The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) sponsors the Immune Epitope Data Base (IEDB). IEDB contains epitopes identified from the medical literature and organized by diseases and categories of diseases. All epitopes (23000+) associated with 82 autoimmune diseases in humans were analyzed. The role of animal, plant, fungal proteins contained in vaccines in the etiology of autoimmune diseases have been described in humans and animals. BLASTP was used to analyze IEDB derived epitopes for sequence alignment to animal, plant, fungal (APF) proteins present in vaccines and biologics.

This letter is a comment on the recent correspondence of Subramanian and Kumar (Endnote 1) regarding the relation between rates of new cases of CoVID-19 and rates of vaccination. This note should strengthen the conclusion of (Endnote 1). In Switkay (Endnote 2), it is argued that a linear model should not be employed unless the predictor and response variables are supported on the whole real number line (-∞,∞). If they are not, one should employ appropriate transformations of the variables before starting a linear analysis.

High school and middle school athletes were observed retrospectively following vaccination with mRNA COVID vaccines. Of twenty student athletes, half were vaccinated and half were not, according to their parents’ prior choices. In this study we compare sports performance of vaccinated versus unvaccinated student athletes doing the same activities. We also compare the sports performance of vaccinated student athletes with their own sports performance prior to vaccination. The observed changes post-vaccination can be helpful to illustrate the cardiovascular changes that occur with COVID vaccination.

This paper addresses the question of prevalence of COVID vaccine associated myocarditis, as well as known mechanisms of spike protein-induced myocarditis, considering the epidemiological consequences of mass vaccination with spike protein-generating COVID vaccines, such as are being deployed throughout the world at present. The cardiac impacts of spike protein distribution have risen to particular concern, due to the recent extraordinary increase in new cases of myocarditis and pericarditis, including among populations that typically have vanishingly rare incidence of this disease, especially young men, with particularly anomalous occurrence in young male athletes.

There is emerging and accumulating evidence that US COVID-19 mortality data presented to the public may be inaccurate. Peculiarities in this reported data include the following: The mean age of those whose deaths were attributed to COVID-19 is older than the US life expectancy, and COVID-19 mortality sharply peaked the week of April 11, 2020 in the US, yet weekly all-cause mortality in the US did not show any significant shift in distribution of deaths across age groups for any week in 2020. Also, throughout 2020, the number of deaths attributed to COVID-19 rose, as the sum of deaths attributed to at least several other causes, compared to prior years, decreased, from no apparent cause, by similar quantities. Have diagnoses diverged from true causes of death?

The Vermont Mask Survey was created to gather information about the negative health effects Vermonters are experiencing as a result of wearing masks. The negative health effects of wearing masks by health care workers has been the subject of many research studies. (Examples are available for each health effect in the Discussion section.) However, research on the effects of mandating masks among the general public has only just begun. This survey is an initial contribution to these efforts. Being a small sample, this is not a statistical analysis, and more work needs to be done if the magnitude of the problem is to be fully understood. Data gathered from this survey demonstrates that a number of Vermonters across the state are suffering multiple health difficulties as a result of wearing masks.

A pandemic that calls the attention of the public, and action by the medical field, is one that raises the total death rate above that of a typical year or season. The COVID-19 era that began in early 2020 has received continuous and rapt attention in the United States for deaths that have occurred. Has COVID-19 resulted in more deaths (known as “excess deaths”) than would have happened in a typical year? An obstacle to answering that question is that COVID-19 testing is flawed and imprecise, for reasons discussed herein, and it is difficult to distinguish COVID-19 from other respiratory illnesses, due to symptoms and signs that are mostly indistinguishable from the common cold, flu or pneumonia.

In 2020 there is a surge in use of facemasks in public places, including for extended periods of time, in the United States as well as in other countries. The public has been instructed by media and their governments that one’s use of masks, even if not sick, may prevent others from being infected with SARS-CoV-2, the infectious agent of COVID-19. A review of the peer-reviewed medical literature examines impacts of masks on human health, both immunological, as well as physiological. The purpose of this paper is to examine data regarding the effectiveness of facemasks, as well as safety data. The reason that both are examined in one paper is that for the general public as a whole, as well as for each individual, a risk-benefit analysis is necessary to guide decisions on if and when to wear a mask.

A control group and an experimental group for a single variable in a scientific experiment are not often provided by political events. All except six US states instituted lockdowns in the spring of 2020. This paper compares mortality data from those six states, herein “free states,” with their immediate neighbors, “locked states,” and with all of the 44 locked states. Five weeks of mortality data during the gradual easing of lockdown in most US states during the spring of 2020 show a consistent history among those weeks with regard to the following: Free states had a lower percentage than locked states of total deaths from all causes in these weeks in 2020, compared to the same weeks for each of the states in the years 2017 to 2019.

There is no biological history of mass masking until the current era. It is important to consider possible outcomes of this society-wide experiment. The consequences to the health of individuals is as yet unknown. Masked individuals have measurably higher inspiratory flow than non-masked individuals. This study is of new masks removed from manufacturer packaging, as well as a laundered cloth mask, examined microscopically. Loose particulate was seen on each type of mask. Also, tight and loose fibers were seen on each type of mask. If every foreign particle and every fiber in every facemask is always secure and not detachable by airflow, then there should be no risk of inhalation of such particles and fibers.

Face masks have come into common use in many countries since mid-2020, for all age groups. Some aspect of this may be voluntary, but certainly much of this use is either accompanied by force, threats, subtle coercion, or a continuum of subtle to fierce societal pressures on the individual to conform to mask-wearing. From widespread fear of COVID-19, associated with the virus named SARS-CoV2, mask-wearing is recently assumed by many to be a prudent measure against contagion. In this paper, the second in our series, we continue our examination of the potential hazards of masks, in which we now turn attention to microbial contamination from masks and mask use, changes in oral and nasal microbiota, and potential risks to the lungs and other organ systems from microbial factors. Because widespread masking is a very new society- wide experiment, the impact of this experiment, the obstruction of airways from free breathing and a typical air exchange interplay with oral microbiota is not yet known. Furthermore, the effects of such changes in the lungs and beyond are not yet known.

Wearing a mask causes physiological changes to multiple organ systems, including the brain, the heart, the lungs, the kidneys and the immune system. We examine changes in oxygen and carbon dioxide concentrations in masked airspace that is available to the airways over the first 45 seconds of wear. Our findings of reduced oxygen and increased carbon dioxide in a masked airspace are not inconsistent with previously reported data. We also consider the range of injuries known to occur to the above-named organ systems in a state of hypoxia and hypercapnia. As an excretory pathway, carbon dioxide release by cells throughout the body, and then past the alveoli and then the airways and orifices, has not been previously challenged by deliberate obstruction in the history of the animal kingdom, except for relatively rare human experiments. Self-deprivation of oxygen is also unknown in the animal kingdom, and rarely attempted by humans. We examine the physiological consequences of this experiment.

Mask “mandates” in 2020 have resulted in no reductions in incidence of COVID-19, as detected by positive polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests among nations or US states. Increased rates or insignificant change in incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infections, as detected by PCR tests, have followed mask mandates throughout the world and in US states. Masks are therefore a possible risk factor for infection with SARS-CoV-2 and higher incidence of COVID-19 disease. This paper examines the known physical and chemical attributes of respiration through and involving the periphery of and inside of masks that may lead to a better understanding of the reasons for this phenomenon of increased COVID-19 incidence following mask use.