Month: February 2022

A Japanese pharmaceutical company, Kowa Co, said on Monday that the drug ivermectin has an “antiviral effect” against Omicron and other Covid-19 variants.

The finding was made with Tokyo’s Kitasato University on a joint non-clinical research project, which has been testing the drug as a potential treatment for the disease, according to Reuters.

Kowa says that ivermectin showed the “same antiviral effect” on all “mutant strains,” including Alpha, Delta and Omicron. The company also noted that ivermectin suppresses invasion of the virus and inhibits its replication.

“[Ivermectin] is expected to be applied as a therapeutic drug (tablet) for all new coronavirus infectious diseases,” reads the report.

Of note, Reuters changed their original headline from “effective” against Omicron to having an “antiviral effect,” and corrected a statement that the finding occurred during “Phase III clinical trials.”

UPDATE – Reuters has updated the title after initial publishing. Now says ivermectin showed “antiviral effect” instead of “effective” against Omicron. pic.twitter.com/YCIz38msjv

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) January 31, 2022

Ivermectin is at the heart of an ongoing ‘medical misinformation’ campaign surrounding podcaster Joe Rogan and several expert guests who have advocated for the use of the anti-parasitic drug as an early treatment option for Covid-19 patients. Rogan himself used ivermectin as part of a cocktail of treatments when he contracted Covid-19.

Controversy over free speech erupted last week after singers Neil Young and Joni Mitchell demanded that Spotify remove their music catalog unless Rogan was silenced.

Rogan responded to the drama on in a Monday Instagram video, in which he said he only seeks to have conversations on his podcast with people who have “differing opinions,” and that he isn’t “trying to promote misinformation.”

He noted that he’s booked experts from all sides, including CNN‘s chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Dr. Michael Osterholm, who is a member of President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 advisory board, and Dr. Peter Hotez from Baylor College of Medicine.

Rogan also pointed out that many previously-verboten Covid claims have turned out to be true.

 

 

 

 

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According to ivmmeta.com, Ivermectin showed an average 64% improvement as an early treatment, a 39% improvement as a late treatment and an 83% improvement as a prophylaxis, across 77 studies.

As The Epoch Times notes;

Ivermectin has been used by the World Health Organization for over 30 years to treat parasitic infections. Volunteers have distributed the drug in African countries where it has been found to be extremely effective, said the Kowa report.

However, the treatment has been mired in controversy during recent times as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not approved the use of ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19, even though the drug is used in humans to treat a variety of conditions.

The FDA has refused to respond to a Freedom of Information Act request (FOIA) asking for details about any reports of side effects related to the use of ivermectin in treating COVID-19 while publicly denouncing its usage.

The federal government pays hospitals across the country to treat COVID-19 patients, but the payment is tied to approved methods, and ivermectin is not part of the protocol.

However, families desperate to save their loved ones are resorting to secretly sneaking the drug into hospitals as a last-ditch effort that often ends up helping the infected person recover.

All or part of 22 countries around the globe have approved the use of ivermectin in the treatment of COVID-19, based on multiple studies. Japan has not yet approved ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19.

A bill has been presented to make New Hampshire the first state in the country to make ivermectin part of the approved COVID-19 treatments and offer it as an over-the-counter medication.

Authored by Dorothy Li and Joshua Philipp via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Sealed from the rest of Beijing in a “closed-loop” bubble, over 200 American athletes are receiving daily COVID screening for the Winter Olympics. But some experts worry that U.S. Olympians’ DNA might be collected by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Patricia Adams, executive director of Canada-based non-profit Probe International, said “it’s a very likely possibility” that the CCP will be collecting top-performing athletes’ DNA at the Games.

“They [CCP] are doing the testing every day … and [there’s] absolutely no oversight over the use of the products that they’re getting,” Adams said during a Jan. 26 webinar on EpochTV’s “Unmasking Communist China” program.

In the online event, Stephen Yates, chief executive of consultancy firm DC International Advisory, spoke of the threat posed by the Chinese regime’s mass collection of personal information and health data. U.S. officials and experts have previously sounded the alarm that Beijing is amassing a large database that includes Americans’ personal and health information, which could be used to enhance artificial intelligence systems and fields of medicine, as well as assist in espionage and military operations.

The danger, Yates said, lies in the CCP using the mass data set for unethical purposes.

“China has weaponized artificial intelligence and a lot of other studies of the human process in ways that civilized countries wouldn’t even allow, so we don’t have any way to really know what this dark window of the future might be,” he said.

According to Yates, CCP may use the massive data set to give their athletes a competitive advantage or increase opportunities for psychological warfare.

The Winter Olympics is set to open in Beijing on Feb 4. The diplomatic boycotts announced by the United States and a spate of other countries, which is meant to hold the communist regime accountable for its human rights violations in Xinjiang, don’t keep athletes from competing at the Games.

The U.S. athletes arrived in Beijing on the evening of Jan. 28, and were sent straight to hotels situated in a closed-loop system surrounded by wire fences. Everyone in the bubble can only leave via special vehicles, and staff in full protective suits carry out mouth swabs on them every day.

In the online event, Adams suggested that the CCP may “get rid of an American who’s the likely winner of the gold” through what she described as “nefarious means using false positive COVID test.”

Beijing’s Olympic organizers on Jan. 29 denied reports that they may potentially manipulate COVID test results, saying that the tests are up to international standards, according to state media China Daily.

Adams said that “at the end of the day, it’s all being done by the Chinese government, and nobody really knows what’s going to happen to the data.”

She noted the problem is “nobody trusts the Chinese government.”

“The Chinese government has demonstrated to the world over and over and over again that they don’t follow rules. They follow their own rules. They don’t follow international rules. They don’t follow treaties that they’ve signed.”

The CCP’s known record of cyber espionage has led several countries, including the United States, UK, and Canada to tell their athletes to bring a burner phone for the Games. Cyber security experts warned that Beijing 2022, a compulsory health app for the Games, may spy on users through encryption flaws.

“I think that athletes are very, very nervous. And they’re not happy,” said Adams.

On Monday in New York top diplomats traded accusations in a rare United Nations National Security Council debate over the Russia-Ukraine crisis. The US and its allies, particularly Britain, have also raised the sanctions pressure – now threatening hard hitting punitive measures on Putin’s “inner circle” – as well as targeting banks and energy companies in the event of a Ukraine offensive. 

Simultaneously, Russia’s Northern Fleet conduced anti-submarine drills in the Norwegian Sea, not far from NATO member Norway, at a moment of broader and rival naval movements in places like the Black Sea. 

Russia’s military described the northern drills as involving ships “hunting down a notional enemy’s submarine using sonars and data from military pilots,” according to TASS news agency.

“As part of the drills with the Arctic expeditionary task force, a group of the Northern Fleet’s combat ships and support vessels practiced anti-submarine assignments in the Norwegian Sea,” the defense ministry described. 

“The crews of the missile cruiser Marshal Ustinov and the frigate Fleet Admiral Kasatonov hunted down the notional enemy’s submarines with the help of an anti-submarine warfare helicopter,” the military press office added.

The exercise involved a Russian missile cruiser, a frigate, and helicopters – and is said to be one of many drills happening across all fleets from the Atlantic to Pacific Oceans, and in the Mediterranean. 

At a moment the West is closely monitoring Russian military movements related to the Ukraine border build-up, TASS writes, “Overall, the sweeping drills will bring together over 140 warships and support vessels, more than 60 aircraft, 1,000 items of military hardware and about 10,000 troops.”

In the past days there have even been Russian naval drills happening off Ireland’s coast, which have been source of major controversy, given it’s a ‘live fire’ exercise initially staged within the Republic of Ireland’s Exclusive Economic Zone. After a government protest to Russia, Irish Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney over the weekend issued an update to say the exercises would be “relocated outside of Ireland’s EEZ”.

A popular hedge fund trade – known as the Treasury Basis Trade which, reminiscent of what LTCM did back in the day seeks to profit from minuscule differences between prices in the futures and cash markets for Treasuries by using massive amounts of borrowed money – is set to make a comeback as the Federal Reserve plots to shrink its footprint in the U.S. Treasury market, even though it nearly blew up the financial world in late 2019.

The strategy, which as we explained in detail most recently here, involves taking leveraged positions in Treasury notes and bonds in order to exploit price differences with the corresponding futures contracts, backfired both in Sept 2019 (leading to the repo market crisis which ushered in the Fed’s “NOT QE” phase of reserve replenishment) as well as the March 2020 liquidity crisis, when the normal relationships between cash and futures broke down completely.

Since then, the Fed’s relentless and gigantic buying of Treasury notes and bonds had stripped the volatility out of the cash-futures relationship, while also bidding up the value of the older Treasuries normally used in basis trades, effectively eliminating any monetizable arb in the basis trade.

But that is changing, and with the Fed set to end QE by March (until the next crisis that is) and to start QT later this year, arbitrage opportunities are set to return, Citigroup strategists Raghav Datla and Jason Williams said in a note late Friday, according to Bloomberg.

The policy shift “should remove the dampening effect that Fed purchases had on the futures net-basis” and yield relationships between older and new Treasuries, they wrote. Also, financing rates for Treasuries should rise “and drive more dislocations in cash/futures markets.”

In short: the trade that prompted the Fed to step in in 2019 and 2020 and bail out countless hedge funds (as we explained in “The Fed Was Suddenly Facing Multiple LTCMs”: An Explanation Of What Really Happened On Repocalypse Day“), is about to come back with a vengeance precisely because the Fed is about to step away and allow markets to return to normal.

Sure enough, as shown in the chart below, since the start of the year, the yield differential between the newest 10-year note maturing in November 2031 and the second-newest, maturing three months earlier in August 2031, has shrunk. The older note’s yield is lower, but by a smaller margin than previously. That trend should continue as the increased supply of Treasuries in private hands leads to higher financing rates, the Citi strategists said.

As for the futures basis, it remains depressed for now despite strong investor demand for Treasury futures. The latest weekly CFTC data showed asset managers were net long almost 1.5 million five-year note contracts, near the highest level of the past two years. Expect this to change as well in coming weeks as the Fed’s footprints in the bond market fade leaving the bond market to crash at its leisure now that the buyer of first resort has stepped away if only until the next market crash.

Two months after we warned that the Fed is hiking into a recession, The downgrades of the US economy are now coming in fast and furious.

What time is Jean-Claude Trichet speaking to explain why the Fed is hiking rates into a recession

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) December 2, 2021

One day after Goldman raised its Fed funds forecast from 4 to 5 rate hikes in 2022, the bank did what it had done on at least 4 previous occasions in the past 3 months: it cut its US GDP forecast for both Q1 and the full year, perhaps prompted by a similar action by JPMorgan on Friday as well as the Atlanta Fed which as a reminder now sees the US economy “growing” at just 0.1% in the first quarter.

Of course, this should not come as a surprise: Goldman’s economics team has been atrocious in its forecasts over the past year (similar to the “inflation is transitory” Fed), not just when it comes to inflation, where the bank increased its year-end 2021 CPI forecast by 0.4% every single month starting in April of last year…

… but also when it comes to being overly optimistic about the state of the US economy, to wit:

• Jul 26, 2021: Goldman Sees Sharp Deceleration In US Economic Growth In 2022
• Aug 17, 2021: US Economic Growth Suddenly Collapses, As Even Goldman Says “Not Good”
• Aug 18, 2021: Here Comes Stagflation: Goldman Slashes GDP Estimate For Second Time In 3 Weeks, Sees “Bigger Inflation Surge”
• Sept 6, 202: Goldman Cuts Its US GDP Forecast For The Third Time In The Past Month
• Oct 10, 2021: Goldman Slashes 2021, 2022 GDP Forecasts Again, Blames Fiscal Drag, Slowing Consumer Spending
• Dec 4, 2021: Goldman Cuts GDP Forecast Due To Omicron, Setting The Stage For More Central Banks Stimulus

You get the picture. It was in one of these multiple GDP cuts where we said that while it remains to be seen just how positive the impact from reopenings will be “one area where we disagree profoundly with Goldman is the bank’s generous modeling of an upside boost to growth from “pent-up savings” which the bank expects to offset a substantial portion of the fiscal hit… The excess savings – in as much as they still exist – mostly benefit the top 1%, with the bulk of the population benefiting from only 30% of the total accumulated amount. As such the contribution to consumption from excess savings will end up being far smaller than most Wall Street strategists predict (since the propensity of the top 1% to spend their savings which are instead invested in the market, is far less than the broader population). The result: expect even more aggressive cuts to GDP growth in coming quarters – from both Goldman and its peers – even as inflation continues to rise, cementing a painful period of non-transitory stagflation for the US as the mid-term elections approach.”

Just a few weeks later, our bearish take was once again validated to the detriment of Goldman’s predictive acumen, when today the Vampire Squid admitted that it had greatly overestimated the spending capacity of the US households – that key driver behind 70% of US GDP – when in a note from Goldman’s econ team, the bank wrote that after last week’s GDP report which saw the US economy grow at the fastest annual pace since the 1980s, “growth is likely to slow abruptly in 2022, as fiscal support fades and, in the near-term, virus spread weighs on services spending and prolongs supply chain disruption.”

Specifically, the bank slashed its Q1 GDP forecast from 2.0% to just 0.5%, and while the bank fudged the other quarters modestly higher, it lowered its 2022 annual average GDP forecast by 0.2% to +3.2% (vs. +3.8% consensus) while warning that “the annual average masks the sharp deceleration in growth from 2021 into 2022, which is better captured by the 2022 Q4/Q4 rate, which we now expect will be +2.2% (previously +2.4%).”

And while Goldman has yet to admit that the significant contribution to GDP from “pent up savings” will prove to be the latest fiasco by one of the country’s most respected economist teams, it had conceded that growth in 2022 will be fast slower due to three key reasons: i) the lack of extended stimmies, in this case the expiration of child tax credits; ii) drop in service spending due to the Omicron panic and iii) continued supply-chain disruptions of domestic production, which will weigh on inventory accumulation and exports in Q1.

Some more details on these three factors:

• 1. Fiscal Impulse slowing: Goldman calculates that fiscal support boosted real disposable income to 5% above the pre-pandemic trend on average in 2021, but following the lapse of the expanded child tax credit this month, disposable income has likely dipped below trend and will remain an average of 1% below the pre-pandemic trend in2022—even after penciling in strong gains in labor income. As Goldman’s Jan Hatzius writes, “this decline should weigh on consumer spending—and is a large part of why we expect growth to slow to only slightly above potential by the end of the year—but the impact should be cushioned by spending of excess savings built up during the pandemic that still total nearly $2½ tn.“

• 2. Omicron hit to service spending. Goldman writes that Q1 growth is likely to be particularly soft because the fiscal drag will be accompanied by a hit from Omicron: “High frequency data indicate that spending on virus-sensitive services has declined sharply since early December, and overall real services spending declined by 0.6% in January.” The good news is that the rebound from Omicron is expected to be quick, and the bank estimates that consumption will grow at a modest 1.5% annualized pace in Q1.

3. Continued supply-chain disruptions. Virus spread has also hit the supply side of the economy, according to Goldman which notes that “worker absenteeism appears to have peaked at 3.5% of the adult population in early January, and renewed foreign virus restrictions will likely prolong supply chain disruptions and interrupt domestic production. This is likely to weigh on inventory accumulation and exports in Q1.”

The lack of continued inventory restocking will also hit Q1 GDP, as we said after last week’s GDP report. According to Goldman’s estimate, Q1 will see +$65bn (annualized) in inventory growth (vs. +$173bn in Q4), which would subtract 2% from Q1 GDP growth. This reflects an expected drawdown in auto inventories based on production schedules and recent company commentary. The bank also assumes moderately slower growth in broader manufacturing and trade inventories, in part because Omicron has already caused a disruptive wave of worker absenteeism in the US and threatens to be more disruptive abroad, especially in China.

Putting it all together, Goldman writes that it “lowered our Q1 GDP forecast by 1.5pp to +0.5% (qoq)—mainly reflecting our expectation for a large negative contribution from the inventories component of GDP—and we have nudged up our Q2 forecast by ½pp to +3.5%, which will benefit from the post-Omicron rebound. We have raised Q3 slightly to +3% (from +2.75%) and left Q4 unchanged (at +2.0%), which lowers our 2022 annual average GDP forecast by 0.2pp to +3.2% (vs. +3.8% consensus). However, the annual average masks the sharp deceleration in growth from 2021 into 2022, which is better captured by the 2022 Q4/Q4 rate, which we now expect will be +2.2% (previously +2.4%).”

Ironically, despite this admission that all of its previous rosy growth forecasts were wrong, and that the US is facing a “sharp deceleration” in growth, the bank raised its forecast for the total number of Fed rate hikes in 2022 to 5. Needless to say, something will give – either the US economy will have to grow much faster, or the Fed will have to capitulate in a few months and pivot dovishly away from its aggressive tightening path which will send the US into recession, something which the bond market is already saying is virtually certainly.

And since the US economy will not find some deus ex engine for faster growth, the Fed is facing two stark choices as Morgan Stanley explained yesterday: a recession or years of very high inflation.

Submitted by The Machine Gun Nest (TMGN).,

What always proceeds gun confiscation historically? A Registry.

A Registry of guns and gun owners is a tool that the federal government, the DOJ, and the ATF have had on their wish list for decades now. Anti-gun politicians and lobbyists have sold a registry as a tool for stopping crime, enforcing universal background checks, and ensuring public safety.

In reality, a Registry guarantees that large-scale confiscation will happen at some point. That’s why the ATF is forbidden explicitly from keeping a searchable database by law.

Today, Gun Owners of America announced that the ATF has nearly 1 Billion records of firearm purchases, with over 850 million of those records in digital format. These records contain all sorts of personal information on gun owners in addition to the gun they’ve purchased. Important personal information, including their names, addresses, place of birth, sometimes even social security numbers, can all be found on these records.

The firearm transaction records that the ATF is referring to is the ATF Form 4473. Federal law currently states that a firearms dealer can destroy 4473 forms after 20 years. If a firearms dealer goes out of business or closes before those 20 years, federal law says dealers must hand over those forms to the ATF.

ATF Form 4473

So the ATF currently is in possession of nearly 1 Billion of these records. Here’s the direct quote attributed to the ATF from GOA: “In total, ATF manages 920,664,765 OBR as of November 2021. This includes digital and an estimated number of hard copy records that are awaiting image conversion. It is currently estimated that 865,787,086 of those records are in a digitalized format.”

So over 850 million of those records are in digital format, making them easier to search. GOA claims this constitutes a “partially complete database of guns and gun owners.”

So how does the ATF justify this massive privacy invasion of gun owners? They claim that “the vast majority of criminal firearms traces are done for state and local law enforcement agencies pertaining to active investigations.” But interestingly, in true Federal Government style, they also mention that they have no idea how effective this system is and if any of the information leads to the successful prosecution of gun crimes. 

This lack of information is especially interesting considering that the Biden DOJ wants to change the regulation on firearms dealers so that they can never destroy gun transaction records. It should be exceedingly obvious that their goal is, of course, a complete registry of all firearms in the United States. What we are witnessing are small steps towards that goal. 

We here at TMGN have been warning people about this change back in 2020 when the ATF changed form 4473 to include both firearm & personal information on the front page. I felt that the only reason for this change was data collection and the ease of digitizing a paper form, but now it’s exceedingly evident that theory was correct. 

This is why it is crucial for gun owners to get involved and make sure they’re calling their members of Congress, getting out and making their voices heard, or even donating to a group that will fight on their behalf. If we don’t push back on these infringements, the ATF will track gun owners down the road and move to confiscate our firearms.

This database is especially worrying with the current situation with the ATF classifying Rare Breed Firearms’ Forced Reset Triggers as machine guns and working to confiscate them from dealers and citizens alike. 

Keep in mind that with the push to regulate semi-automatic firearms as machine guns, a registry would be a handy tool for confiscation. When you consider that confiscation of firearms is the end goal, it’s no wonder the ATF is pushing so hard to keep a database of gun owners.

We explain more about today’s startling developments here: 

Students at Colorado State University who have been traumatized by free speech events held on campus now have 17 different counseling resources to help them cope.

The future of America, ladies and gentlemen…

“If you (or someone you know) are affected by a free speech event on campus, here are some resources,” reads a sign posted to Instagram by Turning Point USA Rockies.

As Campus Reform notes, the university’s sign points to 17 departments that can help students who have been “affected.”

Departments and programs were also designated for minority students, including Student Diversity Program centers for Asian Pacific, Black/African, and Native Americans. Service and Cultural resources provided spaces for LGBTQ+ students, students with disabilities, and included the Women and Gender Advocacy Center.

The Rockies account called out the school for “intolerance,” noting, “And we haven’t even had an event yet gotta love the intolerance of @coloradostateuniversity.”

Colorado State University has consistently been a hostile environment for conservative organizations, particularly in the fall 2021 semester. -Campus Reform

CSU seems to have no problem with left-wing students harassing conservative students, however.

 

 

 

 

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Submitted by Daniel Teng of The Epoch Times

Hundreds of protestors have gathered in front of Australia’s Parliament House in solidarity with the massive Convoy to Ottawa that converged on the Canadian capital around the weekend of Jan. 29.

Calls for a similar movement have been echoing Down Under for days, and on Jan. 31, a crowd organised under a “Convoy to Canberra” campaign gathered in front of the national legislature, according to videos circulating on social media.

Australian Parliament House. pic.twitter.com/TcEltQ38zk

— Tony (@mrtdogg_1) January 31, 2022

The crowd can be heard chanting, “What do you want? Freedom! When do we want it? Now!” One individual addressed the crowd saying they had “every right to be here peacefully.”

“They have told us that they have passed the message on that we demand that a representative of this Parliament comes out and addresses the people of Australia and our demands,” he said in a video circulating online.

Social media has been awash with footage of drivers making their way to the Australian capital. The grassroots movement has begun gathering steam as a four-day-old GoFundMe campaign already garnered AU$167,539 in donations, as of Jan. 31.

According to the ABC, the funds have been frozen by the website until details are provided regarding how the organiser will disperse them.

A similar issue occurred with the Canadian protest when GoFundMe froze access to CA$4.5 million in funds. Those funds have since been released.

U.S. truckers are now planning their own version of the protest from California to Washington D.C.

The movement, which has seen thousands to tens of thousands of truckers mobilise, is in response to ongoing vaccine mandates and harsh government-mandated restrictions.

In Australia, mandates have been widely enforced across the country with largely bipartisan support politically and from the business and medical community; it has, however, remained a contentious issue.

On Jan. 22, protests broke out across Australia’s major capital cities with government-mandated restrictions.

Vaccine developer Nikolai Petrovsky has criticised the mixed government messaging on the benefits of the jab, saying it only protects individuals and does not stop transmission of the virus—undermining the reasoning for mandates.

“Every individual should be making decisions about their own health, and it is completely inappropriate to demonise or suggest someone who’s unvaccinated is in any way different to anyone else,” the lead researcher behind Spikogen told The Epoch Times.