Reacting to truck blockades in Ottawa and at the U.S. border, Ontario Premier Doug Ford today declared a state of emergency and said he will convene the provincial cabinet on Saturday to enact orders that make it “crystal clear” it is illegal to block critical infrastructure.

(insert, Sandra:  SEQUENCE)

1. GoFundMe withholds almost $9 million of the money raised for the Truckers (Ottawa mayor and police chief involved)
2. The Freedom Convoy goes to GiveSendGo is set up fund-raising.
3. Ontario Premier Doug Ford comes up with law:  it is illegal to disburse money to the Truckers
4. GiveSendGo reply (Feb 10):

Know this! Canada has absolutely ZERO jurisdiction over how we manage our funds here at GiveSendGo. All funds for EVERY campaign on GiveSendGo flow directly to the recipients of those campaigns, not least of which is The Freedom Convoy campaign.

5.  Doug Ford declares a state of emergency in Ontario

(WXYZ) — Matt Moroun is urging the Canadian government to take action and end the blockade at the Ambassador Bridge, now on the fourth day of being closed. Moroun is the chairman of the Detroit International Bridge Company and the owner of the Ambassador Bridge.

. . .  The first option is to repeal the COVID-19 vaccine mandate, which is for truck drivers coming into the country.

“End the protest by repealing the mandate and recognizing that while the vast majority of truck drivers are vaccinated, there are some who for many reasons are choosing not to get vaccinated but deserve to be respected and allowed to do their jobs and serve our countries with dignity,” Moroun wrote.

. . .   The Ambassador Bridge is the busiest border crossing between the United States and Canada, carrying $400 million in goods across it each day.

Journalist Megan Redshaw does a nice job of weaving together the situation of the family, and the conditions (U.S. Law) that apply in the event of  injuries or death caused by covid vaccination.

Under the CICP program, attorney fees are not covered. There is no court, judge or right to appeal.

I do not know the rules that apply under Canadian Law.   

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Kansas Woman Died From Allergic Reaction to Moderna COVID Vaccine, Autopsy Confirms

Jeanie Evans, 68, of Effingham, Kansas, died of “anaphylaxis due to COVID-19 vaccination,” according to her autopsy report. Evans died March 24, 2021, one day after her first dose of Moderna’s vaccine.

By Megan Redshaw    Children’s Health Defense

According to the most recent data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System — co-managed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and CDC — there have been 2,300 reports of anaphylaxis following COVID vaccines, where the reaction was life-threatening, required treatment or resulted in death.

Colt Umphenour, one of Evans’ sons, said the family plans to file a lawsuit.

“I am actively looking for a new attorney to represent the family,” Umphenour said.

Members of Evans’ family last April hired Lynn Johnson, of the law firm Shamberg, Johnson and Bergman in Kansas City, Missouri. But Johnson told the Topeka Capital-Journal on Tuesday he chose not to pursue legal action on their behalf.

Vaccine makers exempt from liability for injuries caused by their products 

As The Defender reported July 8, 2021, under federal law, vaccine makers are shielded from liability, leaving people who are injured by COVID vaccines and their family members with little recourse.

In 2005, Congress passed the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREP), which authorizes the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to issue a declaration providing immunity from tort liability for claims of loss caused by medical countermeasures (e.g., vaccines, drugs, products) against diseases or other threats of public health emergencies.

On Feb. 4, 2020, HHS invoked the PREP Act when it declared COVID-19 to be a public health emergency.

On Jan. 21, 2021, HHS amended the act, extending the liability shield to include additional categories of qualified persons authorized to prescribe, dispense and administer COVID vaccines authorized by the FDA.

In exchange for immunity for vaccine makers, under the PREP Act, the federal government pledged compensation for adverse reactions to COVID treatments and vaccines through a program called the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP), run by HHS.

The CICP in December 2021 approved its first COVID countermeasure claim, one of 65 claims related to anaphylaxis and anaphylactic reactions following COVID vaccines. The claim is pending review of eligible expenses.

The CICP website outlines the parameters of the program, which provides compensation for medical expenses, lost employment income and survivor death benefits as “the payer of last resort,” covering only what remains unpaid or unpayable by other third parties, such as health insurance.

Under the CICP program, attorney fees are not covered. There is no court, judge or right to appeal.

Children’s Health Defense asks anyone who has experienced an adverse reaction, to any vaccine, to file a report following these three steps.

Pfizer announced Tuesday projected combined sales of its COVID vaccine and antiviral drug Paxlovid should top $54 billion in 2022, but the company’s stock dropped sharply today.

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Pfizer announced Tuesday projected combined sales of its COVID vaccine and antiviral drug Paxlovid should top $54 billion in 2022, constituting more than 50% of the company’s expected revenues of about $100 billion.

The drugmaker predicted slightly lower 2022 revenues ($32 billion) for the vaccine compared to 2021, but increased revenues ($22 billion) from Paxlovid, the company’s COVID-19 pill.

Pfizer stock today “dropped sharply after the company’s 2022 sales guidance appeared to fall short of expectations,” Barron’s reported.

According to Barron’s:

“The antiviral sales guidance met the consensus estimate according to FactSet, but the Covid vaccine guidance fell short by $2.8 billion. The FactSet estimate for Pfizer’s overall revenue for 2022 was $103.2 billion, around $3 billion above the midpoint of Pfizer’s guidance range.”

Reporting on the news, ZeroHedge said the company added new language to its fourth-quarter earnings release, including the prediction that COVID could “diminish in severity or prevalence, or disappear entirely.”

The company also added language about the potential for “information regarding the quality of pre-clinical, clinical or safety data, including by audit or inspection” to have a negative impact on future earnings.

ZeroHedge suggested that language may have to do with last week’s ruling against Pfizer and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration which had wanted to delay the release of Pfizer’s clinical trial safety data.

In Tuesday’s announcement, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla predicted the company will manufacture 120 million doses of Paxlovid in 2022, including a threefold increase in production in the second half of the year as compared to the first. The FDA gave the drug Emergency Use Authorization in December 2021.

“2021 was a watershed year for Pfizer,” said Bourla. “Our successes in leading the fight against COVID-19 have not only made a positive difference in the world; I believe they have fundamentally changed our company forever.”

In fact, Pfizer’s 2021 profits doubled to $22 billion on the strength of its vaccine sales of more than 3 billion doses worldwide while the company’s total revenues in 2021 increased by 95% over the previous year, topping $100 billion for the first time in the company’s history.

The $36.8 billion the company made from its COVID vaccine alone was the highest annual sales total for any pharmaceutical product in history, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Flush with cash, the company engineered a number of recent acquisitions and partnerships to bolster its supply line of drugs and vaccines, including several partnerships announced last month to expand its growing mRNA business.

In December 2021, Pfizer announced it would acquire Arena Pharmaceuticals Inc. for $6.7 billion. Pfizer also said it had invested $25 billion on business development since 2019.

Sarat Sethi, managing partner and portfolio manager at DCLA, speaking on CNBC’s Squawk Box, said he thought the promise of COVID vaccine boosters in the future made Pfizer’s “balance sheet bulletproof.”

As Reuters reported, analysts forecast revenue of more than $6.6 billion for the Pfizer-BioNTech shot and $7.6 billion for Moderna in 2023, mostly from booster sales. They expect the annual market to settle around $5 billion or higher, with additional drugmakers competing for those sales.

In addition to the expectation of boosters, Pfizer said it is optimistic the FDA will approve its vaccine for children 6 months to 4 years old.

Bourla told CNBC he believes the FDA will authorize the company’s COVID vaccine for children under 5 years old under a fast-track process that allows the agency to review the data as soon as researchers compile it in real time.

“I think the chances are very high for the FDA to approve it,” Bourla said.

Initial results of the Pfizer trial with children under 5 showed no positive effects from the vaccine. Still, the FDA invited Pfizer to submit the vaccine for approval with the hope that a third booster shot, still untested, would show a benefit.

The FDA’s vaccine advisory committee is scheduled to meet Feb. 15 to consider approval of the shots for infants and toddlers.

Please see the note at the bottom about support for Julius Ruechel’s work.  (After you read his article!)  Thank-you /S

A Brave New World Without Rights: Ending Mandates Does Not Strip Government of the Ability to Do This Again, Julius Ruechel

The ongoing Truckers for Freedom convoy in Ottawa has triggered a shockwave that is reaching all around the world. Even as our authoritarian federal regime continues to double down on measures and threatens to use brute force tactics against peaceful protesters, many provinces are nervously beginning to lay out a timeline for ending mandates.

But there is something important missing from the conversation surrounding the end of mandates. If the mandates are simply dropped today without calling out the underlying legal and ethical fallacy that was used to justify them, government overreach will have become normalized. We will be left without the legal protections to stop them from doing this to us again after the truckers go home. All it will take to put us back in a cage is for the government to point at the next wave, the next virus variant, or the next non-Covid emergency. We will have normalized that our rights, our freedoms, our bodily autonomy, and even access to our lives are conditional privileges, subject to opinion polls and technocratic impulses, and that they can be withdrawn again at any time, “for our safety.”

(INSERT:  there is a 1.5 minute video on twitter.  93K views.  View it on Julius’ blog.  I am unable to upload it here.)

Quebec Health Minister Christian Dubé admits that vaccine passports and mandatory masks have no end in sight, and will remain “tools” to ensure a return to “normal life” when another wave hits.

In March of 2020, in violation of the principles embedded in our constitutions, governments around the world convinced citizens to give their leaders and public institutions the authority to overrule individual rights in order to “flatten the curve.” That impulse went unchallenged under the false assumption that human rights violations could be justified as long as the benefits to the majority outweighed the costs to the minority. By accepting this excuse for overriding unconditional rights, we transformed ourselves into an authoritarian police state where “might makes right”. That is the moment when all the checks and balances in our scientific and democratic institutions stopped functioning.

Liberal democracy was built around the principle that individual rights must be unconditional. In other words, they are meant to supersede the authority of government. Consequently, individual rights (such as bodily autonomy) were meant to serve as checks and balances on government power. They were meant to provide a hard limit to what our government can do to us without our individual consent.

If the government cannot override your rights to bend you to its will, then it will be forced to try to convince you by talking with you. That forces government to be transparent and to engage in meaningful debate with critics. Your ability to say NO, and to have your choice respected, is the difference between a functioning liberal democracy and an authoritarian regime.

The natural instinct of fearful people is to control those around them. Unconditional rights force people to negotiate voluntary participation in collective solutions. Thus, unconditional rights prevent the formation of echo chambers and provide an important counter-weight to rein in uncontrolled panic. When no-one has the option to use the brute force of State power to force others to submit to what they think is “the right thing to do”, then the only path forward is to keep talking to everyone, including to “fringe minorities” with “unacceptable views”. When we allow rights to become conditional, it is virtually a certainty that during a crisis, panicked citizens and opportunistic politicians will give in to their worst impulses and trample those who disagree with them.

Unconditional individual rights prevent governments from taking unwilling citizens on crusades. They prevent scientific institutions from transforming themselves into unchallengeable “Ministries of Truth” that can double down on their mistakes to avoid accountability. They ensure that the checks and balances that make science and democracy work do not break down in the chaos of a crisis. In the heat of an emergency when policy decisions are often made on the fly, unconditional rights are often the only safeguards to protect minorities from panicked mobs and self-anointed kings.

If we allow our leaders to normalize the idea that rights can be switched off during emergencies or when political leaders decide that “the science is settled”, then we are giving the government terrifying and unlimited power over us. It gives those who control the levers of power the authority to turn off access to your life. That turns the competition for power into a zero-sum game: the winners become masters, the losers become serfs. It means you can no longer afford to allow the other side to win an election, at any cost, nor agree to a peaceful transfer of power, because if you lose the winning team becomes the master of your destiny. And so, a zero-sum game of brutal power politics is set in motion. Unconditional individual rights are the antidote to civil war. Liberal democracy collapses without them.

Withdrawing mandates because “the Omicron variant is mild” or because “the costs of continuing the measures outweigh the benefits” does not undo what has been normalized and legitimized. If the legitimacy of mandates is not overturned, you will not be going back to your normal life. It may superficially look similar to your life before Covid, but in reality you will be living in a Brave New World where governments temporarily grant privileges to those who conform with the government’s vision of how we should live. You will no longer be celebrating your differences, cultivating your individuality, or making your own free choices. Only conformity will enable you to exist. You will be living under a regime in which any new “crisis” can serve as justification to impose restrictions on those who don’t “get with the program” as long as mobs and technocrats think the restrictions are “reasonable”. You will no longer be the master of your own life. A golden cage is still a cage if someone else controls the lock on the door.

Politicians and public health authorities MUST be forced to acknowledge that mandates are a violation of civil liberties. The public MUST be confronted by the fact that liberal democracy ceases to exist without the unconditional (inalienable) safeguards of individual rights and freedoms. The public MUST recognize that science ceases to function when mandates can be used to cut off scientific debates. Our governments and our fellow citizens MUST be made to understand that unconditional rights are especially important during a crisis.

If the legal and ethical fallacies that were used to justify mandates are not called out as inexcusable violations of our constitutional rights, we will have inadvertently normalized the illiberal idea that, as long as someone in a lab coat says it’s okay, this can be done to us again, at any time, whether to fight the next wave of Covid, to take away freedoms to fight “climate change”, to seize assets to solve a government debt crisis, or simply to socially engineer outcomes according to whatever our leaders define as a “fairer and more equitable world”.

How we navigate the end of mandates determines whether we win our freedom or whether we allow our leaders to normalize a Brave New World with conditional rights that can be turned off again during the next “emergency”.

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Julius Ruechel:

Interpreting propaganda:   2021-10-05  Covid19 – Analysis of all-cause mortality by week in Canada 

https://sandrafinley.ca/blog/?p=25861  

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2021-09-09   Julius Ruechel:   Forcing Employers to Put Their Fingerprints on Tyranny (an update on Constable Adrienne Gilvesy’s fight against mandatory vaccination)

https://sandrafinley.ca/blog/?p=25663

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SUPPORT FOR THE WORK OF JULIUS RUECHEL

NOTE: I tried to make a financial contribution to Julius Reuchel in October and again now.  His work is very important.

I do not use PayPal.  The credit card option is not REALLY available, as far as I can tell.  “PayPal” appears on the screen, upper left when in the final stage of payment.   I cannot find a mailing address;  Julius is somewhere in British Columbia, Canada.

I can do this for Julius.  From his blog:

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