Good morning and Happy Friday, C&C! It’s a crisp cool Florida morning here, the cardinals are chirping happily, and the news keeps rolling in. Today’s roundup includes: Operation multiplier raised almost $120K for HFDF; Paxlovid problems appear; Shanghai fences in; Michigan’s senate discourages college jabs; GDP falls precipitously; a new study shows higher heart damage from jabs; and I explain my thoughts about student loans a little more.

🗞 *THE C&C ARMY POST* 🗞

🪖 OPERATION MULTIPLIER UPDATE: I spoke with Leslie Manookian, the founder of Health Freedom Defense Fund again yesterday. She says we multiplied them with nearly $120,000 from almost 5,000 C&C’ers! Leslie is working on getting us the final figures, along with a link to a special “thank-you C&C” video.

It looks like we might have set another record. Great work, soldiers!

Most importantly, our multiplier was a message; we’ve spoken a word of encouragement not just to HFDF but to all the average citizens fighting their own Goliaths. So.

🔥 I’m quoted in another Epoch Times article that ran yesterday, “Affidavits Allege Widespread Discrimination Against Florida’s Unvaccinated, Despite Law.” (https://tinyurl.com/yckuj79n)

🗞*COVID NEWS AND COMMENTARY* 🗞

💊 Uh-oh! CNN ran an article Wednesday with the alarming headline, “Covid-19 Cases That Return After Antiviral Treatment Puzzle Doctors.” The gist is some people who take Paxlovid find their symptoms temporarily abate but then come roaring back, even worse.

The article begins by describing Erin Blakeney, a 43-year-old researcher who is fully boosted, not immunocompromised, and wears KN95 masks around other people. But she and her husband both tested positive for asymptomatic Covid in March, and to be extra safe, Erin got them some Paxlovid. It’s supposed to only be prescribed for high-risk patients, but Erin wanted to be extra sure. Because you can never be too careful.

After taking the five-day series of pills, Erin and her husband tested negative. Whew. But then within a few days, the article explains “she was starting to get congested again. When she woke up on Tuesday, April 12, she realized that she was really sick. Her husband was, too.” They both took rapid tests, and guess what? Positive again.

But this time she had a high fever, a rapid heart rate and a “really awful” cough. She says her breathing was very wheezy. She wound up going to the ER, where doctors were mystified it could even happen, after taking Paxlovid. “They were like, ‘we’ve never heard of this,’ “ Blakeney explained. CNN reports she’s now “mostly recovered,” though her cough has lingered.

CNN describes a couple other examples, and then admits the experts are baffled. Dr. Michael Charness, a Boston VA neurologist who’s submitted a pre-print study about the problem, admitted “At the moment, I would say it’s just a little mysterious. There are a lot of potential explanations for what’s going on. They’re all speculation, and it has to be much better studied.”

How could this possibly have happened? The drug was SO carefully vetted by the FDA before being approved under EUA as one of the only treatments for Covid. Weird.

Pfizer admitted to CNN that, in the clinical trial for the drug, a “small number” of patients taking Paxlovid experienced higher viral loads 10 to 14 days after starting treatment compared with their viral loads at day 5. Pfizer claims the placebo group showed the same thing, which if true, doesn’t say much for any benefit from Paxlovid.

Blogger Igor Chudov rounded up an impressive number of online posts from puzzled people who recently took Paxlovid and then got a worse case of covid. Chudov re-printed the posts in his Substack. Many of the folks reported all-new types of symptoms arising during their second infection, like first-time loss of smell or taste. Almost all report having been vaccinated.

So, what’s going on? No help from the experts, unfortunately, even though they have opinions about everything else.

💉 Michigan’s senate voted 22-15 in favor of a resolution late last week opposing jab mandates for college kids. Michigan State Senator Douglas Wozniak said he thinks “the time has come for mask and vaccine mandates to be rescinded.” Indeed. Michigan’s public two-year colleges reported a 20 percent decrease in enrollment from fall 2019 to fall 2020.

“Further unnecessary mandates will result in increased resentment and resistance, not compliance,” the resolution stated. Hard to imagine how the resentment and resistance could increase at this point, but I suppose anything’s possible.

🔥 Reuters ran an article earlier this week headlined, “Shanghai Fences Up COVID-Hit Areas, Fueling Fresh Outcry.” The article reports new images from Shanghai showing white hazmat suit-clad enforcers sealing off apartment building entrances and closing off entire streets with tall green metal fencing.

One video shows residents shouting from balconies at workers trying to set up fencing before relenting in a cowardly fashion and taking the fences away. Other videos show people trying to pull the fences down. “Isn’t this a fire hazard?” asked one commenter on Weibo. Personally, I’d say that’s a “yes.” It’s somewhat harder to evacuate during a fire if the doors are FENCED CLOSED.

Reuters also reported that in the past week, Shanghai authorities have removed entire communities into quarantine, including uninfected people, claiming the government needs to disinfect their homes. Somehow I doubt they’re doing the dishes and taking out the trash, but one can hope.

💉 The Epoch Times ran an article late last week about a new study of 23 million Europeans headlined, “Heart Inflammation More Prevalent Among Vaccinated Than Unvaccinated: Study.”

“These extra cases among men aged 16–24 correspond to a 5 times increased risk after [Pfizer’s] Comirnaty and 15 times increased risk after [Moderna’s] Spikevax compared to unvaccinated,” Dr. Rickard Ljung, a professor and physician at the Swedish Medical Products Agency and one of the principal investigators of the study.

Oops! The study showed heart problems in younger people were FIVE TIMES greater after taking the Pfizer jab and FIFTEEN TIMES greater after Moderna. That can’t be good for business. Rates were higher among vaccinated folks of almost all ages after the first or second dose.

The peer-reviewed study was published in JAMA on April 20th, titled “SARS-CoV-2 Vaccination and Myocarditis in a Nordic Cohort Study of 23 Million Residents.”

The Epoch Times said Moderna and Pfizer did not respond to requests for comment. The study authors said the magic words required to get published, that the benefits of the vaxx outweigh the risks.

But Dr. Peter McCullough, a cardiologist, disagreed. “In cardiology we spend our entire career trying to save every bit of heart muscle. We put in stents, we do heart catheterization, we do stress tests, we do CT angiograms. The whole game of cardiology is to preserve heart muscle,” McCullough told The Epoch Times. “Under no circumstances would we accept a vaccine that causes even one person to stay sustain heart damage. Not one. And this idea that ‘oh, we’re going to ask a large number of people to sustain heart damage for some other theoretical benefit for a viral infection,’ which for most is less than a common cold, is untenable. The benefits of the vaccines in no way outweigh the risks.”

So.

🦘 95% vaccinated and quarantine-camped Australia is experiencing its highest all-cause mortality since the start of the pandemic. For some reason.

📉 In disastrous financial news, U.S. GDP growth fell from +6.9 percent last quarter to negative -1.4 percent this quarter. Biden was asked about the news and said that there would NOT be a recession this year, so don’t you worry. He’s an optimist. But he did concede that recession was a concern, allowing “You’re always worried about a recession.”

Always? I’m not sure about that. I’m old enough to remember a previous administration where I never worried about recession. It might not be recession though. What’s that word again, “stagflation?” Or is that not allowed on social media?

🔥 The AP reported this week that “Climate change may increase risk of new infectious diseases.” Uh huh.

💉 This week, Moderna and Pfizer both asked the FDA for expanded EUAs for the jabs in kids over 5. Moderna wants an EUA for the first two shots, and Pfizer wants its existing EUA expanded to allow for boosters, which the FDA’s vaccine committee opposes. What do you think will happen?

🔥 I wrote about all the Administration’s dangerous and preposterous student loan talk yesterday and there were some downright skeptical questions in the comments, like I’d nominated Fauci for a first aid merit badge or something. That’s what I get for summarizing. To be clear, I am 100% opposed to blanket forgiveness of student loans. Even if it was ethical, which it isn’t, the only way the government could pull off something like that would be to expand the money supply again, which could be the final heavy straw on the country’s financial camel, which is already loaded down with three morbidly obese clowns: Fauci, Biden, and Comanche warrior Elizabeth Warren.

Over the years, certain professional experiences have convinced me that what’s happening to SOME kids with student loans is immoral and unconscionable. And the Bankruptcy Code would already allow these loans to be discharged — under a higher “hardship” standard — except judges have made it impossibly difficult. I’m not the only one who thinks that. The Sixth Circuit recently and harshly described all the judicial law stopping student loans from being discharged as “retributive dicta.”

Absent the judges’ “retributive dicta,” students in impossibly upside-down loans could have been discharged; not easily, not like discharging a bad car loan or runaway credit card debt, but they SHOULD have been able to get a fresh start with some effort. So, to the extent there is a student loan crisis in this country, judges must take responsibility for having created it. Otherwise the bankruptcy system would have already vented the mounting pressure.

I understand the moral argument against debt forgiveness but it is misplaced. The FOUNDERS designed the bankruptcy system; they drafted it along with the Constitution. The only reason bankruptcy has survived till now is because it is enshrined in the Constitution (Article I, Section 8). And the Founders didn’t make it up; they based the bankruptcy system on the ancient Hebrew moral law requiring debts be forgiven every seven years — the same period that the Founders chose for our bankruptcy code.

The Founders were ethically opposed to debtors’ prison. They relied on the Biblical teaching, “At the end of every seven years you must cancel debts.” Deu. 15:1 (NIV). Still, the Founders weren’t as generous as the ancient Hebrews. They believed in personal responsibility as well as mercy. They required citizens, in order to get a release from debts, to sell their non-exempt assets and fully disclose their finances in public.

There are good economic arguments for bankruptcy: it encourages productive risk taking and provides a way to quickly recycle entrepreneurs and taxpayers so they don’t languish in debt for long, unproductive periods of time. The existence of bankruptcy acts as a brake on creditors as much as a relief valve for borrowers. Bankruptcy stops creditors from making unnecessarily risky loans, which can destabilize an entire economy, as we saw in the 2008 real estate crisis.

So a debt discharge in bankruptcy is not immoral per se. It’s Biblical and Constitutional. But what IS clearly immoral is usurious interest, which is a criminal offense in 49 States. The only state to repeal its usury laws was Delaware, attracting all the large financial institutions for that reason. That’s why a credit card company can charge over 18% interest and not be arrested like you or I would be. Student loan interest rates, when combined with hidden fees, extra charges, penalties, and added interest, are often usurious. Just saying.

Have a fabulous Friday! I’ll see you guys back here tomorrow for the weekend edition.

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