reveals the CDC was proven to have lied in its marketing materials for the vaccine.

Judy Roberts was one of the victims of that campaign. She was paralyzed by the vaccine, and suffered permanent damage. Her husband, who was also vaccinated and suffered no ill effects, ends the segment saying:

“I told Judy to take the shot … I’m mad with my government. They knew the facts but they didn’t release those facts, because if they had released them, people wouldn’t have taken it.

And they can come out tomorrow and tell me there’s going to be an epidemic, and they can drop off like flies next to me, and I will not take another shot that my government tells me to take.”

Remember, do not trust any vaccine messaging Fauci, Gates and other misinformed and ill-intentioned professionals are seeking to spread. It would be far wiser to focus on improving your innate immunity through solid inexpensive and safe strategies we have previously discussed.

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Disclaimer: The entire contents of this website are based upon the opinions of Dr. Mercola, unless otherwise noted. Individual articles are based upon the opinions of the respective author, who retains copyright as marked.

The information on this website is not intended to replace a one-on-one relationship with a qualified health care professional and is not intended as medical advice. It is intended as a sharing of knowledge and information from the research and experience of Dr. Mercola and his community. Dr. Mercola encourages you to make your own health care decisions based upon your research and in partnership with a qualified health care professional. The subscription fee being requested is for access to the articles and information posted on this site, and is not being paid for any individual medical advice.

If you are pregnant, nursing, taking medication, or have a medical condition, consult your health care professional before using products based on this content.