What Happened Today: January 27, 2022
Canadian trucker protest; Syrian prison showdown; pediatric vaccines
The Big Story
Thousands of truckers protesting Canadian vaccine rules could arrive in Ottawa, the nation’s capital, as early as today, ahead of a planned demonstration on Saturday. Law enforcement is preparing for potential unrest as the protest continues to garner national attention and may attract unassociated violent groups that could clash with counterprotesters on Parliament Hill. While truckers were previously exempt from vaccination requirements at the Canadian-U.S. border because they were deemed essential service workers, the new mandate, in effect as of Jan. 15, requires that truckers crossing into Canada who are not double-vaccinated must quarantine for 14 days, a mandate that affects a small minority of Canadian truckers, as the Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA) estimates that 85% of all truckers are vaccinated. As The Scroll wrote earlier this week, protest organizers are rallying under the banner “Freedom Convoy 2022” to challenge the “rules and mandates that are destroying the foundation of our business, industries, and livelihoods,” as they write on their GoFundMe page, which as of this afternoon has received 78,000 donations totaling more than $6 million.
That money was temporarily unavailable to the protesters after GoFundMe froze the funds until the donation platform was made aware of how the money would be used, according to a report by The Canadian Press. Facebook also throttled the protesters by removing the organizer’s page, which had some 300,000 members, though a new Facebook group, started yesterday, now has 129,000 members. Police in Ottawa have been in contact with protest organizers, who’ve been cooperative about sharing their plans for the demonstration, says the Associated Press. Though CTA disapproved of the protest because it’s taking place on public roads, it has called on the government to postpone the mandate for fear that the protest will worsen ongoing supply chain delays and drive up consumer prices across Canada. The protest has been dismissed by Prime Minister Trudeau, who said the truckers were a “small fringe minority who are on the way to Ottawa who are holding unacceptable views.” Leader of the opposing political party, Erin O’Toole, said Trudeau’s trucker mandate has been “dividing Canadians,” adding that “we can advocate for vaccines but also advocate for people to not lose their … home or their livelihood.”
Back Pages: Pediatric Boosters: A Necessary Conversation
The Rest
→ Ahead of the start of the Winter Olympics in Beijing on Feb. 4, where city officials have enacted tight lockdowns to deter possible COVID-19 outbreaks that could impact the games, yesterday the Biden administration authorized embassy diplomats and their families to leave the country if they wished to avoid the lockdown. The move is a curious one that has drawn pushback from China. Diplomats leaving China “would only significantly increase the risk of infection,” Chinese representative Zhao Lijian told reporters, adding that the country finds “the U.S. decision perplexing and unjustifiable.” The state newspaper Global Times said the authorization was a direct snub by the Biden administration. No embassy staff has reportedly left the country, according to the Associated Press, suggesting the move was a symbolic one.
→ A prison housing some 3,500 members of the Islamic State in northeast Syria has become the scene for an intense showdown between a group of about 100 IS fighters who attacked the prison and U.S.-backed Kurdish forces, with at least 160 people killed so far in the battle, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Rioting inmates have taken over control of some of the prison and taken hostages, and some of the other inmates, including minors, have been transported by prison staff to other detention facilities while the standoff continues. Observers fear that without a successful resolution to ongoing negotiations, the fighting could leave hundreds killed in the battle.
→ On Monday, a former Colombian soldier, Mario Palacios, will stand in a federal court in Miami for a preliminary hearing on charges for his alleged involvement in the assassination of Jovenel Moïse, the president of Haiti who was slain in his home during an invasion by a group comprised mainly of former military. Palacios was detained in Jamaica, where he was reported to be hiding, after Interpol issued a red alert against him on behalf of the Haitian government. It’s unclear if Palacios will be extradited back to Haiti or stand trial in Miami, where he’s been represented by a public defender. Haiti has suffered intense poverty and violence since the assassination last year, with gangs actively vying for control of ports and city infrastructure. Earlier this month, two journalists were gunned down near Port-au-Prince by one gang, according to several local reports, because they were going to interview the leader of a gang rival.
→ Researchers have completed the genetic sequence for the coast redwood (the world’s largest tree) and the giant sequoia (one of the oldest tree species on the planet) and published their findings in a new issue of the journal G3: Genes, Genomes, Genetics. Once considered too complex to be sequences, advances in new technology have allowed researchers to complete the conifer genomes, which are upwards of 10 times larger than the genomes of humans. The completed sequences will now pave the way to additional research into the evolutionary adaptive qualities that have allowed these massive trees to survive for so many centuries despite volatile changes in the climate and soil.
Read more: https://newsconcerns.com/research-reveals-genes-for-climate-adaptation-and-insights-into-genetic-basis-for-survival-sciencedaily/
→ Sotheby’s has dubbed a 555-carat black diamond The Enigma, a gem the auction house says it suspects to have extraterrestrial origins, formed by “meteorites colliding with the Earth and either forming chemical vapor deposition or indeed coming from the meteorites themselves,” a representative of the auction in Dubai told reporters. The rare diamond is expected to fetch $6.8 million on the block.
→ Amazon executives have pulled the plug on an internal campaign to persuade employees to post messages on social media platforms and a public website as part of the company’s effort to combat the mounting negative media attention about poor worker conditions for warehouse and delivery personnel. After shutting down the campaign, Amazon also scrubbed all traces of the “online messages that were meant to improve the tech giant’s image to potential workers it needs to achieve continued growth,” according to a new report yesterday in the Financial Times. The so-called Amazon ambassadors were given written scripts to follow to combat the negative press, including notes like “I worked in an Amazon [fulfillment center] for over four years and never saw anyone urinate in a bottle.” Replacing the propaganda effort, Amazon is now focusing its public relations efforts on tours of its facilities.
Read more: https://www.ft.com/content/90b9a68b-807a-4053-8573-4ceab42909a6
→ Stat of the day: According to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, as of last summer at least 23 million U.S. households acquired a new dog or cat during the pandemic. Though in some cities the uptick in feline friends hasn’t deterred swelling appearances by other less welcome animals. In New York City, the department of health reported a 52% rise in reports of rats in 2021 compared to the year prior.
Pediatric Boosters: A Necessary Conversation
In a new article for Common Sense, journalist David Zweig tackles one of the more complicated issues in the conversation about children and vaccination boosters: the risk of myocarditis for young people. Zweig is quick to praise the amazing science that made the vaccines possible: “They’ve saved innumerable lives. And the evidence shows they’ve helped reduce the incidence of severe disease in untold numbers of people.” Yet, as Zweig points out, for kids and in particular for young males, the risk of mRNA vaccines causing myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart, is significant enough that it should be front and center in the public consideration of our rules on childhood vaccination: Some research shows as many as 1 in 2,650 young males contract the condition following a second vaccination.
As any discussion about vaccinations has been tarnished by partisans who discourage legitimate questions and inquiries made in good faith about the efficacy of too many vaccine doses administered to children who might not need them, Zweig’s article is a sharp investigative dive into the dynamics shaping American vaccine policy, which runs counter to many other nations and even a growing number of top infectious-disease doctors and officials who’ve advised the FDA’s vaccine rollout.
A number of American experts, including some on the FDA’s own advisory committee, have challenged the wisdom of our policy. They have cited both a lack of evidence of boosters’ effectiveness in children and their potential—even if low—for harm.
Monica Gandhi, a doctor and an infectious-disease specialist at the University of California, San Francisco, was blunt in her assessment. “I am not giving my 12- and 14-year-old boys boosters,” she told me.
Dr. Gandhi is not the only expert to publicly state an intention to not comply with the CDC’s recommendation. Dr. Paul Offit is the director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, a member of the FDA’s vaccine advisory committee, and is considered one the country’s top authorities on pediatric vaccine policy. He recently said that getting boosted would not be worth the risk for the average healthy 17-year-old boy, and he advised his son, who is in his 20s, not to get a third dose.
Just last week, the WHO’s Chief Scientist, Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, said, “There is no evidence that healthy children or healthy adolescents need boosters. No evidence at all.”
Despite significant opposition to pediatric vaccine boosters within the CDC and the FDA, Zweig reports, both agencies have ultimately come out in favor of boosters for 12- to 17-year-olds. What quelled the opposition remains unclear, but as Zweig writes, “For now, here’s what we know: The approval of pediatric boosters directly contradicts the guidance of top doctors, like Offit, the two former top FDA officials, and, most damning, the underlying data about safety and efficacy for this younger group.”
The whole piece is worth a read:
Every time that I read self-congratulatory comments from medical officials about how many lives have been saved by the vaccines, I ask myself the same question. Are there still people out there who don't know that there are alternatives for the prevention and treatment of Covid that don't require vaccination? Are there still people who are unaware of the dozens and dozens of studies that have confirmed the extraordinary effectiveness of prophylactic drugs like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin? There's nothing "controversial" about such statements. Anyone can confirm what I'm saying within five minutes by researching online for what front-line doctors have reported from their real-world experiences, as opposed to pronouncements from bureaucrats and government officials who have never treated a single patient. Enough already.
Exactly. Here in Chiriqui, Panama I have been purchasing both hcq and ivermectin otc during this past year.