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Jan. 17, 2022 - Epoch Times
21:29
Passports Being Disabled for 65+ Year Olds Who Don't Take 3rd (Booster) Shot in France
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Good evening, and boy do we have a lot of stories to cover today.
To start with, several researchers spent months poring over these studies, the actual studies which have been used to justify mask mandates across the entire country, and they found that once you dig into them, once you actually look at the data, There is very little evidence that supports the use of cloth masks in stopping the spread of the virus.
Meanwhile, three days ago over in France, the government there announced that if you are a person over the age of 65 and you don't get a booster shot by December the 15th, well, they are going to deactivate your vaccine passport.
Although, frankly, that sounds like kid stuff compared to what's happening over in Austria, where the government there, they have just announced a complete lockdown of anyone who is not vaccinated.
They even ordered the police to do spot checks of people's paperwork on the street at random.
let's go through it all together.
This is your daily Facts Matter update, and I'm your host, Roman, from the Epoch Times.
And now let's begin today's discussion by talking about vaccine passports.
And to start with, do you remember how, just a few months ago, we were discussing the possibility that vaccine passports might be implemented across the entire globe?
And how, if this were to happen, it might create a two-tiered society, with different rights and privileges for the vaccinated versus the unvaccinated?
And then furthermore, how governments might use the system once it's in place to further control their people and tell them what to do.
Well, those were the good old days, because as of today, there is nothing else to discuss.
Why?
Well, let's start our discussion over in France, where three days ago, the president of France announced that they will begin to deactivate the vaccine passports of anyone who's over the age of 65 and has not gotten a booster shot.
Let me just repeat that.
If you are a citizen of France, if you are over the age of 65, and if you've already been vaccinated, then frankly, for the last several months, you have likely not had too many problems.
That's because with your vaccine passport, Which in France is called the Green Pass.
It shows whether you've been vaccinated or not.
You have been able to do almost anything.
You've been able to go to restaurants, go to cafes, go to concerts, to museums.
You have been even allowed to board long-distance trains.
However, according to a new announcement from President Emmanuel Macron, if you don't get a booster shot by December the 15th, well, your pass will be deactivated.
It will go from green to red, and once again, you will be relegated to staying at home.
Here's how President Macron explained his decision in a speech when he made this announcement.
Just as an aside, if you've been following this story for the, let's say, past year, it's kind of amazing that what was once called a conspiracy theory just a few months ago is quite literally front-page news on The New York Times.
Regardless, as I mentioned earlier, people over the age of 65 in France will now have until December the 15th to get a booster shot in order to keep their vaccine passport from being disabled.
However, during that same speech, President Macron also alluded to the fact that very soon this booster shot mandate will expand beyond those who are just over the age of 65.
That's because during his speech, President Macron stated that starting in early December, those above the age of 50 will also be eligible for a booster shot, with the natural assumption being that shortly after the shot is available, it will be mandated.
Now, France is now the only European country that is changing the definition of what it means to be fully vaccinated.
That's because just yesterday, Mr.
Boris Johnson, who is the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, he came out and announced that in order to be considered fully vaccinated over in the UK, people will need to have gotten a booster shot on top of the original two doses of the vaccine.
Here's specifically what he said in a speech just yesterday.
"On boosters, it's very clear that getting three jabs, getting your booster, will become an important fact and it will make life easier for you in all sorts of ways.
And we will have to adjust our concept of what constitutes a full vaccination to take account of that." He further added that just like over in France, the English government is currently working on adding the booster shot to their digital COVID passports.
Here's what Boris Johnson added during his speech.
Now, in justifying why exactly this move had to be made, the British health secretary, Mr.
Sajid Javid, he came out and cited data which shows that the vaccine, regardless of which brand of vaccine it is, the effectiveness of them wanes significantly over time.
Here's specifically what he said in a speech just yesterday.
We know immunity to COVID-19 begins to wane after six months, and new data published today shows a third dose boosts protection against symptomatic infection to more than 90%.
This highlights just how important it is that everyone eligible gets their top-up jabs as soon as possible.
You might look at those two stories and you might think that what's happening over in France and England, it's already beginning to push the bounds of civil liberties.
However, these two countries, what they're doing sounds almost elementary when you compare it to what's happening over in Austria.
That's because just two days ago, the Austrian government, they came out and made an announcement that they are placing millions of people who are not fully vaccinated for COVID on lockdown.
Let me just repeat that.
The Austrian government came out and ordered that anyone who is not fully vaccinated is now officially on lockdown.
They must stay home except for very limited reasons.
Furthermore, the government also announced that this lockdown will be enforced by police officers who have been instructed to do spot checks of people's paperwork when they see them walking around in public.
And frankly, given the fact that this is happening over in Austria, I actually feel like I've seen this movie somewhere before.
Regardless, here's what the Austrian chancellor, Mr.
Alexander Schallenberg, here's what he said in a speech when he made this announcement.
We are not taking this step lightly, but it is necessary.
In reality, we have told one-third of the population, you will not leave your apartment anymore, apart from for certain reasons.
That is a massive reduction in contacts between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated.
Now, it's already been the case that for several weeks now, over in Austria, unvaccinated people have been excluded from many things like entertainment venues, bars, restaurants, cafes, hotels, theaters.
They even can't go on ski lifts.
However, this new rule takes it up a notch, and it stipulates that unvaccinated people, they can only leave their homes for a limited number of reasons, like either going to work or shopping for essentials.
And if, for instance, an unvaccinated individual decides to break the law and take an illegal stroll in the park, well, he or she can be stopped by the police and be given a fine of up to 1,450 euros, which is equivalent to about 1,660 dollars.
And in terms of how many people this actually affects over in Austria, well, according to their official government statistics, approximately 65% of the population is vaccinated, meaning that about 35% or about 3 million people in total are not vaccinated.
Furthermore, according to Austria's health minister, who provided more details on what's actually happening, he said that this lockdown will, for one, not apply to those who are under the age of 12.
That secondly, it will not apply to people who have recently recovered from COVID. And that thirdly, this lockdown will initially last for only 10 days.
Although frankly, on that last point, the idea that it will only last for 10 days, well, we'll just have to wait and see whether that's true, given what we've just lived through in 2020.
Hashtag 15 days to slow the spread.
Regardless, here is a statement from Austria's Minister of the Interior that sums up what exactly is happening in that country.
As of tomorrow, every citizen, every person who lives in Austria must be aware that they can be checked by the police.
Now, if you'd like to read more about what's happening over in Austria or about these new vaccine passports in France or the UK, I'll throw all those links into the description box below this video for you to check out.
And all I ask in return is that, if you don't mind, take a quick moment to smash, smash, smash that like button, which forces the YouTube algorithm to share this video out to potentially thousands of more people, letting the truth be known far and wide.
And now, before we move on over and discuss this analysis right here, which found very, very little evidence that cloth masks have any effect in stopping the spread of the virus, I would like to take a quick moment and introduce our sponsor for today's episode, and I will do so from the sound booth.
That's right, Roman.
The sponsor of today's episode is an awesome company called AMAC. That's A-M-A-C. And it stands for the Association of Mature American Citizens.
Now, what I learned earlier today, though, is that you don't actually need to be a mature American citizen yourself in order to join AMAC, because even though they're an organization that's geared towards people who are 50 years of age and above, you can actually join at any age as long as you're an American-loving patriot.
And so what they say is that as our fundamental freedoms here in this country are being threatened by politicians who don't even necessarily know how to balance their own checking accounts, And as there is a concerted effort to censor conservatives by this woke ideology, one thing that you can do to fight back is to join the two million people who are already members of AMAC. And by joining, you'll have access to three main benefits.
The first benefit is the money-saving benefit.
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Second of all, you will gain access to the AMAC website.
The AMAC app, as well as the AMAC magazine, which gives you something that the mainstream media doesn't, which is honest news that is grounded in facts.
And third of all, and this is what a lot of people say is their favorite benefit, is that AMAC has your back over on Capitol Hill.
Because with two million freedom-loving members, they are a voice for conservatives that cannot be ignored.
And so, if you are a person who considers themselves a constitutional conservative, then I would consider joining AMAC. You can do so over at amac.us.
That's amac.us.
So consider signing up, consider helping AMAC's effort, and getting access to these excellent membership benefits.
So AMAC, thank you so much for sponsoring this episode.
Now Roman in the studio, back to you.
And now let's move on over and talk about masks.
So as you likely already know, over the past year, federal health authorities, as well as many jurisdictions across the entire country, they have either required or recommended that people wear masks in order to limit the spread of the virus.
For instance, here in New York City, where we filmed this program, it's still a requirement that everyone must wear a mask in the New York City subway, regardless of their vaccination status.
And as a justification for why these mask mandates are put into place, health authorities at the federal, state, and local levels, they usually cite several studies, like this one here out of Bangladesh and another study out of Denmark.
However, three researchers spent the last several months poring over the actual details in these studies, and they found that once you get deep into the details, these studies were, for one, poorly designed, and that secondly, they offer very little evidence supporting the use of cloth masks.
Now, last week, these researchers, they actually published their full analysis over at the Cato Institute website.
I'll throw it up on screen so you can see for yourself.
And what they found was that most of the studies that are actually cited by health officials, they are observational studies, which leaves them open to a wide variety of interfering variables.
In fact, here's how Dr.
Jonathan Darrow, who...
He teaches medicine over at the Harvard Medical School, and he's also one of the lead researchers in the study.
Here's how he explained it to us in an email.
The biggest takeaway is that more than 100 years of attempts to prove that masks are beneficial has produced a large volume of mostly low-quality evidence that has generally failed to demonstrate their value in most settings.
Based on the evidence currently available, masks are mostly a distraction from the important work of promoting the public health.
And to give you an actual example of what specifically he's talking about, people who push mask mandates very often use one study that was published out of Bangladesh here.
It examined rural villages over in Bangladesh and they used this study to justify mask mandates, saying that according to that study, it reduces the likelihood of symptomatic COVID infection.
However, according to these researchers, when you actually dig into the findings of this study, this particular study over in Bangladesh, what it says is that while surgical masks appear to marginally be effective in reducing symptomatic infection, cloth masks actually do not.
Here's specifically what this analysis found.
Researchers also reported results by mask type, finding that surgical masks reduced symptomatic seroprevalence rates by 0.09% compared to controls.
But that cloth masks did not offer a statistically significant rate reduction.
This endpoint is highly biased susceptible, and the difference in the cloth mask subgroup, although borderline statistically significant, was less than 1%.
Communities assigned to masking may report symptoms differently, and the more rigorous endpoint of laboratory-confirmed prior SARS-CoV-2 infection found no benefit.
So that was one example.
As another example that people often cite when they push for mask mandates is another study, this one here, that came out of Denmark.
However, in this case as well, in the case of the Denmark study, the researchers said that when you actually dig into the details of that study, you find that there is no statistically significant difference in regards to infections between people who are masked and people who are unmasked.
Here's specifically what the researchers wrote in regards to this Denmark study.
One study of 4,862 participants in Denmark who reported being outside the home for more than three hours per day found no statistically significant difference between a group receiving a recommendation to wear a surgical mask when outside the home and the control group.
The Denmark study relied on self-reported adherence, was not designed to test the efficacy of masks as source control, and did not consider whether COVID-19 positive participants were infected in the home, among other limitations.
And so, by the way, one thing that I would like to mention here and that I was rather surprised when I was going through this analysis is that these two studies, the one from Denmark and the one from Bangladesh, they are the only two randomized control studies which have been evaluated in order to test the efficacy of cloth masks.
There are literally only two.
In fact, here is how a senior scientist over at the Brownstone Institute explains it.
The truth is that there has been only two randomized trials of masks for COVID. One was in Denmark, which showed that they might be slightly beneficial, they might be slightly harmful, we don't really know.
The confidence interval kind of crossed zero.
And then there was another study from Bangladesh where they randomized villagers to masks or no masks, and the efficacy of the masks was for reduction of COVID was something between zero and 18%.
So either no effect or very minuscule effect.
And so think about that for a moment.
Only two studies, and according to these researchers, when you actually dig into these studies, you find no real evidence that cloth masks limit the spread of the virus.
And then in regards to the other studies that are floating out there, Besides these two, there are about 14 other studies that are often cited by health officials.
Well, here is what the researchers of this analysis said in regards to them.
The remainder of the available clinical evidence is primarily limited to non-randomized observational data which are subject to confounding variables, meaning essentially that it is not really reliable.
If you'd like to actually go through this analysis for yourself, I'll throw a link to the PDF version of it into the description box below, and I would recommend that it's about 60 pages, and towards the end, I actually list the studies one by one, And list their opinions of them once they go through them.
And then it's earmarked so you can actually go and dig and read their full analysis of each study if you are interested and keen in doing so.
And the last in return is that you take a moment to smash that like button if you haven't already.
However, while we are on the topic of masks, let's talk a bit about schools.
Because it's worth mentioning that these studies, the ones that we just went through, they are not the only reason that health officials give when they justify forcing school kids to wear masks.
And along that line, a few months ago, Dr.
Francis Collins, who is the director of the NIH, which is the National Institutes of Health, he gave a radio interview that was fairly revealing.
Now, we did actually talk about this interview on this show a few months ago.
However, since we're on the topic again, it's worth discussing.
Because during that interview, Dr.
Collins shed some light on why exactly the federal government, as well as all these different municipalities, why they are forcing kids to wear masks in school.
During that interview, which by the way was on a conservative radio show, Dr.
Collins was asked by the host about the recent recommendations that were given by the federal government that children between kindergarten and third grade should be wearing masks.
In response, Dr.
Collins said that although it's rare for young children to get COVID, students who don't wear a mask could cause outbreaks at school, forcing everyone to go home and go back to remote learning.
Here's what he said.
It is still pretty rare, but it is not zero.
And we now have more than 400 kids that have died of this.
So we have to think of that.
If they're unmasked in the classroom, you know what's going to happen?
There's going to be an outbreak.
And then what happens?
The kids go back home again.
That's a bad outcome.
So even if you're not worried about their personal health, if you're worried about the fact that we want them to stay in school, the masks may be an important way to achieve that.
Now, the host of this program, he then noted that kids who are in kindergarten through third grade, They are vulnerable to developing speech development problems if they can't see people's full faces.
And then he asked the NIH director whether kids are at greater risk of either hospitalization or serious illness if they take their masks off, to which Mr.
Collins responded by saying this, I wish we had that data, but Hugh, I don't think you're hearing me.
It's not just about that.
And this is, in my opinion at least, where the exchange got interesting.
Because at this point, the host of the program, he accused the federal government of basing their decisions on just guesswork if they didn't have any actual data.
However, Mr.
Collins, he explained that the health officials, they're not guessing.
And he once again pointed to recent reports of school districts closing because of COVID outbreaks.
And so, his argument is essentially And upon hearing this, the host of the program, he argued that these school districts were overreacting to those cases, since there is no data showing that the risk of suffering from severe COVID symptoms outweighs the risk of developing speech deficits.
And then, the host, who's by the way named Hugh Hewitt, he said this, I think we've created a concern about panic with outbreaks among children when the children do not demonstrate any significant symptoms.
I don't think you have any data showing that there is a significant greater risk of being sent home than lifelong learning deficits.
To which, and this is I believe the crux of the conversation, the NIH director, he responded by saying this, I don't think we have the data on either side of it, Hugh.
I think right now, we're all trying to do the best we can.
The CDC really hates to have to make recommendations based on anecdotes.
And so, what this conversation appears to show is that the reason kids are being forced to wear masks in schools across the country is not necessarily for their safety, but rather because the school districts throughout the country, they have a tendency to overreact and send everyone home if there are any COVID cases, regardless of whether those outbreaks are actually dangerous to the kids themselves.
And just for your reference, by the way, in its latest version of school reopening guidelines, the CDC recommends, quote, Meaning that if this continues for a long time, there might very well be a full generation of kids who have only, on very rare occasions, seen people's full faces in public.
Especially in places like here in New York.
If you'd like to read that full transcript between the host and Dr.
Francis Collins, I'll throw that into the description box below this video for you to check out.
And again, all I ask in return is that if you haven't already, take a quick moment to smash that like button for the user algorithm.
Now, since you've completed this episode of Facts Matter, I would highly recommend that you go on over to Epic TV and check out an awesome episode of Cash's Corner, where Cash Patel goes in and digs into the origins of the Steele dossier.
And from his perspective, it's interesting because he was a man on the inside.
Here's a trailer for that awesome episode.
The guy who wrote the Steele dossier and was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to do it, Christopher Steele, by the DNC and the Hiller campaign, was introduced to a subsource by Fiona Hill, the very lady who went into the Trump White House and then conjured up the Ukraine impeachment fiasco.
Fiona Hill introduces Denchenko to Christopher Steele.
And she has no idea.
She testified under oath.
She has no idea what Steele was doing or how that dossier got made.
Charles Dolan, the Hillary Clinton operative, who was paid money by the Clinton campaign and heard the Denchenko indictment, is the one that was feeding information to Denchenko for the Steele dossier.
I'm the lead Russia guy and I had never heard of this guy.
It means to me the FBI and DOJ under Rod Rosenstein withheld information that was critical to the Russiagate investigation that we were running.
Who knows what else they've left out?
If you want to check out that phenomenal episode, as well as all the other great content over on Epic TV, It'll be right there at the very top of the description box.
I hope you click on it.
I hope you check it out.
I hope you subscribe.
And I hope that you join us on this journey of exploring this beautiful, beautiful world through honest journalism that is based in truth and tradition.
Now, lastly, if you haven't already, smash that like button for the use of algorithm.
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And then, until next time, I'm your host, Roman from the Epic Times.
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