FDA is raising the white flag on the mRNA Covid shots

 The Food and Drug Administration just all-but-gave up on mRNA Covid jabs.

This afternoon, under the guise of “simplify(ing)” the Covid vaccination schedule, the FDA ended the two-dose mRNA vaccination regimen for unvaccinated people.

Americans who have not yet been vaccinated can now receive only a single dose of the newer “bivalent” vaccines, which supposedly work better against the Omicron strain -though real-world evidence of their improved effectiveness is nearly nonexistent.

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(TRUST THE SCIENCE!)

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It is hard to overstate the importance of this change, which effectively undoes more than two years of public health guidance on the importance of the two-dose mRNA regimen.

(YEAH, ABOUT THAT…)

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The change is even bigger than it appears. Each dose of the Moderna bivalent vaccine contains only half as much as mRNA as the original Moderna shot. So people who receive the Moderna vaccine will get only one-quarter as much mRNA as the original dosing schedule, 50 micrograms instead of 200.

(Pfizer’s booster contains 30 micrograms of mRNA, the same as the original dose, so the Pfizer regimen has been cut only in half.)

The change comes as demand for the mRNAs has collapsed, not just in the United States but worldwide. Only about 1 in 9,000 Americans is now receiving a Covid shot each day - and only about 1 in 40,000 Germans.

(SELLING LIKE COLDCAKES:)

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The FDA is also discouraging repeated booster doses. “Most Americans who have already received a bivalent booster will not be eligible for another dose for now,” the agency said.

The lower doses are appropriate because most people have antibodies to the coronavirus, either from infection or vaccination, the FDA said.

This rationale contradicts almost two years of loudly repeated recommendations from health bureaucrats about benefits of “hybrid” immunity and the need for everyone to be vaccinated with a full-dose regimen.

But any excuse is better than none.

https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/very-urgent-the-fda-is-raising-the

GSK-spinoff Haleon forecasts 2023 organic revenue growth at top-end of view

 

Consumer healthcare group Haleon expects 2023 organic revenue growth towards the upper end of its 4%-6% forecast, it said on Thursday, on strong demand and the restocking of its respiratory health products due to a bad cold and flu season.

The company, the world's biggest standalone consumer health business that sells non-prescription drugs, vitamins and oral care products, kept the rest of its full-year 2023 outlook unchanged.

Haleon was carved out of British drugmaker GSK in July last year

https://www.marketscreener.com/quote/stock/GSK-PLC-9590199/news/GSK-spinoff-Haleon-forecasts-2023-organic-revenue-growth-at-top-end-of-view-43548558/

'Biden to roll out curbs on U.S. investment in China next month'

 The Biden administration is planning for an executive order next month that aims to limit U.S. investment in certain sectors in China, according to a Bloomberg report citing unnamed sources. The order looks set to come around the time of a Group of Seven meeting in Japan that starts on May 19, as the U.S. wants G-7 nations to endorse it. A Wall Street Journal report last month said the Biden administration was preparing a new program that could prohibit U.S. investment in certain sectors in China and was reaching out to G-7 allies to build support for the concept.

https://www.morningstar.com/news/marketwatch/20230420593/biden-to-roll-out-curbs-on-us-investment-in-china-next-month-report

FLASHBACK: RFK Jr. once called for Koch Industries, ExxonMobil to be put to 'corporate death'

 Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental and anti-vaccine activist, once called for corporations and conservative groups that dispute climate change to be handed the "death penalty." 

Kennedy, a controversial environmental lawyer whose resume includes work for the Natural Resources Defense Council and waterway preservation group Waterkeeper Alliance, argued in a 2014 blog post that big oil companies, including Koch Industries and ExxonMobil, "should be given the death penalty." 

The post, titled, "Jailing Climate Deniers," was a response to claims made at the time that Kennedy said "all climate deniers should be jailed." He denied ever saying such a thing, writing, "I support the First Amendment which makes room for any citizen to, even knowingly, spew far more vile lies without legal consequence."

"I do, however, believe that corporations which deliberately, purposefully, maliciously and systematically sponsor climate lies should be given the death penalty," Kennedy wrote for EcoWatch. 

Robert F Kennedy Jr. speaks during an event to launch his 2024 presidential bid, at the Boston Park Plaza in Boston, Massachusetts, on April 19, 2023. (Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images / Getty Images)

He named Koch Industries and ExxonMobil as the supervillains behind "a successful multimillion dollar propaganda blitz to mislead the public about global warming using the same techniques honed by Big Tobacco in its campaign to hoodwink the public about smoking." 

Kennedy, the 69-year-old son of the late senator, attorney general and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy and the nephew of the late President John F. Kennedy, launched a campaign for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination on Wednesday in Boston. 

His platform emphasizes civil liberties and he calls free speech "the capstone of all other rights and freedoms." However, Kennedy's previous writings indicate he does not believe free speech rights extend to businesses, or even some nonprofit groups. 

In his EcoWatch article, Kennedy asserted that state attorneys general could use a legal process he called "charter revocation" to dissolve companies that "put their profit-making before the ‘public welfare.'" 

"Laws in every state maintain that companies that fail to comply with prescribed standards of corporate behavior may be either dissolved or, in the case of foreign corporations, lose their rights to operate within that state's borders. These rules can be quite expansive and, in contrast to the U.S. Supreme Court's ­­­­recent rulings on campaign finance law, companies, under state laws, enjoy far less protection than human beings," he argued. 

Kennedy suggested that a state attorney general "with the will, resolve and to stand to up to the dangerous and duplicitous corporate propagandists" could not only annul the corporate charters of businesses that dispute climate change, but also nonprofit conservative groups, including the Cato Institute, The Heritage Foundation, American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). 

UCLA law professor Stephen Bainbridge disputed Kennedy's claims, writing at the time there was no legal basis for dissolving a company that put profits before "public welfare." 

"If corporations have free speech rights (as they do), after all, speaking on issues of public policy must be covered and protected by the First Amendment," Bainbridge wrote in a scathing response to Kennedy's blog post.

Still, Kennedy was undeterred. As recently as 2016, he urged then-state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman to ban ExxonMobil from doing business in New York for allegedly misleading the public about climate change, according to a memo reported by the New York Post in 2018.

The Kennedy campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether he continues to hold these views as he runs for the Democratic presidential nomination. 

In recent years, Kennedy's controversial anti-vaccine activism has largely overshadowed his environmental work. He was banned on Instagram and YouTube in 2021 for spreading misinformation about the vaccines and opposing COVID-19 restrictions. Years before, members of his famous family had called his social media posts "dangerous misinformation."

Announcing his candidacy for president Wednesday, Kennedy presented his environmental views as unifying, speaking about his desire to work with "rural and working class Americas, and particularly hunters and fishermen." He said these "bullet people" were "alienated from the mainstream environmental community." 

"Good environmental policy is good economic policy," Kennedy said. 

https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/flashback-robert-f-kennedy-jr-once-called-for-koch-industries-and-exxonmobil-to-be-put-to-corporate-death

At least 193 suspected of being involved in terrorism have crossed the Southern border

 The Biden administration has overwhelmed our asylum system by releasing more than a million illegal border crossers into the country to apply for asylum. As of the end of January 2023, the immigration court had a backlog of 2,097,244 cases, and a major increase in illegal crossings is expected in May when the Title 42 order is terminated.

This isn’t just a problem for our asylum system: It also presents national security issues.

For instance, the Border Patrol is apprehending more illegal crossers who are on the terrorist watchlist, which has information about people suspected of being involved in terrorism or related activities.  

INA section 212(a)(3) makes a migrant inadmissible if there is a reasonable ground to believe that he or she has engaged in — or is likely to engage in — terrorist activity. This may not apply to every migrant found to be on the watchlist.

Alex Nowrasteh, a CATO Institute policy scholar, thinks that politicians are inflating the risk that terrorists will enter the U.S. by making an illegal entry across the Southwest border. He claims that zero people have been killed or injured in the U.S. by terrorists who crossed the Southwest border illegally.

Sept. 11, 2001, proved that foreign terrorists can be very resourceful, and there has been a substantial increase in attempts to cross the Southwest border illegally by migrants the government suspects of being involved in terrorism or related activities.

Increase in illegal crossers on the watchlist

The Border Patrol apprehended 11 illegal border crossers who were on the watchlist during the four years of the previous administration. That number rose to 15 in fiscal 2021, which was the first fiscal year of the current administration. It reached 98 in 2022, and it has reached 80 already in the first months of fiscal 2023.  

Before Sept. 11, the intelligence community was very focused on foreign threats, not on domestic threats. Moreover, there were several different terrorism watchlists, which made it difficult to share information. The Terrorist Screening Center has consolidated watchlist data into a single federal terrorism watchlist.

Does Border Patrol always check watchlist?

The DHS Inspector General (IG) did an audit on the Border Patrol to determine the extent to which it screens illegal crossers to prevent criminals, drug traffickers, and individuals on the terrorist watchlist from entering the United States.

On Sept. 19, 2022, the IG issued a report in which he observes that Border Patrol agents collect biographic and biometric information, such as photos and fingerprints, and then upload the info to the e3 Portal, which compares the uploaded information with the data in Federal law enforcement databanks to determine, among other things, whether the migrant in question is on the terrorist watchlist.

The IG’s audit was based on a statistical sample of records for 384 illegal crossers that agents had apprehended between April 2021 and September 2021. However, the sample was actually smaller than 384 migrants because 112 of them were younger than 14 and record checks are not required for migrants who are that young.

The IG found that agents did conduct the required record checks on the migrants in the sample and verified that the databanks did not reveal derogatory information on migrants in the sample who were released.

The IG also found, however, that the agents didn’t always document the screening procedures they performed, and they expedited record processing to move migrants out of processing centers that were exceeding capacity limits. For instance, Border Patrol headquarters directed agents to reduce processing times by not assigning A-numbers to all of the migrants when these were near capacity.

The agents are supposed assign an A-number to each migrant during processing. The A-number is used by immigration and law enforcement officials to track and locate a migrant’s A-File for a complete history of immigration encounters. The Border Patrol did not issue A-numbers to 107 of the 384 migrants in the sample.

What else will they have to skip when Title 42 is terminated and there is a major surge in illegal crossings?

DHS is preparing for multiple possibilities, including projections of between 9,000 to 14,000 migrants a day, more than double the current number of illegal crossings, which could overwhelm already strained resources.

The IG also found that the Border Patrol did not have a formal policy on how to expedite processing when the processing centers got too crowded. They need such a policy to facilitate proper documentation of screening procedures and adequate tracking of the migrants who are released into the United States.

Illegal crossers who aren’t checked at all

According to border security expert, Todd Bensman, the crucial question is, ‘How many migrants on the watchlist got through to the interior of the United States among the gotaways?’ Gotaways are illegal crossers who were detected but not apprehended. The Border Patrol has confirmed that 1.2 million illegal migrants “got away” from authorities while crossing the border under current administration. 

And no one knows how many migrants have succeeded in making an illegal crossing without being detected.

Is another Sept. 11 more likely if migrants the government suspects of being involved in terrorism or related activities continue to cross the border among large numbers of illegal crossers who claim to be asylum seekers?

I think it is.

As Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.) said recently at a congressional hearing, “You don’t need that many terrorists to enter the country to cause spectacular harm.”

The Sept. 11 attack only took 19 terrorists, and it killed 2,977 people. This is more than the 2,400 people who were killed when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, which led President Franklin D. Roosevelt to ask Congress to declare war on Japan.

Nolan Rappaport was detailed to the House Judiciary Committee as an Executive Branch Immigration Law Expert for three years. He subsequently served as an immigration counsel for the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims for four years. Prior to working on the Judiciary Committee, he wrote decisions for the Board of Immigration Appeals for 20 years.

https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/3959839-at-least-193-suspected-of-being-involved-in-terrorism-have-crossed-the-southern-border/

Search suspended for three American sailors missing off Mexican coast

 A search for three American sailors who went missing off the Mexican coast has been suspended, the U.S. Coast Guard announced on Wednesday.

“An exhaustive search was conducted by our international search and rescue partner, Mexico, with the U.S. Coast Guard and Canada providing additional search assets,” said Cmdr. Gregory Higgins, command center chief for Coast Guard District 11, in a statement. “Unfortunately, we found no evidence of the three Americans’ whereabouts or what might have happened.”

The Coast Guard noted the search was suspended “pending further developments.”

William Gross, Kerry O’Brien and Frank O’Brien were aboard the 44-foot La Fitte sailing vessel Ocean Bound when they left Mazatlán, Mexico, en route to San Diego, Calif., the Coast Guard said. They were last heard from on April 4 near Mazatlán.

The trio had reportedly made plans to stop in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, two days later, but they never arrived.

Mexican Navy and U.S. Coast Guard responders conducted 281 hours of searching over 200,057 square nautical miles, according to the release, but no sightings or evidence of the vessel or the three sailors were found. 

https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/3961031-search-suspended-for-three-american-sailors-missing-off-mexican-coast/

Pentagon prepping for potential evacuation of US embassy staff from Sudan

 The U.S. is putting troops in place over the potential to evacuate American embassy personnel sheltering in place in Khartoum, amid days of intense fighting between opposing Sudanese military forces in the country’s capital, the Biden administration confirmed Thursday.

U.S. Africa Command “is monitoring the situation in Sudan and conducting prudent planning for various contingencies,” Pentagon spokesperson Lt. Col. Phil Ventura said in a statement. “As part of this, we are deploying additional capabilities nearby in the region for contingency purposes related to securing and potentially facilitating the departure of U.S. Embassy personnel from Sudan, if circumstances require it.”

American diplomats and staff are among the millions of civilians caught in the crossfire that erupted late last week, with the United Nations estimating that at least 185 people have been killed and over 1,800 wounded in a battle that has turned streets into war zones. 

National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters on Thursday that the U.S. has “good accountability” of its diplomats who are sheltering in place, and that the State Department is trying to get “them all co-located together for their own safety.” 

“Obviously we’re still very concerned about the violence there, the continued fighting. There was a so-called ceasefire last night that didn’t hold very long and so people are still being hurt,” he said.

Security alerts from the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum have indicated that the government is unlikely to coordinate an evacuation for U.S. citizens, but U.S. officials have expressed grave concern for the safety of American diplomats serving in the capitol. 

An American diplomatic convoy was fired upon, Secretary of State Antony Blinken confirmed on Wednesday, although no was harmed.

“But this action was reckless, it was irresponsible, and of course unsafe – a diplomatic convoy with diplomatic plates, a U.S. flag, being fired upon,” the secretary said in remarks to the press while on diplomatic travel in Japan. 

Blinken, along with other U.S. officials, have engaged intensely with the warring military commanders and partner nations to achieve a ceasefire, including the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom and African Union.

“The imperative is getting quickly to a ceasefire so that the guns stop firing, people can move about safely, reunite with their families, get the assistance they need, and all of us can continue to engage in supporting Sudan as it makes its transition.”

Fighting broke out Saturday, April 15, between forces loyal to Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, the commander of the Sudanese Armed Forces, against Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, also referred to as Hemedti, the head of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

Gen. Burhan has been at the head of a military-civilian government that has stalled in transitioning to a full, civilian, democratically elected government since a grassroots revolution between 2018 and 2019 succeeded in turning the military, led by Burhan and Hemedti, to depose Sudan’s then-dictator Omar al-Bashir. 

https://thehill.com/policy/defense/3961129-pentagon-prepping-for-potential-evacuation-of-us-embassy-staff-from-sudan/