"Does Anyone Care About COVID Anymore?"

I care, and I've been caring since 2020.

It's the people who don't care now and who have never cared who are making things worse, preferring to shrug COVID off as "just a cold" or a conspiracy theory, or deciding to scapegoat Dr Fauci for the entire pandemic.

"Most Americans" are fed up? They must have very short memories of the trauma we've faced. 

I chose to use my brain and not listen to the conspiracy-mongers, and thanks to my choices of vaccines and masks, I'm still COVID-free. 

It's because ignorant people don't care that COVID is still around and  causing the rest of us to care greatly. 

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The People's Pharmacy 8-21-26 

COVID Is Back: Does Anyone Care Anymore?

America has moved on, but COVID is back. What about fall vaccines, repeat infections and cleaner indoor air? Have you stopped caring?

Most Americans seem thoroughly fed up with COVID-19. We get it. After more than six years of warnings about variants, vaccines, boosters, masks and testing, most people have moved on. There is just one problem. COVID is back, and the SARS-CoV-2 virus did not get the memo that Americans are no longer interested. 

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC):

“As of August 12, 2026, we estimate that COVID-19 infections are growing or likely growing in 50 states, declining or likely declining in 0 states, and not changing in 0 states.”

That does not mean hospitals are overflowing with COVID cases. They aren’t. Overall respiratory illness remains very low nationally. But the direction of COVID transmission is unmistakable.

Wastewater Surveillance Also Reveals that COVID is Back

If you have been reading The People’s Pharmacy newsletter and website articles, you know that we track the WastewaterSCAN Dashboard on a regular basis. Let’s be blunt: WastewaterSCAN monitors sewage! It’s an incredibly valuable tool to assess infectious diseases. These folks monitor “nearly 150 locations across 40 states serving more than 39 million people.”

Wastewater surveillance is detecting increasing viral activity in many parts of the country. This type of monitoring has become especially valuable now that relatively few people report home COVID tests. Sewage doesn’t care whether anybody bothers to stick a swab up their nose.

So, yes, there is another summer COVID wave underway…again.

Yawn.

That may be the response of a great many Americans.

COVID Is Back in the Summertime. Why?

We understand why colds and influenza spread during the winter. People spend more time indoors. Schools are in session. Holiday gatherings bring people together. Cold, dry air may also favor transmission of some respiratory viruses. At least those are the explanations we have been getting from infectious disease experts and public health officials for years.

So what’s COVID doing surging in July and August? It’s hot and humid at this time of year in many parts of the US.

Good question. Apparently, even the infectious disease experts don’t have a satisfying answer.

Epidemiologist Dr. Caitlin Rivers of Johns Hopkins told NPR that COVID is unusual because it repeatedly produces both winter and summer waves.

She told Rob Stein on NPR (August, 2026):

“COVID-19 is still dangerous, particularly for older adults, infants and people who are immunocompromised. In a typical office, if you have 20 colleagues, it’s likely that one or two of them have some degree of immunocompromise. So it’s very common that people have risk factors that make COVID-19 dangerous.”

“It’s a big mystery as far as I’m concerned. It is the only seasonal respiratory virus that has a summer season. To my knowledge, we don’t know what is causing this seasonality.”

We appreciate that candor. After years of listening to authoritative explanations about respiratory-virus seasonality, it is refreshing to hear an expert say, in essence: We don’t know.

What we do know is that this pattern has repeated itself. COVID has surged during the summer for several years running. This year’s outbreak is still relatively modest compared with the gigantic waves of the early pandemic. Emergency department visits are low, and widespread immunity from previous infections and vaccinations appears to be protecting many people against severe disease.

That is, in our opinion, good news. But “less dangerous than 2020” is not the same thing as “harmless.”

Older people, infants, immunocompromised individuals and people with certain chronic conditions can still become seriously ill. Our back-of-the-envelope calculations put that number at around 100 million people. Even a “mild” case of COVID can ruin a vacation, knock someone out of work for a week or two or lead to lingering symptoms. You have heard of long COVID, right?

COVID Is Back, But Haven’t We All Had It Already?

For some people, the current attitude seems to be:

I’ve already had COVID two or three times. What’s one more infection?

That question deserves more attention than it gets. One impressive study published in Nature Medicine (November, 2022) examined the health records of nearly 6 million people in the Department of Veterans Affairs health system.

Here’s the summary:

“In this study of 5,819,264 people, including 443,588 people with a first infection, 40,947 people who had reinfection and 5,334,729 noninfected controls, we showed that compared to people with no reinfection, people who had reinfection exhibited increased risks of all-cause mortality, hospitalization and several prespecified outcomes.”

The authors reported “sequelae” related to reinfection:

“…including pulmonary, cardiovascular, hematological, diabetes, gastrointestinal, kidney, mental health, musculoskeletal and neurological disorders.”

Even more intriguing, the investigators found a graded relationship between the number of infections and the cumulative burden of adverse health outcomes. Risks were lowest after one infection, higher among people who had experienced two and highest among those with three or more infections.

Should You Worry About COVID Reinfection?

Some people will disregard the study in Nature Medicine on the grounds that it dates back to 2022. They may assume that SARS-CoV-2 was more dangerous four years ago. But wait…there is a more recent study in BMC Global and Public Health (Nov. 19, 2025). The data come from Singapore where they keep careful track of health records for their population.

Conclusions:

“Reinfection was associated with increased risk of diagnoses of any post-acute sequelae and sequelae across multiple organ systems, even in boosted individuals in Singapore. The findings highlight the continued significance of re-infection in influencing the risk of post-acute sequelae. Our results emphasise the need for preventative strategies against SARS-CoV-2 infection, such as updated vaccines that have better effectiveness against infection.”

In other words, reinfection with SARS-CoV-2 led to an increased risk for long COVID. We know that most people do not want to hear that. But every new infection represents another opportunity for something to go wrong. Most people will recover. Some won’t. Avoiding an infection still seems preferable to catching COVID again.

COVID Is Back. What About the Fall Vaccine?

Here is where things get really confusing. For years, Americans could count on the CDC to make fairly straightforward recommendations about who should get the latest COVID vaccine. Not this year.

The federal vaccine recommendation process has been disrupted by political, administrative and legal battles. As a result, professional organizations have increasingly been developing their own recommendations. Meanwhile, vaccine manufacturers are preparing updated shots for the 2026-2027 season.

In May, the FDA’s vaccine advisory committee recommended that this fall’s COVID vaccines target the XFG variant from the JN.1 lineage. That is important because SARS-CoV-2 keeps changing. Like influenza vaccines, COVID vaccines are being reformulated in an attempt to better match the viruses people are likely to encounter.

Will Americans line up for the new shots? We wouldn’t bet the farm on it.

“I Am DONE-DONE-DONE With COVID Vaccines!”

We hear regularly from visitors to this website who are intensely skeptical of COVID vaccinations.

Some don’t trust mRNA technology. Others believe they experienced serious side effects after a previous vaccination. Some received several doses and caught COVID anyway. Others simply don’t want any more shots.

They are DONE-DONE-DONE!

Here are just a few comments from the hundreds we have received:

Rose shares this sad story:

“In 2023 I had a Covid shot. I continue to have myalgia in the spot where the shot was administered. It makes me anxious about getting another mRNA type of vaccine. The pain has been persistent and permanent. I haven’t received a Covid shot since then and I’ve been fine.”

Judy describes a tragedy:

“My husband almost died from the Moderna booster. The company did not trial those vaccines properly either. We will take the standard dose for seniors. It is a shame the FDA cares so little for the people they are suppose to protect.”

Tim expresses a sentiment we hear from many others:

“I saw way too many serious injuries from the mRNA COVID vaccine to trust any such technology again. People close to me are still suffering injuries from the COVID shots. The bottom line is that diet, lifestyle and good sleep are the most important preventatives people can take against viral disease. We are systematically poisoning our population with pesticide and herbicide residue along with all the other chemicals in processed food. No amount of pharmaceuticals is going to be able to overcome that toxicity.”

Sherree offers a more positive message:

“I am 62, have gotten the COVID vaccines since they became available. I have never had covid. I always get my flu vaccines, and haven’t had the flu in decades. “

We don’t think public health authorities should pretend that negative sentiments don’t exist. Nor should they assume that everyone who has questions about vaccination is ignorant or “anti-science.”

People deserve clear answers about benefits, risks and uncertainties.

At the same time, we should be cautious about concluding from loud online commentary that practically all Americans have turned against vaccines. Vaccine skepticism may receive disproportionate attention because angry voices tend to get more attention.

What About New Vaccines Now That COVID is Back?

COVID vaccination is much better at reducing the likelihood of severe illness, hospitalization and death than it is at guaranteeing you will never catch SARS-CoV-2. Someone who received multiple COVID shots and nevertheless became infected may reasonably ask: What was the point?

The answer isn’t that vaccination created an impenetrable force field around that person’s nose. It didn’t! The more relevant question is whether that infection might have been worse without some sort of prior immunity.

People who are older, immunocompromised or otherwise at increased risk of severe COVID should discuss the updated vaccine with a knowledgeable health professional once the fall recommendations and products become clearer.

People who remain skeptical will have to make their own decisions. But vaccines aren’t the only tool we have. And that brings us to one of our greatest frustrations from the entire COVID pandemic.

COVID Is Back. Why Aren’t We Talking About Air Quality?

Remember 2020? Americans were scrubbing groceries and boxes of cereal. People were disinfecting doorknobs. Hand sanitizer disappeared from store shelves.

And early in the pandemic, public health authorities were reluctant to acknowledge what ultimately became obvious:

SARS-CoV-2 Spreads through the Air

An infected person exhales virus-containing respiratory particles. Some can remain suspended in indoor air, especially when ventilation is poor. Once that became clear, you might have expected a national campaign to improve the air we breathe in schools, hospitals, nursing homes, offices, pharmacies, airports, restaurants and other public buildings.

Where was it? We are still waiting.

We have been complaining about this for years. Better ventilation, effective filtration and appropriately designed air-cleaning systems don’t require every person entering a building to remember to do something. Judging from our own experience, many people are:

• Not wearing a mask and probably never will again
• Not seeking Paxlovid when they come down with COVID (it’s pricey)
• Not planning their next vaccine appointment

The beauty of improved air quality is that you don’t need to do anything.  You simply breathe.

A review in JAMA pointed out several years ago that bringing more outside air indoors, improving HVAC filtration and using portable HEPA cleaners can reduce concentrations of infectious respiratory particles in shared indoor spaces.

Here are the conclusions of this article in JAMA:

“Improving air quality has the potential to reduce not only infections with SARS-CoV-2 but also infections with other respiratory viruses and bacteria, reactive airway disease (eg, asthma) triggered by antigens, pulmonary and cardiovascular injury from inhalation of harmful respiratory particulates (eg, wildfires, smog), and toxicity from inhalation of volatile organic compounds. A once-in-decades opportunity now exists to make sustained improvements to public and private indoor air quality, reduce COVID-19 risk, and improve school, workplace, and consumer health and safety.”

We could not have said it better ourselves. So why didn’t improving indoor air become a major public health priority?

Money undoubtedly has something to do with it. Retrofitting HVAC systems isn’t cheap. Increasing outdoor air exchange can increase heating and cooling bills. High-quality filters need to be purchased and replaced on a regular schedule. It is much easier to tell individuals what they should do than to require institutions to change buildings. Public health authorities and government agencies do not seem to have made air quality a priority.

What About Ultraviolet Light?

There is another intriguing possibility: germicidal ultraviolet light. These devices are designed to inactivate airborne viruses, bacteria and fungi. The idea sounds almost too good to be true, so we were pleased to see researchers actually test it.

Australian investigators conducted a randomized clinical trial of germicidal ultraviolet devices in long-term-care facilities (JAMA Internal Medicine, Sept. 1, 2025). The results were not spectacular, but they weren’t nothing either.

The devices produced a modest reduction in acute respiratory infections overall, and the investigators reported a statistically significant reduction in the total number of respiratory infections among residents.

We are awaiting a fabulous French study of “ultraviolet germicidal irradiation (UVGI) devices (Trials, May, 2026). The study is called “RESPROTECT.”

Here is the plan:

“A total of 848 UVGI devices were installed in communal living areas of 12 nursing homes in the Haute-Loire region, France. All devices are switched on, but some contain internal filters that deactivate UV light while remaining indistinguishable from the outside…The primary outcome is the incidence of severe ARIs. Secondary outcomes include the incidence of ARIs of any grade, all-cause hospitalization or death, adverse events of interest (keratitis and erythema), antibiotic consumption, airborne and surface pathogen loads, and cost-effectiveness.”

This study should tell us whether ultraviolet light is beneficial against airborne infections. In the meantime, though, you may want to read our article on this topic:

Improve Indoor Air Quality with UV Light to Fight COVID and Flu!
How can we improve indoor air quality to avoid COVID, flu, norovirus, measles, and other infections? What about germicidal UV light (GUV)?

At this moment we cannot say that installing UV devices in every school, doctor’s office or supermarket would prevent COVID outbreaks. The French study should give us some decent data in that regard.

Why aren’t the NIH, the CDC, the FDA and other public health organizations following the French example and carrying out such research? In fact, why don’t we have solid scientific data right now to help us make informed decisions about air quality? Isn’t this the sort of research public health agencies should have made a top priority after a pandemic brought on by an airborne virus?

Instead, years later, we are still arguing about masks.

Masks Are Not Coming Back

We are going to make a prediction. Even if this summer and fall the COVID wave gets much worse, most Americans are not going back to routine masking. We aren’t advocating for mandates. We are describing reality. Masks became so culturally and politically toxic during the pandemic that broad public acceptance seems highly unlikely.

Some individuals will continue wearing a high-quality N95 or similar respirator in airports, airplanes, medical settings or crowded indoor environments. That is their choice. Please be kind to them! They may have cancer and be immunocompromised. Or they may have some other chronic condition that makes them more vulnerable to infections.

Most people won’t wear a mask, though. That is precisely why cleaner indoor air deserves so much more attention. A person can refuse a mask. A person can refuse a vaccine. But everyone entering a building benefits when the air contains fewer infectious particles.

Florence Nightingale Understood This More Than 165 Years Ago

One of the pioneers of modern nursing understood the importance of air quality long before anyone had heard of coronavirus. Florence Nightingale made ventilation a central principle of hospital design. In her famous 1859 book Notes on Nursing, she emphasized keeping indoor air as pure as the air outside.

Modern buildings have often moved in the opposite direction. To conserve energy, we sealed them tightly. Windows stopped opening. Outside-air exchange was reduced. We became extraordinarily sophisticated at heating and cooling indoor air without necessarily asking enough questions about what else was circulating in it.

The COVID pandemic gave us an extraordinary opportunity to rethink that system. We largely wasted that opportunity! Are you as mad/sad as I am?

COVID Is Back! Should You Be Scared?

No! That isn’t our message. COVID in August 2026 is not COVID in April 2020. The CDC reports that overall respiratory illness remains very low, even though COVID infections are increasing. Population immunity is substantial, and severe outcomes are much less common than they were during the early phase of the pandemic.

But pretending the virus disappeared isn’t sensible either. Perhaps there is a reasonable middle ground between panic and pretending. If COVID activity is high where you live and you are vulnerable, crowded indoor spaces may deserve a little extra thought. If you develop symptoms, testing can still provide useful information.

People at high risk of severe disease should know in advance what treatments might be appropriate and how quickly they need to be started. Such individuals may want to consider wearing a well-fitting N95 respirator in poorly ventilated rooms with lots of people.

Those who want an updated fall vaccine should be able to get straightforward information about its potential benefits and risks without political spin from either direction. And public health authorities should finally get serious about something Florence Nightingale understood more than a century and a half ago:

The quality of the air we breathe matters.

The People’s Pharmacy Bottom Line

We understand why people are tired of COVID. We are too. But our exhaustion has no biological effect whatsoever on SARS-CoV-2. The virus doesn’t care whether we read another COVID story, get another vaccine, wear another mask or swear never to think about the pandemic again.

COVID is back whether we like it or not.

Fortunately, that doesn’t mean catastrophe is around the corner. It does mean we should learn something from the last six years. We need better information about the risks of repeated infections. We need honest, comprehensible communication about vaccines. And we desperately need serious research and investment in cleaner indoor air.

If another dangerous airborne virus appears someday—and history suggests that eventually one will—we shouldn’t once again discover that the air inside our schools, hospitals, nursing homes, airports and other public buildings was an afterthought.

What Do You Think?

Have you stopped worrying about COVID completely? Would you consider another COVID vaccine this fall? Have you had COVID three, four or even five times? Have you avoided COVID completely? We would love to read your story below in the comment section. Just click on the green box that says “View Comments.” It will allow you to add your own thoughts.

Would you like to see schools, hospitals and other public buildings required to tell us something about the quality of the air we breathe? It would be super easy. Such buildings could install carbon dioxide monitors and post the minute-by-minute results on electronic signs at the entrance to the building or even in individual rooms. This information would enable people to tell at a glance if the air quality is good or bad. What do you think?

Please share your thoughts in the comment section below. If you believe this article is worthy of sharing, please pass it along to friends and family members. The way The People’s Pharmacy can keep moving forward is when you encourage acquaintances to sign up for our free newsletter at this link. Your donations also help. Thank you for your support.

Citations

• Lim, J.T., et al, "Multi-systemic risk of post-acute sequelae associated with SARS-CoV-2 reinfection," BMC Global and Public Health, Nov. 19, 2025, doi: 10.1186/s44263-025-00222-1
• Shoubridge, A.P., et al, "Germicidal UV Light and Incidence of Acute Respiratory Infection in Long-Term Care for Older Adults: A Randomized Clinical Trial," JAMA Internal Medicine, Sept. 1, 2025, doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2025.3388
• Bowe, B., et al, "Acute and postacute sequelae associated with SARS-CoV-2 reinfection," Nature Medicine, Nov. 2022, doi: 10.1038/s41591-022-02051-3
• Dowell, D., et al, "Reducing SARS-CoV-2 in Shared Indoor Air," JAMA, July 12, 2022, doi: 10.1001/jama.2022.9970

Melanie Phillips on Sick Jew-Hatred on Social Media

Melanie Phillips is a great spokesman for the Jewish people, and I just hate that she has been attacked in such a disgusting fashion by people old enough to know better.  We Jews have done nothing to provoke such ages-old hatred and are the scapegoat for the rage of people angry at their own petty lives.  This is the way it started in Nazi Germany as well.

If only the antisemites would focus their deranged rage on actual enemies like Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIS, Al Qaeda, and Iran, the world might be a safer place.

When we were kids, my mother used to say that the Jew-haters were envious and spiteful because we were more clever and much smarter than they were, and the more I see it, the more I believe it. 

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Jew-hatred online

A dying culture is eating itself from the inside

Melanie Phillips

Aug 21, 2026

One of the charming images posted on X in response to my work

In this pogrom-style atmosphere, it’s well known that social media has become a sewer of Jew-hatred.

Those of us on the defensive verbal frontlines in this war against civilisation, and who have been bombarded accordingly by this stuff for years, are no longer remotely surprised or shocked by any of it. Instead, it provides useful ongoing evidence of the unprecedented nature and scale of the west’s slide off the edge of the cultural cliff.

Indeed, since many sensible folk refuse to wade into the foul waters of social media more people need to become aware of specific examples of this Jew-hatred, to understand better what’s taking place in their society and just who its enemies are.

So here’s a selection of these exchanges in which I have been targeted over the past few days on X. Notice in particular a few things:

• the obsessive focus on the fact that that I am a Jew, aka “Zionist”, as seemingly the key issue in a discussion about British citizenship in which Judaism or Zionism are irrelevant;

• the claim that I am not British because I am a Jew, even though I was born and brought up in London, had British-born parents and two British-born grandparents, and lived exclusively in Britain for the first six decades of my life;

• the insistence that because I’m Jewish and/or now live mostly in Israel, I can’t be allowed even to speak about what Britishness is;

• the charge that I and the rest of the Jewish people want to deny the British their own homeland, even though for decades I was virtually a lone voice urging the British to promote, celebrate and defend their nation and its historic identity and culture;

• the professed support or admiration for the state of Israel, on the grounds that it is fighting the Islamic world, by people who nevertheless despise Jews;

• the obsession with having an “ethnostate” — which the Jews, allegedly enjoying one of their own, are said to be intent on denying to the Brits and Americans.

This last obsession, the hallmark of the Tucker Carlson/Nick Fuentes fascist-adjacent faction in America, has spawned British Tucker-Fuentes wannabes. What they all mean by an “ethnostate” is white people like them. They claim that the Jews want to deny them their white “ethnostate” even though the Jews have their own “ethnostate” in Israel.

But as I argued, ethnicity, skin colour and citizenship aren’t necessarily coterminous at all. In Israel, most Jews are brown or black skinned, 20 per cent of Israelis are Arabs and there are other ethnicities among Israeli citizens. No matter! These self-styled “patriots” insist that the Jews aren’t white, even when Jews like myself clearly are; but apparently we can’t be white, because we want to “replace” white people in Britain even when we’ve said or thought nothing of the kind. See? Once people start sliding down this rabbit hole, the insanity turns wild.

It’s a long screed here, much of it repellent, ludicrous and unbelievably imbecilic. But it’s no joke. Treat it as a first draft of anti-history, the chronicle of a dying culture that’s eating itself from the inside.

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Here’s how it started. Earlier this month in my Times column, later extended in a blog post, I took issue with the Restore party’s claim that only white Christians were properly British. I argued that this wasn’t just bigoted but failed to understand citizenship, ethnicity or British identity.

Here’s the resulting tweet on X and what I wrote in reply that kicked off the online hate-fest:

*The spat between Restore and Zionists is infuriating. They both want the same thing. Now to alienate my fellow rightoids AND my “Zionist paymasters” at the same time…

There is a concerted effort to bring down Britain’s insurgent right-wing party, Restore. They’ve been accused of racism and anti-Semitism following Restore co-founder Charlie Downes’ insinuations that Nigel Farage has been bought by Israel, and his claim that “Restore believe that Britain is a people defined by indigenous British ancestry and Christian faith.”

Before I, an Anglo-Saxon white man, start talking about Zionism and Israel and the Jews, I should point out I’m a massive fan. I’m a Zionist. I believe the Jews have a right to a homeland, a right to self-determination and to control their borders. The thing is — I believe that the men and women of Britain have this right as well. And this seems to be where I diverge from the people criticising Restore.

Jewish journalist Melanie Phillips thundered, “The far right noisily identify British identity with Christianity...[but]... A Hindu or a Sikh, a Jew or a Muslim is as British as anyone else.” And she said of migrants, “Upon taking citizenship, all become equally British.”

But this clashes with her vision of Israel. “Israel is a Jewish state. Its national identity is Israeli and Jewish. So Arabs can only have the first, civic identity, but not the culturally fundamental second one.”

Hmmm...no “just as Israeli as anyone else” there. Melanie Phillips accepts an ancestral/peoplehood basis for Jewish national self-determination in Israel while expressly denying that British national identity has an equivalent ethnic or ancestry-based character.

In the Telegraph, Alister Heath said “Rupert Lowe’s racist cheerleaders can no longer hide their despicable extremism. Downes believes that the fact that 54 per cent of babies were born to white British mothers in 2024 — and thus that 46 per cent were born to “white other”, mixed race or non-white mothers — as “an existential threat to our nation”. This claim, this specific sentence, is racist”.

But wait a minute. Surely the fact that people whose lineage is outside Britain are popping out nearly half of the babies in the UK is a bit alarming? For all that we might pretend that these people are just as British as anyone else, there’s evidence that many are not. I see flags of barbarous third-world regimes waved on Britain’s streets. I see a newspaper for black Britons telling me that only one in ten black feel proud to be British. I see David Lammy, a poster boy for an integrated minority, agitate for reparations for foreign countries.

I’m a civic nationalist at heart, I genuinely believe people can come here and integrate. But civic nationalism is an ideal. It doesn’t necessarily work as planned in the real world, and as distasteful as it might be to bleeding heart liberals such as me, it requires a certain amount of ethno-nationalism. We all know that if Britain became 99% Eritrean overnight, then regardless of what “values” the Eritreans had, we would have a very different country.

There’s an interesting term that’s arisen on the right, “demographic security”, where a certain proportion of the British population has to be of British lineage before more migrants are allowed in. This makes sense to me. It preserves the harmony and security of this country and makes it a better place for migrants as well.

Israel understands this. They publish the fertility rates of their Arab Muslims alongside the Jewish population as a nudge to Israeli Jews to keep up, or be replaced.

Restore have been criticised for presenting over-simplified solutions to complex problems, but there genuinely are simple solutions. Pakistan deported 2.4 million Afghan migrants. They just did it. They told them to go home and, in some cases, laid on coaches to help. Given that Britain used to control a third of the world, I think we can achieve a goal of “being able to do what Pakistan is capable of doing”.

The right should be the natural ally of Israel and Jews. Israel is the front line of Western civilisation. Israel shows the West how to handle the threat of Islamism, and how to have a healthy nationalism. And what’s interesting is that every Jew I know, every Israeli I spoke to, wants Britain to have this healthy nationalism and wants Britain to control its borders.

I think a lot of Jews understand that their survival in both countries is dependent on those countries not being overrun by third world barbarians who want to kill Jews. We all know it’s not smartly dressed young Restore candidates who are going on stabbing rampages at synagogues.@LeoKearse

Although this writer professed warm feelings towards Israel, he honed in on the fact that I am a “Zionist”, which was irrelevant to my argument, and made the baseless claim that I sought to deny to the British what Jews have in Israel. So I replied:

This is very muddled. British identity is civic and not ethnic. It is totally different from Jewish identity, which is ethnic, religious and cutural. Judaism is the unique fusion of a people, a faith and a land. That’s why the Jewish people, as a people, is entitled to live in its ancestral homeland.

This is different again from Israeli identlty. Arabs, Druze and others are also Israeli citizens with equal civic and religious rights. But (unless they convert to Judaism) they can’t be Jews with their unique claim to self-determination in the land and their unique political right to a state of their own.

Because of the unique and multi-faceted nature of Judaism, there’s no crossover with British identity. But as I have written for decades, the British are not only entitled to but should promote and defend their historic nation, identity and its culture. There’s no conflict between those two positions, and the suggestion that Jews want to deny to the British the self-determination that the Jews have fulfilled in the State of Israel is false and disgraceful.

Boom! Here’s a selection of what was then hurled at me, which I’ve organised thematically.

Jew-hatred directed at me on the grounds that I am not British

*Jews like Phillips do not belong in a Western country. @miggymaru

Slanderous accusations of dual loyalty or outright treachery

*What is so bizarre about this — apart from the “reasoning” and the arrogance — is the motivation. WHY does she care so much about asserting that British identity is civic? Why does this matter to her? She doesn’t even live here any more, and she clearly cares much more about Israel than Britain. Yet she is very forthright, as if she thinks she bought Britain and can now repurpose it without any consideration whatsoever of the wishes of its native people.… @MillennialWoes

To which I replied:

I am British. I care very much about what is happening to Britain. I care very much about the murderous bigotry that’s erupted there against the Jewish people. I care very much about the deranged and libellous falsehoods there that so wickedly impute Jewish malevolence against British interests. I care very much that this repudiation of conscience, justice and reason may destroy Britain altogether.

This produced further paroxysms of spitting hatred:

*Thanks but no thanks. We don’t need jews telling us who is or isn’t British.@MrSonicAdvance

*Deport. @KOBCOB2

*Rancid witch @iijbrads66

*EVIL SUPPORTER OF ZIONIST TERRORISM BLIND TO FACTUAL EVIDENCE OF GENOCIDE….JUST LIKE THE REST OF THE ZIONIST CULT OF EVIL @Miles4Jemima

*She didn’t say, she cared about the British people in Britain getting raped and murdered. She said she cared about what happens to the Jewish people in the UK. That is because @MelanieLatestIS NOT BRITISH. 🐺The Wise Wolf

And then there was this charming picture with a one word message:

Soon

Libelous accusations to silence me and others defending Israel:

*@MelanieLatest @HausdorffMedia still barefaced lying day in day out. Two individuals working on behalf of a despotic foreign government. They are living & working amongst us causing havoc upon decent human beings based off their lies. When will they be barred from polite society? The law & media outlets need to adhere to their own ethical standards and principles and take steps to ensure they never work again. @cee_jonsey

*Shabbos Kestenbaum is a liar, one of the worst, just like Melanie. @RossaHey

*You’re a Israeli puppet. Brainwashed slave for the Judeo. Foolishness @merengue060

The assumption that factual explanation of distinctions signals “Jewish supremacism”

*I absolutely love how the guy she is responding to was trying to get British nationalists to align with Zionists and she just rushes in to stomp all over that with the most deranged Jewish supremacist rant imaginable @Villgecrazylady

Fury at my suggestion that the Hebrew Bible is at the heart of west’s moral political and scientific greatness:

*This is incredibly dumb. The Greeks, the Romans, Christ’s rebuke of the pharisees, and the Greek-Roman-Germanic-Christian synthesis constitute the “foundation of the West’s historic moral, political, and scientific greatness”. Whatever spiritual values may lie in the Torah/Old Testament, it has contributed nothing of value to science, politics or moral values in the West. @Arktosjournal

*Only a dishonest Jew would claim that. They always want to pretend like Christians base their faith off of the Old Testament (to the point that retards like Huckabee bought it hook, line, and sinker) when the reality is our faith is based off of the New Testament because without Jesus and the New Testament you are missing the key to the OT. @shangrila500

Hatred directed at all Jews and at Judaism

*They are deceivers and killers just like their Father the devil @bos43235093

*Europe is waking up to the talmudic ones and I couldn’t be happier! @mimi4me4

*That jews flooded the west with nons because we were stupid enough to beat their enemy (our actual ally) for them and they’re spawn of the devil @kernow_outlaw

*Jews don’t care about the goys, shocker @crusadeonalbion

*The Hebrew Bible is essentially animal sacrifices and stories of genociding other races. Nothing really Western about that. @jdkumarpatil

*jews view the west as a continuation of rome. they seek the fall of rome as revenge for destruction of the second temple. sounds crazy but it’s true. @jupes20

*And I am not talking about them actually being neo-nazi. I am talking about the fact that Jewish people will use the charge of Nazism against any form of politics they find inconvenient to them ... which they, of course, wish to actually pursue in their own true home country…They fought for themselves ... they didn’t fight for the British. We know this because when it was convenient they would later murder British soldiers, hang their bodies to trees and then booby trap them hoping to murder more British trying to retrieve their murdered comrades... @GregorysServant

*Aren’t you tired? I’m definitely tired. tired of hearing jews kvetch every time I look at a screen. I’m tired of seeing their tweets. I’m tired of gentiles responding to them and taking what they say seriously. Tired of gentiles bending over backwards to appease them. To me, their words are meaningless. Their ideas are poisonous. Yet to the decision making gentiles, jewish approval seems to take precedence over the lives of their very own children.

What is that? Seriously WTF is that? Do these people’s words cast a spell on gentiles that enslaves them or what? How are they not viscerally repulsed by these creatures? I genuinely don’t understand it. Has the world gone mad? Have we turned so far away from God that we are incapable of recognizing evil and rejecting it? Im not claiming to be righteous in any way but I cannot stomach looking at or listening to a creature as the one below or mark levin or Ben Shapiro for more than a minute on double speed… yet our leaders treat them like gods.

I know more and more people are starting to feel the way I do but it’s still tiresome just seeing them everywhere with their entitled attitudes and their hideous faces everywhere you look.

It’s also tiresome knowing that many feel this disgust but pretend to care in order to appease them… it’s enough. It’s time to stop listening, stop pretending to listen and if they really were as smart as they say they are… they would know it’s time for them to shut up….. but they’re not, so they won’t. @sofresh_sobleam

In response to my comment:

The Hebrew Bible is the foundation of the west’s historic moral, political and scientific greatness

responses included:

*The ancient European Pagan Traditions and Roman Natural Law, Pythagoras, Plato, Anaximander, Archimedes, and the ancient gods and goddesses are the foundation of the West’s moral, political, and scientific greatness. The Hebrew Bible destroyed the West’s culture and science from the fall of Rome until the Pagan inspired Renaissance when the yoke of Christianity started to be overthrown and reason and spirit finally returned. The Hebrew Bible is spiritual poison forced upon us from the Middle East. The Bible destroyed the Westerner’s perception of their own bodies in space and time. It destroyed the art and theatre of the classical world. It was brutal to women. The Hebrew Bible is spiritual and cultural poison. @jruebl47185

*Hamas must rocket this yids @JSTN271

*Anti-semitic simply means someone who speaks truth to Zionism/Judaism & your many/varied crimes.It’s no different to being called an Islamophobe by muslims. I am comfortably retied thanks — I just cannot keep quiet about your demonic degradation & barbarity. Raquel Martin

*The Hebrew Bible belongs to Christianity, not to Judaism. Yours is the Talmud: the deliriums of the Pharisaic rabbis who in denying Jesus Christ, concocted their own racist, supremacist, and perverse judaic religion. @eniorJimenez

Christianity built the West (and the world); and now judaism s poisoning it from within pretending to be the rightful heir. – "And Jesus said to them: 'Watch out and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.' Then they understood that He did not say to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees" (Matthew 16:6, 12).

and this delightful contribution:

The lie that the Jews are trying to destroy the West

*jewishness is civic, so they need an endless stream of somalis, afghans and pakis now, lest their gdp number go down. @jupes20

*You push race-mixing, degeneracy, White guilt, the notion that having a healthy family while European is “White supremacy”, every last false and toxic narrative that has become a self-fulfilling prophecy was cooked up in your think tanks. How DARE you spew this bullshit in public @chloespeaks156 .

*.. a bunch of eeebil racists if they won’t let these despicable, murdering, raping, sex trafficking SCUM overtake their nation and replace them. Jews have been pushing this sh*t since the end of the War and covering it up with f*cking horror stories & hallmark card. @chloespeaks156

Slanderous Jew-hatred directed at Israel:

*Yup, seems very moral to exterminate thousands of semites just like Yahweh did. Judaism is a death cult dressed up as religion, but the worst part is that it also phagocytes and subverts other religions (and institutions). Essentially, it’d be the ideal cult for ticks @kimmeraf

The obsession with double standards over an “ethnostate”

*Curious that your concern for Britain only manifests as it affects your ethnic group while dismissing the concerns of the British ethnos as non-extant by virtue of discounting them as a loose civic collection of deracinated peoples. @AydinPaladin

*British people aren’t allowed an ethnic identity but Jews are, written in black and white this time rather than subversively This’ll sell really well, keep digging please! @ZoomerHistorian

*Imagine the most mixed people on Earth, Jews, telling you that they are a real ethnic group and you aren’t.The chutzpah of it. @liangshikai1990

*Why yes she’s a journalist Why yes she lives in Israel Why yes she thinks that Israel deserves a monoculture and the UK doesn’t Why yes she’s been caught saying both things many, many times @11975MHz

*“British identity is civic and not ethnic. It is totally different from Jewish identity, which is ethnic, religious and cultural.” It’s statements like this that lead to persecution historically and will lead to persecution again. They only have themselves to blame. @ThePragmatistGB

Lies about what I’ve written and blatant misrepresentation

*Melanie Phillips says [in a video clip] if the West abandons Israel it deserves to die” The West in turning against the Jews... is turning uh against uh goodness in favor of evil and it will destroy itself

I replied:

I said nothing of the kind, as the clip demonstrates. I said the west is in danger of committing cultural suicide — not that it deserved to die.

On went the wilful misinterpretations:

*Everyone accepts Jewish identity is real — that’s not in doubt. What I will not accept is the idea that this somehow ends with one people alone. The English, Scots, Welsh and the Britons of Northern Ireland are peoples too, formed across millennia on these islands. The claim that British identity is purely civic is a very recent invention, barely a generation old, produced the moment large-scale change made that truth awkward. Our identity is also “ethnic, religious and cultural” Melanie.

It is faintly ridiculous that I must even spell this out in my own country. We have shown almost limitless tolerance, and that forbearance has been read as stupidity? The instant the native majority notices the transformation and seeks the same demographic security Israel claims for Jews, we are told it is ‘beyond the pale’- our very own ancient phrase of fairness thrown back at us as if we were the interlopers.

The sheer audacity is this — a woman who places her Jewish identity above all else calmly informs me that I have no identity of my own. It’s absurd beyond belief. One people’s continuity is justice — mine is extremism. No honest rule can work that way. We are entitled to remain majorities in the land our ancestors built and fought for.

The relentless campaign against the native British — from every quarter, foreign and domestic, the political class and its media allies- has to stop. No other nation on earth would tolerate such open bigotry directed at it’s own historic people in their own homeland. @AuntyMatter

Even a summary at the end of my book Fighting the Hate: A Handbook for Jews Under Siege was viciously ripped out of context:

“Use weapons of psychological warfare and reputational damage…” These are tips found in “British” jew Melanie Phillips’ “handbook for Jews under siege.” @Contrarianism1

To which I responded:

My advice in the book is how to fight back against a campaign of psychological warfare that demonises Israel and Jews with murderous lies about their behaviour. I advocate combating this with the weapon of truth, but doing so in a way that turns the attacks against Jews into a tactical boomerang.

Enough. There’s much more of this; and there have also been some supportive responses from people seeking to uphold decency and sanity. We must all do what we can to fight back against this cancer that’s now a mortal threat to Britain and to western civilisation.

Gov. Kathy Hochul on The Thwarted ISIS Attack in Albany

This was Kathy Hochul's wishy-washy statement following the arrest of the Albany, NY female ISIS-supporter who was ready to bomb the New York Capitol building. 

Does this really look like "political violence" to you?  An ISIS-inspired plot, yet no mention of Islamic terrorism by the governor?  

She has either forgotten what terrorism is, despite the upcoming anniversary of the 9/11 attacks; or else she's too politically correct to admit it.

----------------------------------- 

From NBC News:

"New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said in a statement Thursday she is “grateful” to the FBI and the New York State Police.

“Earlier this year, amid a rise in political violence and threats against public officials, we took steps to strengthen security at the State Capitol and across state government,” she said. “While there is no immediate threat at this time, we will continue working closely with our law enforcement partners to protect New Yorkers and keep our communities safe.”

Female ISIS Supporter Arrested in NY Bomb Plot

I was just watching the FBI press conference about this vile plot, and I'm sure we'll have to hear a lot of  the usual downplaying and gaslighting by the liberal media and the Democrats, and even sympathy by some people, before this terrorist is put on trial. Hearing this news a month before the 25th anniversary of September 11 somehow doesn't surprise me in the least.

Who knows? Maybe she'll become the latest criminal celebrity, like Luigi! 

------------------------------------------ 

New York Post 8-20-26

Female ISIS supporter caught in plot to bomb NY State Capitol building: FBI

By Vaughn Golden, Anthony Blair 

"An ISIS-inspired militant was arrested for allegedly plotting a deadly attack on the New York State Capitol in Albany, the FBI said Thursday.

"Jessica Bowie, 35, pledged allegiance to the Islamist terror group and began planning the attack in July, according to a criminal complaint obtained by ABC News.

"She allegedly purchased bomb materials from a hardware store on Aug. 5 and planned the attack with the help of FBI informants for two weeks, the feds said.

Jessica Bowie, 35, seen purchasing nails at a hardware store. US District Court Northern District of New York

A DoorDash bag that was allegedly intended to hold the explosive device. US District Court Northern District of New York

"Bowie, who converted to Islam five years ago, also allegedly tracked the Capitol building for weeks, taking pictures from various vantage points including an “observation hall nearby,” according to the complaint.

"The FBI informants met Bowie Wednesday and gave her an inert explosive device and an inert handgun, along with instructions on how to detonate the bomb, the complaint said.

Bowie seen taking a photo on July 21, 2026 while she allegedly planned the terror attack at the Capitol. US District Court Northern District of New York

The Capitol circled in a photo taken by Bowie from an “observation hall” when she was allegedly planning the attack. US District Court Northern District of New York

Jessica Bowie, 35, is accused of plotting to bomb the New York State Capitol building in Albany. Hans Pennink for NY Post

"She was soon arrested and appeared to offer a partial confession during her interview with FBI agents, according to the complaint.

“There’s no helping me, you guys know enough, there’s no helping me, I’m…going to prison for the rest of my life,” she allegedly said.

“Material support is up to 20 years in prison, I already Googled it before, I know I’m going to jail.”

COVID Is Rising

By Jen Christensen at CNN 8-20-26:

The traditional respiratory virus season hasn’t started, but Covid is already climbing

Are you coughing, hacking or feeling feverish? It may not be just a summer cold; you might want to consider taking a Covid test.

Although the autumn respiratory illness season hasn’t kicked off, and flu and RSV activity remain low, there’s a growing summer wave of Covid-19.

Case numbers aren’t especially high, and the United States isn’t recording many hospitalizations or deaths. But data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention puts the test positivity rate for the week ending August 8 above 3% for the first time since March, with numbers climbing in every state.

“August is solidly Covid season,” said Dr. Caitlin Rivers, an expert in outbreak science and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health and Security. “Right now, the South and the West are sort of the leading edge of this Covid season. In the past, it almost always starts in Florida, Texas and Georgia, which is exactly what we’re seeing this year.”

Respiratory viruses circulate year-round in the United States, but waiting rooms typically fill with flu and RSV cases in the fall and winter. Since Covid joined the mix, coughing and sneezing season seems to be starting sooner.

Flu and RSV cases typically peak only once each year, between December and February, and taper off around April. Covid behaves differently, with winter and summer seasons. Experts say it’s a good time to take precautions.

How to stay aware

Tracking where Covid is spreading is a good first step toward avoiding illness, says Dr. Amanda Zink, an emergency room doctor in Alaska and a Yale University fellow who helped develop PopHIVE, a free platform for checking local and national health trends in the US that uses near real-time health data.

But tracking Covid cases has become trickier than it was during the height of the pandemic, when daily case counts were available on the CDC website. The federal government now collects far less data than it did during the pandemic. Labs no longer have to report negative tests, and hospitals no longer have to report specific bed capacity.

“We just have the tools we have,” said Dr. Scott Harris, state health officer for the Alabama Department of Public Health.

The CDC now relies on indicators including wastewater data, emergency room visits and lab results to gauge how much Covid is circulating in the country.

In Alabama, Harris says, Covid is not reflected in hospitalizations or mortality data yet, but cases are registering an “uptick” rather than a surge.

“It is going up,” Harris said Tuesday at a briefing held by the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. “We don’t know how to describe these numbers that we’re seeing in terms of what the denominator is anymore.”

“Now we just know when we get a positive test, and we don’t even have clinical data sometimes to put that in context.”

Zink says that before traveling, people may want to consult PopHIVE and other disease tracking sites to help them decide what level of protection they want to bring with them.

“They can connect directly and say ‘what does the respiratory diseases look like in Kentucky?’ ” said Zink, who was chief medical officer for Alaska during the pandemic. “It can be helpful to know what’s out there, and then take the measures that you feel comfortable with and that you have the power to control.”

Amanda Bidwell, scientific program manager at WastewaterSCAN, a Stanford University-based program that monitors viruses and other germs in wastewater that updates daily, says she treats her website almost like a weather map before going out.

“I live in the Bay Area of California, and I’m able to look at my phone and be like, ‘Yep, Covid is taking off right now. I’m going to wear my mask if I’m going to go to this concert or going to get on a plane.’ ”

Wastewater data can also reveal where Covid or other diseases may worsen next, since people shed viral RNA days before they feel sick or get tested.

The CDC’s wastewater surveillance report says Covid is “very low” as of the week ending August 8. WastewaterSCAN, which uses different methodology and is more up to date, characterizes activity as “high.” It also detects an upward trend in the past 21 days in every region except the Midwest, where activity is “medium.”

With last-minute summer travel, the start of a new school year, and declining immunity from prior vaccination or infection, Covid cases will probably continue to rise.

Tracking case severity can also help you gauge your level of risk. The CDC’s analysis of emergency room data says that visits are low for Covid in many regions but increasing in the West and South as of August 12.

Preventing illness

Covid can still be serious and even deadly, so Zink reminds patients that there are non-pharmaceutical options to help keep them out of her emergency room in Palmer, Alaska.

Zink urges everyone to wash their hands regularly. The CDC suggests washing with soap and water for about 20 seconds, or about the time it takes to sing “Happy Birthday” twice.

A well-fitting N95 mask can filter at least 95% of airborne particles and help prevent you from breathing in the virus, as well as stopping you from spreading the virus if you are sick.

If you didn’t get a Covid vaccine last year, you may want to talk to your healthcare provider or pharmacist about getting one, maybe even the one that was formulated for last season, said Dr. James McDonald, commissioner of health for the New York State Department of Health.

“For people that are really at high-risk, for sure, if it’s been eight or 10 months since you’ve had the vaccine, I would say please talk to your provider about that,” McDonald noted, it’s not a black and white answer, but it’s important to find out what’s right for the individual based on their risk factors.

The US Food and Drug Administration’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee has made its suggestions for what should go into this season’s Covid shot. Experts expect it to start becoming available in late September, even though the CDC hasn’t officially recommended it.

Under the Trump administration, the federal government has shifted from a universal Covid vaccine recommendation to a more restricted one in which it’s recommended for everyone 6 months and over to consult with a healthcare provider. Most medical organizations recommend getting it, and insurance companies have indicated that they will continue to cover the shot.

If someone in your family gets sick or if you have close contact with someone with Covid, you might be able to take a new drug called Xocova, the first FDA-approved oral antiviral pill designed to help prevent illness in people 12 and older who are exposed to the coronavirus.

What to do if you get sick

If you get sick, Paxlovid can reduce your risk of developing a severe infection, particularly if you start taking the drug early after symptoms begin. But it’s no longer free, like it was during the pandemic, so check to see if your insurance covers it.

To help prevent the spread of illness, stay home when you have symptoms. The CDC recommends isolating and wearing a mask around others while symptoms continue.

When you’ve been fever-free without medication for 24 hours, the agency says, it’s safe to interact with others.