WHO, Fauci Warn COVID-19 Vaccines May Not Prevent Infection and Disease Transmission - The Vaccine Reaction

https://thevaccinereaction.org/2021/01/who-fauci-warn-covid-19-vaccines-may-not-prevent-infection-and-disease-transmission/

WHO, Fauci Warn COVID-19 Vaccines May Not Prevent Infection and Disease Transmission

by Barbara Loe Fisher

Published January 3, 2021 | Vaccination, Risk & Failure Reports

At a virtual press conference held by the World Health Organization (WHO) on Dec. 28, 2020, WHO officials warned there is no guarantee that COVID-19 vaccines will prevent people from being infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus and transmitting it to other people.¹ In a New Year's Day interview with Newsweek, Anthony Fauci, MD, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), reinforced the WHO's admission that health officials do not know if COVID-19 vaccines prevent infection or if people can spread the virus to others after getting vaccinated.² According to U.S. and WHO health officials, vaccinated persons still need to mask and social distance because they could be able to spread the new coronavirus to others without knowing it.^{3 4}

Although the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) in December 2020 for Pfizer/BioNTech⁵ and Moderna⁶ to release their experimental mRNA vaccines for use in the U.S., the companies only provided evidence from clinical trials to demonstrate that their vaccines prevented more mild to severe COVID-19 disease symptoms in vaccinated participants compared to unvaccinated trial participants. The companies did not investigate whether the vaccines prevent people from becoming asymptomatically infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus and/or transmitting it to other people.^{7 8}

WHO Officials Say COVID-19 Vaccines Designed to Prevent Severe Disease

According to WHO officials, while it appears the vaccines can prevent clinically symptomatic COVID-19 clinical disease, there is no clear evidence COVID-19 vaccines are effective at preventing asymptomatic infection and transmission. During the press conference, WHO chief scientist and pediatrician Soumya Swaminathan, MD said:

We continue to wait for more results from the vaccine trials to really understand whether the vaccines, apart from preventing symptomatic disease and severe disease and deaths, whether they're also going to reduce infection or prevent people from getting infected with the virus, then from passing it on or transmitting it to other people. I don't' believe we have the evidence on any of the vaccines to be confident that it's going to prevent people from actually getting the infection and therefore being able to pass it on.⁹

Dr. Swaminathan said the COVID-19 vaccine was designed to first prevent symptomatic disease, severe disease and deaths. Mark Ryan, MD, MPH, who is executive director of the WHO Health Emergencies Program, agreed with Swaminathan and added:

So the first primary objective is to decrease the impact the disease is having on people's lives and, therefore, that will be a major step forward in bringing the world back to some kind of normal. The second phase is then looking at how will this vaccine affect transmission. We just don't know enough yet about length of protection and other things to be absolutely able to predict that, but we should be able to get good control of the virus.¹⁰

SARS-CoV-2 Eradication Via Mass Vaccination is a "Moonshot"

Dr. Ryan also pointed out that the decision by WHO to try to eradicate the SARS-CoV-2 virus "requires a much higher degree of efficiency and effectiveness in the vaccination program and the other control measures" and that it is likely the new coronavirus will "become another endemic virus, a virus that will remain somewhat of a threat but a very low level threat in the context of an effective vaccination program."

Ryan cautioned that, like with measles and polio, there is no guarantee of eliminating the SARS-CoV-2 virus through mass vaccination programs. He said:

The existence of a vaccine even at high efficacy is no guarantee of eliminating or eradicating an infectious disease. That's a very high bar for us to be able to get over. First, we have to focus on saving lives, getting good control of this epidemic, and then we will deal with the moonshot of potentially being able to eliminate or eradicate this virus.¹¹

Azar Says Get Vaccinated But Still Mask Up

In a Dec. 22 interview, HHS Secretary Alex Azar told Fox News that the current "consensus" among health officials is that people who get two doses of COVID-19 vaccine should still mask up and practice social distancing. He said:

We're still studying some fundamental scientific questions though, such as, once you've been vaccinated, do you sill need to wear a mask to protect others, could you still be carrying the virus even though you're protected from it…If you're getting vaccinated right now, still social distance, still wear a mask, but all these [recommendations] have to be data and science-driven, so we're working to generate the data there so that as we go forward, we'll be able to advise people on a foundation of data.¹²

Fauci Says "We don't know what we don't know," but COVID-19 Vaccine Passports and Mandates May Be Coming

In an interview on CNN in early April 2020 when most states were in some form of a coronavirus lockdown, Dr. Fauci told Alyson Camerota that, "It's very likely that there are a large number of people out there that have been infected, have been asymptomatic, and did not know they were infected."¹³ Eight months later, on New Year's Day 2021, Dr. Fauci told Newsweek that in his role as the new Administration's chief medical advisor, there is a possibility the federal government will eventually introduce "COVID-19 vaccine passports" and that some city, county or state governments and businesses will make COVID-19 vaccines mandatory, including in schools.¹⁴

Everything will be on the table," Dr. Fauci declared.

A week earlier, Fauci told The New York Times that between 70 percent and 90 percent of the U.S. population would need to get COVID-19 vaccinations in order for the country to reach vaccine-acquired herd immunity. He explained why he has continued to shift the "herd immunity" goal post over the past year:

When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent. Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, 'I can nudge this up a bit,' so I went to 80, 85… We really don't know what the real number is. I think the real range is somewhere between 70 to 90 percent. But, I'm not going to say 90 percent.¹⁵

Even as Fauci discussed vaccine passports and mandates in Newsweek, he admitted proving that COVID-19 vaccines do more than prevent clinical disease but also block infection and transmission has been elusive. He emphasized that persons who get vaccinated still must wear masks:

We do not know if the vaccines that prevent clinical disease also prevent infection. They very well might, but we have not proven that yet….That's the reason I keep saying that even though you get vaccinated, we should not eliminate, at all, public health measures like wearing masks because we don't know yet what the effect [of the vaccine] is on transmissibility.¹⁶

Fauci added, "We don't know what we don't know."

Immunity Passports: Suggested Soon After the COVID-19 Pandemic Began

Government health officials in Israel are getting ready to issue a COVID-19 "green passport" to citizens who have received two COVID-19 shots, which will exempt them from travel restrictions and testing for infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus or being required to quarantine after exposure to an infected person. ¹⁷ Technology companies have been working on creating a digital certificate, which contains personal medical information giving evidence that an individual has been vaccinated and can be used as a screening tool by employers, businesses and owners or operators of services and public venues, such as airlines, theme parks, concert halls, hotels and other places where people gather in groups with other people.^{18 19 20 21}

Immediately after the coronavirus pandemic was declared by the WHO last winter, Silicon Valley businessman Bill Gates began talking about the need for issuing digital certificates proving immunity to the virus and, once a COVID-19 vaccine becomes available, proof of vaccination. In a comment posted on Reddit in March 2020, Gates said, "Eventually we will have some digital certificates to show who has recovered or been tested recently or when we have a vaccine who has received it."²² That same month in a TED Talk, Gates explained how lockdowns and resulting "economic pain" will prevent people from getting naturally acquired immunity to the SARS-CoV-2 virus and that immunity "certificates" will eventually be required. Gates said:

Now we don't want to have a lot of recovered people, you know. To be clear, we're trying through the shutdown in the United States, to not get to one percent of the population infected. We're well below that today, but with exponentiation you could get past that three million. I believe we will be able to avoid that with having this economic pain.

Eventually, what we'll have to have is certificates of who is a recovered person, who's a vaccinated person, because you don't want people moving around the world where you'll have some countries that won't have it under control, sadly. You don't want to completely block off the ability for people to go there and come back and move around.²³

In an Apr. 9 interview on National Public Radio (NPR), Gates returned to the message that some "social distancing" measures have to stay in place "until we get a vaccine that almost everybody's had." He said:

What I'm saying, what Dr. Anthony Fauci is saying, what some other experts are saying, there's a great deal of consistency. We're not sure yet which activities should be resumed, because until we get a vaccine that almost everybody's had, the risk of a rebound will be there.²⁴

As of Jan. 3, 2021, the CDC had recorded over 20 million COVID-19 cases and nearly 350,000 related deaths.²⁵

New Study: Evidence of Lasting Immunity After Mild or Asymptomatic COVID-19 Infection

A study was published in Science Immunology on Dec. 24, 2020 by scientists from Queen Mary, University of London in which they analyzed antibody and T cell responses in 136 London health care workers and reported that there was evidence of protective immunity up to four months after mild or asymptomatic COVID-19.²⁶ A press release issued by the University stated that mild or asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections represent the largest infected group and noted that researchers found T cell responses tended to be higher in those with the classic, defining symptoms of COVID-19, while asymptomatic infection resulted in a weaker T cell immunity than symptomatic infection, but equivalent neutralizing antibody responses.²⁷

One of the researchers commented:

Our study of SARS-CoV-2 infection in healthcare workers from London hospitals reveals that four months after infection, around 90 percent of individuals have antibodies to block the virus. Even more encouragingly, in 66 percent of healthcare workers we see levels of these protective antibodies are high and that this robust antibody response is complemented by T cells which we see reacting to various parts of the virus. This is good news. It means that if you have been infected there is a good chance that you will have developed antibodies and T cells that may provide some protection if you encounter the virus again.²⁸

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  Alex Azar, Alyson Camerota, Anthony Fauci, Barbara Loe Fisher, Bill Gates, CNN, COVID-19, Fox News, green passport, Mark Ryan, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Vaccine Information Center, Newsweek, NIAID, NVIC, SARS-CoV-2, Science Immunology, Soumya Swaminathan, TED Talk, The New York Times, The Vaccine Reaction, University of London, WHO, World Health Organization

~A.

https://healthimpactnews.com/2021/are-the-new-experimental-covid-vaccines-the-largest-propaganda-campaign-ever-launched-on-the-public/?fbclid=IwAR0q8Os6C96xFBV54JPacNs59EoMG6VIkswaHxM4LM4EDgofx6my7uSEqLs

Are the New Experimental COVID Vaccines the Largest Propaganda Campaign Ever Launched on the Public?

Published on January 8, 2021

Will the Covid Vaccine Meet Its Quixotic Promises?

by Richard Gale and Gary Null
Progressive Radio Network

Daily we hear and observe a stream of endless propaganda about the miracles of the new generation of Covid vaccines in order to calm fears and increase public compliance.

In unison, editors at the New York Times, Washington Post and the major multimedia networks encourage everyone to be vaccinated as soon as enough vaccines are available.

Anthony Fauci and the captains in the pandemic efforts claim Moderna's and Pfizer's vaccines are about 95 percent effective, and the Department of Health and Human Services is convincing us they are safe and effective. 

Therefore, we should all be willing to stand in the waiting line. There is nothing to be concerned about, we are told, except those anti-vaccine heretics, who the World Health Organization has now dubbed among the ten most dangerous risks to global health.  

What the media blitzkrieg is ignoring are the very legitimate and even worrisome unanswered questions

What the media blitzkrieg is ignoring are the very legitimate and even worrisome unanswered questions on the minds of many citizens.

Aside from concerns over these vaccines' uncertainties for effectiveness and safety due to quickly being fast-tracked past the usual regulatory analyses and reviews, Moderna's and Pfizer's vaccines are largely experimental.

Never before has an mRNA vaccine been distributed en masse to tens of millions of people.

Other suspicions include 1) the length of time neutralizing antibodies are effective before immunity wanes, 2) what kind of protection the vaccines will actually offer, 3) does the data truly support Moderna and Pfizer claims that their vaccines are 95 percent effective, 4) are vaccine recipients protected from contracting the virus, and if not, can they transmit it to others, and 5) the absence of long-term safety profiles following vaccination that are still pending.

The Pfizer Phase 3 trial lasted less than 4 months. Moderna only completed its COVE trial enrollment on October 22; now two months later people are receiving the vaccine.

Therefore, insufficient time has lapsed to make any realistic clinical determination about either vaccine's safety following months after vaccination.

Yet despite these questions, over half of Americans believe that being vaccinated will provide complete immunity from infection and therefore their lives will return to normal.

New discrimination against unvaccinated?

Now the most recent narrative we are witnessing is stoking public fear that unless we are vaccinated we will be unable to board a plane or train, will be prevented from attending schools or public events, and may even become victims to more austere and harsh quarantine laws.

There is also the lingering myth of the PCR test as a reliable standard for diagnosing Covid infections. Due to the widespread abuse of PCR, which was never designed nor intended to be relied upon as a confirmatory diagnostic tool, a growing number of medical experts argue that the US, the UK, Germany and other EU nations are facing a "casedemic" rather than a pandemic due to a pathogenic virus.

Despite PCR's high rate of misdiagnoses, positive results are still being reported as Covid cases. 

How much protection will the new mRNA Covid vaccines provide and for how long?

In early December, the New England Journal of Medicine published a National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease analysis of the Moderna vaccine's length of efficacy based upon neutralizing antibody levels.

This was the first data published of its kind for any of the Covid vaccines.

Although the analysis only included 34 individuals who had received both shots, it found that antibody counts were significant over a 3-month period, averaging between 50-75 percent.

The report stated this was "less than we were hoping for." 

The rate of antibody decline increased among the older trial participants. 

This disappointing result should not be a surprise, although even a sharp drop in antibodies may still provide sufficient immunity, at least for some. 

The most recent issue of the British Medical Journal reports that natural immunity following infection lasts approximately 6 months. Yet this study conducted by Oxford University Hospitals likely has serious flaws since it relied upon PCR for diagnosing the data. 

Furthermore, Moderna has also been using its mRNA technology for vaccines against several influenza strains. A similar pattern of antibody decline was noted in their flu vaccines, showing effectiveness for about 6 months and then an antibody drop by as much 90 percent. 

So how much protection will the new mRNA Covid vaccines provide and for how long? Only time and further monitoring of vaccine recipients will tell. 

Can one still be infected after vaccination and can they transmit the virus to others?

Another important question on people's minds is whether they can still be infected after vaccination and whether they can transmit the virus to others. In principle, vaccine proponents argue that vaccines prevent both infection and transmission. 

But the data does not support this conclusion.

It is well known that persons vaccinated against the flu will frequently contract the virus, become ill and spread it to others. This is largely because we are dealing with viruses that enter the upper respiratory tract by way of the mucous layer in the nose and throat. 

Mucous itself slows down the spread of the virus to the lungs. However, it is also an obstacle for antibodies and immune cells, such as T-cells, from reaching the multiplying virus. 

For this reason, Anthony Fauci has continued to state that vaccinated persons should continue to wear masks and observe social distancing to avoid transmitting the virus. The World Health Organization has stated that there is no "evidence on any of the vaccines to be confident that it's going to prevent people from actually getting the infection and therefore being able to pass it on."

95 percent efficacy?

Back in October, Dr. Peter Doshi, at the time an editor for the British Medical Journal, had already warned that the later vaccine clinical trials were never properly designed to determine whether it would reduce the likelihood of falling ill nor preventing infection.

In a later article Doshi questions the vaccines' purported 95 percent efficacy based upon how the results are being reported and the ambiguity between "suspected" and "confirmed" Covid cases among the trial participants who received the vaccine. 

If the "suspected" cases are included, there is a 20-fold higher number of vaccinated individuals who later contracted the virus. 

However, Doshi reminds us that neither Pfizer nor Moderna have provided the raw data for public scrutiny.

Moderna says it will make the data available after the trial is completed, which will be in 2022. 

Repeatedly Bill Gates, Fauci and all of the media pundits tell us that unless there is large vaccination compliance, the transmission of Covid will never be interrupted. However, based upon what we are learning, these new Covid vaccines have always been and remain an unsupported illusion to realistically end the pandemic. 

Another important piece of information that is very rarely mentioned is Covid-19's 4-5 day incubation period. In the event a person is asymptomatically infected with the virus, the CDC states,

"mRNA vaccines are not currently recommended for outbreak management or for post-exposure prophylaxis, which is vaccination to prevent the development of SARS-CoV-2 infection in a person with a specific known exposure. Because the median incubation period of SARS-CoV-2 is 4 to 5 days, it is unlikely that the first dose of COVID-19 vaccine would provide an adequate immune response within the incubation period for effective post-exposure prophylaxis. Thus, vaccination is unlikely to be effective in preventing disease following an exposure."

Reports are already coming in to confirm this.

Recently, hundreds of Israelis became infected with the virus after receiving Pfizer's Covid vaccine. There may be several reasons for this. 

First, were the vaccine recipients already carrying the virus at the time of vaccination? Second, it takes 8-10 days for immunity to sufficiently increase after receiving the vaccine, and after the first dose there is only about 50 percent efficacy. This is why the second shot for the mRNA vaccines is so critical in order to reach the magical 95 percent effectiveness. 

Serious adverse effects

Now that the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are being administered throughout the US – 4.6 million recipients since January 4^th – and in other nations, we are beginning to read reports about serious adverse effects.

Recently Covid vaccine injuries have started to be reported in the CDC's Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).

During a seven-day period, December 15-22, there were 1,158 cases entered. However, this is but a fraction, albeit significant, of the actual number of adverse events.

On December 19, the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices convened to review the cases of life-threatening anaphylaxis following mRNA vaccination.

In his presentation to the Working Group, Dr. Thomas Clark presented statistics showing that there was a minimum of 3,150 "health impact events" among 112,807 vaccine recipients (2.7 percent) during only a five-day period (December 14-18). 

Moreover, these 3,150 adverse events were tagged as "unable to perform normal daily activities, unable to work, required care from a doctor or health care professional." 

The presentation did not include the number of minor and moderate adverse events which are likely much higher. 

Reproductive Issues?

In early October we reported on Covid-19 vaccine risks stated by Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, the former chair of microbiology at the University of Mainz Medical School in Germany.

Among those risks is the possibility of the vaccine's mRNA contributing to mutogenesis in reproductive cells that may be inherited later by children.

Subsequently, the University of Miami has reported it is following up on its earlier discovery of the virus present in men's testicles up to six months after infection.

Now the researchers are investigating whether the vaccine's Covid genetic information may do likewise and interfere with sperm quality and reproduction. 

What about the precautionary principle?

The final question is why are we failing to discuss, let alone adhere, to the precautionary principle before this massive undertaking to produce and distribute potentially billions of vaccines to inoculate the global population?

The precautionary principle quite simply states that any new medical intervention with results that are either disputed or unknown should be avoided.

In fact, the principle has frequently been invoked for products or processes that would introduce genetically modified organisms or foods for consumption.

Now we are injecting questionable genetically engineered substances into human bodies, and worse there are voices that want to mandate this enormously expensive experiment long before any reliable medical consensus can be reached on their long-term safety. 

If the precautionary principle had been respected and honored during the past 100 years, the US would have prevented untold numbers of life-long injuries and deaths due to the public advertising of smoking, asbestos and DDT poisoning, synthetic hormone replacement, toxic pesticides such as Monsanto's glyphosate, AZT during the early part of the AIDS epidemic, and the swine flu and Gardasil vaccines that were also rushed to market without proper scientific oversight. 

The US government has an atrocious track record for introducing toxic chemicals to the American public then denying all responsibility for their adverse effects

The US government has an atrocious track record for introducing toxic chemicals to the American public then denying all responsibility for their adverse effects and the indescribable suffering that their shortsightedness has caused.

It is only well after the tragedy gains some public attention that a whistleblower or someone "in the know" comes forward to reveal the wrongdoings and corruption behind the companies developing these toxic products.

And how often do we find the government, the regulatory agencies and mainstream media being the primary source to expose these felonies? Rarely ever.

Even when protective laws are enacted, such as the Clean Air, Food, Water and Energy acts, corporate lobbyists and big money apply their trade to buy off legislators and heads of federal agencies to gradually scrub away these laws' safeguards. This is part of the corporate cancel culture to erase our protections. 

Today's largest propaganda campaign

These trends that have become ingrained into the government's politick have led to today's largest propaganda campaign in the country's history and is now orchestrated by the CDC and NIH in collusion with the pharmaceutical industrial complex, Bill Gates, many of our leading corporate-funded medical schools and institutions and across the ideological spectrum of the media.

All are heavily invested in the new generations of Covid vaccines and whatever new novel drugs in the pipeline and to invalidate the highly effective and cheap drugs, such as hydroxychloroquine and invermectin, that have been proven to treat Covid infections quickly and safety. 

This is the same artifice of corporate scoundrels and their media escorts that have relied on faulty science, fabricate their own research to serve their financial interests, and hide behind a cloak of non-transparency who Fauci now encourages us to openheartedly trust as Covid vaccines reach your local clinics and downtown pharmacies.  

Sadly their past track records of colluding and showing favoritism to private interests over public health should top the list of our worries. 

Whatever the long term consequences from this massive vaccination campaign, praise, condemnation or even criminal accusations will ultimately rest upon the shoulders of our nation's Anthony Fauci-s, Bill Gates and Moncef-s.

About the Authors

Richard Gale is the Executive Producer of the Progressive Radio Network and a former Senior Research Analyst in the biotechnology and genomic industries.

Dr. Gary Null is the host of America's longest running public radio program on alternative and nutritional health and a multi-award-winning documentary film director, including War on Health and more recently Last Call for Tomorrow.

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~A.

The Glass is Full: Jeff Miller, Furniture Maker – Lost Art Press

Just had to share this - after watching Leo rebuild Tally-Ho in and about Pt Townsend and all the woodworkering here in Mystic…..got to Love a talent like this.
https://blog.lostartpress.com/2021/01/10/the-glass-is-full-jeff-miller-furniture-maker/

The Glass is Full: Jeff Miller, Furniture Maker

Sometimes when life knocks you off your feet, you find yourself in a surprisingly happy place when you pick yourself back up. Such is the case with furniture maker Jeff Miller. Most woodworkers know Jeff's name through his many articles, books and videos for Fine Woodworking, Popular Woodworking and Wood Magazine. (He also has upcoming articles in Mortise & Tenon and Furniture & Cabinetmaking.) Jeff has taught at woodworking schools across the United States, from the Northwest Woodworking Studio and Port Townsend School of Woodworking on the west coast to the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship on the east, and others – Red Rocks in Colorado, Marc Adams in Indiana, Kelly Mehler's School of Woodworking in central Kentucky (now Pine Croft) and Highland Woodworking in Georgia. He has presented at Woodworking in America, Weekend with Wood and the Association of Woodworking and Finishing Suppliers, and at more clubs and guilds than he can easily call to mind. He has won numerous awards for his woodworking, among them the Distinguished Furniture Design Award from the Chicago Athenaeum Museum, and for his publications, including the Stanley Golden Hammer Award for his 1997 book "Chairmaking & Design." The Chicago History Museum has Jeff's "Spider Handkerchief Table" in its permanent collection. And you will soon find his work on the prestigious back cover of Fine Woodworking magazine.

Jeff calls this intersection "the centerpiece of this rocker: a particular piece of insanity" to design, "and an even worse piece of insanity actually making it."

So it may come as a surprise to learn that professional furniture making was nowhere on Jeff's radar for his first 27 years. Music was his passion, and in that department, as in academic performance and his commitment to physical fitness, he was no slouch. For college he applied to the University of Rochester, home to the Eastman School of Music; Oberlin, with its distinguished Conservatory of Music; and Yale. In the end he chose Yale because the curriculum emphasized academics as well as music studies. He minored in literature – Russian, English, French.

While at Yale, Jeff took a semester off and dipped his toes in the field of instrument making, learning from a then-recently published book, "The Amateur Wind Instrument Maker." Guided by the book's instructions, he made several baroque and renaissance wood instruments. Looking around his scantly furnished apartment, he decided he could use some tables and chairs, so from plans he made a few pieces he now calls "just awful!" Those projects gave him confidence that he could learn to use a lathe and other tools, as well as make what tools he needed. With experience, he took on better pieces. Friends saw them and asked him to make them some furniture, though he says it was still on a strictly amateur level.

After that semester off, Jeff returned to his formal studies and graduated in 1978 with a Bachelor of Arts in music. Like many musicians, he picked up gigs as a freelance musician in New York City. When he learned the Chicago Chamber Brass quintet was looking for a trumpet player, Jeff auditioned and got the job. He moved to Chicago in 1983 and launched a career as a professional musician, touring the eastern United States and recording a CD.

The recording Jeff did with Chicago Chamber Brass.

A serious runner for both fitness and fun, Jeff was training for one of the runner's ultimate benchmarks, a marathon, when he noticed his legs were swelling. A nurse friend urged him to see his doctor.

"The next day I was in the hospital," he says. "They did a kidney biopsy and pretty much within a week my life had changed." He was 27.

The original diagnosis was lupus, which his doctor thought had caused the kidney disease. Jeff's mother was visiting from New York at the time; they read that lupus was chronic and fatal. (This information came from an outdated medical textbook and was – and, happily, remains – no longer accurate.) Jeff recalls all too clearly "that moment where I could almost see my mom…mentally collapsing…and the blood drained out of my head completely, and it was just one of those moments where everything seemed to fall apart around me." The medication to treat his condition made him weak and jittery; he went from running a fast 8 miles to not being able to run across the street. It was clear he could no longer play the trumpet at his former professional level. He left the quintet.

As a therapeutic diversion Jeff took up building furniture in his nurse friend's basement. He'd work, nap, then go back to it. "It was my salvation," he says, "a creative outlet that was the salve for losing music – and I felt I was actually better at it than at music." He was still rather naïve, but he learned quickly. Just as exciting, he adds, "I was also designing, and learning more as a designer, which helped push my skills tremendously."

About a year after starting in his friend's basement, he had lined up enough paying work to cover rent and moved to a shop of his own. He split off the front to use as a showroom and kept the back of the building, along with the basement, as a shop. Coincidentally, his shop today is just a block away from his first shop in West Rogers Park, home to many new immigrants; he relishes the everyday experience of hearing seven or eight languages in a stroll through the park.

Jeff's shop today is in a former post office.

Although Jeff gave most Yale alumni events a pass, he said yes to one in 1986 at the Hilton on Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago. He's glad he went; he met a young woman there, Rebecca Wurtz, who was training to be a doctor. "We were talking, and she said, 'Oh! I have this idea for a bed!' She sketched something out and I was terribly impressed that she could sketch." They had dinner and, he says, "just hit it off." They moved in together and were married a couple of years later. Their son, Isaac, was born in 1993; he's now in graduate school, training in social work. Their daughter, Ariel, was born the following year. With a degree in creative writing from Oberlin, she is an aspiring writer and illustrator.

"City Bed," a design based on the bed Jeff made for his wife, Rebecca.

Starting out, Jeff found a lot of people ordered beds. He'd done some work for a local company that made futons, as well as easy chairs for futon-like cushions. After a year or so he moved beyond bedroom furniture to another part of the house on which people proved happy to spend money, the dining room. He started with tables. Inevitably, people asked about chairs. Through what Jeff now calls "an excess of confidence" he began them. As he came up with increasingly sophisticated chair designs and translated them into functional pieces, he gained proficiency. He also appreciated the many lessons that came with the process of making the same piece multiple times: "If you're paying attention and are critical in terms of design," he says, "you can constantly improve." Most of the work was commissioned by local customers, but once he got a website, Jeff began to get orders from around the country.

"Windsor Bed."

Buried in beds.

Jeff's first article for Fine Woodworking was on how to build a Windsor bed. He'd been reading the magazine for several years and had learned a lot, so he sent in a picture with a query. After all his academic writing at college, it didn't feel like a big deal. He got the contract – his first editor was Sandor Nagyszalanczy – and has written about 35 more in the years since then.

A few articles in, Jeff was thinking big. He submitted a proposal for a book on chairmaking and design. He'd completed a commission for 75 chairs ordered by a convent. The first 50, he says, were "this amazing logistical feat" – aside from the slog of repetition, he had to figure out a way to store the chairs once he had them assembled. He started with a stack on one side of the shop, then moved to the other. With his book proposal he included pictures of the stacks, which caught the editors' eye. Jeff got the contract. While working on the book, he also leapt into the world of teaching, an experience he found useful in conveying how best to write and illustrate the how-to. "It helped me to understand what students needed to learn." And writing, in turn, "helped me to clarify and refine what I would teach somebody," says Jeff. The writing, teaching and making came together as "an amazing trio, each feeding the other two." Ever since, he has found this combo "the most satisfying part of what I do. It's not any individual element; it's all three together."

"Timpani" table. Shop-sawn mahogany veneer and ebonized mahogany.

At this point in our conversation Jeff switched back to his musical training, which he considers invaluable for its transferability to woodworking. First, he says, "as a musician you have to understand that your body is this crucial part of your ability to play. It is your primary instrument. That helped me so much in my woodworking, to understand that the tools were just extensions of what I thought and was trying to express in the wood. Using your body correctly in music and in woodworking makes a huge difference; it informs how you plane, chisel, saw and shape pieces."

Second, Jeff goes on, "I think of my designs as musical compositions also. That makes a difference in how I think about the piece as I design it and how I build it. So many woodworkers find plans for what they want to build, and then they build. As a musician you're given a 'plan' for a piece of music [the score], and you have to understand that playing the notes as they're written on the page is just the beginning of turning that piece into a musical expression. The same is true for woodworking. You can build the piece precisely to specification on the page and completely miss what the person who designed it was trying to get across! When you build a piece of furniture it's more like playing a jazz solo than following specs. You're choosing how a curve goes, you're picking wood as part of an artist's palette. Every nuance is important."

Third, "understanding musical composition also helps you understand designs in wood. There can be little motifs that appear in both small and large scale. The flow of lines in music is a huge influence in the flow of the lines in my furniture."

"Arch Table." Cherry.

Even a cursory click through the gallery at Jeff's website illustrates these connections between music and design in wood. His pieces are both fluid and sturdily made. The back of a chair curves and swells to hold its sitter; there is rhythm, harmony and crescendo. Jeff's love of technical challenge – how to achieve a flawless intersection of curving, angled parts in a rocker that must also support its sitter safely and comfortably, how to cooper a hexadecagon for a table inspired by a timpani drum – comes through in each design. And beyond these artistic and technical feats, he has garnered a national clientele – no small feat in its own right.

"Spider Handkerchief Table."

"Toccata" rocking chair. Ash. (Yes, the arm supports run through the seat.)

But Jeff lives with another formidable challenge, and his example here is no less inspiring. "The kidney disease has been a huge factor in my life for exactly as long as I have been woodworking," he says: 37 years. "There have been periods of stasis when I've been fine; in others, a variety of crises. I lead a very healthy life. Still run and work out. I'm on my feet all day working in the shop. And yet I have been through more than most people I know."

"The specific diagnosis may have been incorrect, but there was no doubt about what was happening to my kidneys," he continues. "They were failing." In 1993, six years after beginning his life with Rebecca, Jeff had his first kidney transplant. "I remember thinking we were just on a roll in the shop. I had two employees at the time. We were working well as a team, had plenty of work." One day he got a call from the hospital at 3 p.m.: "We've got a kidney for you. We need you down here at 7 p.m." to get ready. "That completely upended my life again. Over and over, there have been things like that." The transplant was successful and allowed him to get back to work.

Meanwhile, Jeff had become friends with the father of one of Isaac's preschool classmates. Like Jeff, John was a skier; they went on ski trips together with another friend. In 2002 Jeff's transplanted kidney began to fail. "I was really pretty sick," he remembers. But he wasn't about to pass up an opportunity for great skiing, so he would "just marshal my resources and ski." One day when they were skiing hard at Vail on one of their favorite runs, John was halfway down the mountain when he tore his ACL. Jeff and his other friend got off the mountain and stabilized him, then took him to the local hospital. That night they were staying with Jeff's sister and Jeff was huddled by the fire, shivering, when John asked "what do you have to do to donate a kidney?"

"It's based on blood type," Jeff replied. John said, "If mine matches, one of my kidneys is yours." Of course, notes Jeff, "he was high on painkillers and beer when he said that." Jeff didn't believe his friend would feel the same the next day. But back in Chicago, John insisted. Jeff's cousin also offered to donate a kidney, but hers would not have been as good a match.

"It's this unbelievable thing that he pushed and went forward with it," Jeff marvels. "How do accept a gift like that from a friend?" John's operation started in the morning, then Jeff was brought in for surgery that took seven hours. "I'm back in my room…and they force you to get up and walk. John walked in that night. He was a wreck. He said 'I want it back!'" Of course he was kidding; for him, the act of giving the kidney was what mattered. "He described it as the most important thing he'd done in his life. It made it so easy to accept that gift and be grateful for it." Five weeks later John was riding his mountain bike. They skied together the following March. But transplanted kidneys don't last forever; John's failed around 2011.

"Stained Glass" chairs. The pattern inspiration came from a stained glass window of modernist design. The backs are solid stacked laminations, scooped out, with routed inlay. Cherry, walnut and ebony.

Now Jeff moved to a new protocol, peritoneal dialysis, which involved "a suitcase-size machine you carry around, and boxes and boxes of fluid." Imagine driving to a woodworking school and teaching a week-long class with that gear.

And there's more. "They don't tell you that your native kidneys, if they shrivel up, can become cancerous. One of the problems with peritoneal dialysis is that you have a tube in your abdomen." (Apologies to you squeamish types.) The tube irritated his intestines, which led to infections. Sometimes he had to stay in the hospital for 10 days. During one of these stints his doctors ordered an MRI that found kidney cancer. "That," says Jeff, "was probably the toughest period for me." They removed the cancerous kidney, only to find, the following year, that the other kidney had also developed cancer.

At this point some might plunge into despair. Not Jeff. Instead, he felt gratitude. "I just feel like I've been so fortunate and appreciate so many aspects of what I do, despite the fact that there have been periods of real misery. It's important to appreciate everything you've got. Whatever you get is a gift. So many people wander through life without appreciating that."

People who find themselves faced with such challenges are "more alive," Jeff thinks. "There are these moments where…things are miserable, and then all of a sudden they're not so miserable and everything around you is more wondrous. I can remember moments where all of a sudden I'm walking and [realize] 'this feels great!' I can even remember where I was when that sort of thing happened."

These days, Jeff goes to a local dialysis clinic for treatments three times a week, a process that lasts 4-1/2 hours, plus travel time. (Read that again.) He schedules his appointments in the late afternoons to allow him maximum time in the shop.

"988" chair. Jeff designed and made this piece for a show in Chicago, "Beyond Function: The Art of Furniture." An experiment in prototyping shaped chair seats, it incorporates 988 stainless steel screws. By adjusting the screws, the user can adjust the fit and feel of the seat.

If you follow Jeff on Instagram you may be as taken as I am by two items that show up occasionally in his feed: Lola the shop dog and his fluting engine. Lola, a blue heeler, belongs to Juan, Jeff's erstwhile assistant. (Jameel Abraham calls Lola "one of the finest people" he has ever met.) Sadly, Lola and Juan have been out of the shop since June, thanks to the pandemic and then Juan's decision to attend grad school in furniture at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Jeff and Lola.

Jameel Abraham's Instagram post from January 27, 2020. "This is Lola, perhaps the most well-mannered, sweet, affectionate animal I've ever met. She did exactly as I asked, and happily posed for several photos. She had the most beautiful black and white mottled coat. Her eyes and general manner [were] so full of soul."

The fluting engine is a device Jeff made based on David Pye's circa-1950 invention. Jeff was intrigued by the tool, which makes evenly spaced flutes on curved surfaces, inside or out. A bit of sleuthing turned nothing up since the description in "David Pye: Woodcarver and Turner." Around 2018, Jeff studied the description in the book with a view to making a fluting engine of his own. He puzzled over it for a few months and built one as a side project. The biggest problem he encountered was figuring out the geometry of the cutters, which required a few variations in the grinding, forging and heat treatment to get things right. In action, the fluting engine makes a mesmerizing sound – for a user or spectator, it's easy to love. On the other hand, it's "incredibly infuriating" as it requires adjustments for every variation. But such frustration goes with any relationship. Bottom line: Jeff is hooked by the device, the process of using it and the texture it brings to his work.

Mahogany bowl.

Butternut bowl.

As someone at heightened risk of infection, Jeff has been staying close to home since last March. He's working on a couple of chair designs and a variety of commission work, along with projects of his own. As with many of us, he says "all sorts of design ideas are always percolating."

In fact, he says, "my head is exploding with ideas. Dialysis takes a huge amount of time and energy. I wish I had more energy." But Jeff's glass is full — with "appreciation for being alive, for experiencing things. The sense of gratitude for being able to do what I do is amazing."

Jeff at around the age of three.

Thanks to Father John Abraham for suggesting that I write about Jeff.

– Nancy Hiller, author of "Making Things Work" and "Kitchen Think."

You can read more of Nancy Hiller's profiles, which we call "Little Acorns," via this link.