Connect with us

Government

To Get US Residency Still Requires The COVID Jab

To Get US Residency Still Requires The COVID Jab

Authored by Jeffrey A. Tucker via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

It’s helpful to think…

Published

1 month ago

on

To Get US Residency Still Requires The COVID Jab

Authored by Jeffrey A. Tucker via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

It’s helpful to think of a COVID experience as a never-ending house of horrors, with room after room of scandal and outrage, so much so that you never quite get through it. There simply are not enough researchers or column inches to cover it all.

(Bist/Shutterstock)

In the past, any one of these outrages would be enough to call forth enormous public debate. Introduce them all at once—starting March 2020—and gradually unfold and codify them over a few years and many features slip through the cracks.

Consider, for example, the continued requirement that any legally immigrating person coming to the United States from another country and seeking residency is absolutely required to get the COVID-19 vaccine, a shot widely admitted not to protect against infection or spread and is associated with injury on a scale without pharmaceutical precedent.

And yet the U.S. government requires it.

The evidence is here from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Note the language: “to prevent the following diseases.”

That is completely untrue. You cannot make it true simply by claiming that it prevents something. It does nothing of the kind, despite its moniker of being a vaccine. All the others are indeed vaccines that generally prevent the disease because they are sterilizing shots. The COVID-19 shot is not. And yet there it is, riding the coattails of public-health valor from past ages.

It is generally not possible to avoid the requirement. You can appeal for a religious exemption, which involves several rounds of correspondence and documentation. They have variously been granted after much headache, bureaucracy, and expense. Very few will go to the trouble.

Meanwhile, the United States is currently experiencing a wave of immigration from asylum seekers which this country has never seen in raw numbers before. There is no requirement that these people coming across the Southern border and then shipped around the country face any such requirement of COVID vaccination. That only kicks in if you seek to immigrate the old-fashioned way, which is to say, by seeking legal permission.

Based on reports from Archive.org, it appears that the addition of the COVID-19 shot was in the first week of October 2021. It was not there and then it was, by pure bureaucratic edict. Edit file, submit, done.

This was long after it was well known that the vaccine did not stop infection or transmission, and long after the CDC was aware of the health risks of the vaccine. It was also a time when vaccine uptake was dramatically dropping from the levels of the initial enthusiasm from earlier that year.

By this time, vast numbers had grown skeptical and were willing to take their chances. The market for shots was headed south. It appears that immigrant populations—who had not been required to get it for the first ten months of 2021—were roped into the market as mandates began to invade private workplaces and cities. In other words, this was a forced recruitment of immigrant populations to boost the demand for the shots.

The Biden administration attempted to impose such mandates on the whole of the private sector. The Supreme Court blocked that measure in January 2022. So most were repealed. But the one for legal immigration stayed, and has not been challenged in court.

There is a darker way to understand this policy move too. It serves as a filtering mechanism. Many people around the world were fleeing shot mandates from their home countries. Adding this one to the list of required injections was a way to signal to the world: the United States would not provide any sanctuary to shot refuseniks, so don’t bother even trying.

It also operates as a culling mechanism against anti-lockdown and anti-mandate opinions. It assured that the United States would not be allowing people to work here who think for themselves, look at evidence, or otherwise refuse to bow to the pharma agenda.

The CDC further elaborates on the regulation: it must be within 12 months and it does pertain to children too. There is a narrow range of exemption for repeated shots but that requires additional paperwork.

There is simply no basis for this mandate at all. The vaccine is not efficacious in the normal sense of that term. Nor is it necessary for healthy adults, much less children, who face a near-zero risk of medically significant outcomes. There is the additional peculiarity that whatever immune response occurs from the shot fades quickly, and ever less pertains to the existing strain in the community of this fast-mutating virus.

In other words, there is nothing defensible about this policy at all. It is keeping untold families apart and preventing U.S. citizens from moving to the United States with children and spouses from other countries who decline the shots. They have worked to get back but the vaccine mandate here bars them from doing so. Sadly, there are few in Congress willing to take up the causes and do something about this.

It’s the sort of rule that is enforced with no rationality at all but which benefits powerful pharmaceutical companies. The issue has been barely covered in the media at all, and there are currently no real efforts ongoing to push back because the victims are powerless and much of the world has moved on.

Meanwhile, this COVID vaccine is being gradually added to every list of requirements that is available, from immigration to the childhood schedule to school attendance. This is despite how the shot has completely failed to perform up to the promise of the first year. This is fully known by vast swaths of the world’s population, and yet U.S. bureaucracies persist in their impositions without the slightest sense that they ought to acquiesce to the reality that everyone knows.

From the Brownstone Institute

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 Thu, 01/25/2024 - 21:40

Read More

Related Topics:
Continue Reading

Government

Low Iron Levels In Blood Could Trigger Long COVID: Study

Low Iron Levels In Blood Could Trigger Long COVID: Study

Authored by Amie Dahnke via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

People with inadequate…

Published

1 hour ago

on

March 9, 2024

By

Low Iron Levels In Blood Could Trigger Long COVID: Study

Authored by Amie Dahnke via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

People with inadequate iron levels in their blood due to a COVID-19 infection could be at greater risk of long COVID.

(Shutterstock)

A new study indicates that problems with iron levels in the bloodstream likely trigger chronic inflammation and other conditions associated with the post-COVID phenomenon. The findings, published on March 1 in Nature Immunology, could offer new ways to treat or prevent the condition.

Long COVID Patients Have Low Iron Levels

Researchers at the University of Cambridge pinpointed low iron as a potential link to long-COVID symptoms thanks to a study they initiated shortly after the start of the pandemic. They recruited people who tested positive for the virus to provide blood samples for analysis over a year, which allowed the researchers to look for post-infection changes in the blood. The researchers looked at 214 samples and found that 45 percent of patients reported symptoms of long COVID that lasted between three and 10 months.

In analyzing the blood samples, the research team noticed that people experiencing long COVID had low iron levels, contributing to anemia and low red blood cell production, just two weeks after they were diagnosed with COVID-19. This was true for patients regardless of age, sex, or the initial severity of their infection.

According to one of the study co-authors, the removal of iron from the bloodstream is a natural process and defense mechanism of the body.

But it can jeopardize a person’s recovery.

“When the body has an infection, it responds by removing iron from the bloodstream. This protects us from potentially lethal bacteria that capture the iron in the bloodstream and grow rapidly. It’s an evolutionary response that redistributes iron in the body, and the blood plasma becomes an iron desert,” University of Oxford professor Hal Drakesmith said in a press release. “However, if this goes on for a long time, there is less iron for red blood cells, so oxygen is transported less efficiently affecting metabolism and energy production, and for white blood cells, which need iron to work properly. The protective mechanism ends up becoming a problem.”

The research team believes that consistently low iron levels could explain why individuals with long COVID continue to experience fatigue and difficulty exercising. As such, the researchers suggested iron supplementation to help regulate and prevent the often debilitating symptoms associated with long COVID.

“It isn’t necessarily the case that individuals don’t have enough iron in their body, it’s just that it’s trapped in the wrong place,” Aimee Hanson, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge who worked on the study, said in the press release. “What we need is a way to remobilize the iron and pull it back into the bloodstream, where it becomes more useful to the red blood cells.”

The research team pointed out that iron supplementation isn’t always straightforward. Achieving the right level of iron varies from person to person. Too much iron can cause stomach issues, ranging from constipation, nausea, and abdominal pain to gastritis and gastric lesions.

1 in 5 Still Affected by Long COVID

COVID-19 has affected nearly 40 percent of Americans, with one in five of those still suffering from symptoms of long COVID, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Long COVID is marked by health issues that continue at least four weeks after an individual was initially diagnosed with COVID-19. Symptoms can last for days, weeks, months, or years and may include fatigue, cough or chest pain, headache, brain fog, depression or anxiety, digestive issues, and joint or muscle pain.

Tyler Durden Sat, 03/09/2024 - 12:50

Read More

Continue Reading

Government

Walmart joins Costco in sharing key pricing news

The massive retailers have both shared information that some retailers keep very close to the vest.

Published

4 hours ago

on

March 9, 2024

By

As we head toward a presidential election, the presumed candidates for both parties will look for issues that rally undecided voters. 

The economy will be a key issue, with Democrats pointing to job creation and lowering prices while Republicans will cite the layoffs at Big Tech companies, high housing prices, and of course, sticky inflation.

The covid pandemic created a perfect storm for inflation and higher prices. It became harder to get many items because people getting sick slowed down, or even stopped, production at some factories.

Related: Popular mall retailer shuts down abruptly after bankruptcy filing

It was also a period where demand increased while shipping, trucking and delivery systems were all strained or thrown out of whack. The combination led to product shortages and higher prices.

You might have gone to the grocery store and not been able to buy your favorite paper towel brand or find toilet paper at all. That happened partly because of the supply chain and partly due to increased demand, but at the end of the day, it led to higher prices, which some consumers blamed on President Joe Biden's administration.

Biden, of course, was blamed for the price increases, but as inflation has dropped and grocery prices have fallen, few companies have been up front about it. That's probably not a political choice in most cases. Instead, some companies have chosen to lower prices more slowly than they raised them.

However, two major retailers, Walmart (WMT) and Costco, have been very honest about inflation. Walmart Chief Executive Doug McMillon's most recent comments validate what Biden's administration has been saying about the state of the economy. And they contrast with the economic picture being painted by Republicans who support their presumptive nominee, Donald Trump.

Walmart has seen inflation drop in many key areas.

Image source: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Walmart sees lower prices

McMillon does not talk about lower prices to make a political statement. He's communicating with customers and potential customers through the analysts who cover the company's quarterly-earnings calls.

During Walmart's fiscal-fourth-quarter-earnings call, McMillon was clear that prices are going down.

"I'm excited about the omnichannel net promoter score trends the team is driving. Across countries, we continue to see a customer that's resilient but looking for value. As always, we're working hard to deliver that for them, including through our rollbacks on food pricing in Walmart U.S. Those were up significantly in Q4 versus last year, following a big increase in Q3," he said.

He was specific about where the chain has seen prices go down.

"Our general merchandise prices are lower than a year ago and even two years ago in some categories, which means our customers are finding value in areas like apparel and hard lines," he said. "In food, prices are lower than a year ago in places like eggs, apples, and deli snacks, but higher in other places like asparagus and blackberries."

McMillon said that in other areas prices were still up but have been falling.

"Dry grocery and consumables categories like paper goods and cleaning supplies are up mid-single digits versus last year and high teens versus two years ago. Private-brand penetration is up in many of the countries where we operate, including the United States," he said.

Costco sees almost no inflation impact

McMillon avoided the word inflation in his comments. Costco  (COST)  Chief Financial Officer Richard Galanti, who steps down on March 15, has been very transparent on the topic.

The CFO commented on inflation during his company's fiscal-first-quarter-earnings call.

"Most recently, in the last fourth-quarter discussion, we had estimated that year-over-year inflation was in the 1% to 2% range. Our estimate for the quarter just ended, that inflation was in the 0% to 1% range," he said.

Galanti made clear that inflation (and even deflation) varied by category.

"A bigger deflation in some big and bulky items like furniture sets due to lower freight costs year over year, as well as on things like domestics, bulky lower-priced items, again, where the freight cost is significant. Some deflationary items were as much as 20% to 30% and, again, mostly freight-related," he added.

Read More

Continue Reading

Government

Walmart has really good news for shoppers (and Joe Biden)

The giant retailer joins Costco in making a statement that has political overtones, even if that’s not the intent.

Published

5 hours ago

on

March 9, 2024

By

As we head toward a presidential election, the presumed candidates for both parties will look for issues that rally undecided voters. 

The economy will be a key issue, with Democrats pointing to job creation and lowering prices while Republicans will cite the layoffs at Big Tech companies, high housing prices, and of course, sticky inflation.

The covid pandemic created a perfect storm for inflation and higher prices. It became harder to get many items because people getting sick slowed down, or even stopped, production at some factories.

Related: Popular mall retailer shuts down abruptly after bankruptcy filing

It was also a period where demand increased while shipping, trucking and delivery systems were all strained or thrown out of whack. The combination led to product shortages and higher prices.

You might have gone to the grocery store and not been able to buy your favorite paper towel brand or find toilet paper at all. That happened partly because of the supply chain and partly due to increased demand, but at the end of the day, it led to higher prices, which some consumers blamed on President Joe Biden's administration.

Biden, of course, was blamed for the price increases, but as inflation has dropped and grocery prices have fallen, few companies have been up front about it. That's probably not a political choice in most cases. Instead, some companies have chosen to lower prices more slowly than they raised them.

However, two major retailers, Walmart (WMT) and Costco, have been very honest about inflation. Walmart Chief Executive Doug McMillon's most recent comments validate what Biden's administration has been saying about the state of the economy. And they contrast with the economic picture being painted by Republicans who support their presumptive nominee, Donald Trump.

Walmart has seen inflation drop in many key areas.

Image source: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Walmart sees lower prices

McMillon does not talk about lower prices to make a political statement. He's communicating with customers and potential customers through the analysts who cover the company's quarterly-earnings calls.

During Walmart's fiscal-fourth-quarter-earnings call, McMillon was clear that prices are going down.

"I'm excited about the omnichannel net promoter score trends the team is driving. Across countries, we continue to see a customer that's resilient but looking for value. As always, we're working hard to deliver that for them, including through our rollbacks on food pricing in Walmart U.S. Those were up significantly in Q4 versus last year, following a big increase in Q3," he said.

He was specific about where the chain has seen prices go down.

"Our general merchandise prices are lower than a year ago and even two years ago in some categories, which means our customers are finding value in areas like apparel and hard lines," he said. "In food, prices are lower than a year ago in places like eggs, apples, and deli snacks, but higher in other places like asparagus and blackberries."

McMillon said that in other areas prices were still up but have been falling.

"Dry grocery and consumables categories like paper goods and cleaning supplies are up mid-single digits versus last year and high teens versus two years ago. Private-brand penetration is up in many of the countries where we operate, including the United States," he said.

Costco sees almost no inflation impact

McMillon avoided the word inflation in his comments. Costco  (COST)  Chief Financial Officer Richard Galanti, who steps down on March 15, has been very transparent on the topic.

The CFO commented on inflation during his company's fiscal-first-quarter-earnings call.

"Most recently, in the last fourth-quarter discussion, we had estimated that year-over-year inflation was in the 1% to 2% range. Our estimate for the quarter just ended, that inflation was in the 0% to 1% range," he said.

Galanti made clear that inflation (and even deflation) varied by category.

"A bigger deflation in some big and bulky items like furniture sets due to lower freight costs year over year, as well as on things like domestics, bulky lower-priced items, again, where the freight cost is significant. Some deflationary items were as much as 20% to 30% and, again, mostly freight-related," he added.

Read More

Continue Reading

Trending