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Alluvial Fund 2Q20: Long Bredband2 i Skandinavien

Alluvial Fund 2Q20: Long Bredband2 i Skandinavien

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Alluvial Fund commentary for the second quarter ended June 2020, discussing the virtures of a negative working capital cycle.

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Q2 2020 hedge fund letters, conferences and more

Alluvial Fund rose 14.8% in the second quarter, recouping most of the first quarter’s losses. As I write in late July, the fund has reached approximately break-even for the year while small-cap and micro-cap indexes remain down by double digit percentages, with “value” indexes faring significantly worse. While break-even is certainly not an exciting result, I am happy to have succeeded in preserving our capital amidst a thoroughly dispiriting environment for investors in small companies and less liquid securities..

Most of our portfolio holdings are showing strong resilience in the face of the economic slowdown. Those that have been stung by the pandemic have the operational flexibility and balance sheet strength to manage through the downturn. Just as our often unlisted, often thinly-traded holdings tend to outperform when fear and panic rule the day, they tend to lag when euphoria reigns. As market indexes roared from March’s lows, many of the companies in our universe experienced only a modest bounce, or none at all. I am reminded of the months and years following the financial crisis of 2008, where investors only slowly regained the confidence needed to purchase lesserknown securities despite the economic and market recovery taking place. Of course, brave souls who were willing to buy these shares were amply rewarded in due time. I continue to seek out the best of these opportunities for Alluvial Fund.

In most of these letters, I highlight a few holdings that are new, or have reported substantial business developments since my last communication. I thought partners would appreciate me taking a more comprehensive approach in this letter and providing a run-down of all the fund’s materially-sized positions. I believe each of these companies is dramatically under-valued either on its present-day assets and cash flows, or on a conservative estimate of the present value of all growth and reinvestment opportunities.

Portfolio Review

P10 Holdings continues to be the fund’s largest position. I added to our position when shares fell to $1.50 during March’s panic. With fears of economic catastrophe fading, P10 shares have since soared to new highs. I believe P10 shares are currently worth between $3.50 and $4.00, and potentially far more in future years depending on the company’s ability to acquire additional highmargin, predictable fee streams from alternative investments managers. COVID-19 has not slowed down P10’s ability to form relationships with new clients. In May, P10 subsidiary RCP Advisors won a mandate from a Dutch pension group to invest $500 million over five years.

Intred SpA is (thus far) our most successful discovery from the Borsa Italiana’s AIM segment. Shares have more than tripled since our initial purchases. This fiber-optic network operator continues to sign up new clients for its ultra-high-speed network, and recently acquired a competitor. The company is no longer an obvious value based on free cash flow yield, but Intred continues to enjoy a strong set of investment opportunities, both internal and external. What’s more, Intred has created a negative working capital cycle where it gets paid in advance for its services, effectively creating investment “float” and subsidizing its investment needs. I have become increasingly interested in firms with sustainably negative working capital positions. More on the topic later in this letter. Intred Shares remain attractive under €10.

Bredband2 i Skandinavien continues to thrive as a low-cost provider of high-speed internet in Sweden. Unlike Intred, Bredband2 is largely non-asset-based, providing its services on networks owned by other parties. Like Intred, Bredband2 generates substantial cash from advance payments by customers. The magnitude of these payments allows Bredband2 to operate with negative invested capital and fund all its capex needs from customer pre-payments. Astonishing. Bredband2 is a bargain below SEK 2.00 per share, though I would be hesitant to sell our shares even at that level based on the company’s long runway for growth and rare cash flow characteristics.

Following Bredband2 is LICT Corporation. LICT is in prime position in the telecom industry. LICT has invested heavily over the years and now boasts a fiber-heavy, state-of-the-art network that is well-positioned to deliver broadband to rural Americans for decades to come. The company enjoys a substantial net cash position, enabling it to return virtually all its earnings to shareholders via share repurchases. I wrote about LICT in a little more detail on OTC Adventures recently. Shares are conservatively worth $25,000, a figure that will only grow as the company companies to shrink its share count.

Nuvera Communications has been a long-time stalwart for Alluvial Fund. The company will benefit from increased need for quality consumer and business broadband connections in its Minnesota and Iowa service territories. I am hard-pressed to find a better combination of robust free cash flow generation, low risk operations and a healthy balance sheet. The company is not exactly exciting or communicative (despite the name) and perhaps that is why Nuvera shares languish at 8.3x free cash flow and 7.4x cash earnings (net income plus intangibles amortization). Nuvera has a history of acquiring small Minnesota telecoms, and I expect the company to go on the hunt once again as it pays down the low-cost debt it took on to purchase Scott-Rice Telephone in 2018. I believe Nuvera should trade at a free cash flow yield of ~7-8%, which would value shares at $25-29. While Nuvera does not have the highest long-term return potential in the Alluvial Fund portfolio, it offers attractive upside potential with minimal risk.

Rand Worldwide has been a wonderful holding for Alluvial Fund, and I expect the best is yet to come. Rand is a value-added software reseller of Autodesk products. Customers come to Rand because they need assistance with training, software integration, and support. Autodesk software is the gold standard in the engineering and design fields, and Autodesk is making every effort to increase its sales by transitioning to a software-as-a-service model and beginning to crack down on unauthorized users. Rand Worldwide is the beneficiary of these trends, and its revenues have soared. Rand requires little investment and produces copious free cash flow, allowing the firm to buy competitors and return capital. I would not sell Rand for less than $16 today, and I expect the company’s value to grow quickly under the leadership of majority owner Peter Kamin.

Crawford United is one of our “stung” holdings. The company’s industrial subsidiaries were set to have a record year until the pandemic came along and walloped the aerospace and construction industries. This year’s results will not be impressive, but I continue to like the company’s longterm strategy of acquiring small, good quality industrial firms in the Midwest. There are thousands of potential acquisition targets. Acquiring these niche companies at low multiples of operating income using responsible amounts of debt financing is a winning strategy that is both repeatable and scalable. I continue to believe shares of Crawford are worth at least $25 today and potentially far more in years to come.

Polaris Infrastructure has been a wild ride for shareholders, but the company’s core business has never been stronger. The next 12 months will be an extraordinary time for Polaris. All of the company’s Peruvian assets will come online, the company will very likely complete a hydro power acquisition in Panama, and there is a strong chance the company will complete a refinancing of its Nicaragua debt, lowering its cost and freeing up current cash flow. I expect the company to continue making attractive purchases of renewable power resources in Latin America and South America and sharing the resulting cash flow with shareholders. A 10% free cash flow yield would be a fair price for Polaris, which would value shares well over $20 Canadian. Once the company’s Nicaragua assets no longer account for the majority of the company’s value, I expect the free cash flow yield to compress and for fair value to rise into the $30s.

Next is MMA Capital Holdings, another long-time Alluvial holding. MMAC has been among Alluvial’s most successful investments to date, though shareholders have little to show for the last three years. Despite the market’s disinterest, the firm’s book value continues to grow at a healthy pace. Earnings are growing proportionally as the solar construction lending business scales. MMA was formerly a voracious repurchaser of its own shares but reduced its activity in favor of building out its core business and preserving liquidity as credit markets came under stress earlier this year. I am hopeful that with the worst of COVID-related fears behind us and shares still trading at a 25% discount to book value (excluding tax assets) the company will resume buying back shares. I believe MMA should trade somewhere in the upper $30s, much closer to book value.

Butler National Corporation rounds out our meaningful holdings. Butler, an aerospace provider with a casino company attached, would seem to be at the epicenter of industries most affected by COVID-19. Indeed, Butler’s Kansas casino was closed for 66 days. However, the casino has experienced good levels of traffic since reopening and is actually on track for a record July. The much more important aerospace segment saw its profit slip to just under breakeven for the quarter ended April 30, but backlog remains strong and the company is confident it will continue experiencing healthy demand for its aircraft upgrades, modifications, and systems. Butler’s balance sheet is as strong as ever with 15 cents in net cash per share, casino lease excluded. I struggle to see how Butler shares could be worth less than $1.00, though it may take time for investors to regain their confidence in Butler’s continued profitability.

Missing is Meritage Hospitality Group, which I sold in the second quarter after holding shares for years. Ultimately, I decided I was no longer comfortable with the firm’s aggressive use of debt and its high operating leverage given the extreme economic uncertainty that prevailed. The risk that a long period of depressed revenue would force Meritage to raise equity capital on deeply disadvantageous terms, or even force the firm into bankruptcy, was unacceptably high. Additionally, other opportunities promised better upside with substantially less risk. Fortunately for Meritage, a worst-case scenario has not come to pass, and the company has dealt with its challenges effectively. Fortunately for us, the securities I purchased with the proceeds from our Meritage shares (mainly P10 and Polaris) have performed very well.

On Negative Working Capital Cycles

As I mentioned when discussing Intred and Bredband2, I have become fascinated by business models that feature a negative working capital cycle. Working capital may not be the flashiest subject, but a company’s working capital characteristics will have a significant effect on its ability to grow profitably and how it will manage the ups and downs of the business cycle. Nearly all firms operate with positive working capital. Simply put, they receive cash some length of time after they record revenue. Their operating cash, inventory, and receivables, less payables, is a positive figure. A positive working capital balance represents invested capital that must be funded with debt or equity. As the company’s revenue grows, so do its working capital requirements and the amount of capital required. Working capital needs act as a drag on returns on capital and on the firm’s ability to produce profitable growth.

Rarely, a firm figures out how to reverse the normal pattern and collect significant cash before it delivers its good or services. Most often, these are companies offering some kind of high-margin intangible service that requires minimal physical inventory. For a firm that operates with negative working capital, growth actually provides a capital subsidy as additional cash rolls in. Instead of requiring incremental capital to support its working capital needs, the firm is free to use excess cash to subsidize investment in fixed assets, perform acquisitions, or return capital to shareholders without sacrificing growth opportunities.

Bredband2 i Skandinavien is a shining example. From 2015 to 2019, Bredband2 grew its revenues from SEK 364 million to SEK 671 million, an increase of 84%. Over the same period, the company’s non-cash net working capital went from negative SEK 65 million to negative SEK 119 million. That’s a stunning figure. One would think an increase of 307 million in annual revenue would require some increase in working capital, but not for Bredband2. Instead, the firm’s growth has freed up over SEK 50 million in cash. The firm’s incredible cash generation is one reason Bredband2 has been able to grow at a high-teens rate while distributing virtually all its earnings to shareholders. Now, it must be said that the virtues of a negative working capital cycle only continue for as long as a firm grows its revenue. If revenues fall, working capital consumes cash rather than providing it. The long-term benefits of a negative working capital model only accrue to companies offering products and services that will experience long-term growth in demand with minimal cyclicality. Hmm, sounds a lot like broadband internet…

I am working to identify other small, little-known businesses that generate float through a negative working capital cycle. One company I have found is a provider of custom, high-end travel packages that gets paid by clients months in advance of their actual vacations. (Obviously, this business faces short-term challenges from the pandemic.) If this company ends up in the Alluvial Fund portfolio, I will be sure to provide a more complete description in my next letter.

Concluding Thoughts

Thank you for your confidence in Alluvial. I remain available any time for questions regarding our strategy and portfolio, so please do not hesitate to contact me. As always, my entire investable capital is committed to Alluvial Fund, and I spend each day looking for ways to make our collective investment grow! I hope you and your families are happy and healthy despite the disruption we are all experiencing. I look forward to writing to you again in October.

Regards,

Dave Waters, CFA

Alluvial Capital Management, LLC

This article firs appeared on ValueWalk Premium.

The post Alluvial Fund 2Q20: Long Bredband2 i Skandinavien appeared first on ValueWalk.

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Fauci Deputy Warned Him Against Vaccine Mandates: Email

Fauci Deputy Warned Him Against Vaccine Mandates: Email

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Mandating COVID-19…

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Fauci Deputy Warned Him Against Vaccine Mandates: Email

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Mandating COVID-19 vaccination was a mistake due to ethical and other concerns, a top government doctor warned Dr. Anthony Fauci after Dr. Fauci promoted mass vaccination.

Coercing or forcing people to take a vaccine can have negative consequences from a biological, sociological, psychological, economical, and ethical standpoint and is not worth the cost even if the vaccine is 100% safe,” Dr. Matthew Memoli, director of the Laboratory of Infectious Diseases clinical studies unit at the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), told Dr. Fauci in an email.

“A more prudent approach that considers these issues would be to focus our efforts on those at high risk of severe disease and death, such as the elderly and obese, and do not push vaccination on the young and healthy any further.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci, ex-director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID. in Washington on Jan. 8, 2024. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

Employing that strategy would help prevent loss of public trust and political capital, Dr. Memoli said.

The email was sent on July 30, 2021, after Dr. Fauci, director of the NIAID, claimed that communities would be safer if more people received one of the COVID-19 vaccines and that mass vaccination would lead to the end of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We’re on a really good track now to really crush this outbreak, and the more people we get vaccinated, the more assuredness that we’re going to have that we’re going to be able to do that,” Dr. Fauci said on CNN the month prior.

Dr. Memoli, who has studied influenza vaccination for years, disagreed, telling Dr. Fauci that research in the field has indicated yearly shots sometimes drive the evolution of influenza.

Vaccinating people who have not been infected with COVID-19, he said, could potentially impact the evolution of the virus that causes COVID-19 in unexpected ways.

“At best what we are doing with mandated mass vaccination does nothing and the variants emerge evading immunity anyway as they would have without the vaccine,” Dr. Memoli wrote. “At worst it drives evolution of the virus in a way that is different from nature and possibly detrimental, prolonging the pandemic or causing more morbidity and mortality than it should.”

The vaccination strategy was flawed because it relied on a single antigen, introducing immunity that only lasted for a certain period of time, Dr. Memoli said. When the immunity weakened, the virus was given an opportunity to evolve.

Some other experts, including virologist Geert Vanden Bossche, have offered similar views. Others in the scientific community, such as U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scientists, say vaccination prevents virus evolution, though the agency has acknowledged it doesn’t have records supporting its position.

Other Messages

Dr. Memoli sent the email to Dr. Fauci and two other top NIAID officials, Drs. Hugh Auchincloss and Clifford Lane. The message was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, though the publication did not publish the message. The Epoch Times obtained the email and 199 other pages of Dr. Memoli’s emails through a Freedom of Information Act request. There were no indications that Dr. Fauci ever responded to Dr. Memoli.

Later in 2021, the NIAID’s parent agency, the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), and all other federal government agencies began requiring COVID-19 vaccination, under direction from President Joe Biden.

In other messages, Dr. Memoli said the mandates were unethical and that he was hopeful legal cases brought against the mandates would ultimately let people “make their own healthcare decisions.”

“I am certainly doing everything in my power to influence that,” he wrote on Nov. 2, 2021, to an unknown recipient. Dr. Memoli also disclosed that both he and his wife had applied for exemptions from the mandates imposed by the NIH and his wife’s employer. While her request had been granted, his had not as of yet, Dr. Memoli said. It’s not clear if it ever was.

According to Dr. Memoli, officials had not gone over the bioethics of the mandates. He wrote to the NIH’s Department of Bioethics, pointing out that the protection from the vaccines waned over time, that the shots can cause serious health issues such as myocarditis, or heart inflammation, and that vaccinated people were just as likely to spread COVID-19 as unvaccinated people.

He cited multiple studies in his emails, including one that found a resurgence of COVID-19 cases in a California health care system despite a high rate of vaccination and another that showed transmission rates were similar among the vaccinated and unvaccinated.

Dr. Memoli said he was “particularly interested in the bioethics of a mandate when the vaccine doesn’t have the ability to stop spread of the disease, which is the purpose of the mandate.”

The message led to Dr. Memoli speaking during an NIH event in December 2021, several weeks after he went public with his concerns about mandating vaccines.

“Vaccine mandates should be rare and considered only with a strong justification,” Dr. Memoli said in the debate. He suggested that the justification was not there for COVID-19 vaccines, given their fleeting effectiveness.

Julie Ledgerwood, another NIAID official who also spoke at the event, said that the vaccines were highly effective and that the side effects that had been detected were not significant. She did acknowledge that vaccinated people needed boosters after a period of time.

The NIH, and many other government agencies, removed their mandates in 2023 with the end of the COVID-19 public health emergency.

A request for comment from Dr. Fauci was not returned. Dr. Memoli told The Epoch Times in an email he was “happy to answer any questions you have” but that he needed clearance from the NIAID’s media office. That office then refused to give clearance.

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of health policy at Stanford University, said that Dr. Memoli showed bravery when he warned Dr. Fauci against mandates.

“Those mandates have done more to demolish public trust in public health than any single action by public health officials in my professional career, including diminishing public trust in all vaccines.” Dr. Bhattacharya, a frequent critic of the U.S. response to COVID-19, told The Epoch Times via email. “It was risky for Dr. Memoli to speak publicly since he works at the NIH, and the culture of the NIH punishes those who cross powerful scientific bureaucrats like Dr. Fauci or his former boss, Dr. Francis Collins.”

Tyler Durden Mon, 03/11/2024 - 17:40

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Trump “Clearly Hasn’t Learned From His COVID-Era Mistakes”, RFK Jr. Says

Trump "Clearly Hasn’t Learned From His COVID-Era Mistakes", RFK Jr. Says

Authored by Jeff Louderback via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

President…

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Trump "Clearly Hasn't Learned From His COVID-Era Mistakes", RFK Jr. Says

Authored by Jeff Louderback via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

President Joe Biden claimed that COVID vaccines are now helping cancer patients during his State of the Union address on March 7, but it was a response on Truth Social from former President Donald Trump that drew the ire of independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. holds a voter rally in Grand Rapids, Mich., on Feb. 10, 2024. (Mitch Ranger for The Epoch Times)

During the address, President Biden said: “The pandemic no longer controls our lives. The vaccines that saved us from COVID are now being used to help beat cancer, turning setback into comeback. That’s what America does.”

President Trump wrote: “The Pandemic no longer controls our lives. The VACCINES that saved us from COVID are now being used to help beat cancer—turning setback into comeback. YOU’RE WELCOME JOE. NINE-MONTH APPROVAL TIME VS. 12 YEARS THAT IT WOULD HAVE TAKEN YOU.”

An outspoken critic of President Trump’s COVID response, and the Operation Warp Speed program that escalated the availability of COVID vaccines, Mr. Kennedy said on X, formerly known as Twitter, that “Donald Trump clearly hasn’t learned from his COVID-era mistakes.”

“He fails to recognize how ineffective his warp speed vaccine is as the ninth shot is being recommended to seniors. Even more troubling is the documented harm being caused by the shot to so many innocent children and adults who are suffering myocarditis, pericarditis, and brain inflammation,” Mr. Kennedy remarked.

“This has been confirmed by a CDC-funded study of 99 million people. Instead of bragging about its speedy approval, we should be honestly and transparently debating the abundant evidence that this vaccine may have caused more harm than good.

“I look forward to debating both Trump and Biden on Sept. 16 in San Marcos, Texas.”

Mr. Kennedy announced in April 2023 that he would challenge President Biden for the 2024 Democratic Party presidential nomination before declaring his run as an independent last October, claiming that the Democrat National Committee was “rigging the primary.”

Since the early stages of his campaign, Mr. Kennedy has generated more support than pundits expected from conservatives, moderates, and independents resulting in speculation that he could take votes away from President Trump.

Many Republicans continue to seek a reckoning over the government-imposed pandemic lockdowns and vaccine mandates.

President Trump’s defense of Operation Warp Speed, the program he rolled out in May 2020 to spur the development and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines amid the pandemic, remains a sticking point for some of his supporters.

Vice President Mike Pence (L) and President Donald Trump deliver an update on Operation Warp Speed in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington on Nov. 13, 2020. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

Operation Warp Speed featured a partnership between the government, the military, and the private sector, with the government paying for millions of vaccine doses to be produced.

President Trump released a statement in March 2021 saying: “I hope everyone remembers when they’re getting the COVID-19 Vaccine, that if I wasn’t President, you wouldn’t be getting that beautiful ‘shot’ for 5 years, at best, and probably wouldn’t be getting it at all. I hope everyone remembers!”

President Trump said about the COVID-19 vaccine in an interview on Fox News in March 2021: “It works incredibly well. Ninety-five percent, maybe even more than that. I would recommend it, and I would recommend it to a lot of people that don’t want to get it and a lot of those people voted for me, frankly.

“But again, we have our freedoms and we have to live by that and I agree with that also. But it’s a great vaccine, it’s a safe vaccine, and it’s something that works.”

On many occasions, President Trump has said that he is not in favor of vaccine mandates.

An environmental attorney, Mr. Kennedy founded Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit that aims to end childhood health epidemics by promoting vaccine safeguards, among other initiatives.

Last year, Mr. Kennedy told podcaster Joe Rogan that ivermectin was suppressed by the FDA so that the COVID-19 vaccines could be granted emergency use authorization.

He has criticized Big Pharma, vaccine safety, and government mandates for years.

Since launching his presidential campaign, Mr. Kennedy has made his stances on the COVID-19 vaccines, and vaccines in general, a frequent talking point.

“I would argue that the science is very clear right now that they [vaccines] caused a lot more problems than they averted,” Mr. Kennedy said on Piers Morgan Uncensored last April.

“And if you look at the countries that did not vaccinate, they had the lowest death rates, they had the lowest COVID and infection rates.”

Additional data show a “direct correlation” between excess deaths and high vaccination rates in developed countries, he said.

President Trump and Mr. Kennedy have similar views on topics like protecting the U.S.-Mexico border and ending the Russia-Ukraine war.

COVID-19 is the topic where Mr. Kennedy and President Trump seem to differ the most.

Former President Donald Trump intended to “drain the swamp” when he took office in 2017, but he was “intimidated by bureaucrats” at federal agencies and did not accomplish that objective, Mr. Kennedy said on Feb. 5.

Speaking at a voter rally in Tucson, where he collected signatures to get on the Arizona ballot, the independent presidential candidate said President Trump was “earnest” when he vowed to “drain the swamp,” but it was “business as usual” during his term.

John Bolton, who President Trump appointed as a national security adviser, is “the template for a swamp creature,” Mr. Kennedy said.

Scott Gottlieb, who President Trump named to run the FDA, “was Pfizer’s business partner” and eventually returned to Pfizer, Mr. Kennedy said.

Mr. Kennedy said that President Trump had more lobbyists running federal agencies than any president in U.S. history.

“You can’t reform them when you’ve got the swamp creatures running them, and I’m not going to do that. I’m going to do something different,” Mr. Kennedy said.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, President Trump “did not ask the questions that he should have,” he believes.

President Trump “knew that lockdowns were wrong” and then “agreed to lockdowns,” Mr. Kennedy said.

He also “knew that hydroxychloroquine worked, he said it,” Mr. Kennedy explained, adding that he was eventually “rolled over” by Dr. Anthony Fauci and his advisers.

President Donald Trump greets the crowd before he leaves at the Operation Warp Speed Vaccine Summit in Washington on Dec. 8, 2020. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

MaryJo Perry, a longtime advocate for vaccine choice and a Trump supporter, thinks votes will be at a premium come Election Day, particularly because the independent and third-party field is becoming more competitive.

Ms. Perry, president of Mississippi Parents for Vaccine Rights, believes advocates for medical freedom could determine who is ultimately president.

She believes that Mr. Kennedy is “pulling votes from Trump” because of the former president’s stance on the vaccines.

“People care about medical freedom. It’s an important issue here in Mississippi, and across the country,” Ms. Perry told The Epoch Times.

“Trump should admit he was wrong about Operation Warp Speed and that COVID vaccines have been dangerous. That would make a difference among people he has offended.”

President Trump won’t lose enough votes to Mr. Kennedy about Operation Warp Speed and COVID vaccines to have a significant impact on the election, Ohio Republican strategist Wes Farno told The Epoch Times.

President Trump won in Ohio by eight percentage points in both 2016 and 2020. The Ohio Republican Party endorsed President Trump for the nomination in 2024.

“The positives of a Trump presidency far outweigh the negatives,” Mr. Farno said. “People are more concerned about their wallet and the economy.

“They are asking themselves if they were better off during President Trump’s term compared to since President Biden took office. The answer to that question is obvious because many Americans are struggling to afford groceries, gas, mortgages, and rent payments.

“America needs President Trump.”

Multiple national polls back Mr. Farno’s view.

As of March 6, the RealClearPolitics average of polls indicates that President Trump has 41.8 percent support in a five-way race that includes President Biden (38.4 percent), Mr. Kennedy (12.7 percent), independent Cornel West (2.6 percent), and Green Party nominee Jill Stein (1.7 percent).

A Pew Research Center study conducted among 10,133 U.S. adults from Feb. 7 to Feb. 11 showed that Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents (42 percent) are more likely than Republicans and GOP-leaning independents (15 percent) to say they have received an updated COVID vaccine.

The poll also reported that just 28 percent of adults say they have received the updated COVID inoculation.

The peer-reviewed multinational study of more than 99 million vaccinated people that Mr. Kennedy referenced in his X post on March 7 was published in the Vaccine journal on Feb. 12.

It aimed to evaluate the risk of 13 adverse events of special interest (AESI) following COVID-19 vaccination. The AESIs spanned three categories—neurological, hematologic (blood), and cardiovascular.

The study reviewed data collected from more than 99 million vaccinated people from eight nations—Argentina, Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, New Zealand, and Scotland—looking at risks up to 42 days after getting the shots.

Three vaccines—Pfizer and Moderna’s mRNA vaccines as well as AstraZeneca’s viral vector jab—were examined in the study.

Researchers found higher-than-expected cases that they deemed met the threshold to be potential safety signals for multiple AESIs, including for Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS), cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST), myocarditis, and pericarditis.

A safety signal refers to information that could suggest a potential risk or harm that may be associated with a medical product.

The study identified higher incidences of neurological, cardiovascular, and blood disorder complications than what the researchers expected.

President Trump’s role in Operation Warp Speed, and his continued praise of the COVID vaccine, remains a concern for some voters, including those who still support him.

Krista Cobb is a 40-year-old mother in western Ohio. She voted for President Trump in 2020 and said she would cast her vote for him this November, but she was stunned when she saw his response to President Biden about the COVID-19 vaccine during the State of the Union address.

I love President Trump and support his policies, but at this point, he has to know they [advisers and health officials] lied about the shot,” Ms. Cobb told The Epoch Times.

“If he continues to promote it, especially after all of the hearings they’ve had about it in Congress, the side effects, and cover-ups on Capitol Hill, at what point does he become the same as the people who have lied?” Ms. Cobb added.

“I think he should distance himself from talk about Operation Warp Speed and even admit that he was wrong—that the vaccines have not had the impact he was told they would have. If he did that, people would respect him even more.”

Tyler Durden Mon, 03/11/2024 - 17:00

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The next pandemic? It’s already here for Earth’s wildlife

Bird flu is decimating species already threatened by climate change and habitat loss.

I am a conservation biologist who studies emerging infectious diseases. When people ask me what I think the next pandemic will be I often say that we are in the midst of one – it’s just afflicting a great many species more than ours.

I am referring to the highly pathogenic strain of avian influenza H5N1 (HPAI H5N1), otherwise known as bird flu, which has killed millions of birds and unknown numbers of mammals, particularly during the past three years.

This is the strain that emerged in domestic geese in China in 1997 and quickly jumped to humans in south-east Asia with a mortality rate of around 40-50%. My research group encountered the virus when it killed a mammal, an endangered Owston’s palm civet, in a captive breeding programme in Cuc Phuong National Park Vietnam in 2005.

How these animals caught bird flu was never confirmed. Their diet is mainly earthworms, so they had not been infected by eating diseased poultry like many captive tigers in the region.

This discovery prompted us to collate all confirmed reports of fatal infection with bird flu to assess just how broad a threat to wildlife this virus might pose.

This is how a newly discovered virus in Chinese poultry came to threaten so much of the world’s biodiversity.

H5N1 originated on a Chinese poultry farm in 1997. ChameleonsEye/Shutterstock

The first signs

Until December 2005, most confirmed infections had been found in a few zoos and rescue centres in Thailand and Cambodia. Our analysis in 2006 showed that nearly half (48%) of all the different groups of birds (known to taxonomists as “orders”) contained a species in which a fatal infection of bird flu had been reported. These 13 orders comprised 84% of all bird species.

We reasoned 20 years ago that the strains of H5N1 circulating were probably highly pathogenic to all bird orders. We also showed that the list of confirmed infected species included those that were globally threatened and that important habitats, such as Vietnam’s Mekong delta, lay close to reported poultry outbreaks.

Mammals known to be susceptible to bird flu during the early 2000s included primates, rodents, pigs and rabbits. Large carnivores such as Bengal tigers and clouded leopards were reported to have been killed, as well as domestic cats.

Our 2006 paper showed the ease with which this virus crossed species barriers and suggested it might one day produce a pandemic-scale threat to global biodiversity.

Unfortunately, our warnings were correct.

A roving sickness

Two decades on, bird flu is killing species from the high Arctic to mainland Antarctica.

In the past couple of years, bird flu has spread rapidly across Europe and infiltrated North and South America, killing millions of poultry and a variety of bird and mammal species. A recent paper found that 26 countries have reported at least 48 mammal species that have died from the virus since 2020, when the latest increase in reported infections started.

Not even the ocean is safe. Since 2020, 13 species of aquatic mammal have succumbed, including American sea lions, porpoises and dolphins, often dying in their thousands in South America. A wide range of scavenging and predatory mammals that live on land are now also confirmed to be susceptible, including mountain lions, lynx, brown, black and polar bears.

The UK alone has lost over 75% of its great skuas and seen a 25% decline in northern gannets. Recent declines in sandwich terns (35%) and common terns (42%) were also largely driven by the virus.

Scientists haven’t managed to completely sequence the virus in all affected species. Research and continuous surveillance could tell us how adaptable it ultimately becomes, and whether it can jump to even more species. We know it can already infect humans – one or more genetic mutations may make it more infectious.

At the crossroads

Between January 1 2003 and December 21 2023, 882 cases of human infection with the H5N1 virus were reported from 23 countries, of which 461 (52%) were fatal.

Of these fatal cases, more than half were in Vietnam, China, Cambodia and Laos. Poultry-to-human infections were first recorded in Cambodia in December 2003. Intermittent cases were reported until 2014, followed by a gap until 2023, yielding 41 deaths from 64 cases. The subtype of H5N1 virus responsible has been detected in poultry in Cambodia since 2014. In the early 2000s, the H5N1 virus circulating had a high human mortality rate, so it is worrying that we are now starting to see people dying after contact with poultry again.

It’s not just H5 subtypes of bird flu that concern humans. The H10N1 virus was originally isolated from wild birds in South Korea, but has also been reported in samples from China and Mongolia.

Recent research found that these particular virus subtypes may be able to jump to humans after they were found to be pathogenic in laboratory mice and ferrets. The first person who was confirmed to be infected with H10N5 died in China on January 27 2024, but this patient was also suffering from seasonal flu (H3N2). They had been exposed to live poultry which also tested positive for H10N5.

Species already threatened with extinction are among those which have died due to bird flu in the past three years. The first deaths from the virus in mainland Antarctica have just been confirmed in skuas, highlighting a looming threat to penguin colonies whose eggs and chicks skuas prey on. Humboldt penguins have already been killed by the virus in Chile.

A colony of king penguins.
Remote penguin colonies are already threatened by climate change. AndreAnita/Shutterstock

How can we stem this tsunami of H5N1 and other avian influenzas? Completely overhaul poultry production on a global scale. Make farms self-sufficient in rearing eggs and chicks instead of exporting them internationally. The trend towards megafarms containing over a million birds must be stopped in its tracks.

To prevent the worst outcomes for this virus, we must revisit its primary source: the incubator of intensive poultry farms.

Diana Bell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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