For this year’s primary races, our readers are invited to ask candidates questions and add comments in an interactive exchange below. Here’s your chance to probe local office-seekers in a relaxed public forum where you’ll even get the chance for a couple rounds of follow-up questions!
Participating candidates have agreed to engage with commenters for at least three days following publication. Candidates can expand upon and clarify their views; voters can get a deeper look into what they have to offer. The candidate will reply daily to each posted comment during the 3-day period. Candidates can reply as expansively or as briefly as they want, optionally writing collective replies to multiple similar comments or commenters who post multiple times during the same day. Comments that violate PTFP commenting policy will be blocked or removed by moderators so won’t qualify for candidate replies.
All contenders in local primary races with at least three candidates were invited to participate in these roundtables —
Jefferson County Commissioner:
Jon Cooke, Greg Brotherton, Marcia Kelbon
WA State Representative, District 24, Position 1:
Sue Forde, Mike Chapman, Matthew Rainwater
WA State Representative, District 24, Position 2:
Steve Tharinger, Darren Corcoran, Brian Pruiett
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M A R C I A K E L B O N
I am running for Jefferson County Commissioner, District 3. I am a mother, grandmother, engineer, attorney, and recently retired biotech executive. I have lived with my husband in the West sound and canal area since 1981 and love this community. I am an independent thinker and a moderate Republican but firmly believe people must be put over politics. My objective is to provide a balanced voice for Jefferson County.
Why I am running
For the last few decades, I commuted into Seattle for work. In recent years I watched that once proud city decay due to its well-intended but ineffective policies concerning the homeless, defunding and disrespecting of law enforcement, decriminalization of drugs, and punishment of job creators. I have been concerned to see some of those same policies being employed in Jefferson County.
Three years ago I retired at age 60 and moved full-time to Quilcene. I have always been actively involved in community service where I live or work. As I became more involved locally, I realized just how difficult it was for working-age people to make a go of it here. The national and state shortage of housing has been exacerbated in Jefferson County by decades of local policies and regulations creating barriers to reasonably-priced housing. The growth of businesses providing true living wages has also been severely restricted. Those factors make it incredibly difficult for working-age adults and families to independently make their way here, reduce service providers for retirees, and burden all, including those on fixed incomes, with a growing tax burden.
It is also concerning that our county commissioners take or endorse actions that do not adequately respect individual and constitutional rights — rights that cut across party lines. Our elected officials should protect those rights irrespective of their personal opinions.
My background
I am running to address all of the above issues using my business, legal, and technical skills as well as my passion for this community. After completing my Master of Science in chemical engineering at the University of Washington, I worked for the U.S. Navy as a civilian engineer for four years. I then went back to UW to complete my law degree, and began practice as a patent attorney, protecting intellectual property and helping businesses start and grow. Twelve years later, I went in-house to join a start-up biotech company. Over the span of 19 years as a senior executive and General Counsel, I guided that company to being publicly traded, creating approximately 250 jobs along the way. I have experience and skill in prioritizing limited resources, budgeting, policymaking, shareholder accountability, operating in regulated environments, grants administration, job creation, hiring and supervision, team building, dispute resolution and technology. Skills that the Board of County Commissioners could well use.
My community involvement includes current service as a Quilcene Fire Commissioner and volunteering for East Jefferson Habitat for Humanity, the Hood Canal Salmon Enhancement Group, and other organizations. I previously served on a regional board of Catholic Community Services, provided pro bono legal services to the Make-A-Wish Foundation of America, and volunteered as a Girl Scout troop leader and with Babe Ruth baseball. In my role at my biotech company, I worked to enable our company to provide medicine on a no-cost basis to people in need throughout the world.
Two of my adult children and a dear granddaughter live in Jefferson County. I want this area to be safe and prosperous for those generations as well as older individuals. Like most of us in our community, I highly value nature and enjoy hiking and biking in our amazing environment.
Leadership solutions
Housing
To address our housing shortage, we need to start permitting rental, multi-family, and starter homes in our urban growth areas. We need to amend our comprehensive plan, using the annual or an emergency review process, to create smaller buildable lots near our village centers. These steps will increase the supply of reasonably-priced housing without harming the environment or losing our rural character. We should curtail septic regulations where cost is added without a commensurate benefit to the environment. We need to reduce permit fees and greenlight less expensive construction techniques. Building moratoriums such as the one currently in place in Jefferson County are counter-productive and must be avoided. The county should negotiate with developers for density bonuses in return for the inclusion of affordable units. All of these steps would move us toward restoring the ability of hard-working people to build, buy, or rent homes of their own.
Business Development
We need to embrace business. This includes permitting the growth of our existing, small-scale technology, manufacturing, and retail businesses. We also need to support our few existing large businesses, rather than constraining or shutting them down. The skills, energy, and funds of a generation of telecommuters that have moved into our area should be welcomed. When those individuals are ready to start environmentally-friendly technology and light manufacturing businesses, we should be sure that we can incubate their ideas here. We can partner with our local community colleges to train our residents to supply a pipeline of workers in diverse fields that pay well. These may include, for example, welding, computer programming, CNC machining, healthcare, and the manufacture of cross-laminated timber modules. The goal is to nurture the creation of true living-wage jobs. Green tourism is important, particularly in the South and West ends of the county, and should be encouraged, but it is not sufficient. A true economic development effort is required.
An end result of housing and business development will also be the growth of our tax base. The escalation of the tax burden on property owners can finally be curtailed so that those on fixed incomes are not at risk of being taxed out of their homes. And a more secure income stream will be available for full funding of public safety, including law enforcement and emergency responders, roads, and infrastructure.
Homeless
Some of our unsheltered individuals simply need a greater supply of housing and better-paying jobs, which the above efforts will alleviate with time. But a majority of homeless are truly sick – addicted to substances, mentally ill, or both. We currently warehouse these individuals in encampments, where they can reside for up to three years. And at the end of that time, they will be just as sick as when they went in. Based on history to date, some will likely die during that period of time, including our youth. We are simply hiding the problem rather than treating people with true compassion and the dignity of accountability. Instead of enabling continued substance abuse, we should insist on screening and then provide the services needed to become healthy and actually move forward in life.
Individual Rights
Regardless of any personal preferences, I will respect individual rights including those enshrined in the U.S. and Washington constitutions. Local ordinances and policy may impact, for example, property rights, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religious expression and from government establishment of religion, second amendment rights, the right to work to better and house oneself, the right to medical and health autonomy, and anti-discrimination rights.
More information
Please keep an eye out for me as I motorcycle through the community campaigning – I love to connect with people. I can be contacted at 360.774.0150 or by e-mail at electmarciakelbon@gmail.com. Please follow me on Facebook or Instagram @ Elect Marcia Kelbon to learn more about my take on local events and issues. Anyone wishing to assist my campaign can do so at www.electmarciakelbon.com.
All photos provided by Marcia Kelbon.
Top photo: Marcia and her husband biking the San Juans.
As you know, the censorship window has been closing on all forms of free speech and alternative views for some time now. You may not know that the Free Press website mysteriously crashed on Thursday, March 17th.
Anyone who attempted to log on saw a skeletal version of our homepage with a “critical error” message at the bottom.
Our website administrators say it was probably triggered by a WordPress update, thus they don’t think it was a hack (or St. Patrick’s Day leprechauns). Given the warnings we’ve received on our Facebook page over the last year, we remain agnostic on that determination, but we do ask for your input on the new look.
Please let us know in the comment section if you find the home page more or less inviting or accessible than the previous format. As we move forward, your views will weigh heavily in the website’s design.
We are so grateful for your ongoing interest and active engagement. Thank you, thank you.
While the Empire’s police were busy confiscating fuel from Freedom Convoy truckers in Ottawa (photo above), last Saturday’s mini-convoy from Port Angeles to Port Townsend indeed came to pass. About 50 folks in 25 vehicles (plus more on overpasses and streets), joined the tens of millions across Canada and worldwide protesting vax mandates and lockdowns.
The Feb. 5th anti-mandate Port-to-Port Freedom Convoy drove between Port Angeles and Port Townsend, with supporters at overpasses along the way. Photos: Sue Coffman
The Port-to-Port event gave a taste of the recently announced nationwide Convoy to DC 2022, expected to start in California on March 4, driving cross-country to Washington, D.C.
Responding Monday to public comments about the trucker protests, Jefferson County Commissioner Kate Dean said:
“I think bringing up issues that are from another country and are largely politically and ideologically motivated is not especially helpful at this time, and I am frustrated by the ongoing chorus of voices saying their personal freedoms are being violated when what we see in fact is that everything is open, people are out, people are traveling, people are recreating, people are doing what they want to do. There is not a massive violation of personal liberties, people are living their lives, and the economy is strong. I don’t see the victims in this as those who are being asked to wear a mask.”
What planet is Dean living on?On our planet, Canada, Australia, New York, California, and much of the world has been locked down hard for most of the past two years, with the main victims being schoolchildren forced to mask and vax for no good reason.
As one Jefferson Healthcare social worker told the Free Press last year, local mask dictates and other lockdown measures had caused a skyrocketing of depression, self-harm and suicidal ideation among children in Jefferson County:
“We are in a mental health crisis. It’s incredibly stressful, a lot of suicidal youth. It’s a nightmare.”
A nightmare that our elected officials refuse to acknowledge or address, denying the harms that their directives have caused.
The trucker convoy is “largely politically and ideologically motivated”? The economy may feel strong to commissioners awarding themselves salary raises above $100,000/year along with $1,000 “premium pay” bonuses to all county employees using federal CARES relief funds. But for the majority of the county, the impact of jab-mandated firings, 40-year record inflation and general impoverishment of the middle class is crippling.
While Commissioner Dean is obviously familiar with political and ideological motivation, she clearly hasn’t seen any reporting from the ground in Ottawa. Far from an exercise in political ideology, these peaceful, courageous truckers are fighting for their livelihoods and the health and well-being of their families.
Amid Johns Hopkins findings that mask mandates and “lockdowns have had little or no effect on COVID-19 mortality” but “imposed enormous social and economic costs” (primarily on children and the most vulnerable), many places are beginning to shake off their mass delusional psychosis. Yet Washington State remains an outlier, one of the last three states not ending indoor mask mandates. And the final state requiring outdoor masks.
Likewise off-planet was Commissioner Greg Brotherton:
“I will say again about the protests, we locally have not created any vaccine mandates, so the things these protests are about really do not touch the policy we are engaging in at the local level, at all.”
Really, no local vax mandates?The restaurant/bar mandates spearheaded by his employee Health Officer Allison Berry were so onerous, a group of restaurateurs sued Berry over them, a challenge just settled out of court with an agreement to lift the mandates. Brotherton and his fellow commissioners were among only three counties in Washington state to enact these divisive restrictions. They remain in effect until Berry’s arbitrary date when it will suddenly be safe to allow unvaxxed diners to mix with those who obediently took experimental injections which do not prevent them from catching or transmitting the virus.
Though not Brotherton’s direct responsibility, locally Jefferson PUD risked outages by heedlessly terminating linemen and half their contractors over vax mandates, while The Leader reported “hundreds leave WSF, State Patrol and other agencies as vaccination mandate takes effect.”
Deeply-felt concerns over such matters drove truckers from their own localities across Canada toward Ottawa for massive non-violent protests. Our northern neighbors are now inspiring parallel freedom convoys around the world, notably in Australia, Finland, France, and New Zealand‘s capital Wellington (as vividly depicted in the last minute of this video):
Up to this point, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has flailed helplessly against the popular alliance, but now his empire is striking back ruthlessly, stealing fuel from truckers needed to heat their rigs and keep them and their families from freezing to death in sub-zero temperatures. They are illegally threatening to arrest good samaritans bringing fuel or supplies. But canny Canadians have found creative ways to confound the criminals:
In a recent press conference, Trudeau characterized the millions of Canadians opposing the mandates as white supremacists and terrorists — “anti-vaxxer mobs” launching “racist, misogynistic attacks.” His smears are echoed in Canada’s state-funded media, broadcasting the message that the Freedom Convoy is “a nationwide insurrection driven by madness.” American mainstream press repeats the spin, verbatim, and reinforces it by calling the millions of protesters “a cult.”
The cult includes 50,000 or more truckers, the vast majority vaccinated (estimated 80-90%), and many of their families, pledged to living in their rigs for as long as it takes to get the mandates lifted.
They’ve been joined by hundreds of farmers who have blockaded an Alberta-Montana border crossing with their tractors…
… and thousands of cowboys who rode into Ottawa on horseback…
… with schoolchildren writing notes of love and appreciation to the truckers, thanking them for making a stand for freedom and their futures.
“This is absolutely amazing and why we’re doing it.” A tearful trucker describes how he “got punched in the heart” when he opened a bag with a cookie that had this handmade card attached. Inside was a handwritten note peppered with hearts: “Dear Mr or Mrs Trucker, It’s really awesome that you’re standing up for human rights. I’m only 11 so I don’t know much about it all but I believe what is happening is wrong and I know you can do it! Sincerely, Kate” Click on note for 2-minute video
So who are the real terrorists? Canada’s ruling class is responding to peaceful demonstrators from all walks of life by not only stealing truckers’ food, firewood, and fuel, but it is reported that when a court order ruled the seizures illegal and required police to return the confiscated petrol, the fuel they returned had been contaminated.
The Ottawa police chief has been talking tough and encouraging harassment, leading to two armed officers manhandling, bruising and arresting a 78-year-old great-grandfather for honking his horn in support of the truckers, disregarding the cameraman calling out their misconduct:
Trudeau’s forces pressured GoFundMe to misappropriate $10 million donated to the truckers, then grabbed $1.4 million already deposited in complicit TD Bank. After donors promptly raised another $8.6 million via GiveSendGo, tyrant Trudeau acted to freeze or seize these newly donated funds:
Now Trudeau is pretending that he’ll get the U.S. government to prosecute all Americans contributing to the fund. The Empire on our side of the border cannot stop the support, but it can continue the smears, lashing out with typical disinformation and censorship.
The planned American Convoy to DC 2022 set up a Facebook page for truckers, and when more than 140,000 joined within days, the page was deleted. When pressed for the reason, Facebook responded: “We have removed this group for repeatedly violating our policies around QAnon.” The organizers and multiple third parties counter that no such material appeared on these now memory-holed pages.
The Empire’s desperation is palpable. The U.S. mainstream press invoked QAnon as also being behind the Canadian movement. Who are that Freedom Convoy’s organizers? The video below is a press conference with Canada’s core team—truckers, scientists, doctors, ex-military, indigenous peoples, a global humanitarian, all joining in one unified voice, asking to meet with Trudeau.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6fBFdLGUZw
The Great Awakening is occurring right now, here and all around the world. Interviews with average working-class people on the frigid streets of Ottawa reveal a populace that is evermore aware of the true source of this tyranny. The global elites have been working on their plans for us for decades. The World Economic Forum (WEF) is no longer hiding in the shadows. In this 2017 video, WEF founder and executive director Klaus Schwab shamelessly brags about “penetrating the cabinets,” crowing, “So yesterday I was at a reception for Prime Minister Trudeau, and I know that half of his cabinet, or even more, are Young Global Leaders of the World Economic Forum.”
These forces are now showing their true colors … as literal bank robbers stealing the funds of peaceful protestors on the false pretext that they are a violent insurrection… as authoritarian violators of free speech and assembly and all the rights guaranteed in the American and Canadian constitutions on the pretext of endless fake emergencies… as shameless liars using their deathgrip on monopoly media to falsify a popular liberation movement whose lively, loving reality is plain to see from the living history on display from Viva Frei and other livestreamers on the scene.
Clallam resident Sue Coffman, a regional Team Leader for Informed Choice Washington, describes why she participated in the recent Port-to-Port convoy:
“My husband and I are advocates for medical freedom, informed choice, and basic human rights. We joined Informed Choice Washington years before the pandemic hit, and continue to support this wonderful & informative organization. When we heard about the local convoy in support of Canada’s efforts to remove all medical mandates, we were very excited to join the movement. It was encouraging to see this fairly small rural community raise their voices strongly in opposition to our current medical tyranny.”
The tens of thousands of truckers in Canada are using their rigs to drive home reality. We’re being had by corporate interests that don’t care about humanity or any other living beings. The Empire takes no pains to conceal their plan to commodify every inch of this once-beautiful blue planet. We’ve got news for them. The jig is up. We are the ones that we’ve been waiting for, and we have finally arrived.
“The welfare of the people, in particular, has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience.”
— Albert Camus
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What a year 2021 was for health disinformation, driving a top-down medical apartheid. Week after week, the Covid reports from health officer Dr. Allison Berry reinforced pharma’s false narrative that we are at war with a dreaded virus which can only be defeated if we comply with health officials’ increasingly draconian edicts and dutifully offer ourselves up to the vaccine gods. Our commissioners, Berry’s bosses, look on in rapt attention as she spins her webs of delusion.
The attempt to paint the refuseniks (still a solid 30% of Americans) with the blame brush has backfired badly, with even The Atlantic acknowledging the turning tide: “The Pandemic of the Vaccinated Is Here.”
The “permanent emergency” public health bureaucracy is wearing thin the patience of many, including the formerly compliant… workers who tolerated the mask or took the first jab to keep their job, employers who had neither training nor desire to become enforcers of these measures.
But that hasn’t deterred spin doctor Berry from her single-minded mission of keeping our citizenry in fear and stigmatizing those refusing to follow her dubious “health measures”. Whether it’s falsifying data on the percentage of unvaxxed in our hospital, denying local injuries and deaths from the experimental injections, or her most recent fear-mongering about Omicron, it’s not possible to narrow her disinformation to just ten statements.
This is only a start. Four of us (see Contributors key at bottom) have selected these Top Ten Disinformation Statements to welcome the New Year. Drum roll, please…
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BERRY on the severity of COVID-19 illness in children versus risk from inoculation:
“Kids are much, much more likely to get severely ill from COVID-19 than any vanishingly small potential risk from the vaccine.” (11-08-21 BOCC meeting)
FACT CHECK:
“At this time, it appears that severe illness due to COVID-19 is uncommon among children.” – American Academy of Pediatrics [source]
Why this degree of hyperbolic fear-mongering when the data from the most ardent pushers of the jab campaign disagree with Allison Berry and her ephemeral “we” advisors? After all, the “vaccine” rollout in the 5 to11 year olds had not even begun here on the peninsula when this statement was made, and we were on the country’s leading edge of that rollout.
As reported in the journal Toxicology Reports only seven weeks prior:
“Clinical trials for these inoculations were very short-term (a few months), had samples not representative of the total population, and for adolescents/children, had poor predictive power because of their small size. Further, the clinical trials did not address changes in biomarkers that could serve as early warning indicators of elevated predisposition to serious diseases. Most importantly, the clinical trials did not address long-term effects that, if serious, would be borne by children/adolescents for potentially decades.”
How can anyone claim a “vanishingly small potential risk from the vaccine” when even FDA committee members who approved the jab for kids acknowledge its safety profile is unknown and this rollout is the real trial? “We are never going to learn how safe this vaccine is until we start giving it.” (10-26-2021 FDA meeting on Pfizer’s Covid vaccines for kids ages 5 to 11) The clinical trial for Pfizer’s childrens jab and post-surveillance myocarditis studies won’t be completed until 2023, and 2024-27, respectively. [source]
Where does the spin doctor get her information? Perhaps the better question is, from where does the spin doctor get her direction? (AH)
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BERRY on effective treatments for Covid-19:
“Ivermectin… has shown NO efficacy in preventing or treating COVID-19…. Nothing else has succeeded [at treating COVID-19] until these most recent [Merck] pills and monoclonal antibodies.” (11-22-21 BOCC Meeting)
FACT CHECK:
40 robust peer-reviewed ivermectin COVID-19 studies show a 70% improvement over the control group, with the most significant improvements from prophylaxis.
52 peer-reviewed studies on the effects of Vitamin D on COVID-19 suggest that the vitamin (which around 42% of Americans are deficient in) can improve COVID-19 outcomes by 44%.
A 38% improvement was found in 194 COVID-19 hydroxychloroquine studies, with the most significant positive effects coming from early treatment (65% improvement).
Other drugs and supplements, including, but not limited to, fluvoxamine, quercetin, zinc, and bromhexine, have also shown positive results, though fewer studies have been completed with these treatments. The most effective treatment protocols include a combination of several drugs.
Click on image to hear cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough’s testimony to the Senate Committee on Health & Human Services, 3-23-21
In March of 2021, leading cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough, who developed the McCullough Protocol for COVID-19 treatment, testified to the Texas Senate that up to 85% of COVID-19 deaths in the United States could have been prevented had there been more focus on treating sick patients with drugs known to be safe and extremely effective. “Covid-19 has always been a very treatable illness.”
Dr. Pierre Kory, cofounder of the Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance, has also testified to the effectiveness of these treatments, including ivermectin: “It basically obliterates transmission of this virus…. It is proving to be an immensely powerful antiviral and anti-inflammatory agent. It is critical for its use in this disease.”
McCullough and Kory are among many doctors and scientists who have spoken out about the suppression of effective treatments. Without that suppression, the experimental injections would likely not have been granted Emergency Use Authorization. (KG)
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BERRYon local cases of myocarditis from the shots:
“There has been only one case of myocarditis reported in Jefferson County, and it was a mild case.” (12-14-21 Peninsula Daily News)
FACT CHECK:
The Free Press reported on the formerly-healthy 27-year-old Port Townsend woman who suffered two separate heart attacks in two different hospitals just days after her second Pfizer shot. (“Young Heart Damaged by Pfizer Vax”) Her Cardiology Progress Notes documented our story.
If there has been only one case of myocarditis caused by the shots here in Jefferson County (unlikely), it certainly was not a mild one.
After her first heart attack at Jefferson Healthcare, “The [ER] doctor said he didn’t know how I was still alive.” The cardiologist at St. Michael in Silverdale told her following the second heart attack that her heart looked like that of an 80-year-old.
Her ultimate diagnosis, as shown in the hospital cardiology notes, was Acute myopericarditis with elevated troponin. That means severe myocarditis compounded by severe pericarditis—acute inflammation of both the heart muscle and the sac lining the heart—nothing mild about it.
Either Berry is not being told about the adverse reactions following shots in the counties she is charged with overseeing… or she is lying outright. (AW)
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BERRY on the recent rise of hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19:
“Cases are up 43 percent in the country. Hospitalizations are up 23 percent and deaths are actually up 32 percent.” (12-13-21 BOCC meeting*)
FACT CHECK:
Contrary to Berry’s baseless claim that hospitalizations across the country were up 23 percent, they were falling precipitously since Thanksgiving:
Below is a screen shot from the CDC’s “Provisional Death Counts for Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)” page as of 12/30/2021:
This chart indicates that, at the time of Berry’s Dec. 13 report, the mortality rates were lower than the prior two weeks’ numbers. Deaths are “actually up 32 percent?” Show us your evidence, Dr. Berry. This is a fraudulent claim until proven otherwise. (AH)
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BERRYon why Jefferson County is “surviving this”:
“That we’re vaccinated, that we have so many people wearing masks and that we have these safety measures in place…
That’s why we’re surviving this.” (12-13-21 BOCC Meeting)
FACT CHECK:
Data shows that in many cases, there is no pronounced relationship between the percentage of people vaccinated and the number of COVID-19 cases. In fact, some countries with the highest vaccination rates simultaneously dealt with the world’s highest case rates. The latest WHO COVID-19 Update continues to show that relatively unvaccinated Africa makes up a disproportionately small share of global COVID-19 cases and deaths.
There is considerable doubt around the ability of face masks (especially homemade, cloth masks) to prevent the spread of COVID-19. (see #2)
Jefferson, Clallam and King are the only counties in the state with the proof of vaccination requirement for restaurants and bars, and data from the Washington State Department of Health does not support the claim that these passports are helping. Out of Washington’s 39 counties, with 1st being the lowest case and hospitalization rates, the counties under Berry’s edicts rank among the worst:
Jefferson ranks 27th, Clallam 36th and King 38th for 7-day COVID-19 Case Rate
Jefferson ranks 28th, Clallam 29th and King 15th for 7-day Hospitalization Rate(KG)
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BERRY on frontline workers:
“What we don’t talk about is that 750,000 Americans died of COVID and that is actually part of our workforce shortage. Those are disproportionately frontline workers. And so, we lost a ton of bus drivers, we lost a ton of truck drivers and health care workers and grocery store workers, and they have died.” (11-15-21 BOCC Meeting)
FACT CHECK:
These statements are hard to reconcile with CDC data showing that 95% of CV deaths have an average of 4 other serious comorbidities contributing to their deaths… therefore occuring “disproportionately” in nursing homes or among those in their 90s like recent Clallam Covid deaths, not any kind of workforce loss, especially not “frontline”!
By contrast, on April 28, 2020 the United Food & Commercial Workers union reported just 72 deaths among its 1,270,000 frontline workers over the two-month period of the initial CV flare-up, a “proportionate” rate to those sheltering in place. (Note these moderate frontline fatalities were largely before shoppers or workers began wearing masks.)
But if Berry is so concerned about losing these frontline workers, why is she intent on getting them fired and deprived of their livelihood when their deeply-held beliefs diverge from her vaccination priority? (SS)
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BERRY on natural versus synthetic immunity:
“What we see is that immunity through a prior infection is more variable compared to immunity due to vaccination. The other thing that we know is immunity from prior infection fades. So it goes away over time.” (11-15-21 BOCC meeting)
FACT CHECK:
The inverse of Berry’s statement is true. Vaccine failure has led to talk of endless boosters. Conversely, “people who develop Covid have complete and durable immunity,” says Dr. Peter McCullough in Senate testimony. “Complete and durable. You can’t beat natural immunity.”
Natural immunity is long-lasting and robust, according to data from well over 100 studies.
This peer-reviewed study “showed that infection by SARS-CoV-2 could lead to 55 different antibodies: 5 from the spike, 50 from the other viral proteins. There are 50 ways to be immune that do not involve the spike protein…” [source]
“Waning of vaccine protection against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection…is a concern,” says this recent peer-reviewed NEJM study.
Like her predecessor Dr. Tom Locke, Berry continues to deceive the public with intentional misuse of the term “immunity.” The new gene therapies never claimed to provide immunity. They were designed to lessen severe disease—the ongoing clinical trial endpoint was milder symptoms once infected. (AH)
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BERRY on hospitalization rates for very young children:
“The other key thing to know is that the highest age range that gets hospitalized for COVID-19 is actually kids 0 to 4.” (11-08-21 BOCC meeting)
FACT CHECK:
Children that young have never been in the “highest age range” for hospitalization for COVID-19, nor are they now, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP):
“The available data indicate that COVID-19-associated hospitalization and death is uncommon in children.”
“Among states reporting, children ranged from 1.8%-4.1% of their total cumulated hospitalizations, and 0.1%-1.8% of all their child COVID-19 cases resulted in hospitalization.” [source]
Covid hospitalizations as a percent of cases, by age. Bar at far left is 0 to 4 year olds. Highest age range for hospitalizations?
The CDC mirrors the AAP’s position, directly the opposite of Berry’s claim: “Rates of COVID-19-associated hospitalizations are also lower in children of all ages compared to adults.” (AH)
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BERRY on masks:
“There’s also a massive amount of data that wearing a mask reduces transmission by 80%. … they reduce your risk by 80%.” (8-19-21 BOCC meeting)
FACT CHECK:
WHO’s latest guidance shows “only limited and inconsistent scientific evidence to support the effectiveness of masking healthy people in the community to prevent infection with respiratory viruses.”
Large randomized controlled trials “found no difference in infection with SARS-CoV-2.” (source]
Aerosol viruses freely “pass through gaps between the face and the surgical mask.” [source]
So where is Berry’s “massive amount of data”? Cue the crickets noise. She has been asked repeatedly to provide any specific sources justifying her claims, and all she does is hand-wave away questions and tell people to “look at that entire amount of data … freely available on the CDC and WA DoH websites.”
Berry is echoing a 37-second propaganda video and tweet from CDC director Rochelle Walensky making the same 80% claim. The video ends with a non-specific link to CDC.GOV/CORONAVIRUS, which offers no information on this mask claim. The only CDC-noted study about masks achieving “upwards of 80% blockage” has a “minimum detectable droplet size” much bigger than the aerosol SARS-CoV-2 virus.
Berry and Walensky should know they are making a category error by trumpeting that masks “reduce your risk by 80%” and “prevent the spread of COVID-19 by reducing your chanceof infection by more than 80%”, justified only by an experiment showing blockage of droplets. They are “trying to quantify the real-world impact of masks based on a laboratory study that did not measure it.”
Of course, that’s assuming Berry has any knowledge of this lone study on the CDC website having any connection to her 80% claim (hardly “a massive amount of data”) and is not just parroting simplistic catch phrases promulgated by her higher-ups. (SS)
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BERRY on U.S. deaths from the Covid jab:
“There have been on the order of less than 20 deaths associated with those severe clots related to the J&J vaccine. And that’s it. No one else has died from their COVID-19 vaccine. I believe it’s 11 nationwide.” (11-15-21 BOCC meeting)
FACT CHECK:
1,223 deaths are reported in Pfizer’s own trial data from post-vax surveillance in the first 90 days of the rollout. When the FDA did not comply with a FOIA request for Pfizer’s documents hidden from the public, a lawsuit forced their release, revealing 42,086 adverse events and 1,223 deaths after their shot alone in the first 3 months. (source)(source)
20,000+ deaths have been reported to VAERS, the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System
In July, a whistleblower inside the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Service (CMS) revealed that their data showed 48,465 people died shortly after receiving their injections.
Since the vax rollout began there have been 200,000+ excess deaths, based on CDC Deaths from All Causes data. (see article above)
Aside from Berry’s claim making no sense (<20 deaths by clotting from the J&J vax alone, but total of 11 nationwide from all manufacturers?), it is perhaps the most absurd lie told by the CDC and—as required in her parroting role—by our public health officer. One has only to read a few dozen VAERS reports, many from medical personnel, to ask how any public health official could make such a ludicrous statement. Is she suggesting that Pfizer falsified their own data to show more deaths after their experimental mRNA shot than actual?
Or that of the more than 20,000 deaths reported to VAERS after the shots—many of them anaphylaxis and heart failure within hours of injection—all but eleven are coincidences or fake reports?
Eleven vax fatalities in the entire country? We have reported on multiple deaths denied, covered up, and/or re-labeled in our little county alone.
Is our health officer delusional? A pathological liar? Or simply a programmed repeater of disinformation from higher up the food chain? (AW)
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CONTRIBUTORS (the Editors plus one!):
AH – Annette Huenke
SS – Stephen Schumacher
AW – Ana Wolpin
KG – Kincaid Gould
*Correction: The original version cited 12-29-21 instead of 12-13-21 as the date of Berry’s #7 quote.
As the Covid crisis has unfolded in Jefferson County over the last two years, a slick, relentless, well-orchestrated fear narrative has created the greatest divide many of us have ever seen in our diverse, once-tolerant community. And with the arrival of experimental injections, vaxxed versus unvaxxed messaging has pushed that divide to a near-breaking point.
Friendships have broken, families split asunder; a two-tiered society is in the making.
Several of the pieces we’ve published since resurrecting the Port Townsend Free Press have focused on the media-driven apartheid tearing apart our social fabric. One of the most striking results of publishing these articles is the feedback they’ve sparked in the Comment sections below them. Comments like:
Over these months those who called themselves friends have cut off communications.
I am worried about the future. This whole thing is like a horrible nightmare… the brainwashed people around here that are in lockstep with every little thing they are told when it comes to this virus and the outrageous measures that have just ravaged society for most likely generations.
I’m a paid member of the American Legion… I’ve never been vaccinated… and can only go in for the two meetings a month. I can’t socialize in the club or drink there.
I have lived in PT for 42 years. My old liberal and peace-loving friends are shocking me with their authoritarian and hateful rhetoric.
The Free Press is now the only media on the peninsula for open community dialog. Many thoughtful, articulate voices are joining the conversation to fill out our stories through their comments, helping to build an uncensored local forum for civil conversations.
How is the fear narrative impacting our relationships and quality of life? We find that many are questioning their political affiliations, mourning friendships abruptly severed, stunned to see how media brainwashing has created factions within their own families.
Personal stories tell the bigger tale. Below are a few of the extended comments readers have contributed that give a taste of how incessant fear messaging is devastating our community. We are struck by the heart, eloquence, and wisdom of contributors to the forum here.
We welcome your perspective on how this growing apartheid has affected you personally. If you haven’t already, please join the conversation!
——————– IN YOUR OWN WORDS ——————–
Thank you Brett, for your calm commentary on the escalating divisiveness in Port Townsend – City of Dreams…as long as your dream is the same as ours it seems. I was one of those giving you the thumbs up as I drove by. If I hadn’t been on my way out of town, I would have joined you.
I’m a relative newbie to Port Townsend – only 18 years under my belt, so will probably kick the bucket before I gain anything resembling ‘local’ status. I thought of my move here as a lateral one – PT in the early 2000s felt much like my native Marin did 30 years previous to my exit. Now, only 18 years later, I hardly recognize this place – it has become everything I left behind. Nearly gone is the visible coterie of colorful, quirky characters who kept the town alive with art, music and any excuse for a parade or celebration in the street. Certainly gone is that ambiance of easy acceptance, or at least tolerance, of everyone’s differences and opinions.
The level of fear engendered by a media-enhanced pandemic would never have happened here 18 years ago, or so I would like to believe. The community would have come together to find solutions – not bowed to the continued onslaught of fear-mongering, turning neighbor against neighbor because of differing ideas about a virus and vaccine of all things!
What has happened here?? How did we become so vicious that we’re calling each other names simply because some of us believe that what goes into our bodies is our business, not any government or medical officers’? Despite the growing rhetoric around vaxxing or not vaxxing, vaccine effectiveness vs. vaccine injury, don’t we owe it to ourselves and our community to listen to one another’s concerns without judgment? How can we possibly hope to survive as a community if we can’t even talk to each other without escalating to name calling and villifying ‘the other’ simply because our views are different? Where does it end?
Thanks for publishing Brett’s letter. How refreshing to hear a fellow citizen speak honestly about his experiences! I wasn’t at the protest, but in my view, the street corner is no longer a safe place to hold a conversation—especially when most passersby are moving at 25 miles per hour. Unlike fast-food and commercials, meaningful dialogue happens when we give time and place, and respectful listening. Sadly, when we need it most, we’ve been denied our customary venues for public conversations—pubs, coffee shops, festivals and concerts. Social distancing is a recipe for inducing depression and fear. Once I realized this, I decided not to allow myself to be manipulated. Then, I did what I always do: I sought out the wisdom of trustworthy voices—people who aren’t getting rich off of this crisis.
I turned off corporate media long ago, disillusioned by the lobbyist-influenced, gridlocked government, and the fear-mongering narratives that justify endless war and an inhumane economics. But at least—so I thought—we had independent journalism, Public Radio, getting us the truth. This morning in my car, risking a brief few minutes to listen to NPR, I was appalled (but not surprised) to hear that Facebook—a veritable fount of disinformation and authoritarian squelcher of dissenting voices—is now a financial sponsor of National Public Radio! Yikes indeed!
These are strange times, indeed, when many our fellow citizens, effectively deranged by fear-inducing narratives, seem to have forgotten about our 1st Amendment rights—the right to express our feelings, thoughts, and beliefs.
I approach controversy humbly, seeking to broaden my understanding through reading, listening, and attempting to see other viewpoints. To ridicule or censor others if their views diverge from our own denies our fellow citizens the same fundamental freedoms we hold dear.
I strive to do my part to live in a community where slow conversations happen again. I want to understand, with compassion, what’s really going on for my fellow citizens. Perhaps listening, and being listened to, from the heart will allow us all some self-reflection, and needed insight.
Enormous gratitude for speaking truth to power during this time of mass hysteria. Please know that many are reading, watching, and standing in solidarity with you. Some are afraid for their livelihoods and remain in the shadows, but this sanctimonious community would be shocked to know how many of us work, congregate and play alongside them as fellow liberals and progressives without paying dues to the Covid cult.
We are critical thinkers who read medical studies and seek out professional, credible sources who reject, through dogged, fact-checked and peer-reviewed documentation that is being censored by social and mainstream media, the dangerous misinformation promulgated by bureaucrats—from Fauci and Walensky to Inslee, all the way down to Locke and Berry. We recognize that this campaign is not about public health—not for a disease that has a 99%+ survival rate, holds a 1-5% chance of hospitalization, and laughably boasts an leaky injection that has not been proven either safe or effective. This is an obedience test and Port Townsend, you’ve passed with flying colors. Keep submitting to your every-six-months jabs, of which you have zero idea what the medium and long-term effects are and ignore the short-term effects, including permanent heart damage, Guillain-Barre Syndrome, and death. Keep relinquishing your bodily autonomy and your Constitutional rights because you have become slaves to the fearful rhetoric.
Those of us who refuse forced vaccination will keep fighting and yes, it is your rights we are fighting for. You claim the shot, masks, and lockdowns are about what’s best for the community at large (psst, no, they are not, have not and will never be about or benefit public health—the evidence is right there, available to you if you can get past your fear and disbelief that everything you’ve absorbed and believed and practiced these past 20 months is wrong wrong wrong). Meanwhile you are succumbing to mandates that have done more harm to our children, our brothers and sisters of color, our poor, those without shelter, our small business owners, our economy, and our future than ten back-to-back Trump administrations. I was shattered when Trump won in 2016. I never imagined that far worse awaited, and it would be at the hands of those I had once considered my political tribe.
Local and far-flung liberals alike have bought into the mainstream media narrative that those speaking out against vaccine mandates and/or are questioning the safety and efficacy of the vaccines are Trump-loving, MAGA-hat wearing red state conservatives. Or hippy-dippy anti-vaxxers. Perhaps because they cannot handle the cognitive dissonance that there are multitudes like me, members of my family, and friends who are (were, now) lifelong Democrats, liberals in the true sense of the word. All caught up on our vaccinations, until this—this lie bigger than anything a gaggle of Deep State fantasists could conjure.
And we vote. Many of us have now become one issue voters: the preservation of our constitutional freedoms. And we will vote in any candidate, from county commissioner to state rep to governor to president, who vows to dismantle vaccine mandates at every level and restore our freedom of choice. We no longer care what letter follows a candidate’s name. We don’t care what their positions are on voting rights, taxation, abortion, gun control, climate change, social justice. There is one issue and one issue only: release from tyranny. We have never been more afraid for our and our country’s future than we are now—watching this country and the world cave from fear, lies, deception, corruption. Know, too, that many of us who have taken the jab to preserve our jobs are even angrier: vaccine mandates may work in the short term to boost the stats and make the vaccine cultists congratulate themselves with smug pats on the back. The blue afterglow will turn a nightmarish red in the midterms. Enjoy your hollow victories now. If the jab hasn’t turned your brains to jelly in a couple of years, your collective political heads will explode when you realize what you have unleashed. You’ve just destroyed your own party. A party we were once proud to call our own. Now we are politically homeless, but we will align ourselves with those who understand this is the greatest threat we have ever faced.
I live in Southeast Florida (Palm Beach County which had stricter protocols than other parts of the state) for about 8 months of the year and PT in the summer. Masks are currently only required, as far as I can tell, in doctor’s offices and hospitals.
When the pandemic began and before we knew anything about what was going on and how to treat Covid, my husband and I were cautious for about 3 weeks. After research, we both went essentially back to normal life although I washed my hands more often after being out in public. When masking became required here in public spaces about spring of 2020, I went from not touching my face to constantly adjusting my mask, such that it was (a thin scarf that did not impede my ability to breathe).
I have made essentially no adjustments in my life except when in PT last summer. Your rules made me crazy and then you shut down the restaurants to unvaccinated me. Yes, I’ve researched whether or not I should be vaccinated, too. We both got one Moderna shot at Safeway and instantly regretted it. I was fine, but my husband was sick for a few days and then had lingering problems for a few weeks.
My son’s wife (they live here in Florida) felt so much pressure from her boss that she got vaccinated with the one shot J&J several months ago. She developed some health issues that her doctor told her were vaccine-related as they have seen a good deal of her particular reaction. My son and their two children, 9 and 11, are recently recovered from Covid. My son went right and got Gov. DeSantis’ Regereron which he has made available throughout the state. He was fairly sick for all of 12 hours and then described his subsequent symptoms as like a cold. My grandchildren had no symptoms whatsoever unless you count one who had a fever of 100 at one point but we only know this because his mom took his temperature. They all tested negative about a week to a week and a half after testing positive, the kids being quicker than my son to test negative.
I have many unvaccinated friends who do as I do and take the vitamin, mineral and Quercetin protocol for prevention. None wear masks except when required and never have, with one literally never wearing one unless specifically asked to. Some have gotten Covid and some haven’t. All have recovered with no issues. Some had it and didn’t know it until later when they discovered they had the antibodies!
To this point neither my husband nor I have had Covid and if we do get it we are prepared with the recommended protocol to avoid the hospital at all costs where treatment seems to be not much more than a ventilator when you get bad enough.
I have never seen a health issue so poorly handled by the government. I have lost all faith in the CDC, the NIH, and Dr. Fauci. When Rahm Emanuel said that we should never let a crisis go to waste, he was prescient regarding this “crisis.” Our feckless government and those of many states, Washington included, have taken the opportunity to exert as much control over people as they can get away with. We the people need to push back and resist. I for one, even if I were fully vaccinated, will refuse to show my vaccination status to anyone. (Strangely, I’m never asked by health care providers to whom I’d be glad to share my status.)
Will I return to PT next summer? Honestly, I’m not much inclined to although we have family there, many great friends, and a fine church. I will certainly truncate my stay unless Gov. Inslee and Jefferson County loosen up significantly. I am SO grateful to be a Florida resident.
Share your reflections on how the divisive Covid narrative
has impacted your relationships and quality of life.
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My community involvement includes current service as a Quilcene Fire Commissioner and volunteering for East Jefferson Habitat for Humanity, the Hood Canal Salmon Enhancement Group, and other organizations. I previously served on a regional board of Catholic Community Services, provided pro bono legal services to the Make-A-Wish Foundation of America, and volunteered as a Girl Scout troop leader and with Babe Ruth baseball. In my role at my biotech company, I worked to enable our company to provide medicine on a no-cost basis to people in need throughout the world.
