Category Archives: Hoaxes

COVID truth bombs

See also “CDC is at it again: Mask up!

~E

CDC is at it again: Mask up!


We are entering the 2024 presidential election season, with state primaries beginning on January 15 at the Iowa caucases, followed by the New Hampshire primary on January 23.

So, of course, the CDC and the legacy (old) media are back to their scare tactics about a new virulent COVID-19 variant, BA.2.86!!!

We must mask up again, despite a review published in late January at the Cochrane Library, which said there was no evidence to prove the spread of COVID-19 infection could be reduced by the use of face masks. Even former CDC director Anthony Fauci admitted that face masks may not be effective on populations when looking at the “pandemic as a whole” — whatever that means — but persists in his stance that people need to follow authorities’ recommendations and wear them. (Epoch News)

Worse than being ineffective, a German study published in March 2023 found that extended mask use increased exposure of children and pregnant women to high levels of Toxic Volatile Organic Compounds (TVOCs). According to the American Lung Association, TVOCs have been shown to cause irritation in the eyes, throat, and nose, and linked to breathing difficulty and damage to the central nervous system and organs like the liver.

Even more perversely is the fact that, according to study after study, COVID-19 vaccines provided only at best short-term or no protection against the virus. Moreover, people who had gotten COVID-19 vaccine boosters were more likely to contract COVID-19 than people who had received no COVID-19 vaccine doses. The latest study is one of prisons in California.

All those studies have not stopped some schools, colleges, and hospitals from reinstating the mask mandate.

Thankfully, some states are fighting back, their governors and legislatures vowing to ban mask mandate and lock down. They are all red states: Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, and Utah. (Newsweek)

Will you mask up?

~E

The Phony Car-Chase Caption Contest

This is our world-famous 270th Caption Contest!

Here’s the pic:

About the pic: The above pic of Prince Harry, Meghan Markle and her mom, in a New York yellow taxi was taken on the evening of May 16, 2023. Invoking memories of Princess Diana’s fatal car crash, the couple’s spokesman claimed that the trio were “extremely upset and shaken” by a harrowing, “near-catastrophic” two-hour paparazzi chase in New York City, and that the “relentless pursuit…resulted in multiple near collisions involving other drivers on the road, pedestrians and two NYPD officers.”  Almost immediately, NY’s Democratic mayor and the NYPD debunked the story, followed by similar testimonies by the taxicab driver as well as the paparazzi agency. Here’s an excellent video by a native New Yorker resident explaining why the story is unbelievable:

You know the drill:

  • Enter the contest by submitting your caption as a comment on this thread (scroll down until you see the “LEAVE A REPLY” box).
  • Body and Soul‘s writers will vote for the winner.
  • Any captions proffered by our writers, no matter how brilliant (ha ha), will not be considered. :(

This contest will be closed at the end of Tuesday, June 20, 2023.

‘To get the contest going, here’s my caption:

Meghan Markle: “Do I look like I’m ‘extremely upset and shaken’?  That Harry is such a dope –snookered again by my machinations. He, he, he.”

For the winner of our last Caption Contest, go here.

~E

The ‘It’s All An Act’ Caption Contest

This is our world-famous 269th Caption Contest!

Here’s the pic:

About the pic: On January 17, 2023, climate activist Greta Thunberg, 20, was hauled away and briefly detained by police while protesting the expansion of a coal mine in western Germany. According to Reuters, the young activist, along with a group of protesters, were warned by police that they would be “removed by force” if they did not vacate the mine site. Reacting to videos circulating on social media of Thunberg seen laughing with police before she was hauled away, viewers accused Thunberg of staging the arrest, which both Thunberg and the German police denied. (BBC)

Here’s The Body Language Guy’s video analyzing the incident:

You know the drill:

  • Enter the contest by submitting your caption as a comment on this thread (scroll down until you see the “LEAVE A REPLY” box).
  • Body and Soul‘s writers will vote for the winner.
  • Any captions proffered by our writers, no matter how brilliant (ha ha), will not be considered. :(

This contest will be closed at the end of Tuesday, May 16, 2023.

‘To get the contest going, here’s my caption (from Shakespeare’s Macbeth):

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

For the winner of our last Caption Contest, go here.

~E

Hillary Clinton, architect of anti-Trump conspiracy, booed by crowd

Two days ago, Hillary Clinton was in New York City to give a speech at the 2022 New York State Democratic Convention.

As she left a downtown hotel, she was booed and heckled by a crowd shouting “Murderer!”.

The booing, no doubt, was in response to DOJ Special Counsel John Durham‘s report that in 2016, Hillary’s (failed) presidential campaign (1) concocted the fictitious story of Donald Trump’s Russian collusion; and (2) spied on Trump — in the Trump Tower and in the White House.

From David Kubal, “Justice at the Gates: The Clinton Campaign,” Intercessors For America, February 19, 2022:

We all remember the impeachment process in 2019 when President Trump was accused of colluding with Russia to influence the outcome of the 2016 election. Though the House voted for impeachment in the democratically-controlled chamber, the articles were never taken up by the republican Senate.

U.S. Attorney General (AG) William Barr appointed a Special Counsel to look into matters that came to surface during the impeachment process….

AG Barr appointed US Attorney John Durham to lead the investigation. Durham and his team filed a motion in court on February 11, 2022 that, if proven to be true, would turn out to be the largest scandal in American history. The filing alleges presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign lawyer, Michael Sussman (Partner at Perkins & Coie and former legal counsel for the Democratic National Committee), worked with an unnamed “Tech Executive” (and a number of other parties) to provide a fictitious “white paper” to the FBI creating the false narrative connecting candidate Trump with a Russian bank. The filing also alleges the same parties monitored internet traffic to the Trump Tower, Candidate Trump’s apartment and understand the gravity of these next few wordsthe Executive Office of the President of the United States, shortly after President Trump took office.

The campaign of a presidential candidate was part of misleading the FBI, resulting in impeachment (but not removal) of a sitting U.S. President. In addition, the campaign monitored the private internet traffic of a political opponent and the Office of a United States President.

The Office of the United States President. Let that sink in…

On February 11, 2022, Durham filed a criminal motion in U.S. District Court, District of Columbia, against Michael Sussman. From United States of America v. Michael A. Sussman:

The defendant [Michael Sussman] is charged in a one-count indictment with making a materially false statement to the FBI, in violation of Title 18, United  States Code, Section 1001 (the “Indictment”). As set  forth in the Indictment , on Sept. 19, 2016 – less than  two months before the 2016 U.S. Presidential election – the defendant, a lawyer at a large international  law firm (“Law Firm-1”) that was then serving as counsel to the Clinton Campaign, met with the FBI  General Counsel at FBI Headquarters in  Washington, D.C. The defendant provided the FBI  General Counsel with purported  data and “white  papers ” that allegedly demonstrated a covert  communications channel between the Trump  Organization and a Russia-based bank (“Russian  Bank-1”). The Indictment alleges that the defendant lied in that meeting, falsely stating to the General  Counsel that he was not providing the allegations to  the FBI on behalf of any client. In fact, the defendant  had assembled and conveyed the allegations to the  FBI on behalf of at least two specific clients,  including (i) a technology executive (“Tech Executive- 1”) at a U.S.-based Internet company (“Internet  Company-1”), and (ii) the Clinton Campaign.

Hillary Clinton not only denies complicity, she has the nerve to accuse Durham of engineering a “conspiracy”. The woman has neither shame nor conscience. When, just when, will she be brought to justice?

~E

Covid vaccine follies: Unvaxxed scapegoated; vaxxed vulnerable to more severe diseases

Americans who decline to be vaccinated with Covid-19 vaccines are being scapegoated for the Delta-variant infections.

(1) CBS reports that in an interview with “Face the Nation” on August 1, 2021, Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to President Biden, said that Americans who remain unvaccinated against the coronavirus are “propagating” the latest outbreak of casesof the highly contagious Delta variant. Fauci said: “We have 100 million people in this country…who are eligible to be vaccinated, who are not vaccinated. We’ve really got to get those people…vaccinated because they are the ones that are propagating this outbreak.

(2) Actress Jennifer Anniston went so far as to cut off some of her friends who refused to be vaccinated because, she maintains, “if you have the variant, you are still able to give it to me.” (BBC)

(3) Actor and former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger called mask-averse Americans “schmucks” and said to them to “screw your freedom.” Well, there are consequences to Schwarzenegger’s name calling — he just lost a sponsor for his annual bodybuilding event known as the Arnold Classic. REDCON1, a sports nutrition brand, confirmed they’ve pulled out from Schwarzenegger’s event as well as any others he’s involved in. “We elected to discontinue support due to Arnold’s comment, ‘Screw Your Freedoms,’” a spokesperson for the company said. (Fox News)

But the testimony from the science so revered by Fauci and the Left says otherwise.

An article in the journal Nature, dated August 12, 2021, says:

[R]eports from various countries seem to confirm what scientists feared after the variant tore through India with alarming speed in April and May: Delta is more likely than other variants to spread through vaccinated people.

Data from COVID-19 tests in the United States, the United Kingdom and Singapore are showing that vaccinated people who become infected with Delta SARS-CoV-2 can carry as much virus in their nose as do unvaccinated people. This means that despite the protection offered by vaccines, a proportion of vaccinated people can pass on Delta, possibly aiding its rise….

An August report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed that following large gatherings in the beach town [Provincetown, Massachusetts], nearly three-quarters of 469 new COVID-19 cases that occurred in the state were in vaccinated people2. Both vaccinated and unvaccinated people had comparably…high viral loads, and of the 133 samples sequenced, 90% were identified as Delta….

In Houston, Texas…, about 17% of Delta cases are in vaccinated people since March 2021, nearly three times the rate of breakthrough infections compared with all other variants combined. Patients with Delta SARS-CoV-2 also stayed in hospital slightly longer than did people infected with other variants. “There’s potentially a slightly different biology to the [Delta] infection,” says James Musser, a molecular pathologist and director of the hospital’s Center for Molecular and Translational Human Infectious Diseases Research. His team found that Ct levels [viral loads] were similar in vaccinated and unvaccinated people3.

However, vaccinated people with Delta might remain infectious for a shorter period, according to researchers in Singapore…. [And, for that reason] Paul Elliott, an epidemiologist at Imperial [College London], says…“We think it’s really, really important to get as many people double vaccinated, and particularly those younger groups, as soon as possible.

And so, those who have been injected with the Covid vaccines carry as many Delta viruses as the unvaccinated, which means the vaxxed are infecting the unvaxxed just as much as the reverse. But the unvaxxed are being blamed for the Delta breakout, and are treated worse than black people during segregation:

  • Restaurants will not admit the unvaxxed.
  • Employees are being forced to be vaxxed or risk losing their jobs.
  • Schools and universities are forcing all their students to be vaxxed.
  • In California, per a health order from the state, hospital or skilled nursing facility visitors must provide proof of full vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test taken within 72 hours in order to enter these facilities to visit/accompany a patient.

The push to jab the unvaxxed is intensifying, despite the fact that:

(1) The vaccines are losing their effectiveness against the Delta Covid-mutation, with the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine waning faster than others. A UK study found that although the Pfizer vaccine was 90% effective against Delta infections one month after the second dose, this declined to 78% after three months, a loss of 12 percentage points. (Statistica)

That is why the push is now on for a “booster,” i.e., a third vaccination.

Since viruses, including the Covid-19 coronavirus, continue to mutate, this means that those who have been vaccinated will likely have to get “booster” shots, again and again, as new Covid mutations appear.

(2) The absolute risk reduction (ARR), which is the difference between Covid attack rates with and without a vaccine, is miniscule (The Lancet):

  • 1-3% for the AstraZeneca–Oxford vaccine.
  • 1-2% for the Moderna–NIH.
  • 1-2% for the J&J.
  • 0.93% for the Gamaleya.
  • 0.84% for the Pfizer–BioNTech vaccines.

Translated, this means that getting the Covid vaccine of whichever variety reduces your chance of getting Covid by less than 1% to at most 3%.

Note: The Lancet scientific journal explains that absolute risk reductions (AAAs) “tend to be ignored because they give a much less impressive effect size than RRRs or relative risk reduction. Vaccine efficacy is generally reported as RRR.

Worse still, leaving aside the many real side-effects of Covid vaccines, is a study published in the Internal Journal of Clinical Practice (IJCP) which found that the vaccines may actually “sensitize” vaccine recipients to more severe diseases than if they had not been vaccinated. The Oxford Dictionary defines “sensitize” as “Cause (someone or something) to respond to certain stimuli; make sensitive.”

From the IJCP article’s “Abstract”:

Results of the study: COVID-19 vaccines designed to elicit neutralising antibodies may sensitise vaccine recipients to more severe disease than if they were not vaccinated. Vaccines for SARS, MERS and RSV have never been approved, and the data generated in the development and testing of these vaccines suggest a serious mechanistic concern: that vaccines designed empirically using the traditional approach (consisting of the unmodified or minimally modified coronavirus viral spike to elicit neutralising antibodies), be they composed of protein, viral vector, DNA or RNA and irrespective of delivery method, may worsen COVID-19 disease via antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE). This risk is sufficiently obscured in clinical trial protocols and consent forms for ongoing COVID-19 vaccine trials that adequate patient comprehension of this risk is unlikely to occur, obviating truly informed consent by subjects in these trials.

~E

Governments inflated number of COVID-19 deaths & hospitalizations

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve seen anecdotal accounts of a non-COVID death being attributed to COVID.

Now, a few governments are admitting that they have “inflated” (i.e., lied about) the numbers of both COVID deaths and COVID hospitalizations.

Below are two examples.

(1) California

Chris Enloe reports for The Blaze that Alameda County in the San Francisco Bay Area, had revised its COVID-19 data methodology to only include people who directly died from COVID-19, resulting in a massive 25% decrease in its reported COVID-19 deaths from 1,634 to 1,223 — a decrease of 411.

Neetu Balram, a spokesperson for the Alameda County Public Health Department, said the 411 people removed from the county’s COVID-19 death toll died from causes “clearly not caused by COVID.”

Previously, Alameda County officials had included in their death toll any resident who died while infected the virus — not just those individuals who died directly from COVID-19.

(2) United Kingdom

The (UK) Telegraph reports, July 29, 2021, that National Health Service (NHS) official data reveal that as many as “One in four patients classed as a Covid hospitalisation is being treated for other reasons . . . prompting claims that the public has been misled.” Many patients categorized as Covid hospitalizations had another primary cause of admission. “The data shows that of 5,021 patients this week classed as hospitalised by Covid, 1,166 were admitted for other reasons.”

In some areas, almost one in three COVID hospitalizations was actually admitted for other reasons. 

Tory MPs accused the Government of making “flawed decisions based on misleading data”, while leading scientists questioned why the true picture was only now beginning to emerge.

Prof. Carl Heneghan, the director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at the University of Oxford, said: “This data is incredibly important, and this is information we should have had a very long time ago. We have been crying out for it for nearly 18 months. The Government might have made very different decisions about restrictions if it had access to data which actually measured the situation accurately.

Last summer, Public Health England (PHE) was forced to make changes to the way it reported death figures after its methods were found to inflate total numbers by counting as a virus fatality anyone who tested positive for Covid and later died. 

~E

Be careful with your airline boarding pass: Hackers can get personal information from it

Like their father, the Devil, evil people are resourceful opportunists.

If they get hold of your airline boarding pass, they can hack into the pass to obtain your personal information by simply scanning the bar code on the card.

That’s because airlines encode your personal information in your boarding pass. All anyone needs to see this hidden information is a barcode scanner ― the same kind that scans items at the grocery store. Barcode scanners can be easily found on various websites and in app stores, often for free.

While some airlines encode more information than others, below is the personal information that hackers can access:

  • Your name and flight details.
  • Your airline account number.
  • Your email address, phone number and more

Once hackers have your basic information, they can use the information to gather more details about you.

For example, with your frequent flier account number, a scammer can then get “secret question” information like your mother’s maiden name or high school mascot from social media to log into your account. From there, the criminal can wreak havoc by changing or canceling future reservations, stealing frequent flier points and more.

Etay Maor, chief security officer at global threat intelligence firm IntSights, said he’d noticed a troubling trend: Passengers leaving their boarding passes behind on the plane. Maor said: “The problem is, people don’t realize that all your personal information is encoded right there. People should treat their boarding passes the same way they treat their passports. You’d never leave your passport behind.

What to do:

  1. Use a mobile boarding pass. Your safest bet for protecting your sensitive travel information is to avoid paper completely. Opt to receive your boarding pass digitally instead of printing it so no one can see or access the barcode.
  2. Shred your paper boarding pass. If you must print your boarding pass, keep it secured at all times and don’t leave it out where someone could quickly scan it or snap a quick pic. And definitely don’t forget it in the seatback pocket of the plane. Once you’ve made it home, go ahead and shred it.
  3. Never post photos of your boarding pass. A quick search of #boardingpass on Instagram will show you thousands of recent posts by users displaying their boarding passes ― many with unobstructed barcodes.

Source

H/t John Molloy

~E

Winner of 2021 Useful Idiot Award

Useful idiots (definition): People who, unwittingly, are propagandists for a cause the goals of which they are not fully aware, and who are used cynically by the leaders of the cause.

Chris Field reports for The Blaze that although Joe Biden had campaigned for the presidency on being pro-abortion, a group of supposed pro-life evangelical leaders who had banded together to support the 2020 election of Biden are now expressing shock and dismay that President Biden has reversed President Trump’s pro-life executive orders that ended U.S. taxpayers’ funding of abortions in the United States and abroad.

During the 2020 election, Pro-Life Evangelicals for Biden declared their support for pro-abort Biden and put out a petition encouraging Christians to do the same. The petition said:

As pro-life evangelicals, we disagree with Vice President Biden and the Democratic platform on the issue of abortion. But…we believe that on balance, Joe Biden’s policies are more consistent with the biblically shaped ethic of life than those of Donald Trump. Therefore, even as we continue to urge different policies on abortion, we urge evangelicals to elect Joe Biden as president.

Now, the group profess being shocked and dismayed by the Biden administration.

In an open letter, the oxymoronic Pro-Life Evangelicals for Biden now say they feel “used and betrayed” by the Biden administration and decried the fact that the COVID relief package passed by Congress excludes the Hyde Amendment, which prevents tax money from being used to fund abortion, in spite of the fact that the Biden campaign had said on its own website before the election that Biden supported repealing the Hyde Amendment.

The Evangelical group says in their open letter:

As pro-life leaders in the evangelical community, we publicly supported President Biden’s candidacy with the understanding that there would be engagement [with] us on the issue of abortion and particularly the Hyde Amendment. The Biden team wanted to talk to us during the campaign to gain our support, and we gave it on the condition there would be active dialogue and common ground solutions on the issue of abortion. There has been no dialogue since the campaign.

We feel used and betrayed and have no intention of simply watching these kinds of efforts happen from the sidelines. Many evangelicals and Catholics took risks to support Biden publicly. President Biden and Democrats need to honor their courage.

I believe the Pro-Life Evangelicals for Biden knew full well before the 2020 election that Biden and the Democrat Party are pro-abort and determined to restore U.S. taxpayer funding of abortions — and more. The group’s protests now are hollow, the purpose of which is to cover their sorry asses.

Below are prominent members of the Pro-Life Evangelicals For Biden:

  • Claude Alexander, Bishop
  • Myron S. Augsburger, President Emeritus, Eastern Mennonite University
  • Ray Bakke, Professor of Global Urban Mission
  • David Black, President Emeritus, Eastern University
  • Jerushah Duford, Billy Graham’s granddaughter
  • Richard Foster, author of Celebration of Discipline
  • Roberta Hestenes, former President of Eastern University
  • John Huffman, Board Chair Emeritus, Christianity Today
  • Joel C. Hunter, faith community organizer
  • Richard Mouw, President Emeritus of Fuller Seminary
  • Brenda Salter McNeil, Reconciler, Professor, Pastor
  • Ron Sider, President Emeritus, Evangelicals for Social Action

~E

Beware of phone call claiming to be from Amazon.com

This seems to be the season for phone scams.

Yesterday, I posted a warning about a phone scam saying that Social Security is “taking legal action” against you for fraudulent Social Security claims.

This afternoon, I got another scam phone call, with a caller ID of (915) 200-3915. A recording said that a charge of more than $900 was made to my Amazon.com account and that I should call the (915) number if I had not made the purchase.

I immediately hung up, went online to my Amazon account and saw that no such charge had been made to my account.

The advice from Amazon is to report the scam phone call to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Go here.

If you got a scam or phishing Amazon email, or landed on a suspicious webpage, report it to Amazon:

  1. Open a new email and attach the email you suspect is fake.For suspicious webpages, copy & paste the link into the email body.If you can’t send the email as an attachment, forward it.
  2. Send the email to [email protected]Note: Sending the suspicious email as an attachment is the best way for Amazon to track it.

~E

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