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T’is better to die than imbibe the enemy’s cure for Covid-19. Russiaphobia lives well in vassal state Denmark. Spuntik V be damned.
[FLASH: U.S. report “Combating malign influences in the Americas…
Office of Global Affairs “used diplomatic relations in the Americas region to mitigate efforts by states, including Cuba, Venezuela, and Russia…dissuade countries in the region from accepting aid from these ill-intentioned states. Examples including using OGA’s Health Attaché office to persuade Brazil to reject the Russian COVID-19 vaccine, and offering CDC technical assistance in lieu of Panama accepting an offer of Cuban doctors.”
This sinister humanitarian, democratic nation wrote this on page 47 of the 2020 annual report of the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services [sic]
MoA – U.S. And Its Five Eye Partners Use ‘Persuasion’, Sabotage And Disinformation To Gain Vaccine Supremacy (moonofalabama.org)]
……Story continues……
A score of blood clots experienced by persons vaccinated with Astra-Zeneca product against the corona virus in some countries recently have caused suspension of its use in several lands. Two women have died—a 60 year-old Danish woman and a 49 year-old Austrian female nurse.
Denmark’s government announced on Thursday, March 11, exactly one year from the first lockdown, that the AstraZeneca vaccine is temporarily suspended. Brostrøm om AstraZeneca-vaccinen: Yngre og umiddelbart raske mennesker ramt af mulige bivirkninger | Indland | DR
Norway, Iceland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Luxemburg, Italy followed suit. They “suspended the use of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine over concerns about patients developing post-jab blood clots, as the manufacturer and Europe’s medicines watchdog insisted the vaccine was safe”. Some suspended use of batches but not all of their AZ doses.
Three European countries suspend use of AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine (livemint.com)
The countries that produced the AZ vaccine, England and Sweden, have not suspended its use.
Austria announced, on March 8, that it had ceased using a batch of AstraZeneca vaccines after the nurse died of “severe blood coagulation problems” days after receiving an anti-Covid shot. Another nurse developed pulmonary embolism.
South Africa suspended using the AZ vaccine last month, because the trial of “about 2000 people, found such a low efficacy against mild and moderate disease, under 25%, that it would not meet minimal international standards for emergency use. But scientists are hopeful it might still prevent severe disease and death…” South Africa suspends use of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine after it fails to clearly stop virus variant | Science | AAAS (sciencemag.org)
For the past two days, I have listened to the main Danish radio news and to all seven hours of DR TV news and analysis programs about the AZ crisis and the long fight against corona virus. Not one word was spoken about Russia’s effective vaccines. Sputnik V is judged by The Lancet study to be 91.6% effective. This important fact was not even brought out on the “Doctor’s Table” program, in which Danish medical experts placed AZ at 61% effective. Sputnik V vaccine is 91.6% effective against symptomatic covid-19 | New Scientist; Safety and immunogenicity of S-Trimer (SCB-2019), a protein subunit vaccine candidate for COVID-19 in healthy adults: a phase 1, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial – The Lancet
In Denmark, and generally in the EU, Sputnik V has been ignored. Ironically, the right-wing Hungarian government is the first to break ranks and has bought Sputnik V and China’s Sinopharm, as well as the three Western produced vaccines.
A Russian think tank/website, Stragetic-Culture Foundation March 12 editorial stated: “The longer the delay in vaccinating the European population the greater the danger of new variants emerging, and hence the longer the delay in returning societies to pre-pandemic normalcy. Populations are becoming restive over protracted lockdowns. Economies and livelihoods have been wrecked by the pandemic. Millions of jobs have been lost…This is the context in which EU official reluctance to deploy Sputnik V must be seen. The European Medicines Agency, the regulator for vaccines, has still not approved the Russian shot even though the requisite data for application for use had been submitted two months ago by the Russian developer of the vaccine.” Russia Offers Europe Win-Win Vaccine Solution — Strategic Culture (strategic-culture.org)
Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen visited Israel last week to help “find a solution for the lack of vaccines”. Israel does not produce any vaccines against corona. Her trip was met with some critique, because her visit can be seen as aiding Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus during an electoral campaign. He is facing a court case on charges of corruption. Netanyahus is also responsible for persistent abuses of Palestinians human rights, theft of their territory and housing, encaging children who resist, and aggressively warring against several Middle Eastern nations.
Nevertheless, PM Frederiksen met with Netanyahus and Austria’s foreign minister, Sebastian Kurtz in Jerusalem. These politicians decided to start a fond for research and possible production of future vaccines—not of any use for the immediate pandemic.
Of the nearly 800,000 Danes vaccinated once or twice (about 14% of the population) as of this writing, 142,000 persons have taken the AZ vaccine. The others have had Pfizer and Moderna—95% and 94% efficacy.
In a DR interview with Soeren Brostroem, director of Denmark’s Health Agency, he stated: “The European Medicines Agency has looked at reports from several EU countries – including Austria and Denmark – with younger and basically healthy people who were vaccinated with the AstraZeneca vaccine, and who then had large blood clots in many different parts of the body in both the large and small blood vessels. So these are very serious blood clot diseases – and unfortunately also in some cases with fatal outcome.”
AZ had been under suspicion before this. Danish medical authorities were doubtful about using it for people over 65 years of age. Just 10 days before the first death due to blood clotting, Denmark’s health agency authorized the vaccine for all Danes.
European health experts have 14 days to study whether the vaccine should be used in the future or not. For Denmark, the calendar for vaccinating all those 16 years old and over, who wish to partake, is set back from mid-July to mid-August. All three vaccines bought by Denmark have been late with promised deliveries, because of prioritizing the Big 3 (US/UK/Israel). Denmark’s original calendar to finish vaccinations was set for mid-June. Brostroem said that if AZ is found unreliable, the calendar could be extended into September.
Astra Zeneca and Sputnik Covid-19 Vaccines
According to Astra-Zeneca, clinical trials found that the vaccine had “an efficacy of 82.4 percent when two doses were given 12 weeks apart. Despite some uncertainty over trial results, Britain authorized the vaccine for emergency use in December 2020.” How the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 Vaccine Works – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
The Lancet March 6 article shows, however, overall efficacy to be 70.4% after one dose, and 62.1% after a booster four weeks later. This is based on studies in UK, Brazil and South Africa. Single-dose Oxford–AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine followed by a 12-week booster – The Lancet
Danish TV2 reported in January that AZ is only 60% effective. EU godkender AstraZeneca-vaccine – TV 2
Sputnik V has many advantages over most Western vaccines.
Developed by the Gamaleya National Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, Sputnik V was registered by the Ministry of Health of Russia—the world’s first registered vaccine against coronavirus.
Sputnik V is based on a safe and tested human adenovirus vector platform. Using two different human adenoviral vectors is a unique approach that boosts the immune response and provides long lasting immunity. It does not need to be frozen for storage. It costs $10 per dose. Pfizer and Moderna cost twice to thrice that and need to be frozen. AZ has the advantage of simple refrigeration and costs less than the other vaccines. The latest vaccine approved by Johnson and Johnson has yet to reach the market.
“On January 18, 2021 mass vaccination of the citizens began in Russia…the first country in the world in which three of its own vaccines are registered and being used,” reported the Russian embassy in Copenhagen. (See also:
Russian Direct Investment Fund, direct investment funds in russia, fund of direct investments, direct investment fund of the russian federation, venture fund of direct investments, mutual funds of direct investments, investmen in russia, russian investors (rdif.ru) )
“Moreover, the vaccine protects 100 % against moderate or severe forms of the disease. To date, the vaccine has already been registered in 50 countries…The Russian Direct Investment Fund, which promotes the vaccine, has applied for registration of Sputnik V in the EU.
“Today, vaccination is being carried out in all 85 regions of [Russia]. Over four thousand vaccination points have been opened. More than 3 million citizens have already received the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine…at least 45% of Russians over 60 were vaccinated [March].
“The head of the European Bureau of the World Health Organization (WHO), Hans Kluge has welcomed the results of the third phase of clinical examination of the ‘Sputnik V’.”
“There are no strong allergies caused by Sputnik V.”
The embassy’s second secretary, Konstantin Akimenko, concluded his answer to my questions, “At the current stage Denmark hasn’t made any requests for purchasing the Russian vaccine.”
Russia offers its license to any nation wishing to produce the vaccine in its own country, something none of the U.S./U.K./EU countries do. Russian willingness to supply its vaccine to others reflects a sound and solidarity-oriented strategy—promoting widespread and speedy immunization. The global pandemic requires a collective solution. No one is safe until we all are. That was the key idea behind communism’s vision, and Russians were the first people to demonstrate a nation-wide effort to promote and achieve that ideal. It failed, on this first trial, due to constant foreign capitalist invasion/interventions, and internal errors and sins.
It is the U.S., Britain, EU that stands in the way of this wise and idealistic approach: no one is safe until we all are. Their capitalist structure prefers “vaccine nationalism” and the permanent perpetuation of the contemporary McCarthyite russiaphoba.
Some EU countries, however, have decided to take Russia’s generous offer seriously. Italy has just made agreed with the Russian vaccine developer to produce Sputnik V in Italy. Other European countries (Spain, Finland, France, among them) are also going outside the EU axis to negotiate their own deals. Sputnik V: Why hasn’t the EU approved Russia’s COVID vaccine yet? | Euronews
Russia Sanctioned for Opposing a Fascistic Coup in Ukraine
Three generations ago, Russian and United States troops met in Torgau, Germany by the Elbe River to celebrate brotherhood in their common fight to defeat fascism. That day, April 26, 1945, these freedom-fighting soldiers promised eternal friendship.
In an arranged photo commemorating the meeting of the Soviet and American armies, 2nd Lt. William Robertson (U.S. Army) and Lt. Alexander Silvashko (Red Army) stand facing one another. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image is in the public domain. Elbe Day – Wikipedia
Not long after WWII, the U.S./U.K. decided to reject friendship and start the Cold War. They rejected diplomacy, preferring violence, threats of war, and crippling sanctions against the Soviet Union, and later against the Russian Federation when President Vladimir Putin decided to recapture Russian sovereignty following the disastrous decade of Boris Yeltsin. (World Bank Document)
The U.S. demands that its allies adhere to their fatal ideology: divide and conquer for eternal profiteering. Since the late 1980s, all Danish governments have complied. Denmark established sanctions against Russia for refusing to support the U.S.-prepared coup against Ukraine’s democratically elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, in February 2014. The U.S. prepared for his replacement with a neo-fascist coalition, supportive of Stepan Bandera, a Waffen SS Nazi collaborator, who was co-responsible for the murder of tens of thousands of Ukrainians, many of them Jews. CIA: Undermining and Nazifying Ukraine Since 1953, by Wayne Madsen (voltairenet.org)
While these sanctions prohibit much trade with Crimea, and armaments and fossil fuels, they do not include medicines. Nevertheless, U.S./UK/EU attitude is not to trade with Russia generally. Now that Joe Biden is president that is not likely to change. When vice-president, Barak Obama put Biden in charge of conducting the Ukrainian “regime change”. Biden’s point envoy to arrange the coup was Victoria Nuland, assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs.
On December 13, 2013, Nuland told the US-Ukrainian Foundation that since 1991 the United States had spent $5 billion to teach Ukrainians “democratic skills”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2fYcHLouXY
A leaked taped telephone conversation between Nuland and U.S. Ambassador Goeffrey Pyatt proves how the U.S. got what it paid for. On February 4, 2014, just three weeks before the coup, Nuland told Pyatt who should sit in the new government, and they then arranged for that to happen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSxaa-67yGM
When Ambassador Pyatt suggests that the heavyweight champion boxer Wladimir Klitschko [Klitsch] is the most popular candidate for prime minister, Nuland corrects him and states that the more politically savvy “Fatherland” party leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk [Yats] should be prime minister. She also thinks that the fascist Svobada leader Oleh Tyahnybok should be in the government but more on the outside ring. Here are excerpts from the conversation.
Nuland: “I don’t think Klitsch should go into government. I don’t think it’s necessary. I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
Pyatt: “yeah…I mean I guess. You think…what…in terms of him not going into the government, just let him sort of stay out and do his political homework and stuff. I’m just thinking in terms of the process moving ahead, we want to keep the moderate democrats together. The problem is going to be Tyahnybok and his guys [that is, the fascists]. I’m sure that’s what Yanukoyvch is calculating on all this.”
Nuland: “I think Yats is the guy who’s got the economic experience, the governing experience. What he needs is Klitsch and Tyahnybok on the outside and he needs to be talking to them four times a week…I think with Klitsch going in at that level working for Yats, it’s not going to work.”
Nuland: “My understanding is that the big three [Yatsenyuk, Klitsch and Tyahnybok] were going in to their own meeting and that Yats was going to offer in that context a three plus one conversation with you.”
Pyatt: “That’s what he proposed but knowing the dynamic that’s been with them where Klitsch has been top dog; he’s going to take a while to show up at a meeting, he’s probably talking to his guys at this point so I think you reaching out to him will help with the personality management among the three and gives us a chance to move fast on all this stuff and put us behind it before they all sit down and he explains why he doesn’t like it.”
Nuland: …“when I talked to Jeff Feltman [U.S. diplomat in UN] this morning, he had a new name for the UN guy …Robert Serry – he’s now gotten both Serry [Dutch diplomat in UN] and Ban ki Moon [U.S.’s South Korean choice for UN General Secretary until 2016] to agree that Serry could come in Monday or Tuesday… so that would be great I think to help glue this thing and have the UN help glue it and you know fuck the EU.
The Guardian reported, February 6, 2014, that State Department spokeswoman “Jen Psaki said that Nuland, ‘has been in contact with her EU counterparts and of course has apologized for these reported comments’” about fucking the EU. The fact that she picked a so-called sovereign state’s next government leaders was not relevant enough to discuss or apologize for.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/06/us-ukraine-russia-eu-victoria-nuland
On February 21, 2014, fascists shot at President Yanukovych as he was driven away from his office. He fled to Russia as the coup-makers were killing scores of pro-democratic protestors.
On February 23, coup-makers issued an arrest warrant for the legitimate President Yanukovych, and pro-Russian Crimeans seized government buildings at Crimea’s capital in Simferopol.
Russia refused to cow-tow to U.S. dictates especially in this vital country bordering on its territory. Several millions of Ukrainians and Russians died or were wounded in the Ukraine during WWII. Many were killed by fascist or nationalist Ukrainians, whose political descendants conducted the 2014 coup.
On March 11, the Crimean parliament declares independence from Ukraine: 78 in favor and 22 against secession.
March 16 referendum results of 1,274,096 voters (83% of potential): 1,233,002 for integration into Russian Federation (96.8%); 32,000 for remaining in Ukraine (2.5%). There were no charges of rigged voting. https://www.rt.com/news/crimea-referendum-results-official-250/
March 17, Crimea parliament recognizes the results and applies to become an independent state within the Russian Federation.
March 18, President Vladimir Putin Russia accepts the application, and recognizes the prime minister, Sergey Aksyonov, and parliament. Ten other states recognize Crimea as part of the Russian Federation, while Ukraine continues to claim Crimea as an integral part of its territory. supported by most foreign governments and United Nations General Assembly Resolution 68/262.
Associated Press’ Moscow reporter Vladimir Isachenkov wrote: “With a sweep of his pen, President Vladimir Putin added Crimea to the map of Russia on Tuesday, describing the move as correcting a past injustice and responding to what he called Western encroachment upon Russia’s vital interests. While his actions were met with cheers in Crimea and Russia, Ukraine’s new government called Putin a threat to the whole world and U.S. Vice President Joe Biden warned that the U.S. and Europe will impose further sanctions against Moscow.”
One year after the “illegal” referendum, the very capitalist Forbes magazine wrote: “The U.S. and European Union may want to save Crimeans from themselves. But the Crimeans are happy right where they are. One year after the annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula in the Black Sea, poll after poll shows that the locals there—be they Ukrainians, ethnic Russians or Tatars are mostly all in agreement: life with Russia is better than life with Ukraine.”
One Year After Russia Annexed Crimea Locals Prefer Moscow to Kiev
Buy Sputnik V
PM Frederiksen told DR, February 25, that the corona virus could last for up to a decade. Denmark, she said, is “dependent on AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Moderna delivering as agreed…It is problematic that the Americans, the British and the Israelis have vaccinated more.”
Why did Frederiksen then travel to Israel instead of travelling or phoning Moscow for direct aid?
Fifty countries are now buying Sputnik V. Russia is also solidarity oriented in that it has given millions of doses free to people in Gaza when Jerusalem hordes the Western produced vaccines mostly for Jews and not Muslims.
Another country that could aid Denmark (and the whole world) is Cuba, which has an effective medicine helpful to curtailing coronavirus developments. Scores of countries, including Italy, are using its Interferon Alpha 2-B Recombinant, which was developed 40 years ago to help patients with HIV and Hepatitis. Since the United States has twice invaded that country, and maintains a strict blockade banning trade, most European governments and mass media are silent about this important medicine. Nevertheless, a major Establishment weekly news magazine, Newsweek, published a positive article about Cuba’s medicine. Cuba Uses ‘Wonder Drug’ to Fight Coronavirus Around World Despite U.S. Sanctions (newsweek.com)
The whole world needs medicines and vaccines that are reliable, that are not expensive, which can easily and inexpensively be stored. Sputnik V and Interferon Alpha 2-B Recombinant are such products. Although U.S.+allies sanctions against Russia do not include medicines, these nationalistic governments do not want Russia seen for anything positive. If some of their people die due to not having the best or enough vaccines, so be it—all is fair in global domination.
RON RIDENOUR is a US-born journalist and anti-war activist living in Denmark. He is a member of www.thiscantbehappening.net His books, “The Russian Peace Threat: Pentagon on Alert” and ‘Winding Brook Stories’ are available at Amazon and Lulu. His other work can be found at ronridenour.com; ronrorama@gmail.com