Free Republic

The protection from vaccines against the virus that causes COVID-19 dropped following the emergence of the Omicron virus variant, but held up better against hospitalization, according to a new study.While the Delta variant was still dominant in the United States, COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations among unvaccinated people were 3.8 times and 12.9 times, respectively, those among vaccinated people without a booster, researchers in California found.The gap between unvaccinated and vaccinated people who received a booster was even wider, with unvaccinated people experiencing infections 12.3 times and hospitalizations 83 times the rate of the metrics in the vaccinated and boosted group.However,...

A first edition copy of Ian Fleming’s 007 novel Goldfinger, inscribed by the author to legendary golfer Sir Henry Cotton, could fetch a record price at auction. The 1959 book features a famous golf match between James Bond and Auric Goldfinger in which the secret agent wins $10,000 from the villain after both use underhand tactics to win. Fleming, who described the grudge match over 21 pages in his novel, presented the inscribed copy to his friend, the three-time Open champion Sir Henry, who was a fellow member at the Royal St George’s golf club in Kent. Inside the 63-year-old...

A major pharmaceutical company this week fired many employees who refused to get the COVID-19 vaccine. Syneos Health is a global pharmaceutical outsourcing company with some 28,000 employees in more than 110 countries. It contracts with bigger pharmaceutical companies including COVID-19 vaccine maker Johnson & Johnson/Janssen.While J & J employs pharmaceutical representatives, it also contracts with Syneos Health to provide additional pharmaceutical representatives. Each Syneos representative is paired with one from J&J and they work together, selling drugs to doctors and other health care providers.“It’s the same exact job, same exact customers, same exact expense reporting. Everything is the same,...

The science is becoming clearer on mask-wearing as COVID becomes an endemic problem. It doesn't work. Everyone is going to get infected eventually. COVID is now part of our lives…forever. Have no fear; we do the same with cold and flu season. We have therapeutics. We have vaccines. It's time to move on with our lives. The masks requirements just need to die. Infections are all over the place. They have not curbed the spread. This is classic "horse has left the barn" territory. And now, this protocol applied to school districts needs to die as well. Even ardent feminists...

While Canadian Truckers were pouring into Ottawa and peacefully assembling, with some taking the time to feed homeless, Justin Trudeau was sneaking out of town to an undisclosed location like he was fleeing advancing Mongol hordes. There are no credible reports of him disguised in blackface although it’s one alter ego he’s known to employ. Maybe he was wearing a Native American headdress. We may never know. In any event, he fled like a coward, refusing to meet with convoy truckers.From his secret location, Trudeau first characterized the truckers as a fringe few causing havoc and property damage; and based...

The 410-pound Castello CUBE had its own security detail. Artist Niclas Castello made it out of 24-carat gold. The cube, which took more than 4,500 hours of work to create, is reportedly worth $11.7 million. Castello hyped up New Yorkers and tourists alike before the presentation with a truck displaying the cube’s coordinates. It also served as promotion for the Castello Coin, an NFT set to launch later in February

Skepticism is building around the White House’s narrative regarding Ukraine and Russia, and that boiled over today during the press briefing at the US State Department. In a rare act of journalism, Matt Lee of the Associated Press excoriated State Department spokesman Ned Price in a must-see back and forth.The issue at hand involved the Biden administration’s latest claims that Russia is spreading “misinformation” and seeking to commit a “false flag” attack to offer a pretext for war. While most reporters would have just accepted the government’s word as fact, Lee was having none of it. He lit into Price,...

Facebook/Meta announced its fourth-quarter earnings on Wednesday and it was quite a different mood than Apple’s last week. Facebook missed expectations with lower revenue and a dismal outlook that sent the stock plummeting some 25 percent. And it’s all Apple’s fault. It all stems from the App Tracking Transparency feature that Apple implemented in iOS 14.5 last April. It’s a simple dialogue box that pops up when you launch an app for the first time. Before you start using the app, you’ll get an alert that asks if you want to allow it to track your activity across other companies’...

Two Democratic senators and a Democrat-aligned colleague are using the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol incursion as a pretext to change the 1887 Electoral Count Act to essentially squelch challenges to election results. This is ironic because many Democrats — including two-time failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters of California — repeatedly challenged the legitimacy of Donald Trump’s presidency throughout his tenure. In fact, Waters and a handful of other Democrats objected to the certification of Trump’s Electoral College win on the floor of Congress in January 2017. Over the past two decades, Democrats objected to the...

The Great White North is making for some damn good political watching, and it looks like it is not letting up anytime soon. The Canadian Trucker Protest, which rolled into the nation’s capital of Ottawa last weekend, is still going strong and has claimed its first political scalp.Unfortunately, it was not the Prime Minister whose government has caused all of this angst, but the leader of the opposition to Trudeau’s government, Conservative MP Erin O’Toole.From the National Post…Erin O’Toole was ousted from the party’s top job, leaving his former deputy Candice Bergen to helm a divided caucus until its members...

Sometimes, you have to take stock of what you’ve been through to see clearly where you’re going. It’s important to recognize obstacles especially when they appear to be shortcuts. This goes for people, too, those who always stand in the way, even while appearing to be someone anxious to help. There are debunked lies that should have slipped out of the conversation, but somehow always seem to be present, forcing them to be debunked over and over again, wasting time, effort and momentum. Recognizing this helps to make ground in valuable endeavors while bypassing the swampland. First of all, there...

Congress has little more than two weeks to pass legislation that funds the government and avoids a shutdown, adding pressure to a jam-packed February. Current government funding expires Feb.18. Democrats are rushing to put the finishing touches on a long-term omnibus spending bill, which would fund the government throughout the 2022 fiscal year. This could be their last chance to amend spending in line with their priorities before the midterm elections, when they may lose control of Congress. But Republicans may be happy to let the process languish, and push instead for another continuing resolution, which would fund the government...

n estimated 40,458 homes and condos are sitting vacant in San Francisco, and that number could potentially go down if the city were to introduce a vacancy tax that would fine homeowners who leave their properties empty, a new report released Monday by the city's budget and legislative analyst said.

As the world guardedly enters into a new year, many, from all corners of society, are wondering just what kind of future lies ahead for everyone in 2022 and beyond. Moreover, prophetically awake Christians, are wondering how much worse things will become as we draw closer to the end. If the general sentiment is anything like the meme that is making its rounds these days, the forecast does not look promising. Although done somewhat tongue-in-cheek, it makes sense that as the signs of global decomposition are becoming more obvious, even the non-prophecy-watching population is starting to notice that something is...

(WXYZ) — When Chris Chelios and the U.S. went on a run to the Olympic final in 2002, son Jake was front and center in Salt Lake City, dreaming of one day following in his father's footsteps. Twenty years later, Jake Chelios is in the Olympics — but not the way he ever envisioned. He is one of seven Americans playing for China at the Beijing Games, part of a team made up of mostly foreign players who will be counted on to keep the host country from being blown out in its own buildings. “I think half the family...

Rédaction Africanews Last updated: 8 hours ago FARMING They may come across as dirty, ugly and nasty creatures that transfer germs from one source to another, but they are worth more than that. According to the World Bank, insects farming could be the answer to the continent's hunger, poverty, and ecological crisis. Aside the economic benefits, insect farming is said to have some great nutritional value as it tackles undernourishment that affects one in five people in the continent. Insect consumption has a long history in Africa, but insect farming is much more recent. Africa consumes about 25% of the...

Schools across the nation are using this week to indoctrinate students with progressive activism using a curriculum promoted by the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, a parent group has warned. During the “Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action,” which began on Jan. 31, public school districts from Boston to Seattle are teaching lessons that correspond to core BLM values, such as “Diversity and Globalism,” and “Trans-Affirming,” “Queer Affirming,” and “Collective Value.” The lessons are based on 13 “Black Lives Matter Guiding Principles,” including a call for “Black Villages,” which is “the disruption of Western nuclear family dynamics and...

Sharon Stone has criticised Joe Rogan for spreading Covid-19 misinformation on his Spotify-exclusive podcast The Joe Rogan Experience. In an interview with TMZ on Tuesday (1 February), the 63-year-old actor responded to Rogan’s recent statement backing Spotify’s decision to label Covid-19 content with advisory warnings, saying: “[Rogan] should put a disclaimer that he’s an *******.” Backlash over The Joe Rogan Experience began after an episode during which Rogan interviewed Robert Malone, a widely discredited doctor. Malone has previously, falsely claimed he’s the inventor of mRNA vaccines, that its *****ing nuts* Americans have to get inoculated, and compared the country’s vaccination...

American factories are calling production back home as supply chain bottlenecks continue to cause an international nightmare for the movement of overseas products. The Rodon Group – a plastic component manufacturer in Hatfield, Pennsylvania – told FOX Business' Jeff Flock on "Varney & Co." Tuesday that the company is reshoring various products previously made in China like lip balm containers in 20 different colors, tinker toys by the millions and COVID-19 testing readers for hospital usage. The Rodon Group President Michael Araten has been in the reshoring business for decades but the current state of the economy, bogged down by...

LOCKWOOD, N.Y. (WETM) — A rare complication to the COVID-19 vaccine turned deadly for the Watts family of Lockwood. Their son, George Watts Jr., died at just 24-years-old after receiving the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine…. George Jr. collapsed in his room on October 27 and was pronounced dead later that morning. His dad described him as healthy, saying he had no underlying medical conditions. An autopsy report from the Bradford County Coroner’s Office shows George Jr. died from “COVID-19 related myocarditis.” “Myocarditis is how I ruled [his cause of death],” Timothy Cahill Jr., Chief Deputy Coroner for Bradford County, said. “We...