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COC#8: Bitcoin’s 2021 Review Using On-Chain And Price Related Data

A look back at 2021’s most important events and on-chain trends for bitcoin’s price action, as well as a brief look forward into 2022.

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2 years ago

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A look back at 2021’s most important events and on-chain trends for bitcoin’s price action, as well as a brief look forward into 2022.

Cycling On-Chain is a monthly column that uses on-chain and price-related data to better understand recent bitcoin market movements. This eighth edition provides a year in review for 2021 and then assesses what current trends look like going into 2022.

A Year Of Modest Growth

The bitcoin price opened the year at $27,346 (on Kraken) and actually never looked back. Hopes were very high, which was largely driven by the institutional fear of missing out (FOMO) that Michael Saylor and MicroStrategy triggered, in combination with PlanB’s Stock-to-Flow (S2F) and S2F Cross Asset (S2FX) models that predicted a price of around $100,000 and $288,000, respectively.

Bitcoin never saw those prices in 2021 but did set a new all-time high at $68,991 (on Kraken) in November. It closed the year at a price of $46,150, which is a $18,804 (68.8%) increase since the start of the year. Bitoin’s full 2021 price history (on Kraken) is displayed in figure 1.

Figure 1: Bitcoin (XBT) price in United States dollars (USD) on Kraken (Source).

Grayscale Inflows Stop In February

In January 2021, the bitcoin price reached its first local top of its bull cycle, during which several on-chain trends changed. Most notably, sell pressure of long-term holders and miners started to drop off. During that time, there was still large institutional FOMO going on, likely triggered by the combination of MicroStrategy and NYDIG’s institutional onboarding event that was rumored to be very successful, as well as Tesla buying $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin in early February and accepting it for car sales.

However, in February, one of the largest drivers of the price run-up into new highs also stopped doing so. Grayscale Investments, which is a fund where mostly institutional investors (81–84%) can buy shares that Grayscale would back with bitcoin (GBTC) and promise to never sell, with exception of their annually deducted fee. During 2020, Grayscale Investments’ BTC holdings saw a massive rise, topping at just over 650,000 bitcoin in February (figure 2).

Figure 2: Grayscale Investment BTC Holdings (Source).

Due to the popularity of the GBTC shares for entities that may not have been willing to self-custody large amounts of bitcoin themselves, the price of GBTC shares traded at a massive premium over the spot bitcoin price. This introduced an arbitrage or “cash-and-carry trade” opportunity, where investors that would simultaneously go short GBTC via futures markets and long GBTC by actually buying shares, and closing both positions when the GBTC shares would be unlocked to be traded on secondary markets six months later. By doing so, investors could capture a “risk-free” spread between the price of GBTC shares and the spot bitcoin price, which peaked at a whopping 40.2% in December 2020 (figure 3).

Figure 3: Grayscale Investments BTC premium (Source).

Late February 2021, this GBTC premium dropped to negative levels, closing the window for this arbitrage opportunity that took so much bitcoin off the market. In hindsight, this change likely played a key role in the lack of vigor in subsequent months to confidently keep bursting to new all-time highs, like it did during the 2017 bull run.

Capital Increasingly Flows Into Altcoins And NFTs In Q1 And Q2

Since the start of 2021, an increasing amount of capital has started flowing into other crypto assets like altcoins and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Around that same time, the GameStop stock frenzy was happening, where retail investors colluded on platforms like Reddit and Robinhood to pump the prices of certain stocks that hedge funds were massively shorting. A large portion of the market was clearly looking for assets with extraordinary upsides, regardless of the risk profile that was attached to them.

Within the broader crypto markets, anticipation of an upcoming Coinbase “IPO” was emerging. On April 14, Coinbase was indeed directly listed on Nasdaq. This event coincided with a number of executives selling their stock, causing a massive dump in the price of its shares that day. The bitcoin price also set a new all-time high that day but, after that, went down alongside Coinbase’s stock price.

For altcoin traders, Coinbase’s direct listing meant that a large number of tokens were now available on a platform that operates on a bigger stage, sending their price expectations for these tokens upward. Around the Coinbase direct listing, altcoin prices outperformed bitcoin by large margins, sending the Bitcoin Dominance Index, which is the percentage of the overall crypto market cap that consists of bitcoin, downward (figure 4).

Figure 4: Bitcoin price (orange) and market dominance (black/white) (Source).

Elon And China Trigger A Market Capitulation In May

Since the Coinbase direct listing mid-April, an increasing amount of bitcoin was being deposited on exchanges and the price kept making sideways actions. On May 12, Tesla CEO Elon Musk unexpectedly tweeted that Tesla would stop accepting bitcoin for payments due to environmental concerns. A week later, on May 18, China banned its financial institutions from offering bitcoin services, exacerbating this fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) that created anxiety in a relatively overheated market.

This combination of events sent the bitcoin price down fast. Many previously illiquid bitcoin became liquid again and were sent to exchanges. This market capitulation event ended with a bang on May 19, as the downward price movements sent the value of many bitcoin-margined futures contracts below their liquidation prices (figure 5), triggering the automatic selling of the underlying bitcoin collateral of those contracts, sending the price down even further. The resulting cascade of liquidations painted bitcoin’s first daily candle with a $10,000 intraday price range — unfortunately to the downside.

Figure 5: Bitcoin price (black), futures open interest (blue), perpetual futures funding rate (green), short- (red) and long-liquidations (orange) (Source).

China Cracks Down Against Bitcoin Mining In May And June

For China, the crackdowns on Bitcoin did not stop there. Experienced Bitcoiners have seen China ban and unban Bitcoin dozens of times since 2013, but this time actually was different. A large portion of the bitcoin mining has historically been done in China, but throughout May and June 2021, the Chinese government actually banned bitcoin mining, which resulted in a hash rate drop of around 50% throughout that period (figure 6).

Figure 6: Bitcoin price (black), hash rate (red) and difficulty (green) (Source).

This period truly was one of the most uncertain times in Bitcoin during recent years. Were we witnessing an actual nation-state attack on Bitcoin, or was China making a decision here that has the potential to go down in history as the worst geopolitical decision related to Bitcoin? On June 1, I wrote the following in COC#2:

“If the Bitcoin network does indeed remain strong, China’s crackdowns against it will actually go down as a great example of Bitcoin’s anti-fragility. The whole point of a truly decentralized system is that you cannot ban that system — you can only ban yourself from using it. Hash rate moving away from China also lowers the impact of future recurring China FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt), as their potential control over the system will have actually decreased.”

Fortunately, this is exactly what played out in the subsequent months. Many Chinese Bitcoin miners reportedly moved to more mining-friendly jurisdictions, and Bitcoin’s hash rate and difficulty fully recovered to its previous all-time highs. Bitcoin once again showed off its resilience, as markets regained confidence during the second half of 2021.

El Salvador Adopts Bitcoin During The Summer

At the same time when China cracked down hard against Bitcoin, El Salvador opened its arms to it and announced that it would make bitcoin legal tender in their country. El Salvador’s Bitcoin strategy would depend heavily on Lightning Network adoption as a means of daily payments and set an excellent precedent for the actual usability of Bitcoin as a medium of exchange, potentially clearing another recurring source of FUD from the table. Although we don’t know to what extent El Salvador’s announcement triggered this, throughout 2021, Lightning Network adoption soared on all accounts (figure 7).

Figure 7: Bitcoin price (black) and Lightning Network capacity (orange), number of nodes (green), number of channels (blue) and mean channel size (red) (Source).

As hash rate was recovering and El Salvador’s “Bitcoin Day,” where it would officially become legal tender and all the country’s inhabitants would get $30 worth of bitcoin if they downloaded the government’s Chivo app, changed Bitcoin’s narrative to a more positive tone. Bitcoin Day itself (September 7) ended up functioning as a “sell the news event,” triggering another fierce sell off that sent the price down in subsequent weeks. This new local top was then followed up by a new higher low, suggesting that the overall trend in the bitcoin price had indeed flipped from bearish to bullish throughout the summer.

Bitcoin Futures Etfs Launch In October

Throughout the summer, on-chain capital flows turned bullish again, as a lot of coins were being moved off exchanges, into the hands of long-term holders and illiquid entities. This coincided with the hash rate recovery and El Salvador’s Bitcoin adoption, which was then followed up by another large story that bitcoin market participants have anticipated for a long time: the formal acceptance of a bitcoin exchange traded fund (ETF).

During 2021, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) appointed Gary Gensler as their new chairman. Gensler had a history of having a more positive attitude toward Bitcoin, and throughout 2021 gave hints that a futures-based bitcoin ETF could be approved. On October 1h, the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF became the first bitcoin ETF to be approved, which was followed by multiple other futures-based ETFs. The ProShares ETF would predominantly use CME futures, which led to a massive increase in the amount of open interest in those (figure 8).

Figure 8: Bitcoin price (black) and CME futures open interest (orange) (Source).

The run-up to the ETF launch sent Bitcoin into new all-time highs, but the ETF approval itself also functioned as a sell the news event. In subsequent weeks, the bitcoin price again recovered and created new highs but has been in a downtrend since.

Long-Term Holders (LTH) Recently Provided Mild Resistance

During this latest downtrend, something interesting happened. Traditionally, long-term holders (LTH), which are Glassnode-labeled entities that have held the majority of their bitcoin for at least 155 days, tend to sell some of their coins during market strength and particularly during price discovery. This also happened during the latest ~$69,000 all-time high, but even continued for a little bit on the way down, which is more atypical.

In a recent Bitcoin Magazine article by Sam Rule, which highlighted a portion of a related Deep Dive newsletter, the bitcoin price was overlaid by the LTH net position change (figure 10). This figure shows that more “heated” colors usually appear during uptrends in price and usually quickly disappear as soon as price moves down again. This last downtrend since touching the ~$69,000 all-time high is an exception to that rule, as LTHs on aggregate actually sold a modest portion of their position on the way down.

Figure 9: Bitcoin price overlaid by the net position change of long-term holders (LTH), which are entities that have held the majority of their bitcoin for 155 days or more (Source).

The reason for this is likely related to the broader macroeconomic circumstances and concerns about the economic impact of policy decisions related to the emergence of the new Omicron COVID-19 variant that were pointed out last month in COC#7.

Although there have been positive signals coming out that suggest that the Omicron variant might not have as much of an impact on developing complications than the previously dominant Delta variant, policy decisions in some countries have been severe (e.g., lockdowns). Similarly, the latest Federal Reserve meeting appears to have calmed down financial markets (stock prices rose into new all-time highs since then), but a certain amount of fear and uncertainty remains active in markets. From that perspective, the trends described in COC#7 are still relevant today.

The Bitcoin Market Lacks Momentum

A reason that the market could not handle the modest sell pressure of LTHs after passing all-time highs was that most of the momentum that was present during the first half of 2021 is now gone. Since the May capitulation event, on-chain activity has been in a downtrend, as was also pointed out in COC#4 at the beginning of September. During the second half of 2020 and first half of 2021, the bitcoin mempool, which represents how many transactions are lined up, waiting to be included in the next block, was continuously filled. Since then, the mempool regularly clears, sending most transaction fees back to the bottom rate of 1 satoshi per vByte (figure 10).

Figure 10: The Bitcoin mempool according to mempool.space (Source).

Similarly, Google search trends for the word “Bitcoin” that always see an uptick during bull runs are suspiciously quiet since the summer (figure 11). From this perspective, it is actually quite remarkable that the bitcoin price recently set new all-time highs, as the retail portion of the market was either distracted by alternative assets or simply just absent.

Figure 11: Worldwide Google search trends for "Bitcoin" (Source).

In Absence Of Retail, Larger Market Participants Dominate

At the start of November, COC#6 pointed out that “smart money” was now frontrunning retail. Since then, it has gotten more and more clear that this is indeed the case. For instance, when looking at the percentage of the transfer volume that consists of more wealthy on-chain entities (e.g., worth more than $10 million) has been relatively high compared to the first half of 2021 (figure 12).

Figure 12: The bitcoin price (gray) and a seven-day moving average of the percentage of the on-chain transfer volume that consists of entities with an on-chain wealth of $10 million or more (Source).

On-Chain Supply Flows Remain Neutral To Bullish

The modest selling pressure by LTHs that was discussed with figure 9 can also be spotted in the downtrend in the green line in figure 13. Furthermore, the red line shows that during the latest price downtrend (black line), the sovereign supply, which is the total bitcoin supply that is not held on exchanges, did not see a similar downturn like it did after the mid-April 2021 market top (Coinbase direct listing) and subsequent Elon and China FUD. The illiquid supply (blue), which is the total bitcoin supply that is in the hands of entities that Glassnode identified as having little or no history of selling, has actually risen and is back at similar values as during the mid-April 2021 market top.

Figure 13: Bitcoin price (black) and the percentage of the circulating supply that Glassnode labels as “illiquid” (blue), in the hands of long-term holders (LTH) (green) or not to be on exchanges (red) (Source).

Futures Markets Look More Mature And Healthier

As was already discussed in COC#7, the general state of bitcoin futures markets now looks, overall, to be more mature and healthier than during the first part of 2021. The total value in futures contracts (open interest) is at similar levels as during the early-2021 highs, but at neutral funding rates and based on more cash-margined collateral that has less downside risk during long liquidation cascades (figure 14).

Figure 14: Bitcoin price (black), futures open interest (blue), perpetual futures funding rate (green) and the percentage of open interest that is bitcoin-margined (red) (Source).

Market Sentiment Is More Neutral

Similarly, the general market sentiment of bitcoin and cryptocurrency markets is now more neutral than during the first part of 2021. Figure 15 shows that current price levels that were initially associated with “extreme greed” are now accompanied by neutral or even fearful market sentiment, illustrating that current prices are now considered to be much more “normal” than they were at the start of the year.

Figure 15: Bitcoin price, overlaid by the fear and greed index market sentiment scores (Source).

The Ongoing Battle Of The Bitcoin Pricing Models

Historically, the bitcoin price has moved in very distinct, halving-driven, four-year cycles that can be expected to eventually diminish. Many pricing models exist. Some simply extrapolate the price history of previous halving cycles on top of the start of the current cycle (figure 17; white lines). Others are time-based regression models (black dotted lines), or even modeled historic bitcoin prices with its disinflationary coin issuance schedule (black striped lines). Each of these models has their own methodological limitations that require a very nuanced interpretation, but together they draw a rough picture of what may be expected if this current cycle does end up being somewhat similar to the previous ones.

Figure 17: The Bitcoin Halving Cycle Roadmap.

Whether this cycle will actually be similar to the previous ones has been heavily debated in 2021. The absence of a clear blow-off top like we saw at similar post-halving dates in 2013 and 2017 convinced some that, from this point on, we’ll see diminishing returns or even lengthening cycles. Others believe that, these days, the coin issuance schedule and related miner sell pressure is just not as relevant as it once was, and that the bitcoin price will be more of a random walk with an upward drift, potentially becoming less volatile over time. One thing is certain, following the outcome of this will be intriguing.

Summary And 2022 Outlook

In hindsight, the initial 2020–2021 bull run was heavily driven by a combination of institutional FOMO and cash-and-carry trades. As soon as those arbitrage opportunities dried up and the narrative regarding institutional adoption changed, the market (which was heavily overextended in altcoins and NFTs) turned around. The Chinese crackdowns against bitcoin mining that continued in the subsequent months suppressed any remaining bullish sentiment, driving speculators away from the market, as their dumped bitcoin gradually transferred into the hands of investors with a higher conviction and a lower time preference. The combination of the hash rate recovery, El Salvador adopting Bitcoin and the launch of the first (futures-based) bitcoin ETF fueled a new run-up in price, but in relative absence of retail market participants, the latest round of price discovery lacked the endurance to support modest sell pressure of long-term holders that sold into apparent market strength.

During 2021, two prominent historical anti-Bitcoin narratives have been disarmed: The “China controls Bitcoin” argument (miners left China) and the misunderstanding that bitcoin cannot be used for small payments (El Salvador uses bitcoin for payments via the Lightning Network). Throughout 2021, many coins moved from the hands of speculators into those of long-term holders, as futures markets matured and $30,000 to $60,000 price levels became the new norm.

Perhaps 2021 did not bring the bitcoin price levels that many were hoping for, but overall, it definitely was a very constructive year for Bitcoin. Going into 2022, Bitcoin does not have the same degree of bullish momentum as it did last year, but current prices appear to be at a much more balanced place from a downside risk perspective. From that perspective, the bitcoin price appears to be primed for a continued period of sideways to mildly upward price action — until a structural change in either market sentiment or macroeconomic circumstances determine the fate of the remainder of Bitcoin’s current halving cycle.

Previous editions of Cycling On-Chain:

Disclaimer: This column was written for educational and entertainment purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice.

This is a guest post by Dilution-proof. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC, Inc. or Bitcoin Magazine.

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Government

Are Voters Recoiling Against Disorder?

Are Voters Recoiling Against Disorder?

Authored by Michael Barone via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The headlines coming out of the Super…

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March 9, 2024

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Are Voters Recoiling Against Disorder?

Authored by Michael Barone via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The headlines coming out of the Super Tuesday primaries have got it right. Barring cataclysmic changes, Donald Trump and Joe Biden will be the Republican and Democratic nominees for president in 2024.

(Left) President Joe Biden delivers remarks on canceling student debt at Culver City Julian Dixon Library in Culver City, Calif., on Feb. 21, 2024. (Right) Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump stands on stage during a campaign event at Big League Dreams Las Vegas in Las Vegas, Nev., on Jan. 27, 2024. (Mario Tama/Getty Images; David Becker/Getty Images)

With Nikki Haley’s withdrawal, there will be no more significantly contested primaries or caucuses—the earliest both parties’ races have been over since something like the current primary-dominated system was put in place in 1972.

The primary results have spotlighted some of both nominees’ weaknesses.

Donald Trump lost high-income, high-educated constituencies, including the entire metro area—aka the Swamp. Many but by no means all Haley votes there were cast by Biden Democrats. Mr. Trump can’t afford to lose too many of the others in target states like Pennsylvania and Michigan.

Majorities and large minorities of voters in overwhelmingly Latino counties in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley and some in Houston voted against Joe Biden, and even more against Senate nominee Rep. Colin Allred (D-Texas).

Returns from Hispanic precincts in New Hampshire and Massachusetts show the same thing. Mr. Biden can’t afford to lose too many Latino votes in target states like Arizona and Georgia.

When Mr. Trump rode down that escalator in 2015, commentators assumed he’d repel Latinos. Instead, Latino voters nationally, and especially the closest eyewitnesses of Biden’s open-border policy, have been trending heavily Republican.

High-income liberal Democrats may sport lawn signs proclaiming, “In this house, we believe ... no human is illegal.” The logical consequence of that belief is an open border. But modest-income folks in border counties know that flows of illegal immigrants result in disorder, disease, and crime.

There is plenty of impatience with increased disorder in election returns below the presidential level. Consider Los Angeles County, America’s largest county, with nearly 10 million people, more people than 40 of the 50 states. It voted 71 percent for Mr. Biden in 2020.

Current returns show county District Attorney George Gascon winning only 21 percent of the vote in the nonpartisan primary. He’ll apparently face Republican Nathan Hochman, a critic of his liberal policies, in November.

Gascon, elected after the May 2020 death of counterfeit-passing suspect George Floyd in Minneapolis, is one of many county prosecutors supported by billionaire George Soros. His policies include not charging juveniles as adults, not seeking higher penalties for gang membership or use of firearms, and bringing fewer misdemeanor cases.

The predictable result has been increased car thefts, burglaries, and personal robberies. Some 120 assistant district attorneys have left the office, and there’s a backlog of 10,000 unprosecuted cases.

More than a dozen other Soros-backed and similarly liberal prosecutors have faced strong opposition or have left office.

St. Louis prosecutor Kim Gardner resigned last May amid lawsuits seeking her removal, Milwaukee’s John Chisholm retired in January, and Baltimore’s Marilyn Mosby was defeated in July 2022 and convicted of perjury in September 2023. Last November, Loudoun County, Virginia, voters (62 percent Biden) ousted liberal Buta Biberaj, who declined to prosecute a transgender student for assault, and in June 2022 voters in San Francisco (85 percent Biden) recalled famed radical Chesa Boudin.

Similarly, this Tuesday, voters in San Francisco passed ballot measures strengthening police powers and requiring treatment of drug-addicted welfare recipients.

In retrospect, it appears the Floyd video, appearing after three months of COVID-19 confinement, sparked a frenzied, even crazed reaction, especially among the highly educated and articulate. One fatal incident was seen as proof that America’s “systemic racism” was worse than ever and that police forces should be defunded and perhaps abolished.

2020 was “the year America went crazy,” I wrote in January 2021, a year in which police funding was actually cut by Democrats in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and Denver. A year in which young New York Times (NYT) staffers claimed they were endangered by the publication of Sen. Tom Cotton’s (R-Ark.) opinion article advocating calling in military forces if necessary to stop rioting, as had been done in Detroit in 1967 and Los Angeles in 1992. A craven NYT publisher even fired the editorial page editor for running the article.

Evidence of visible and tangible discontent with increasing violence and its consequences—barren and locked shelves in Manhattan chain drugstores, skyrocketing carjackings in Washington, D.C.—is as unmistakable in polls and election results as it is in daily life in large metropolitan areas. Maybe 2024 will turn out to be the year even liberal America stopped acting crazy.

Chaos and disorder work against incumbents, as they did in 1968 when Democrats saw their party’s popular vote fall from 61 percent to 43 percent.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

Tyler Durden Sat, 03/09/2024 - 23:20

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Government

Veterans Affairs Kept COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate In Place Without Evidence

Veterans Affairs Kept COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate In Place Without Evidence

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

The…

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March 9, 2024

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Veterans Affairs Kept COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate In Place Without Evidence

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

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) reviewed no data when deciding in 2023 to keep its COVID-19 vaccine mandate in place.

Doses of a COVID-19 vaccine in Washington in a file image. (Jacquelyn Martin/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

VA Secretary Denis McDonough said on May 1, 2023, that the end of many other federal mandates “will not impact current policies at the Department of Veterans Affairs.”

He said the mandate was remaining for VA health care personnel “to ensure the safety of veterans and our colleagues.”

Mr. McDonough did not cite any studies or other data. A VA spokesperson declined to provide any data that was reviewed when deciding not to rescind the mandate. The Epoch Times submitted a Freedom of Information Act for “all documents outlining which data was relied upon when establishing the mandate when deciding to keep the mandate in place.”

The agency searched for such data and did not find any.

“The VA does not even attempt to justify its policies with science, because it can’t,” Leslie Manookian, president and founder of the Health Freedom Defense Fund, told The Epoch Times.

“The VA just trusts that the process and cost of challenging its unfounded policies is so onerous, most people are dissuaded from even trying,” she added.

The VA’s mandate remains in place to this day.

The VA’s website claims that vaccines “help protect you from getting severe illness” and “offer good protection against most COVID-19 variants,” pointing in part to observational data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that estimate the vaccines provide poor protection against symptomatic infection and transient shielding against hospitalization.

There have also been increasing concerns among outside scientists about confirmed side effects like heart inflammation—the VA hid a safety signal it detected for the inflammation—and possible side effects such as tinnitus, which shift the benefit-risk calculus.

President Joe Biden imposed a slate of COVID-19 vaccine mandates in 2021. The VA was the first federal agency to implement a mandate.

President Biden rescinded the mandates in May 2023, citing a drop in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations. His administration maintains the choice to require vaccines was the right one and saved lives.

“Our administration’s vaccination requirements helped ensure the safety of workers in critical workforces including those in the healthcare and education sectors, protecting themselves and the populations they serve, and strengthening their ability to provide services without disruptions to operations,” the White House said.

Some experts said requiring vaccination meant many younger people were forced to get a vaccine despite the risks potentially outweighing the benefits, leaving fewer doses for older adults.

“By mandating the vaccines to younger people and those with natural immunity from having had COVID, older people in the U.S. and other countries did not have access to them, and many people might have died because of that,” Martin Kulldorff, a professor of medicine on leave from Harvard Medical School, told The Epoch Times previously.

The VA was one of just a handful of agencies to keep its mandate in place following the removal of many federal mandates.

“At this time, the vaccine requirement will remain in effect for VA health care personnel, including VA psychologists, pharmacists, social workers, nursing assistants, physical therapists, respiratory therapists, peer specialists, medical support assistants, engineers, housekeepers, and other clinical, administrative, and infrastructure support employees,” Mr. McDonough wrote to VA employees at the time.

“This also includes VA volunteers and contractors. Effectively, this means that any Veterans Health Administration (VHA) employee, volunteer, or contractor who works in VHA facilities, visits VHA facilities, or provides direct care to those we serve will still be subject to the vaccine requirement at this time,” he said. “We continue to monitor and discuss this requirement, and we will provide more information about the vaccination requirements for VA health care employees soon. As always, we will process requests for vaccination exceptions in accordance with applicable laws, regulations, and policies.”

The version of the shots cleared in the fall of 2022, and available through the fall of 2023, did not have any clinical trial data supporting them.

A new version was approved in the fall of 2023 because there were indications that the shots not only offered temporary protection but also that the level of protection was lower than what was observed during earlier stages of the pandemic.

Ms. Manookian, whose group has challenged several of the federal mandates, said that the mandate “illustrates the dangers of the administrative state and how these federal agencies have become a law unto themselves.”

Tyler Durden Sat, 03/09/2024 - 22:10

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Spread & Containment

The Coming Of The Police State In America

The Coming Of The Police State In America

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

The National Guard and the State Police are now…

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March 9, 2024

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The Coming Of The Police State In America

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

The National Guard and the State Police are now patrolling the New York City subway system in an attempt to do something about the explosion of crime. As part of this, there are bag checks and new surveillance of all passengers. No legislation, no debate, just an edict from the mayor.

Many citizens who rely on this system for transportation might welcome this. It’s a city of strict gun control, and no one knows for sure if they have the right to defend themselves. Merchants have been harassed and even arrested for trying to stop looting and pillaging in their own shops.

The message has been sent: Only the police can do this job. Whether they do it or not is another matter.

Things on the subway system have gotten crazy. If you know it well, you can manage to travel safely, but visitors to the city who take the wrong train at the wrong time are taking grave risks.

In actual fact, it’s guaranteed that this will only end in confiscating knives and other things that people carry in order to protect themselves while leaving the actual criminals even more free to prey on citizens.

The law-abiding will suffer and the criminals will grow more numerous. It will not end well.

When you step back from the details, what we have is the dawning of a genuine police state in the United States. It only starts in New York City. Where is the Guard going to be deployed next? Anywhere is possible.

If the crime is bad enough, citizens will welcome it. It must have been this way in most times and places that when the police state arrives, the people cheer.

We will all have our own stories of how this came to be. Some might begin with the passage of the Patriot Act and the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security in 2001. Some will focus on gun control and the taking away of citizens’ rights to defend themselves.

My own version of events is closer in time. It began four years ago this month with lockdowns. That’s what shattered the capacity of civil society to function in the United States. Everything that has happened since follows like one domino tumbling after another.

It goes like this:

1) lockdown,

2) loss of moral compass and spreading of loneliness and nihilism,

3) rioting resulting from citizen frustration, 4) police absent because of ideological hectoring,

5) a rise in uncontrolled immigration/refugees,

6) an epidemic of ill health from substance abuse and otherwise,

7) businesses flee the city

8) cities fall into decay, and that results in

9) more surveillance and police state.

The 10th stage is the sacking of liberty and civilization itself.

It doesn’t fall out this way at every point in history, but this seems like a solid outline of what happened in this case. Four years is a very short period of time to see all of this unfold. But it is a fact that New York City was more-or-less civilized only four years ago. No one could have predicted that it would come to this so quickly.

But once the lockdowns happened, all bets were off. Here we had a policy that most directly trampled on all freedoms that we had taken for granted. Schools, businesses, and churches were slammed shut, with various levels of enforcement. The entire workforce was divided between essential and nonessential, and there was widespread confusion about who precisely was in charge of designating and enforcing this.

It felt like martial law at the time, as if all normal civilian law had been displaced by something else. That something had to do with public health, but there was clearly more going on, because suddenly our social media posts were censored and we were being asked to do things that made no sense, such as mask up for a virus that evaded mask protection and walk in only one direction in grocery aisles.

Vast amounts of the white-collar workforce stayed home—and their kids, too—until it became too much to bear. The city became a ghost town. Most U.S. cities were the same.

As the months of disaster rolled on, the captives were let out of their houses for the summer in order to protest racism but no other reason. As a way of excusing this, the same public health authorities said that racism was a virus as bad as COVID-19, so therefore it was permitted.

The protests had turned to riots in many cities, and the police were being defunded and discouraged to do anything about the problem. Citizens watched in horror as downtowns burned and drug-crazed freaks took over whole sections of cities. It was like every standard of decency had been zapped out of an entire swath of the population.

Meanwhile, large checks were arriving in people’s bank accounts, defying every normal economic expectation. How could people not be working and get their bank accounts more flush with cash than ever? There was a new law that didn’t even require that people pay rent. How weird was that? Even student loans didn’t need to be paid.

By the fall, recess from lockdown was over and everyone was told to go home again. But this time they had a job to do: They were supposed to vote. Not at the polling places, because going there would only spread germs, or so the media said. When the voting results finally came in, it was the absentee ballots that swung the election in favor of the opposition party that actually wanted more lockdowns and eventually pushed vaccine mandates on the whole population.

The new party in control took note of the large population movements out of cities and states that they controlled. This would have a large effect on voting patterns in the future. But they had a plan. They would open the borders to millions of people in the guise of caring for refugees. These new warm bodies would become voters in time and certainly count on the census when it came time to reapportion political power.

Meanwhile, the native population had begun to swim in ill health from substance abuse, widespread depression, and demoralization, plus vaccine injury. This increased dependency on the very institutions that had caused the problem in the first place: the medical/scientific establishment.

The rise of crime drove the small businesses out of the city. They had barely survived the lockdowns, but they certainly could not survive the crime epidemic. This undermined the tax base of the city and allowed the criminals to take further control.

The same cities became sanctuaries for the waves of migrants sacking the country, and partisan mayors actually used tax dollars to house these invaders in high-end hotels in the name of having compassion for the stranger. Citizens were pushed out to make way for rampaging migrant hordes, as incredible as this seems.

But with that, of course, crime rose ever further, inciting citizen anger and providing a pretext to bring in the police state in the form of the National Guard, now tasked with cracking down on crime in the transportation system.

What’s the next step? It’s probably already here: mass surveillance and censorship, plus ever-expanding police power. This will be accompanied by further population movements, as those with the means to do so flee the city and even the country and leave it for everyone else to suffer.

As I tell the story, all of this seems inevitable. It is not. It could have been stopped at any point. A wise and prudent political leadership could have admitted the error from the beginning and called on the country to rediscover freedom, decency, and the difference between right and wrong. But ego and pride stopped that from happening, and we are left with the consequences.

The government grows ever bigger and civil society ever less capable of managing itself in large urban centers. Disaster is unfolding in real time, mitigated only by a rising stock market and a financial system that has yet to fall apart completely.

Are we at the middle stages of total collapse, or at the point where the population and people in leadership positions wise up and decide to put an end to the downward slide? It’s hard to know. But this much we do know: There is a growing pocket of resistance out there that is fed up and refuses to sit by and watch this great country be sacked and taken over by everything it was set up to prevent.

Tyler Durden Sat, 03/09/2024 - 16:20

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