What a picture.

“Unlikely” to be helpful.

Now the World Health Organization has waved the white flag on Covid vaccine boosters too.

WHO released a statement about Covid vaccines yesterday. It’s filled with the usual public health jargon and ass-covering, but one line stands out:

a vaccination strategy based on repeated booster doses of the original vaccine composition is unlikely to be appropriate or sustainable.

It’s over, people.

From his book, The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health (Children’s Health Defense), p. 57, Kindle Edition [emphasis added]:

During a pandemic, reliable and comprehensive data are critical for determining the behavior of the pathogen, identifying vulnerable populations, rapidly measuring the effectiveness of interventions, mobilizing the medical community around cutting-edge disease management, and inspiring cooperation from the public.

The shockingly low quality of virtually all relevant data pertinent to COVID-19, and the quackery, the obfuscation, the cherrypicking and blatant perversion would have scandalized, offended, and humiliated every prior generation of American public health officials.

Too often, Dr. Fauci was at the center of these systemic deceptions. The “mistakes” were always in the same direction—inflating the risks of coronavirus and the safety and efficacy of vaccines in order to stoke public fear of COVID and provoke…

From the Daily Sceptic, out of Blighty:

We’re publishing an excellent piece today about the risks of the booster roll-out by Dr. David Livermore, Professor of Medical Microbiology at the University of East Anglia. He points out that Geert vanden Bossche, a critic of the Covid vaccines, may be right – that leaky vaccines deliver a brief adaptive protection against infection but simultaneously impair innate immunity, causing a reduction in non-specific protection once the initial protection has worn off. If that’s true, he doesn’t think it’s an argument for not boosting the over-50s or the vulnerable. But it is an argument for not boosting the young and healthy. Here are the opening few paragraphs:

The Government’s answer to Omicron is boosters, boosters and more boosters. Everyone over 18 is eligible. Early queues exceeded five hours; December 18th saw 904,000 boosted. Israel is doling out fourth shots to…

This pope has a bee in his bonnet.

VATICAN CITY, Jan 6 (Reuters) – Pope Francis took an apparent dig at conservatives resisting change in the Roman Catholic Church on Thursday, lamenting those whose religion he said was self-referential and encased in a “suit of armour”.

On the Feast of the Epiphany, Francis seemed to direct specific criticism at those who have balked at his decision to restrict the traditionalist Latin Mass, saying the liturgy could not be trapped in a “dead language.”

“Have we been stuck all too long, nestled inside a conventional, external and formal religiosity that no longer warms our hearts and changes our lives?,” Francis said.

“Do our words and our liturgies ignite in people’s hearts a desire to move towards God, or are they a ‘dead language’ that speaks only of itself and to itself?”

At his pastoral best.

. . . unless he’s turned around the looking same way you are looking, at God incarnate in the tabernacle, or up to God in heaven above in a tried and true symbolic gesture — He’s everywhere, we know — God being the most important person in the room.

But no, it’s the mass of the faithful kneeling, standing, sitting together under the same room in His house, the mass of gazing on Father at the altar and what he does, hearing his voice (as prescribed) almost constantly, requiring (demanding) our attention. It’s his time to shine, whether he or we like it or not.

And He? Gets a lot of lip service, He does. Priest keeps things moving right along. Few empty (of words) moments.

Not good, not good, not good . . .

Would do 92% of it all over!

Roger Finnell ’59 has spent the past 59 years teaching math at Fenwick, which he calls “his second home. And to him, his classroom looks rather lived in.”

Mr. Finnell, who turns 80 in June, is retiring after this school year. “If I had to do it all over again, I’d repeat 92% of it …,” he tells the Oak Park Wednesday Journal.

A judicious statement!

Oak Park:

Two Oak Park District 97 schools have switched to remote learning after returning from winter break this week, citing staff absences as the main reason for the change. With school set to start Jan. 4, students from Longfellow Elementary and Percy Julian Middle schools are asked to shift to e-learning until Jan. 5, according to an email announcement sent to district families over the weekend.

Chi-town:

(Bloomberg) — Chicago schools have canceled instruction for Wednesday after the teachers’ union voted to shift to remote learning, escalating a clash with city officials.

The result of an electronic citywide ballot showed 73% of the members of the Chicago Teachers Union were in favor of the action, according to its posts on Twitter. Mayor Lori Lightfoot wanted to keep the U.S.’s third-largest district open amid nationwide staffing shortages as Covid-19 cases surge. City officials have called the step illegal…

Cited by Pope Francis’ most articulate opponent in the Church’s internecine warfare, Archbishop Vigano:

Polish Archbishop Jan Paweł Lenga said that it is time for a Catholic counterrevolution if we do not want the Church to sink under the heresies and vices of mercenaries and traitors. The promise of the Non prævalebunt [“{the gates of hell} will not prevail”] does not exclude in the least, rather it asks and demands firm and courageous action not only on the part of bishops and priests, but also of the laity, who as never before are treated as subjects, despite the fatuous appeals to active participation in his role in the Church.

Take note: clericalism has reached its peak under the “pontificate” of those who hypocritically do nothing but stigmatize it.

+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop December 27, 2021

Matters have not reached such a pass for many, what? Decades?…

Gets a kick out of this.

The prelate offered a pagan blessing dotting paint onto the lion’s eyes, nose, mouth, ears and body while reciting the invocation:

“Good fortune upon your head, miraculous light glittering to your eyes, your ears capturing sounds from all directions. May the most favorable auspicious big fortune and great profit be to you throughout the whole year, from the beginning all the way to the end.”

He did versions of this ritual at St. Therese Chinese Catholic Church in 2016 and more recently at Carmel Catholic High, in Mundelein.

Cardinal Blase Cupich visited Carmel Catholic on Tuesday, January 7, 2020 to preside over an all-school Mass celebrating the Lunar New Year, a prominent liturgical custom in certain Asian countries. This Mass of Thanksgiving highlighted the cultural importance of family, service, and gratitude — above all, gratitude to God for the blessings we have…