Free Republic

The protection against severe illness from so-called natural immunity remains superior to the protection bestowed by COVID-19 vaccines, according to a new study.People who survived COVID-19 infection and were not vaccinated had sky-high protection against severe or fatal COVID-19, researchers in Qatar found.“Effectiveness of primary infection against severe, critical, or fatal COVID-19 reinfection was 97.3 percent … irrespective of the variant of primary infection or reinfection, and with no evidence for waning. Similar results were found in sub-group analyses for those ≥50 years of age,” Dr. Laith Abu-Raddad, with Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar, and colleagues said after studying long-term natural immunity...

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban will travel to the U.S. in August to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Texas, the Daily Caller has learned. Orban’s appearance comes after CPAC hosted a May conference in Budapest. Orban spoke there about Hungary’s “12-point recipe” for success. Orban is expected to discuss similar themes during his speech in Texas. .... “CPAC is proud to host Prime Minister Viktor Orban. The fight against socialism is a global one,” American Conservative Union (ACU) Chairman Matt Schlapp told the Daily Caller.

I've just finished a rough draft of a book length sci fi story, it's taken me a year and I've still got some rewriting to do but I was starting to think about the next steps in possibly getting it published. I've not been on the internet in any depth for over a year and I don't know what sort help and resources are available these days so any help from published or even aspiring authors would be greatly appreciated.Like I said, it's not finished yet, but the rough draft is good, it has a beginning a middle and an...

The creator of the trans flag forced his wife to participate in his fetishistic cross-dressing and wrote ‘forced feminization’ and erotic short stories, including one about young girls who never age. Monica Helms, born Robert Hogge, designed the first trans pride flag in 1999. In his memoir, More Than Just a Flag, Helms – who named himself after a fictional battle in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings – describes himself as an “enlightened” being who is able to “float” between multiple worlds. “I identify as female, but I’m more of a bigender person,” Helms says. “This allows my brain...

The blame for mass shootings and other gun crimes lies directly with the federal, state, and local authorities for not reporting criminal activities and domestic disputes directly to ATF, the agency that clears the purchase of weapons. It usually takes only a couple hours for law enforcement to put the picture together after the fact. That means they have that information at hand but not in a central data base. More data entry is required. We have all the gun laws we need. Government is not enforcing the laws. Every time, the shooter has a history, has been posting plans...

Many of the top jurists in our country care no more about election integrity than the Democrat politicians trying to sell the myth that the 2020 election was spectacularly safe and error-free.The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Friday held that state election officials’ use of some 500-plus drop boxes during the 2020 general election violated Wisconsin law. While the court’s decision represents a (partial, as we will soon see) victory for election integrity, the split 4-3 decision and the substance of the dissent reveal that having a fair electoral process no longer “transcends any individual partisan interest” — something less than...

(The Center Square) – A Louisiana sheriff is vowing to defy a state law that bans abortion by refusing to jail anyone arrested for violations. Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson issued a statement on Thursday announcing she will refuse to accept any person into custody at the Orleans Justice Center who is arrested for violating the state’s 2006 “trigger law,” which bans abortions in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. “Our community elected me to bring progressive change to our jail, not bring us back to the days before Roe v. Wade,” Hutson said. “I...

We are living in an age when civilization itself is under attack — or at least Western civilization, which has made the fruitful lives we lead today possible.Editor’s note: This article, originally a speech before a teacher training conference, has been adapted from a pamphlet recently published by Memoria Press and is printed here with permission.What is Civilization? Let’s consider this a meditation on an idea.Henry James, in an early novel called “The Europeans,” records a brother and sister, both Europeans, visiting America for the first time in the early to mid-19th century. The brother lights out in search of...

I have been asking people to watch 2000 Mules. Several response are, essentially it is too expensive. I understand it is a commercial movie. Are there any sites where people can watch it without having to register, for little or no cost? If anyone knows, someone on freerepublic knows.

Two recent studies have shown that electric vehicles have more quality issues than gas-powered ones and are not better for the environment. Many people believe electric vehicles are higher quality than gas-powered vehicles and are emissions-free, which makes them much better for the environment. But two recent studies have shown that electric cars have more quality issues than gas-powered ones and are not better for the environment. J.D. Power has produced the annual U.S. Initial Quality Study for 36 years, which measures the quality of new vehicles based on feedback from owners. The most recent study, which included Tesla in...

Just two years ago, the National Endowment for the Arts made only one grant to an art project that promised to address the issue of climate change, awarding $25,000 to the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art to commission work informed by "research on the Earth's dissolving permafrost layer." During the last two years, the federal agency has provided $1,369,000 to fund some 40 climate-focused projects. The 29 such grants approved for fiscal year 2022 include support for multidisciplinary artist Hajra Waheed's collaboration "with researchers and organizers on issues such as land sovereignty and food and climate justice"; development of a...

Billionaire Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates flexed his leftist bona fides by advocating for world governments to centralize control over digital payments. A June 29 World Bank press release stated that following the COVID-19 pandemic, “Two-thirds of adults worldwide now make or receive a digital payment, with the share in developing economies grew [sic] from 35% in 2014 to 57% in 2021.” The press release, which was based on findings from the Gates-supported 2021 Global Findex database, noted that “over 40% of adults who made merchant in-store or online payments using a card, phone, or the internet did so for the...

Related video above: Calls to Massachusetts fertility clinics after Roe v. Wade ruling All Sharon McRae and her husband wanted were to be parents, but it took terminating embryos to get there, she said. The Columbia, Maryland, couple were thrilled when she quickly became pregnant, but about nine and a half weeks in, she miscarried. It was devastating, but the doctor said it happens. They tried again. She would have three more consecutive miscarriages, which required a procedure called dilation and curettage, often called a D&C, to remove the tissue, before fertility specialists found the right combination of treatments for...

After 18 months of treatment, 74% of patients who received the combination medication attained remission, compared to 4% of those who received a placebo. Immune changes can cause peanut allergy remission The potential of new, more focused allergy treatments is now possible thanks to the identification of the key immunological changes that allow the remission of peanut allergy in children. For the first time, researchers discovered that particular gene networks are rewired to drive the transition from peanut allergy to clinical remission after combination treatment of a probiotic and peanut oral immunotherapy. The research, led by the Murdoch Children’s Research...

Big brother just got a little bigger with the help of corporate America. A new bombshell report by the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) has blown the lid off of the “vast, secretive” partnership between private companies and the federal government to surveil and track the movements of millions of people. According to the EFF, the Biden Regime’s alphabet agencies, including ICE, the FBI, US Secret Service, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the Department of Defense (DoD), as well as state and local law enforcement, are being funneled hordes of private cell phone location data by private brokers who...

“Could the future of parenthood be having virtual children in the metaverse?” An article featured in British newspaper The Guardian forecasts a world in which it is commonplace for young adults and would-be parents to opt toward raising “digital babies” over having real children of their own. Powered by virtual reality and artificial intelligence, these “programmable and highly realistic children” would simulate play, emotional feedback, and the tactile feel of caring for offspring. Cute, right? Not at all. What it says about us is deeply unsettling: that we are a culture of lifestyle as opposed to a culture of life...

This 32 second video says it all, about where we are as a society.........................

The Biden Justice Department has yet to take action against abortion extremists menacing pro-life clinics and members of the Supreme Court. Republican lawmakers are resolved to hold leadership accountable after the midterm elections—even if that means impeaching Attorney General Merrick Garland. Rep. Jim Jordan (R., Ohio), who is in line to take over the House Judiciary Committee if Republicans prevail in November, didn’t take a Garland impeachment inquiry off the table in an interview with the Washington Free Beacon. Jordan cited a range of alleged misconduct, from failure to enforce black-letter law to protect clinics and justices, to secret collusion...

Former President Donald J. Trump categorically announced that Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-MO) will not be receiving his endorsement for U.S. Senate in Missouri.“You can forget about Vicky Hartzler for Senate from the Great State of Missouri,” Trump began in an emphatic post on Truth Social. “She called me this morning asking for my Endorsement, much as she has on many other occasions.”He continued: I was anything but positive in that I don’t think she has what it takes to take on the Radical Left Democrats, together with their partner in the destruction of our Country, the Fake News Media and,...

I will never get over the fact that our society seems to produce a steady stream of young men who think it is heroic to murder innocent people. I read their histories. I look at the social science research. I’ve tried to understand the typical pathway they take to get to their evil behavior. The common thing to say about mass shooters is that they have mental health issues, but that’s often misleading. This has been studied in a variety of ways. A majority of mass shooters do not have diagnosed mental illness. It’s mostly the circumstances that drive them...