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Jan. 20, 2022 - Epoch Times
19:50
CDC Reveals 79% of Omicron Patients Were "Fully Vaccinated", 32% Had Booster Shots | Facts Matter
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Good evening.
Four days ago, down in Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis introduced a new plan that will allow him to take the illegal immigrants that have been brought to the state of Florida and to relocate them to other places, such as to Washington, D.C., Delaware, which is Joe Biden's home state, as well as Martha's Vineyard, where Barack Obama owns a large mansion.
Meanwhile, over in California, when local police officers went to a middle school in order to investigate a possible shooting threat, the school's director, And then lastly, Let's
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 over in Florida, where an interesting new plan was just introduced.
Specifically, four days ago, during a press conference wherein he was discussing the problem of illegal immigration, Governor Ron DeSantis proposed adding $8 million to the state budget in order to relocate illegal immigrants from Florida to other locations, such as Washington, D.C., Delaware, which as we mentioned earlier is Joe Biden's home state, as well as Martha's Vineyard, where Barack Obama owns a large mansion.
Here's specifically what Governor DeSantis said about this issue during that press conference.
In yesterday's budget, I put in $8 million for us to be able to transport people illegally in the United States out of the state of Florida.
If you sent illegal immigrants to Delaware or Martha's Vineyard or some of these places, that border would be secure the next day.
Now, we here at the Epoch Times, we did reach out to both the White House as well as the Obama Foundation for comment on this proposed move, but we have yet to hear back.
Although it is worth noting that this is not the first time that Governor Ron DeSantis threatened such a move.
Back in November, so just about a month ago, there were reports coming out that the Biden administration was sending illegal immigrants into the state of Florida.
Specifically, back then, the reports were saying that illegal immigrants were being picked up at the U.S.-Mexico border by the agents, and they were being loaded onto 70 different flights, 70 different flights, and then sent over to Jacksonville, Florida.
And so, at that time, Governor Ron DeSantis announced that his administration was looking at different legal avenues to send these illegal immigrants over to Delaware so that Joe Biden would feel more pressure in dealing with the issue.
Here's specifically what Governor Ron DeSantis said back then.
Now, during that same speech, Governor DeSantis did know that his options were limited, given the fact that it is, after all, the federal government that controls America's immigration policies as well as the related actions.
However, seeing the situation, Governor DeSantis added this.
And so with this new proposal to the state budget that he announced just four days ago, it looks like he is serious in doing so.
Now, the proposed $8 million to transport these people out of Florida, as well as the entire 2022 state budget, it still needs to be approved by the state legislature.
However, if they approve it, perhaps we really will begin to see buses of illegal immigrants leaving Florida and heading to Martha's Vineyard.
Only time will tell.
If you'd like to see the entire proposed budget for yourself, which, by the way, is named the Freedom First Budget, I'll throw a PDF of it into the description box below this video so you can check it out for yourself, and all I ask in return is that you take a quick moment to smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm.
And now, let's move on over to California, where a story so bizarre happened that I almost couldn't believe it.
And by the way, this story was first broken by a great reporter named Anthony Casaba.
He reports for El American out in California.
And so what happened was that last Wednesday, at about 3 p.m.
local time, police officers over in Los Angeles, they received, they were rather notified of a potential school shooting threat, which was made against Watts Middle School.
However, since it was made after school hours after 3 p.m., and therefore there wasn't an immediate threat to the students, the police officers opened an investigation into the credibility of the threat.
And so, after spending the late afternoon as well as the evening looking into it, the police department decided that a police presence was needed at the school campus in order to ensure that both the school staff members as well as the students remain safe against the potential threat.
And so what they did was that the very next day, which was on Thursday, police officers showed up at the school and they went over to the school administrators to tell them what was going on.
However, at this point, the school's director, Ms.
Angelique Sims, she came out and she asked these police officers whether they had proof of vaccination.
She said that it was school policy.
And this is where the story takes a turn for the absurd.
because after the police officers informed the school director that they did not have proof of vaccination, the police officers were told to leave.
Let me just repeat that.
A group of LAPD officers who came to this particular middle school to protect the staff and the students from a credible shooting threat, they were told to turn around and to get off campus because according to the school's policy, they were not allowed to be there if they were unvaccinated.
Now again, this story was first broken by L-American, which covers a lot of local news out in California, and they reached out to the director of this middle school as well as the principal of the Associated High School, and both of them did not reply or comment on this particular matter.
And it is also unclear whether the local police officers have concluded their investigation into the threat that was allegedly made against the school.
Regardless though, if you'd like to read more about this particular case over in LA, I'll throw the links to it into the description box below this video for you to check out.
And all I ask again in return is that if you haven't already, take a quick moment to smash, smash, smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm.
And now, before we move on over and discuss how the CDC just revealed that 80% of the people who have been infected with the Omicron variant were fully vaccinated, 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 2 million people who are already members one thing that you can do to fight back is to join And by joining, you'll have access to three main benefits.
The first benefit is the money-saving benefit, because by joining, you'll have access to discounts on things like vitamins, restaurants, retail shops throughout the entire country.
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.
That's right.
Although I did run out of studio time, so I had to shoot this episode a little bit piecemeal.
But let's in fact talk about the CDC. Specifically about how over the weekend, the CDC came out with new data, which showed, when you actually dig through it, it's buried a little bit in here, but it showed that out of the Omicron cases that have been detected in America thus far, 79% of them were among people who you can consider to be fully vaccinated.
Let me just repeat that.
Among the people here in America who have been identified to have the Omicron variant of the virus, 79% of them received at least two doses of the Pfizer vaccine.
Here's specifically what this data show when you break it down.
79% of the cases occurred in people who had at least two doses of the vaccine at least two weeks prior to testing positive for the Omicron variant.
And then 32% of the cases of the Omicron had also received a booster shot.
And then what's interesting also to note is that only 14% of the people who tested positive for Omicron had a prior COVID infection, meaning that among the discovered Omicron cases thus far here in America, 79% of these people had at least two doses of the vaccine.
32% of these people had at least three doses of the vaccine, whereas those who had natural immunity, they seem to be rather unaffected, at least comparatively, because only 14% of them comprised the Omicron cases.
Here's, in fact, what the CDC wrote in this Summary of their data.
Quote, mutations in Omicron might increase transmissibility, confer resistance to therapeutics, or partially escape infection or vaccine-induced immunity.
Now, this data from the CDC, it actually ties in quite nicely to this new study that was just released in the form of a preprint, released online.
And this study, it found that the existing COVID vaccines, meaning that vaccines that are already out there, they induce a lower number of antibodies that can actually defend against the Omicron variant.
Specifically, what the researchers in this study did was they took blood samples from people who had received two doses of either the AstraZeneca vaccine or the Pfizer vaccine, and then they tested their blood against the Omicron variant.
And they found, and this was a quote, a substantial fall in neutralizing antibodies with some people and then other people having no antibodies to speak of when it comes to the new variant.
Here's specifically what these researchers wrote in a part of their summary, quote, There was a substantial fall in neutralization titters in recipients of both AstraZeneca vaccine and the Pfizer vaccine primary courses, with evidence of some recipients failing to neutralize at all.
This will likely lead to increased breakthrough infections in previously infected or double vaccinated individuals, which could drive a further wave of infection, although there is currently no evidence of increased potential to cause severe disease, hospitalization, or death.
And the reason that the results of this preprint study are so significant is because the number of natural antibodies that an individual possesses is pretty much the primary measure of that person's protection against a particular disease.
And so, as the study mentions, if a person either has the lowered efficacy in their antibodies or if, in regards to a new variant, their antibodies don't have any effect, Then, in a sense, that person is not protected at all.
And actually, this preprint study, the results of it are very much in line with a separate study that came out of Pfizer themselves.
And that earlier study, it also showed that the primary vaccination series, meaning that the two-dose regimen of the vaccine, it shows a dramatically lower effect in terms of preventing infections.
And this led the Pfizer CEO, after that earlier study came out, to say that boosters will likely be necessary.
Here's specifically what he said.
Although two doses of the vaccine may still offer protection against severe disease caused by the Omicron strain, it's clear from these preliminary data that protection is improved with a third dose of our vaccine.
Ensuring as many people as possible are fully vaccinated with the first two-dose series and a booster remains the best course of action to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Likewise, and despite the fact that most of the Omicron cases across the world thus far have been mild cases, the CEO of Moderna, he also came out and said that a whole new vaccine might need to be developed in order to combat the Omicron variant.
And so in the near future, I would expect more booster developments and then subsequently more vaccine mandates that will likely require everybody in the country to get booster shots as well.
Until then, as you're waiting, you can check out the preprint study as well as the CDC data showing that out of the people in America who have tested positive for Omicron, 79% of them are fully vaccinated with an additional 32% of them having gotten three shots of the vaccine.
I'll throw the links to the PDF versions of these into the description box below so you can check them out at your own leisure.
Otherwise, Roman in the studio, back to you.
And now let's talk about fact checkers.
You know, there's a very funny phenomenon in this world, specifically in America.
And that is, regardless of what kind of well-spun hyperbole you might say in public, Typically, in the courtroom, you need to tell the truth.
The whole truth and nothing but the truth.
That's because when it comes to lawsuits, you are typically held under penalty of perjury.
You need to tell the truth or you will face real-world consequences.
And so, while publicly, Facebook has painted their independent fact-checkers as the arbiters of truth and science, in court...
It's a very different story.
In fact, three days ago, Facebook's lawyers admitted in a court filing that their so-called fact checks are actually opinions.
Let me just repeat that.
In a court filing, the lawyers for Facebook, they admitted that their fact check labels are actually, as they call them, protected opinions.
Let me give you a bit of context around this particular lawsuit.
A libertarian television host named Mr.
John Stossel posted two videos on Facebook in regards to climate change.
In one of those videos, Mr.
Stossel interviewed a climate change expert regarding the forest fires which were devastating California in the year 2020.
During that interview, Mr.
Stossel claimed that climate change has made things worse in the state of California.
However, the expert that he was interviewing, he said that even though climate change played a role in those forest fires, the primary reason behind them was actually mismanagement of the forest by the state government.
And so, you might look at a video like that and you might think, okay, well, it's two individuals who are expressing different viewpoints, they're having a debate on the issue, covering multiple sides of it, and there's nothing wrong with that.
However, the Facebook independent fact-checkers, they did not see it that way.
That's because Facebook placed a label over top of that video telling its users that it was quote-unquote missing context.
And then, if you actually click through, you were met with a page from a website called Climate Feedback where they wrote this, quote, Claim, forest fires are caused by poor management, not by climate change.
And the verdict, misleading.
However, and this is what Mr.
Stossel is claiming in his lawsuit, nowhere in his video does he make the claim that forest fires are caused by poor management rather than climate change.
In fact, he suggested the exact opposite to be true.
Here's in fact how Mr.
Stossel described the fact-checking process over on Facebook.
It's nothing more than a pretext used by defendants to defame users with impunity, particularly when defendants disagree with the scientific opinions expressed in user content.
And so, Mr.
Stossel filed a lawsuit against Facebook, accusing them of defaming him.
However, and this is where it gets interesting, Facebook claims that their fact-checking, as well as the associated labels on the post across their entire site, it constitutes protected opinion.
Here's specifically what they wrote in their legal brief.
Stossel's claims focus on the fact-check articles written by Climate Feedback, not the labels affixed through Facebook platform.
The labels themselves are neither false nor defamatory.
To the contrary, they constitute protected opinion.
And even if Stossel could attribute Climate Feedback's separate web pages to Meta, the challenged statements on those pages are likewise neither false nor defamatory.
Any of these failures would doom Stossel's complaint, but the combination makes any amendment futile.
And so the significance of their argument is that here in the US, in the legal system, opinions are not subject to defamation claims.
Our libel laws in America, they actually protect opinions, and the basis of Facebook's defense in this lawsuit is that their fact checks are opinions.
And the definition of an opinion, by the way, is, quote, a view or judgment formed about something not necessarily based on fact or knowledge.
And so do you see the argument that they're making here?
By their very own lawyers' arguments, Facebook's fact checks are legally just opinions that are held either by Facebook employees and or third-party companies that are hired to undertake the fact-checking process.
That is quite cool.
And of course, besides their fact-check labels being officially opinion statements, it's also worth noting that in this particular lawsuit, the claim that the fact-checkers were checking actually appeared nowhere in the video itself.
It was essentially a straw man that they set up, disproved, and then used that disapproval to claim that Mr.
Stossel's video was false.
And of course, when a video is marked as being false, you might know that its distribution on Facebook is reduced significantly on that particular platform.
And by the way, I've actually seen this happen firsthand.
For instance, when we published the documentary called Tracking Down the Origin of the Wuhan Coronavirus, we published it on Facebook in order to distribute it to more people.
And in that documentary, if you watched it, you'd know we explored the question of whether the virus leaked from a lab in Wuhan.
We did not say that it was manufactured by the government.
We did not say that it was manufactured as some kind of a weapon.
We simply stated that the evidence points to the fact that it might have leaked from a lab.
That's all.
However, Facebook fact-checked our video, and when you clicked into it, the claim that they were actually looking into was whether the virus was engineered in a lab, which they said was false.
However, again, that doesn't matter, because in our video, we never made that claim.
We said that it might have leaked from a lab.
We never said that it was manufactured or engineered in that lab.
And yet, somehow, that was still what they were disproving, and in the course of that disapproval, they labeled our video as being false.
False.
And of course now, given the court filing that we just went through against Mr.
Stossel, which exposes the fact that these fact checks on Facebook are actually protected opinions, I do not expect that it'll get any easier to fight back against them, because after all, it's just a matter of opinion.
If you'd like to read more about this particular case, I will throw the legal arguments down into the description box below this video so you can read them for yourself.
And all I ask in return is that if you haven't already, take a quick moment to smash, smash, smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm.
Now lastly, since you've completed this episode of Facts Matter, I would highly recommend that you go on over to Epic TV and check out part two of the interview on American Thought Leaders, where Jan sat down with a former high-ranking official in the State Department, and they discuss how the West, meaning America and Europe and other countries such as Australia, are starting to adopt China's Orwellian social credit system.
Here's a trailer for that episode.
If you allow people to say, oh, declaring an emergency means that rights don't apply, then there's going to be lots of emergencies.
With the rise of big tech censorship and lockdowns of the unvaccinated, are the seeds of China's internet firewall and Orwellian social credit system now spreading to the West?
As soon as you can use pejoratives for people, whether you call it anti-vaxxer or anti-science or racist or whatever you want to call it, that's the road to tyranny.
In part two of my interview with Professor Robert Destro, former Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, DRL, We discuss the state of human rights in the United States and the rest of the Western world.
Destro is also a law professor at the Catholic University of America's Columbus School of Law.
You have to stand up against tyranny, otherwise it will eat you alive.
If you want to check out that awesome episode, as well as all the other phenomenal content over on Epic TV, I'll throw a link to it.
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 honors journalism that is based in truth and tradition.
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And then, until next time, I'm your host, Roman from The Epoch Times.
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