CORONA Main Coronavirus thread

[ChicagoMan74]

WHO's Tedros "very Disappointed" China Has Not Authorized Entry of Coronavirus Experts | Newsmax.com

The head of the World Health Organization is "very disappointed" that China has still not authorized the entry of a team of international experts to examine the origins of the coronavirus.

"Today, we learned that Chinese officials have not yet finalized the necessary permissions for the team's arrival in China," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a news conference in Geneva.


"I have been in contact with senior Chinese officials and I have once again made it clear the mission is a priority for the WHO," he told reporters.

 

[marsh]

Freshman GOP Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene Gets Into Shouting Match On House Floor For Removing Her Mask * 100PercentFedUp.com * by Patty McMurray

Keep an eye on Freshman Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). She was making waves before she was elected, and not […]

100percentfedup.com

Freshman GOP Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene Gets Into Shouting Match On House Floor For Removing Her Mask

By Patty McMurray | Jan 4, 2021

Keep an eye on Freshman Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). She was making waves before she was elected, and not that she’s officially a member of Congress, Rep. Greene isn’t taking her foot off the gas. Before she won the election, she put the Socialist “Squad” on notice, and on her first day in office, Greene, who recently announced that she would object to the electoral votes for Joe Biden when it goes to Congress for a vote on January 6, was caught in a shouting match on the House floor.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene wears a “Trump Won” mask on the House floor.

Greene drew attention from fellow Democrats lawmakers who freaked out when she and another GOP member were told by House floor staff that they had to put their masks back on, after briefly removing them to take selfies.

NBC reporter Jake Sherman tweeted about the “screaming match” that broke out on the House floor between Democratic and Republican staff members.


Curiously, while Democrats were shouting at perfectly healthy Republican lawmakers for not wearing a mask, Hypocrite Speaker Pelosi agreed to allow Democrat Rep Gwen Moore (WI), who tested positive for the Chinese virus on Dec. 28th, to attend a vote on the House floor.

Rep. Greene clapped back on Twitter:



Here’s Greene leaving the House floor, letting everyone know she voted “no” on Pelosi’s ridiculous rule to get rid of gender in Congress.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1346201916372623361

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1346201916372623361
.08 min

 

[marsh]

'YOU NAZI BI**H!'; Lunatic On Train Goes Ballistic After Passengers Drink Coffee Without Masks; Ashley St. Clair Captures It All On Video

On her way to Washington DC for the January 6th Trump march, conservative commentator Ashley St. Clair had a wild encounter with […] More

trendingpolitics.com

'YOU NAZI BI**H!'; Lunatic On Train Goes Ballistic After Passengers Drink Coffee Without Masks; Ashley St. Clair Captures It All On Video



Follow Clayton Keirns
Posted January 5, 2021 in Politics

On her way to Washington DC for the January 6th Trump march, conservative commentator Ashley St. Clair had a wild encounter with a liberal lunatic, and you won't be able to stop watching the events that unfold.
The unhinged liberal woman began losing her mind at the sight of two men simply drinking coffee on the train without masks on. It's unclear how she expected them to drink the coffee while wearing masks, but I digress.

St. Clair caught that initial encounter on video, but this was just the beginning of the chaos that would later ensue:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1346502162487107590

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1346502162487107590
1:20 min

As you can see, the men were just enjoying their cup of Joe as the unhinged woman began to unravel.
Then, she later got right up into St. Clairs face (not socially distant), and began to scream obscenities at her.

"Oh Ashley!", she began in a strange accent.

"Is that you? You fu**ing doxxing b**ch. You nazi bi*ch. You doxxed me," she continued.

"I did not dox you," St. Clair responded. (which was true, Ashley only posted a simple video of the woman, no names were revealed)

"Yes you did sweetheart," continued the lunatic.

"No I didn't, I posted a video of you, on a public train," St. Clair responded.

Watch the entire back and forth here:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1346535433119924229

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1346535433119924229
1:20 min

As you can see in the video, a man tries to help calm down the unhinged woman. She responds by falsely claiming that he was "getting ready to hit her".

She clearly has some serious psychological problems.

Mike Cernovich summed it up perfectly on Twitter:

"Everyone needs to watch this. Especially the middle. “He’s about to punch me.” They will LIE. Falsely accuse you. Always be recording and always travel with a buddy," he tweeted.



It turns out the lady we've been referring to as "Crazy Mask Lady" is actually a Huffington Post contributor...figures!

Here's what Jack Posobiec tweeted:


She later had an unhinged meltdown on Twitter. Screenshot posted below in case she deletes it:

Stay tuned, because there will no doubt be some more hilarious video meltdowns from this woman in the coming hours.

 

[marsh]

LA Tells Ambulances to Stop Taking Patients ‘With Little Chance of Survival’ to Hospital » The National Pulse+

The Los Angeles County Emergency Medical Services Agency instructed ambulance crews not to transport patients that cannot be revived in the field. Patients “whose hearts have stopped despite efforts of resuscitation should no longer be transported to hospitals,” a summary of the county’s...

thenationalpulse.com

LA Tells Ambulances To Stop Taking Patients ‘With Little Chance Of Survival’ To Hospital

• JANUARY 5, 2021
• NATALIE WINTERS

The Los Angeles County Emergency Medical Services Agency instructed ambulance crews not to transport patients that cannot be revived in the field.

Patients “whose hearts have stopped despite efforts of resuscitation should no longer be transported to hospitals,” a summary of the county’s Emergency Medical Services (EMS) January 4th guidelines read.

“Effective immediately, due to the severe impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on EMS and 9-1-1 Receiving Hospitals, adult patients (18 years of age or older) in blunt traumatic and nontraumatic out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) shall not be transported [if]return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC) is not achieved in the field,” Los Angeles County EMS instructed.

If a patient lacks signs of breathing or a pulse, EMS will continue to perform resuscitation for 20 minutes. If a patient is stabilized after the resuscitation attempts, they would ultimately be taken to a hospital; however, if the patient is declared “dead at the scene or no pulse can be restored,” paramedics would not transport the body to the hospital.

In short, Los Angeles ambulance crews shouldn’t transport patients with “little chance of survival.”

The county has also been forced to ration its oxygen as outlined in the EMS memo:

“Given the acute need to conserve oxygen, effective immediately, EMS should only administer supplemental oxygen to patients with oxygen saturation below 90%.”

 

[marsh]

MPs demand China comes clean over 'credible evidence' Covid leaked from lab

MPS have demanded China come clean after a US official stunningly claimed the “most credible” origin of Covid-19 was a lab leak in Wuhan. Senior Tory MPs Tom Tugendhat and Tobias Ellwoo…

www.thesun.co.uk

FESS UP, NOW China must come clean over Covid ‘leak’, MPs warn after US official claims ‘credible evidence’ it came from Wuhan lab

EXCLUSIVE

• Henry Holloway

• 4 Jan 2021, 16:57
• Updated: 4 Jan 2021, 17:17

MPS have demanded China come clean after a US official stunningly claimed the "most credible" origin of Covid-19 was a lab leak in Wuhan.

Senior Tory MPs Tom Tugendhat and Tobias Ellwood have called on the Government to probe allegations made by Donald Trump's security advisor Matthew Pottinger.




The Wuhan Institute of Virology is the most advanced lab of its kind in ChinaCredit: AFP - Getty



The Wuhan Institute of Virology is known to have been studying bat coronavirusesCredit: AFP or licensors
China has long denied that the virus - which most scientists agree occurred naturally - may have escaped from its highest security lab, the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The allegations come almost exactly a year since the virus first emerged in Wuhan just a stone's throw from the lab - infecting more than 85million people worldwide and killing almost 2million.

Mr Tugendhat, chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, told The Sun Online the allegations are "extremely serious".

While Mr Ellwood, chair of the Defence Select Committee, said Britain needs to "demand answers" from the Communist Party.

The US are claimed to have a whistleblower former scientist from the Wuhan Institute who is working with their intelligence services.

World Health Organisation (WHO) scientists are due to arrive in China this month to begin a formal probe into the coronavirus's origin.

However, the eight-page mission statement for the WHO study makes no reference to investigating the possibility the virus emerged from a lab.

Questions have loomed over the Wuhan Institute since the start of the pandemic, and scientists there have repeatedly denied any allegations of a leak.

The lab was being used to create hybrid coronaviruses for research purposes, but there is no suggestion Covid-19 is manmade.

China has today denied the allegation again, and instead blamed global outbreaks - shifting away the focus from Wuhan.

This is a question about China's ability to act responsibly in a globalised world
Tom Tugendhat MP

"China’s continued silencing of any local voices who dare to speak out and the ongoing removal of all online commentary suggest the authorities have something to hide," Mr Ellwood told The Sun Online.
"Britain should join Australia in formally demanding answers for until there is clarity."

Mr Tugendhat told The Sun Online: "How China has dealt with the pandemic internationally is extremely concerning, they have been very slow at sharing information - whether about the outbreak or its origins.

"They locked up those who were whistleblowing, and now it seems there is a danger they covered up a leak."

7
US national security advisor Matt Pottinger made the revelations about the possible lab leakCredit: Getty Images - Getty

WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE WUHAN INSTITUTE?
THE WUHAN Institute of Virology is the highest security level of its kind in all of China - and can be found right at the heart of the origins of the global pandemic.

Various theories have been swirling about the lab, which is headed up by Chinese scientist Dr Shi Zhengli, known as “Bat Woman”.

Most scientists do not believe the virus leaked from the lab, and the lab itself has categorically denied the claims.

The lab specialised in bat-borne viruses and had been carrying out experiences on them since 2015.
Airlocks, full body suits, and chemical showers are required before entering and leaving the lab - the first in China to be accredited with biosafety level 4 (BSL-4).

BSL-4 labs are the only places in the world where scientists can study diseases that have no cure.
Scientists from the lab even tested mysterious virus which killed three miners 1,000 miles away in Yunnan province back in 2012.

It has been suggested this fatal mystery bug may have been the true origin of Covid-19.
Experts at the lab also engineered a new type of hybrid 'super-virus' that can infect humans in 2015, according to medical journal Nature Medicine

Despite fears surrounding the research, the study was designed to show the risk of viruses carried by bats which could be transmitted to humans.

There is no suggestion the facility's 2015 work is linked to the pandemic.

The lab was also recruiting new scientists to probe coronaviruses in bats just seven days before the outbreak.

China has began tightening security around its biolabs with President Xi Jinping saying it was a “national security” issue to improve scientific safety at a meeting last February.

Trump aide Pottinger told a group of international politicians that leaders in China are "admitting" there is a chance the theory suggesting Covid-19 started in a "wet market" is false.

He told them intelligence points to the likelihood of the virus leaking from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, reported The Mail on Sunday.

"There is a growing body of evidence that the lab is likely the most credible source of the virus," Pottinger said.

He described the incident as a possible: "Leak or accident."

"Even establishment figures in Beijing have openly dismissed the wet market story," he added.


Wuhan was ground zero for the virus which has killed millionsCredit: EPA

Mr Tugendhat told The Sun Online: "This is extremely serious, Matt Pottinger is one of the world's experts on China - he not only knows the country but he knows the intelligence exceptionally well.

"He will be able to evaluate the situation much better than almost anyone. And I think his comments are extremely important.

"This is exactly the sort of thing the British government should be looking at."

He added: "This is a question about China's ability to act responsibly in a globalised world.

"If China can't be honest about an accidental breach of lab security that has put billions at risk and millions in hospital, it makes it very difficult to be able to trust China in many other areas."

Mr Ellwood told The Sun Online: "Until there is a thorough, transparent, internationally investigation into the pandemic’ origins the world will never know for sure how this outbreak started, where was ground zero and who was patient zero."



China first reported the new virus on December, 31, 2019Credit: Reuters
China has today hit back at claims the virus may have leaked from the Wuhan lab, and instead Foreign Minister Wang Yi blamed "separate outbreaks in multiple places in the world".

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying's also went on the attack when quizzed about the claims from Pottinger.

She instead called on WHO to "investigate the virus in the US" and linked it to a previous flu outbreak, and Fort Detrick military lab in Maryland.

Hua then cited US disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci and said "almost all the scientists and experts in the world" deny claims the virus came from the Wuhan lab.

The tit-for-tat response came as China has been often accused of taking a more aggressive diplomatic stance amid the pandemic, being branded as carrying out "wolf warrior diplomacy".



The Wuhan Institute of Virology categorically denies there was a leakCredit: AFP - Getty
Scientists are satisfied that Covid-19 is believed to have originated naturally - crossing from bats, to another animal, and then to humans.

Most fingers still point to Chinese wet markets as a possible breeding ground for such viruses.
However, it has been suggested a scientist or lab worker may have accidentally allowed the virus to escape, such as either being infected themselves or improperly disposing of waste.

No concrete evidence of such a claim has been presented as investigations continue.

Pictures previously revealed by The Sun Online showed shoddy conditions inside the lab - despite it being the first in China to be accredited with the highest possible biosafety level.

Researchers at the lab also discovered the new infection is 96 per cent similar to the virus they had discovered in bats held in the lab.


7
Chinese leader Xi Jinping has defended his nation's handling of the pandemicCredit: Alamy Live News

CHINA CORONAVIRUS TIMELINE

CORONAVIRUS originated in Chinese city of Wuhan before spreading around the world as a pandemic.

• December 31, 2019 - China alerts the World Health Organisation (WHO) to an unknown virus in Wuhan
• January 7, 2020 - WHO officials identify the new virus as its linked to a seafood market
• January 11, 2020 - China announces its first death from the virus
• January 13, 2020 - The first case is reported outside China with a case in Thailand
• January 23, 2020 - Wuhan is placed under quarantine
• February 9, 2020 - Death toll in China surpasses Sars outbreak at 811
• February 11, 2020 - Coronavirus is dubbed Covid-19 by WHO
• February 18, 2020 - China's daily infection figures drops below 2,000 for first time
• March 11, 2020 - WHO declares outbreak a global pandemic
• March 18, 2020 - No new cases reports in China for first time since start of outbreak
• March 25, 2020 - China begins to relax quarantine restrictions on Wuhan and Hubei province
• March 31, 2020- US death toll surpasses China
• April 1, 2020 - China admits to unreported asymptomatic cases

Chinese state media has since blamed Britain over the new Covid variant, B117, which has led to the UK being pushed to the brink of a new lockdown.

Beijing has become increasingly bullish over allegations it bungled its coronavirus response, failed to share information, and actively attempted to cover up the outbreak.

Questionable studies emerging in China have tried to bat away blame, claiming the coronavirus may have originated in India, Bangladesh or even Italy.

Damning leaked documents unveiled this week showed that China appears to have lied about the virus to "protect" its image.

China now claims to have mostly returned to normal since the pandemic, with scenes of packed nightclubs, theme parks and sports games now common again.

Pictures showed on New Year's Eve that even in Wuhan life appears to be almost like it was before the pandemic.

Much of the world however continues to suffer, with Britain becoming a new focus point amid the emerging new mutant virus.

More than 2.6million people have been infected in the UK, with 75,023 deaths, while China has only admitted to 87,150 cases and 4,634 deaths.

Play Video on website 1:35 min

Huge crowds gather in the street in Wuhan for New Year’s Eve celebrations

 

[marsh]

FDA rejects proposals to inoculate more people by halving vaccine dose

The Food and Drug Administration rejected proposals floated by other federal health officials for cutting COVID-19 vaccine doses in half to cover twice as many people will provide.

www.washingtonexaminer.com

FDA rejects proposals to inoculate more people by halving vaccine dose

by Cassidy Morrison, Healthcare Reporter |
| January 04, 2021 05:51 PM
| Updated Jan 04, 2021, 08:55 PM

The Food and Drug Administration rejected proposals floated by other federal health officials for cutting COVID-19 vaccine doses in half to cover twice as many people will provide.

“We know that some of these discussions about changing the dosing schedule … are based on a belief that changing the dose or dosing schedule can help get more vaccine to the public faster,” FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn said in a statement Monday evening. “However, making such changes that are not supported by adequate scientific evidence may ultimately be counterproductive to public health.”

Federal health officials leading the vaccine rollout have been debating the idea of giving out as many first doses of two-dose vaccines as possible rather than waiting to give patients both doses. Some say the proposal could accelerate the immunization process and end the pandemic sooner, but the FDA dismissed those arguments.

“Until vaccine manufacturers have data and science supporting a change, we continue to strongly recommend that health care providers follow the FDA-authorized dosing schedule for each COVID-19 vaccine,” Hahn said in the statement, which was issued jointly with Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research Director Peter Marks.

The Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines have been shown to be most effective when the booster is administered 28 days and 21 days after the first, respectively. Evidence that single doses afford people the same protection, the FDA said, “is commonly being misinterpreted.” Those who received only one dose of either vaccine in clinical trials were surveilled for only a short period of time compared with those who received both shots.

Officials leading the vaccine development initiative Operation Warp Speed have been criticized for the slower-than-desired vaccine rollout, a massive undertaking that aims to innoculate roughly 100 million people by March.

Moncef Slaoui, chief of Operation Warp Speed, said on Sunday that the Trump administration is asking vaccine maker Moderna about halving the doses as a means of shoring up limited supplies and giving twice as many people access to the shots as quickly as possible.

“We know that, for the Moderna vaccine, giving half of the dose to people between the ages of 18 and 55, two doses [at] half the dose … we know it induces identical immune response” to the currently authorized two-dose regimen, Slaoui said.

The vaccine trials did not include tests for efficacy of single doses. Moderna's Phase 3 clinical trial data showed that a single dose of the vaccine was slightly over 80% effective at generating a robust immune response, compared with a 94% efficacy rate with a two-dose regimen. Still, the trial results show that the short period in which researchers monitored single-dose recipients limited their ability to determine that one shot was as effective as two.

The federal government struck a deal with Moderna to procure 200 million doses of the vaccine, enough to immunize 100 million people. But the vaccine rollout process has gone slower than desired, with about 4.6 million people having been given shots since Dec. 14, far short of the goal public health officials set last month to give at least 20 million people their first shots before the end of the yea

A Moderna spokesperson told the Washington Examiner earlier on Monday that clinical trials were designed to record efficacy after two doses, not one, adding that they could not comment on potential regulatory discussions with the FDA.

Pfizer, meanwhile, said last week the emergency use authorization granted by the Food and Drug Administration last month “was designed to evaluate the vaccine's safety and efficacy following a 2-dose schedule. … There are no data to demonstrate that protection after the first dose is sustained after 21 days.” Indeed, the New England Journal of Medicine reported on Dec. 30 that "some degree of prevention may be afforded after the first dose" but additional study is needed.

Some governments have already employed the single-dose strategy, with the goal of administering shots to as many people as possible. The United Kingdom announced last week that it would extend the interval between doses of the Pfizer or AstraZeneca vaccine up to 12 weeks in order to provide at least partial protection to a wider swath of the population.

The Quebec Health Department will also make all of the doses available at once rather than reserve half to provide boosters to those who received the first shot.

Yet, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. government’s top infectious disease expert, warned against Britain’s move on Sunday, saying the government shouldn’t deviate from the authorized dosing regimen.

“If we do it efficiently the way we've planned, it's much better than trying to stretch it out and not having a scientific basis of knowing what happens if you wait … 50 or 70 [days],” Fauci said. “We don't know whether or not that's going to be good enough. We know what the science tells us. … Let's do it the way the clinical trials have instructed us to do it.”

Surgeon General Jerome Adams, meanwhile, referred back to Fauci when asked about the merit of spacing out doses, saying Monday that “we need to let science lead the way.”

“We’re going to make sure we get as much vaccine to as many people as possible and getting it into arms,” he said. “Tony Fauci has said clearly that he does not think it’s appropriate for us to eliminate the second dose or push it back at this point, but we are looking again at halving the dose.”

Nongovernment public health experts are also making a case for delaying the second doses of each vaccine. Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a Pfizer board member who served as FDA Commissioner from 2017 until April 2019, said Monday that cutting the doses of Moderna's vaccine in half would create "significantly more doses than just the 200 million that we talk about that's going to be available the first half of the year."

 

[marsh]

Medical experts say anyone receiving COVID-19 vaccine should avoid alcohol around the time of injection

Russian scientists made a similar claim in December

www.theblaze.com

Medical experts say anyone receiving COVID-19 vaccine should avoid alcohol around the time of injection
Russian scientists made a similar claim in December
Photo by Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images

SARAH TAYLOR

Medical experts warn that any persons intending to receive the COVID-19 vaccination should avoid drinking alcohol around the time of the shot as alcohol can reduce the body's immune response to the vaccine.

What are the details?
According to a Monday report from the Daily Mail, emergency medicine specialist Dr. Ronx Ikhaira, who conducted a recent experiment, determined that after three glasses of an alcoholic beverage, lymphocyte cells in researchers' bodies decreased by as much as 50%.

"Alcohol changes makeup of the trillions of microorganisms that live in the gut which play an important role in preventing the invasion of bacteria and viruses," the outlet reported, noting that it "leads to the damage of immune cells in the blood, known as white blood cells, including lymphocytes, which send out antibodies to attack viruses."

Professor Sheena Cruickshank, an immunologist at the University of Manchester, said that the lymphocyte reduction "could lower the effectiveness of the body's immune response," the Daily Mail pointed out.

Because of the drop in lymphocytes, Cruickshank has advised people who intend to receive the immunization to avoid alcohol in the immediate timeframe leading up to — and following — the shot.

"You need to have your immune system working tiptop to have a good response to the vaccine, so if you're drinking the night before, or shortly afterwards, that's not going to help," Cruickshank said.

The outlet added, "Lymphocytes are of 'fundamental importance' in the immune system because they determine immune response to infectious microorganisms and other foreign substances, such as the SARS-CoV-2 virus, according to a team of scientists in Wuhan, China."

What else?
In December, Russian scientists urged citizens seeking a COVID-19 vaccine to avoid alcohol for at least two months.

Russia began issuing its own two-dose coronavirus vaccine, Sputnik V — which the country has claimed is at least 95% effective — in December, and delivered the injection with a warning to those citizens who like to imbibe: No alcohol for two months during the immunization process.

Citizens were also urged not to take any immunosuppressant drugs during the course of treatment.
Anna Popova, head of the nation's consumer safety watchdog organization, said that those receiving the vaccine should avoid alcohol for at least two weeks before the first shot and then for an additional 42 days following the second shot, which is administered 21 days after the first shot.

"It's a strain on the body," Popova said. "If we want to stay healthy and have a strong immune response, don't drink alcohol."

 

[marsh]

'We are way behind': FDA commissioner says US has backlog of 35M vaccines

Former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb warned that the United States is behind on its rollout of the coronavirus vaccine, and each passing day makes the delay worse.

www.washingtonexaminer.com

'We are way behind': FDA commissioner says US has backlog of 35M vaccines
by Mica Soellner, Breaking News Reporter |

| January 04, 2021 02:54 PM

Former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb warned that the United States is behind on its rollout of the coronavirus vaccine, and each passing day makes the delay worse.

Gottlieb said Monday on CNBC that he expects the backlog to grow more from the 35 million vaccines already in the stockpile at the moment.

"There's 35 million vaccines sitting on a shelf right now," Gottlieb said. "We know 50 million vaccines are going to become available in the month of January, so we're stockpiling as many as maybe two vaccines a day on top of the 35 million, and you know, the federal government is applauding themselves because they managed to vaccinate half a million people a day in the last three days. You're still building up an inventory each day, and a substantial inventory, so we are way behind."

Vaccine rollout began last month, first going to healthcare workers and then beginning its rollout to vulnerable, elderly populations.

Since Dec. 13, more than 4.5 million people across the country have received a COVID-19 vaccine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Over 15 million doses have been administered.

The U.S. has had over 20 million cases of COVID-19 and over 350,000 deaths attributed to the virus. With many having traveled for the holidays, health experts warn that cases may increase in the coming weeks.

 

[marsh]

Highly contagious UK variant of COVID-19 found in NY for first time

The highly contagious UK variant of the coronavirus has been detected in two New York City residents — one of whom recently traveled to the United Kingdom, Mayor Bill de Blasio revealed W…

nypost.com

Highly contagious UK variant of COVID-19 found in NY for first time

By Bernadette Hogan, Nolan Hicks and Aaron Feis
January 4, 2021 | 4:22pm | Updated

He was symptomatic,

Cuomo announces highly contagious UK variant of COVID-19 found in NY

The highly-contagious UK variant of the coronavirus has been detected in Saratoga Springs, marking the first known case in New York State, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Monday.

A 60-year-old man recently tested positive for the mutated COVID-19 strain, and is recovering, Cuomo said during an afternoon conference call.

“He appears to be on the mend,” said Cuomo.

It’s believed that the patient, who was not identified by name, contracted the disease at a jewelry store in Saratoga Springs.

Three other people in the store have also fallen ill, though it is not yet clear if they have the UK variant, Cuomo said.

He had not traveled recently, suggesting that he contracted the strain from another yet-unidentified person within the community, Cuomo said.

The governor added that approximately 5,000 tests for the variant have been conducted — including downstate — with no prior positive results.

The UK strain has previously been detected stateside in Colorado and California.

 

[marsh]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0LDFysxHPA
13:54 min
Violence, Firearms, and the COVID-19 Pandemic in California
•Streamed live 4 hours ago


JAMA Network
Nicole Kravitz-Wirtz, PhD, MPH, joins JAMA Network Open Digital Media Editor, Seth Trueger, MD, MPH, to discuss a survey study describing individuals’ concerns regarding violence in the context of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, experiences of pandemic-related unfair treatment, prevalence of and reasons for firearm acquisition, and changes in firearm storage practices due to the pandemic. Read the article here: https://ja.ma/2X7lC1x.

 

[marsh]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drGP_8m3J1Q
4:40 min
The Left's Scary News COVID Proposal with Daniel Horowitz
•Jan 5, 2021


One America News Network

 

[PanBear]

(fair use)
UC San Diego introduces vending machines for COVID-19 tests
The machines are streamlining on-campus testing.

ByJulia Jacobo
January 5, 2021, 6:05 PM
5 min read

Lengthy waits for COVID-19 tests are a thing of the past at the University of California, San Diego now that the school is distributing test kits -- for free -- from on-campus vending machines.

Schools officials attributed the success in mitigating the spread of the virus over the fall quarter to normalizing proven methods, such as enforcing mask-wearing, social distancing and frequent testing, Pradeep Khosla, UCSD's chancellor, told ABC News. Only 581 students, and just 183 among the approximately 10,000 who live on campus, have tested positive since March 1.

But as the university prepared for a nationwide surge over the holidays, school officials said they wanted to come up with an idea to make testing more widely available, Khosla said.

"The way to think about this is, we are removing the friction associated with testing," Khosla added.

While an appointment with a nurse previously was required to get tested, the new program was in place by Saturday -- right when students returned from the holiday break. Dr. Angela Scioscia, head of student health and well-being at UCSD, told ABC News that the take-home kits are then returned to a dropbox, and results are uploaded to a student's portal, sometimes that same day.

"They can pick up the kit at their convenience -- they can drop it off," Scioscia said. It's "much more user-friendly."

A few hundred kits were distributed on Saturday, more than 1,000 were on Sunday and more than 2,000 were on Monday, Scioscia said.

Freshman Andy Goodman told ABC San Diego station KGTV that while he was "uncomfortable" with the new process at first, "after doing it a bunch of times, I got used to it."

Sophomore Citlaly Magana told KGTV her last test was "like my 20th time since I've been here. I'm not lying. We get tested every week."

Tests are required for students as they return to campus for the spring semester -- the first within 24 hours of arrival, then five and 10 days later, Scioscia explained. After the 10-day tests, students who live on campus are required to get tested weekly or face disciplinary action.

The school has incentivized students to remain diligent about testing -- if someone gets tested 10 straight weeks, they receive a $50 gift card to the basic needs hub on campus, Khosla said.

UC San Diego introduces vending machines for COVID-19 tests

Lengthy waits for COVID-19 tests are a thing of the past for students at UC San Diego -- test kits are now available through on-campus vending machines.

abcnews.go.com

UCSD installs new COVID-19 test kit vending machines
2:01 - Jan 3, 2021

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geUy_5D2ZCY

 

[PanBear]

ABC News

Wuhan, China, thrives 1 year after pandemic began

ABC News’ Ian Pannell reports on how the original epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic in China has returned to normal one year later.

5:06 - Jan 5, 2021

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tj6ZnOYfhCM

 

[marsh]

UK coronavirus variant most likely to spread among this age group, study suggests

A new study suggests who may be most at risk for contracting B.1.1.7: Those under 20 years of age.

www.foxnews.com

UK coronavirus variant most likely to spread among this age group, study suggests

A new coronavirus variant discovered in the UK is now making its rounds in the US

By Madeline Farber | Fox News


Video
New coronavirus strain is ‘probably already widespread’ in the US: Dr. Nesheiwat

Dr. Janette Nesheiwat discusses the new variant of coronavirus on ‘America’s News HQ.’
A new coronavirus variant discovered in the United Kingdom is now making its rounds in the U.S., with the B.1.1.7 variant most recently identified in New York in a man who has no recent travel history.

The variant is said to be more transmissible than COVID-19 — though as of now, it’s not thought to be more virulent or resistant to vaccines and treatment. That said, a new study suggests who may be most at risk for contracting B.1.1.7: Those under 20 years of age.

The study, which was conducted by researchers at Imperial College London and others and has not yet been peer-reviewed, found that those under 20 years of age are more likely to make up a higher percentage of B.1.1.7 cases — or what is identified in the study as the "Variant of Concern" or VOC.

Available data indicates "a shift in the age composition of reported cases, with a larger share of under 20-year-olds among reported VOC than non-VOC cases," per the study.

However, the researchers said that it’s too soon to determine the "mechanism behind this change," noting that it could have been influenced, in part, by "the variants spread coinciding with a period where lockdown was in force but schools were open."

"Further research is ongoing on the specific nature of any changes in how the virus affects this age group," noted a press release on the findings.

Unlike COVID-19, the B.1.1.7 may be more likely to infect children, suggests the study, which echoes concerns expressed by Professor Neil Ferguson, a scientist at Imperial College London and a study author, in December.

At the time, Ferguson warned that early analysis "hints that it has a higher propensity to infect children."

"If it were true, then this might explain a significant proportion, maybe even the majority, of the transmission increase seen," he added, per the BBC.

The Imperial College London study also estimated the reproduction number (R0) of the new variant to be between 1.4 and 1.8.

"These analyses, which have informed UK government planning in recent weeks, show that the new variant of concern, B.1.1.7, has substantially higher transmissibility than previous SARS-CoV-2 viruses circulating in the U.K.," said Ferguson in a statement. "This will make control more difficult and further accentuates the urgency of rolling out vaccination as quickly as possible."

"All viruses evolve, and very rarely a virus will change in a way that requires us to re-evaluate public health policy," added Dr. Erik Volz, a scientist at Imperial College London and one of the study authors, in a statement. "We find overwhelming evidence of a change in transmissibility of the B.1.1.7 variant that should be taken into account when planning our COVID-19 response in the new year."

 

[jward]

Eric Topol
@EricTopol
11m

Surprised this has not received more attention. Now approved in UK. 24% reduction of mortality on top of dexamethasone Timing is critical—needs to be early; not too early https://washingtonpost.com/health/2021/01/08/covid-arthritis-drugs-treatment/
by
@Carolynyjohnson

@bbguari
https://nytimes.com/2021/01/08/health/covid-arthritis-drugs-reduced-deaths.html?searchResultPosition=2 by
@KatherineJWu

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1347945408765464578

View: https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1347945408765464578?s=20

 

[jward]

My lawd, we are all the way through the looking glass now, aren't we-

Vivian Bercovici
@VivianBercovici
21m

WOO HOO!!! On news in Israel now....after second dose of vaccine we get a "green passport" that confirms we're vaccinated and will allow us to participate full in society. I'm beyond giddy......ten more days for me!!!!

 

[marsh]

New California COVID Orders: Residents Can Travel No More Than 120 Miles From Their Homes

California Crazy

redstate.com

New California COVID Orders: Residents Can Travel No More Than 120 Miles From Their Homes

By Kira Davis | Jan 08, 2021 3:45 PM ET

(CalTrans)

The term ‘California Dream’ used to be commonplace. It used to mean something. Now that term has faded into a tragic joke. From now on the term to describe the Golden State is ‘California Crazy.’

Despite insanely restrictive lockdowns for 10 months, travel restrictions, quarantine requirements, business closures, mask mandates and school closures, California has some of the worst COVID numbers in the nation. The state currently has a total of just over 3,800 COVID fatalities. Of course, in a state of 40 million that is .0095% of the population, but we’re really not allowed to put perspective on COVID-19 numbers these days. That little tidbit was for the curious.

In a state like this one, there is no such thing as policy failure. If a policy isn’t working, we just get more of it.

On Wednesday, the California Department of Public Health announced new “guidance” for people in California who have the nerve to want to wander around their free country. CDPH wants Californians to stay within 120 miles of their residences except for “essential” travel. They also demand those gross “non-essential” travelers don’t come at all, but if they must, then they should quarantine for 10 days. Everyone traveling for anything should also quarantine for 10 days upon return to California.

From the CDPH website:

Amid the current COVID-19 surge, it is imperative that California take steps necessary to curb the spread of COVID-19 and contain new sources of infection. The State is issuing the following recommendations, which supercede the Travel Advisory issued on November 13, 2020 and shall apply prospectively from January 6, 2021:

Non-Essential Travel
1. Except in connection with essential travel, Californians should avoid non-essential travel to any part of California more than 120 miles from one’s place of residence, or to other states or countries. Avoiding travel reduces the risk of virus transmission, including by reducing the risk that new sources of infection and, potentially, new virus strains will be introduced to California.

2. Non-essential travelers from other states or countries are strongly discouraged from entering California, and should adhere to the quarantine procedures set forth in Paragraph 3.

Quarantine Post-Travel
3. All persons arriving in or returning to California from other states or countries, should self-quarantine for 10 days [ii] after arrival, except as necessary to meet urgent critical healthcare staffing needs or to otherwise engage in emergency response. Additionally, this recommendation does not apply to individuals who routinely cross state or country borders for essential travel [iii].

A Local Health Officer may determine if and when the situation within the Local Health Offficer’s jurisdiction warrants measures that are more restrictive than this statewide order, and retains authority to implement such measures.

While there is no doubt that California is suffering a COVID-19 surge, the “solutions” to the surges have all so far been completely useless. Perhaps the solutions don’t lie in restricting free, healthy citizens, but in bulking up the healthcare system, focusing on treatments and vaccinations and educating the public about safe practices.

At this point the onslaught of “guidances” and orders and closures and lectures from Warden Governor Newsom has created a numbness among an exhausted constituency. Good, healthy, law-abiding taxpayers are being treated as the enemy, instead of the virus.

Newsom needs to start arresting people for moving about freely – which he knows he cannot do – or shut up.

 

[marsh]

RIP Big Pharma: Study Shows COVID Immunity Is Long-Lasting

People who recovered from COVID-19 are likely to have "robust" and "long-lasting" immunity that lasts for years, a new study suggests.

thefederalist.com

RIP Big Pharma: Study Shows COVID Immunity Is Long-Lasting

JANUARY 8, 2021 By Jordan Davidson

People who recovered from COVID-19 are likely to have “robust” and “long-lasting” immunity that lasts for years, a new study suggests.

According to research published in “Science,” people who recovered from COVID-19 have a very low risk of reinfection for at least five to eight months following contraction of the virus due to extremely high levels of immunity memory — but now it appears immunity lasts longer.

“There was a lot of concern originally that this virus might not induce much memory,” Shane Crotty, a researcher and a co-author of the paper, noted. “Instead, the immune memory looks quite good.”

After studying the blood samples from approximately 185 people who had previously contracted and recovered from COVID-19, researchers found that contrary to popular belief, 95 percent of participants’ antibodies and T-cell numbers only declined moderately after eight months following the original infection, resulting in longer-lasting immunity. Researchers also found that B-cell numbers, another component of maintaining immunity, remained fairly unchanged or sometimes even grew months after the patient’s recovery from the virus.

According to the study, the immunity memory created by these higher-than-anticipated antibody, T-cell, and B-cell numbers can help the body “restart antibody production and coordinate an attack against the coronavirus” quickly to prevent reinfection and potentially provide immunity for years, as it does with influenza, smallpox, and other diseases. Researchers were also quick to note that the same effect most likely applies to immunity that results from a dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.

One of the limitations of the study is that most people only offered one blood sample, providing only a glimpse into their current immunity. Another limitation is that there remains a small portion of people “with weak immune memory” who might not benefit long-term.

“Immunity varies from person to person, and uncommon individuals with weak immune memory still may be susceptible to reinfection,” Crotty said.

Despite these potential setbacks, researchers expressed hope that between the rollout of the vaccine and growing herd immunity, “durable immunity against secondary COVID-19 disease is a possibility in most individuals.”

 

[155 arty]

New California COVID Orders: Residents Can Travel No More Than 120 Miles From Their Homes

California Crazy

redstate.com

New California COVID Orders: Residents Can Travel No More Than 120 Miles From Their Homes

By Kira Davis | Jan 08, 2021 3:45 PM ET

(CalTrans)

The term ‘California Dream’ used to be commonplace. It used to mean something. Now that term has faded into a tragic joke. From now on the term to describe the Golden State is ‘California Crazy.’

Despite insanely restrictive lockdowns for 10 months, travel restrictions, quarantine requirements, business closures, mask mandates and school closures, California has some of the worst COVID numbers in the nation. The state currently has a total of just over 3,800 COVID fatalities. Of course, in a state of 40 million that is .0095% of the population, but we’re really not allowed to put perspective on COVID-19 numbers these days. That little tidbit was for the curious.

In a state like this one, there is no such thing as policy failure. If a policy isn’t working, we just get more of it.

On Wednesday, the California Department of Public Health announced new “guidance” for people in California who have the nerve to want to wander around their free country. CDPH wants Californians to stay within 120 miles of their residences except for “essential” travel. They also demand those gross “non-essential” travelers don’t come at all, but if they must, then they should quarantine for 10 days. Everyone traveling for anything should also quarantine for 10 days upon return to California.

From the CDPH website:





While there is no doubt that California is suffering a COVID-19 surge, the “solutions” to the surges have all so far been completely useless. Perhaps the solutions don’t lie in restricting free, healthy citizens, but in bulking up the healthcare system, focusing on treatments and vaccinations and educating the public about safe practices.

At this point the onslaught of “guidances” and orders and closures and lectures from Warden Governor Newsom has created a numbness among an exhausted constituency. Good, healthy, law-abiding taxpayers are being treated as the enemy, instead of the virus.

Newsom needs to start arresting people for moving about freely – which he knows he cannot do – or shut up.

Is there a meme for go fornicate with yourself?

 

[Zagdid]

Lethal fungal infection spreads wildly at US hospital Covid-19 ward - The Hindu BusinessLine

Lethal fungal infection spreads wildly at US hospital Covid-19 ward
Prashasti Awasthi Mumbai | Updated on January 10, 2021 Published on January 10, 2021

A hospital in Florida, United States, has found a lethal fungus -- candida Auris -- unprecedentedly spreading across its Covid-19 ward.

According to media reports, the hospital in Florida discovered a mysterious fungal infection infecting dozens of people who were being treated for coronavirus.

This multidrug-resistant yeast was first detected in Japan in 2009. It gained the attention of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, becoming its top priority in recent years because of its increasing global spread.

According to the HealthSite report, the recent fungal outbreak began in July when a hospital, which the report did not name, informed the Florida Department of Health of an initial four cases of fungus among patients being treated for the coronavirus.

The hospital then detected 35 more patients as being C. Auris-positive after additional screening in its Covid-19 unit was carried out. The data found was available for only 20 out of the 35 patients. 8 patients out of these 20 people died, but whether the fungus was the main reason is yet to be found out.

According to the CDC, Candida Auris is a yeast that causes severe illness in hospitalized patients. It can enter the bloodstream and affect different parts of the body, causing serious illnesses. C. Auris is usually caught inside a healthcare setting, especially when people have feeding or breathing tubes, or catheters placed in large veins.

It causes bloodstream infections, wound infections, and ear infections. It has also been found in urine and respiratory samples, but it’s not clear if the fungus infects the lung or bladder.

CDC said “most C. Auris can be treated with the use of antifungal drugs called echinocandins.”

CDC noted: “Outbreaks such as that described in this report highlight the importance of adhering to recommended infection control and PPE practices and continuing surveillance for novel pathogens like C.Aurisis.”

 

[Zagdid]

New coronavirus variant found in travelers from Brazil, Japan says (nbcnews.com)

New coronavirus variant found in travelers from Brazil, Japan says

"At the moment, there is no proof showing the new variant found in those from Brazil is high in infectiousness," a health official said.

Jan. 10, 2021, 9:51 AM EST
By Reuters

A new coronavirus variant has been detected in four travelers from Brazil's Amazonas state, Japan's Health Ministry said on Sunday, in the latest instance the pandemic virus is evolving.

A ministry official said studies were underway into the efficacy of vaccines against the new variant, which differs from highly-infectious variants first found in Britain and South Africa that have driven a surge in cases.

"At the moment, there is no proof showing the new variant found in those from Brazil is high in infectiousness," Takaji Wakita, head of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases, told a health ministry briefing.

Of the four travelers who arrived at Tokyo's Haneda airport on Jan. 2, a man in his forties had a problem breathing, a woman in her thirties had a headache and sore throat and a man in his teens had a fever, while a woman in her teens showed no symptoms, the health ministry said.

After seeing a steep rise in coronavirus cases, Japan declared a state of emergency for Tokyo and three prefectures neighboring the capital on Thursday.

Nationwide cases have totaled about 289,000, with 4,061 deaths, public broadcaster NHK said.

 

[marsh]

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

Another "Mutant" COVID Strain Discovered In Japan As Greater Tokyo Outbreak Worsens

SUNDAY, JAN 10, 2021 - 12:15
As paranoia surrounding the dawn of new COVID "variants" reaches a fever pitch, local scientists are claiming that the Japanese Health Ministry said it had tracked down yet another variant of COVID-19 partly similar to the strains from the UK and South Africa, which are believed to be more contagious and linked to a spike in infections and potentially linked to rising numbers in the UK.

According to local media reports cited by RT, the mutant strain was found in four people who flew into Japan from Brazil. The passengers tested positive for COVID-19 in an airport quarantine, per the ministry of health. The news comes as officials in the US insist that reports about a similarly dangerous variant being isolated in the US were actually false.


Japan's new variant was detected by themNational Institute of Infectious Diseases, which has thoroughly studied the samples taken from the four travelers mentioned above.

Virologists claim that the new mutations found in Japan bear certain similarities to the mutant strains from the UK and Germany.

The discovery comes at a particularly difficult time for Japan, which is weighing an extension of its state of emergency now that cases are rising sharply in its No. 2 city, Osaka.

Even after imposing travel bans on the UK, the mutated strain first isolated in Britain has been tracked to Japan.

Since the start of the pandemic, Japan has recorded more than 283,000 infections and over 3,800 deaths related to the coronavirus.

Despite publishing all those pieces dismissing the risks that COVID-19 mutations could complicate the vaccination process, the NYT pointed out yesterday in a piece that "scientists have discovered worrisome new variants of the virus, leading to border closures, quarantines and lockdowns, and dousing some of the enthusiasm that arrived with the vaccines."

In the UK, it's believed the new mutant variant is responsible for 60% of cases being discovered in London.

The upshot of this onslaught of new viruses, according to the NYT, is quite clear: It will take years to vaccinate enough people to stop the spread of COVID-19. In the meantime, masks and strict social distancing requirements will be the order of the day.

Despite vaccine-makers' insistence that their shots will protect against infection from the new variants, the NYT insists that the vaccine alone will not be enough to get ahead of the virus: It will take years to inoculate enough people to limit its evolution. In the meantime, social distancing, mask-wearing and hand-washing - coupled with aggressive testing, tracking and tracing - might buy some time and avert devastating spikes in hospitalizations and deaths along the way.

These strategies could still "turn the tide" against the virus, one NYT expert source said.

But if that were true, wouldn't it have happened already.

 

[jward]

News That Matter
@jay1stnewyorker
8m

New research on U.K. coronavirus variant has scientists worried. Some very important terrible news. - Los Angeles Times

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1348509992362647552

View: https://twitter.com/jay1stnewyorker/status/1348509992362647552?s=20

 

[marsh]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3s5UovlwpcA
7:20 min
BEST Predictor of COVID19 Disease SEVERITY?
41,538 views
•Jan 11, 2021

2.3K46SHARESAVE




Doctor Mike Hansen

512K subscribers


SUBSCRIBED

Some people with COVID-19 do just fine. Others die. And then there is everyone in between. So what determines disease severity? Yeah, most of us know the risk factors by now. It’s mostly older age, being a male, obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure. But not everyone with severe COVID19 fits that mold, for example, there was the case of the 28-year-old female who needed to have a double lung transplant in Chicago. But what about the number of viral particles you are exposed to? Or how many viral particles that invade your body before the immune system defeats it?

The number of viral particles that land on your mucus membranes when an infected person coughs or sneezes is the viral dose. An infection can start with a few viral particles. However, the higher the dose, the more likely the immune system will not clear all of the viral particles, and an infection takes hold. The viral dose required to make you sick seems to be very low for COVID-19 as it is spread through casual contact. The CDC changed its definition of close contact to a cumulative exposure of 15 minutes or more in contact with an infected person because it appears that even a series of small exposures may also cause disease. We may not know the minimum infectious dose of SARS-CoV-2 needed to result in illness or whether multiple small doses or a single large dose is more likely to lead to serious disease. The amount of virus someone gets into their system depends not only the duration you are exposed to someone with the virus, but also the viral concentration that you are exposed to, in addition to proximity. And this is why social distancing and wearing masks is so important, in order to mitigate this process. Viral load is the level of replicating virus in the body and is measured by copies per ml. We can determine whether the SARS-CoV-2 virus is present in the human body by collecting samples from the nose, respiratory tract, blood, or urine. When the SARS-CoV-2 virus reaches the respiratory tract and binds to the ACE2 receptors on human cells, viral particles enter respiratory cells and reproduce, specifically in Type II alveoli. The newly made viral particles infect other cells, and the cycle continues. This cycle can carry on, and exponentially increase the number of viral particles until the immune system has a chance to tame it, and hopefully stop the replication process. Whatever that number maybe, this is what we refer to as the viral load. Studies have shown that the higher the viral load in nasopharyngeal swabs or in the blood, the more severe the disease will be, with higher viral loads equating to two times or higher odds of needing a breathing tube (intubated). And this is regardless of age, other risk factors, and severity of illness at the time of presentation to the hospital. Quantifying the viral load is a tool physicians can use for risk stratification.

The PCR Test for COVID-19

A reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction test (RT-PCR test) is used to detect the SARS-CoV-2 infection on a swab of nasal secretions. A lab technologist prepares the swabs for processing and adds the fluid from the swabs and other chemicals to the PCR machine. The PCR machine goes through a series of heating and cooling cycles during which it makes copies of any viral RNA in the sample. Each time the PCR machine goes through its series of cycles, it doubles the number of RNA strands present. The PCR machine can report whether the virus was present and, if so, how many cycles it had to go through in order to amplify the RNA enough, so it is detectable, the cycle threshold. If no virus is present in the sample, the PCR machine can go through innumerable amplification cycles, and the virus will still not be present. If low levels of virus are present, it will take more PCR amplification cycles to get enough RNA to make the SARS-CoV-2 sample detectable. If there are large amounts of SARS-CoV-2 in the sample, fewer amplification cycles will be required to get an observable sample. Fewer amplification cycles to get a detectable level of RNA equals a higher viral load.

 

[marsh]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuN_uyAjbmc
34:41 min

Coronavirus Vaccine Update With Arnold S. Monto, MD

•Streamed live 5 hours ago


JAMA Network

Arnold S. Monto, MD chaired the @U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) meetings in December that led to emergency use authorization (EUA) of the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines. He joins JAMA's Q&A series from the @University of Michigan School of Public Health to discuss experience to date with the 2 products and what's next in vaccine development. Recorded January 11, 2021. Additional viewing: Peter Marks, MD PhD and Steven Hahn, MD discuss the 1st vaccine EUA: 12/10 FDA VRBPAC Committee Meeting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owveM...

 

[marsh]

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

L.A. County Tells Residents To Wear Masks Inside Own Homes

TUESDAY, JAN 12, 2021 - 17:45
More insane and looming unconstitutional Covid-lockdown overreach, once again out of hard hit L.A. county where cases are surging:

Things are so bad in Los Angeles County that health officials are now advising all essential workers to wear masks inside their own home to prevent spreading Covid-19 within their household.

Via CNN
As if instances where some cities across the globe began previously enforcing mask-wearing outdoors wasn't bad enough, the L.A. health recommendation now advises people to mask up inside their own homes.

And it's not a precaution that says wear a mask in the presence of a confirmed COVID-19 infected house member, which would be understandable, but simply at all times regardless of other family members being sick.

"Right now, because there is so much spread, we're recommending that people wear their face coverings while they're inside the home," Los Angeles County Director of Public Health Barbara Ferrer said at a press briefing Monday.

"That's for people who are either leaving their home every day for work or who are running errands regularly for their family" Ferrer said. She called it an added "layer of protection while we get through this surge."



Even though media outlets like CNN are framing the directive as applying to "essential workers" it's clear from the health director's wording that the guidance is being issued to all L.A. County residents who belong to a household with more than one person.

Los Angeles is now approaching its one year mark since its first recorded confirmed coronavirus case. Since then over 930,000 people have tested positive in L.A. County.

Local authorities have lately sought to impose the most stringent social distancing measures in the country, including new lockdown orders and a 10pm to 6am curfew, with the exception of essential workers.

L.A. is also telling people to not event take a walk or jog without wearing a mask: "Now is not the time to meet with friends at your home to watch the game," Ferrer said in the Monday statement. "It is not the time to go for a walk without a mask."

 

[Troke]

RIP Big Pharma: Study Shows COVID Immunity Is Long-Lasting

People who recovered from COVID-19 are likely to have "robust" and "long-lasting" immunity that lasts for years, a new study suggests.

thefederalist.com

RIP Big Pharma: Study Shows COVID Immunity Is Long-Lasting

JANUARY 8, 2021 By Jordan Davidson

People who recovered from COVID-19 are likely to have “robust” and “long-lasting” immunity that lasts for years, a new study suggests.

According to research published in “Science,” people who recovered from COVID-19 have a very low risk of reinfection for at least five to eight months following contraction of the virus due to extremely high levels of immunity memory — but now it appears immunity lasts longer.

“There was a lot of concern originally that this virus might not induce much memory,” Shane Crotty, a researcher and a co-author of the paper, noted. “Instead, the immune memory looks quite good.”

After studying the blood samples from approximately 185 people who had previously contracted and recovered from COVID-19, researchers found that contrary to popular belief, 95 percent of participants’ antibodies and T-cell numbers only declined moderately after eight months following the original infection, resulting in longer-lasting immunity. Researchers also found that B-cell numbers, another component of maintaining immunity, remained fairly unchanged or sometimes even grew months after the patient’s recovery from the virus.

According to the study, the immunity memory created by these higher-than-anticipated antibody, T-cell, and B-cell numbers can help the body “restart antibody production and coordinate an attack against the coronavirus” quickly to prevent reinfection and potentially provide immunity for years, as it does with influenza, smallpox, and other diseases. Researchers were also quick to note that the same effect most likely applies to immunity that results from a dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.

One of the limitations of the study is that most people only offered one blood sample, providing only a glimpse into their current immunity. Another limitation is that there remains a small portion of people “with weak immune memory” who might not benefit long-term.

“Immunity varies from person to person, and uncommon individuals with weak immune memory still may be susceptible to reinfection,” Crotty said.

Despite these potential setbacks, researchers expressed hope that between the rollout of the vaccine and growing herd immunity, “durable immunity against secondary COVID-19 disease is a possibility in most individuals.”

Don't we have some posters that have had it more than once? I thought I saw that.

 

[Valann]

Modern doesn't expect covid vaccine data for young children until 2022.

Moderna doesn't expect Covid vaccine data for young children until 2022, CEO says

Moderna doesn't expect to have clinical trial data on its coronavirus vaccine in young children until 2022, CEO Stephane Bancel said.

www.cnbc.com

 

[marsh]

msn.com/en-us/health/medical/67-million-covid-vaccines-given-in-us-with-70-25-of-available-doses-unused/ar-BB1cEEjo?ocid=uxbndlbing

6.7 million COVID Vaccines Given in U.S. With 70% of Available Doses Unused
Aristos Georgiou 1 day ago
http://a.msn.com/05/en-us/BB1cEEjo?ocid=sf
6.7 million COVID Vaccines Given in U.S. With 70% of Available Doses Unused
http://a.msn.com/05/en-us/BB1cEEjo?ocid=sf
Nearly 6.7 million people have received COVID-19 vaccinations in the United States, although around 70 percent of available doses remain unused, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC.)

CDC data shows that 6,688,231 first doses have been administered, according to the latest available figures, while more than 22.1 million doses have been distributed around the country.

These figures refer to doses of both the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines, which were both authorized for emergency use in December.

Among those who have received their first dose are nearly 700,000 high-risk people in long-term care facilities, according to the CDC. More than four million doses have been distributed to these facilities.

The agency said the reason for the large difference between the number of doses distributed and the number of people receiving their first doses was to be "expected" at this stage of the mass vaccination program.

This is because of several factors, including delays in the reporting of administered doses and the management of available stock by various jurisdictions and federal pharmacy partners.

The majority of vaccine doses so far have been administered to high-risk groups, such as frontline medical workers and people living in nursing homes.

Out of all U.S. states, Texas, the second largest, has administered the most first doses of the vaccine so far—618,298—according to the CDC. More than 1.8 million doses have been allocated to the state. States have received vaccine doses roughly in proportion to their populations.

The state that has administered the most first doses per 100,000 people is West Virginia. Its rate of vaccination is 4,867 per 100,000 people. The state is followed by South Dakota and North Dakota in this ranking.

Wyoming has administered the lowest number of first doses, although it also has the smallest population—numbering just over 580,000. The state with the lowest rate of vaccination is Georgia, with 1,122 first doses administered out of every 100,000 people.

In addition to the 50 states and District of Columbia, the federal government is also distributing vaccines doses to U.S. territories such as as Puerto Rico and Guam, some federal agencies, including the Department of Defense and Bureau of Prisons, and three small countries in the Pacific: Palau, Micronesia and the Marshall Islands.

The vaccine rollout has not gone as quickly as officials had hoped, with the U.S. missing the federal government's target of 20 million shots in arms by the end of 2020. By this point, only around 2.8 million Americans had received a COVID-19 vaccine.

"We agree that that number is lower than what we had hoped for," Moncef Slaoui, chief advisor of the U.S. government's Operation Warp Speed vaccination drive, said during a press conference. "We know that it should be better, and we're working hard to make it better."

 

[aznurse]

Astonishing COVID-19 Testing Fraud Revealed (mercola.com)

 

[marsh]

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

In Final Act, Trump Admin To Present 'Bombshell' Findings Blaming Wuhan Lab For COVID-19, WHO Cover-Up

WEDNESDAY, JAN 13, 2021 - 20:25
The Trump administration will present 'dramatic new evidence' that the virus which causes COVID-19 leaked from a Wuhan lab, according to the Daily Mail, which adds that outgoing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will make a "bombshell" announcement that SARS-CoV-2 did not naturally jump from bats to humans through an intermediary species - and was instead cultured by scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), where both Chinese and foreign experts have warned of shoddy bio-security for years.


The Britsh government (Daily Mail and all), meanwhile, dismissed the claims in advance - saying that 'all the credible scientific evidence does not point to a leak from the laboratory.'

This is of course patently false, as several prominent microbiologists - including one who worked in the Wuhan lab - have said it was likely created there and likely escaped. Two weeks ago, US National Security Adviser Matthew Pottinger said there was a "growing body of evidence that the lab is likely the most credible source of the virus," while French intelligence warned of the possibility of a 'catastrophic leak' from the lab due to poor bio-security over a decade before the outbreak.

The lab’s highest security ‘P4’ section was built with French help in a deal signed off by Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier. But after it opened in 2015, the French contingent due to work there were pushed out by China’s military. -Daily Mail

Meanwhile, China scrubbed "hundreds of pages of information" spanning over 300 studies conducted by the WIV, including some which discuss passing diseases from animals to humans. Totally normal behavior from innocent people, we're sure.

Pompeo is also set to cite close links between the Institute and the People’s Liberation Army.
He will point out its highest security section has always had a ‘dual use’ military and civilian purpose.
He is also expected to accuse the World Health Organisation of assisting in a Chinese cover-up by refusing to probe the lab’s possible role.
Its ten-person team tasked with investigating the pandemic’s origins will arrive in Wuhan tomorrow – but there is no mention of the lab in its official terms of reference. -Daily Mail

"We don’t know whether this virus was natural or artificially created, and if it came from the lab, whether this was an accident or deliberate. It would be immoral and foolish to allow any sort of cover-up," said former Brexit Secretary David Davis, who added that it was 'vital' that the WHO team investigate.

"If it emerges the virus did come from the lab, China will become the pariah of the world," he added.
That said, MIT / Harvard doctor Alina Chan, who has been investigating the origins of the pandemic, doesn't think the WHO is suited to conduct any investigation.

"We have to take the necessary steps to do a proper investigation and, based on the available information, I don’t think the WHO is up to the task," said Chan. Stanford professor of microbiology David Relman, meanwhile, has voiced fears that the WIV was genetically engineering natural viruses to make them more transmissible - writing in November that "If SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a lab to cause the pandemic, it will become critical to understand the chain of events and prevent this from happening again."

According to Sam Armtrong, China expert with the Henry Jackson Society think-tank, "The global public has a right to know exactly what was going on prior to the emergence of this deadly pandemic. The question cannot be shirked."

And as Edward Lucas writes via the Mail, "All the evidence points to cover-up...(but the truth can't be hidden for ever):
* * *
Secrets, lies and thuggery are the hallmark of the Chinese Communist regime. And in the mystery of the devastating Wuhan virus, all three are combined.

The strongest evidence of a crime is a cover-up. And the Chinese authorities have provided that.

They have fought ferociously to prevent an international inquiry into the pandemic’s origins.

Their repeated obstruction of the World Health Organisation’s fact-finding missions has provoked even that notoriously supine body to protest.

Even now, WHO investigators are being prevented from accessing the vitally important laboratory in Wuhan that is likely to be at the heart of America’s allegations.

Experts have been questioning the Chinese authorities’ account of events for a year. Now, it appears, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is to make a direct accusation.

Was it really pure chance the virus first attacked the human race in the only city in China with a research lab specialising in manipulating the world’s most dangerous viruses?

That would be as odd as a new disease emerging in the surroundings of Britain’s top-secret biological defence research establishment of Porton Down in Wiltshire.

To this day, scientists who support the theory that the virus is a mutation that emerged from Wuhan’s ‘wet market’ have not been able to find a convincing candidate for the animal in which this mutation actually occurred.

The official explanation is the new virus was 96 percent identical to a bat virus, RaTG13, found in Yunnan province in southern China.

But as Chinese professor Botao Xiao pointed out in a paper in February, no such bats are sold at the city’s markets. And the caves where they live are hundreds of miles away.

That paper disappeared from the internet. Mr Xiao — perhaps mindful of the fate that awaits those in China who promote inconvenient truths — disavowed it.

Many scientists privately assumed an engineered virus released via a laboratory accident was at least as likely as the idea of a series of stunningly unfortunate chance mutations.


After all, Shi Zhengli, the Chinese scientist nicknamed ‘Bat Woman’ was a regular visitor to those caves.

When news of the outbreak broke, she initially feared that a leak from her research institute was to blame.

That thought alone should have prompted a full-scale and searching inquiry. Instead, the Chinese Ministry of Education issued a diktat: ‘Any paper that traces the origin of the virus must be strictly and tightly managed.’

But even the Chinese regime cannot hold back the truth forever. Over the past twelve months independent research, official leaks and news reports have strengthened the lab-leak hypothesis.

In February a Taiwanese professor, Fang Chi-tai, highlighted a curious feature of the virus’s genetic code, which would make it more effective in attacking targeted cells. This was unlikely to be the result of a natural mutation, he suggested.

Much scientific research involves modifying viruses to understand how they function. Many observers have worried for years that the risks of such experiments are not properly thought through.

Lab safety procedures are riddled with potential loopholes and flaws: breakages, animal bites, faulty equipment or simple mis-labelling can all lead to a deadly pathogen reaching its first human victim. If so, such carelessness has now cost tens of millions of lives.

Yet we should be clear. The Chinese authorities are ruthless. But even they would not unleash a global plague.

Only in the fevered imagination of conspiracy theorists is Beijing deliberately waging biological warfare on the West.

Paradoxically, such speculation — promoted by among others President Donald Trump’s former adviser Steve Bannon — may have hampered the search for the truth, by making the lab-release theory seem racist and politically toxic.

In February, in Britain’s politically correct medical journal, the Lancet, scientists published an open letter denouncing ‘conspiracy theories and rumours’, urging solidarity with Chinese colleagues.

Yet it was just those colleagues who were bearing the brunt of the regime’s frantic attempts to censor the truth about the outbreak.

The Chinese regime prizes self-preservation above all — certainly over the truth, or the health of its own people, let alone the lives of foreigners.

 

[marsh]

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

Another Mutant COVID Strain Discovered In Ohio

WEDNESDAY, JAN 13, 2021 - 20:25
As public health experts around the world issue warnings about new mutant strains of SARS-CoV-2, it appears a new variant has been isolated in Ohio, likely originating from somewhere in the Midwest.

One of these variants, dubbed the "Columbus strain," has three gene mutations that haven't previously been seen in other SARS-CoV-2 strains - the virus that causes COVID-19, according to a statement from The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. These mutations occur in the so-called spike protein of the virus, which enables the virus to bind to human cells more quickly.

This strain quickly became the dominant COVID strain variant in Columbus over a three-week period between late December 2020 and early January, according to the researchers, who hope to post their findings soon on the pre-print database bioRxiv.

A second variant found by the Ohio researchers has a mutation dubbed 501Y that is identical to one seen in the UK's B117 variant. This mutation affects the receptor-binding domain, or part of the virus's spike protein that latches onto the ACE2 receptor in human cells; in lab-dish experiments, the mutated receptor-binding domain binds more tightly to the ACE2 receptor, past research found.

However, the researchers believe the Ohio-linked mutation independently evolved from a similarly mutated strain that was already a strain already in the US. So far, it has only been found in one patient from Ohio, so the researchers don't yet know how prevalent it is in the population overall. A spokesperson for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told CNBC that the agency is reviewing the new research. But the researchers believe the Ohio variant independently evolved that mutation from a strain already in the U.S. It was found in one patient from Ohio, so the researchers don't yet know how prevalent it is in the population overall.

Of course, with so many new "mutant" (deadlier, more contagious) strains of COVID-19 spreading around the country, the Biden administration will have the perfect excuse to extend lockdowns nationwide into late 2021 and beyond... reinforcing Americans' dependence on government welfare (and implicitly the Democratic Party) even more.

 

[marsh]

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

J&J One-Shot Vaccine Is Safe In Early Trials, Generates "Promising Immune Response"

WEDNESDAY, JAN 13, 2021 - 17:17
And so we have another vaccine candidate, one which however requires just one shot, not two like Pfizer and Moderna, and can also be stored at a far higher temperature than its approved competitors making it far easier to distribute.

According to interim data from the Phase 1/2A trial which tested 805 volunteers, and which was published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, Johnson & Johnson’s one-dose coronavirus vaccine is safe and appears to generate a promising immune response in both young and elderly volunteers. The company is expected to release results from its 45,000-person phase three trial later this month.

According tot he report, J&J scientists randomly assigned healthy adults between the ages of 18 and 55 and those 65 and older to receive a high or low dose of its vaccine - called Ad26.COV2.S - or a placebo. Some participants in the 18-to-55 age group were also selected to receive a second dose of the vaccine. J&J is using the same technologies it used to develop its Ebola vaccine for its Covid-19 vaccine.

Most of the volunteers produced detectable neutralizing antibodies, which researchers believe play a key role in defending cells against the virus, after 28 days, according to the trial data. By day 57, all volunteers had detectable antibodies, regardless of vaccine dose or age group, and remained stable for at least 71 days in the 18-to-55 age group.

Unlike Pfizer’s and Moderna’s authorized vaccines, which require two doses about three to four weeks apart, J&J’s requires only one dose. That means patients will not have to come back for another dose, simplifying logistics for health-care providers.

Alas, this vaccine too had its side-effects, and unlike the unexpected spike in allergic reactions in mRNA based vaccines, the most common side effects from the J&J shot were fever, fatigue, headache, muscle aches and pain at the injection site Side effects were less common in the older age group, who received only one dose of the vaccine, as well as those who received a lower dose of the vaccine, according to the data.

Speaking to CNBC’s Meg Tirrell, Dr. Paul Stoffels, chief scientific officer at J&J said that the phase one and two clinical trial data shows a single shot of the vaccine “gives sustainable antibodies.” He added it gives the company “confidence” the vaccine will be highly effective against the virus.

As CNBC reports, U.S. officials and Wall Street analysts are eagerly anticipating the authorization of J&J’s vaccine, which could happen as early as next month. Public health officials and infectious disease experts say world leaders will need an array of drugs and vaccines to defeat the virus, which has killed at least 382,120 Americans since the beginning of the pandemic.

If J&J’s vaccine is authorized by the Food and Drug Administration, it would be the third approved for use in the U.S. behind the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and Moderna’s. Pfizer’s vaccine was authorized on Dec. 11, and Moderna’s was authorized a week later on Dec. 18.

The data comes as U.S. officials complain that the pace of vaccinations has been too slow as the supply of vaccine doses exceeds demand. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expanded Covid vaccine eligibility guidelines Tuesday to include people 65 and older as well as people with preexisting conditions. The government is also changing the way it allocates Covid vaccine doses, now basing it on how quickly states can administer shots and the size of their elderly population.

The Department of Health and Human Services announced in August that it reached a deal with Janssen, J&J’s pharmaceutical subsidiary, worth approximately $1 billion for 100 million doses of its vaccine. The deal gives the federal government the option to order an additional 200 million doses, according to the announcement.

Stoffels said the company plans to ship the vaccine at 2 to 8 degrees Celsius, which is about 36 to 46 degrees Fahrenheit.

“We have three months stability as of this moment at 2 to 8,” he said. “That will be expanded over the year as we generate more stability data. We know from our other vaccines it can go up to a year, but at the start we can’t do that because we don’t have it for this vaccine.”

The news sent JNJ stock higher after hours, while Moderna slumped because in a zero vaccine sum world, there are only so many vaccines the world will need.

 

[marsh]

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

How COVID Paved The Road To Serfdom

WEDNESDAY, JAN 13, 2021 - 23:25
Authored by Rob Sutton via TheCritic.co.uk,

Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom maintains a near unrivalled influence on the political imagination of conservative and classical liberal thinkers. Published in 1943, at the height of the Keynesian consensus, it elaborated a worldview considered intolerable within academic economics.

The central thesis of The Road to Serfdom is that descent into tyranny is the ultimate and inevitable trajectory of a society in which the sovereignty of the individual is subverted in the accumulation of economic power by the state. Central planning leads invariably to authoritarianism. Hayek is not timid in making these claims.


Studying the seemingly disparate political systems which dominated Europe in the run-up to the Second World War (communism, fascism, socialism), Hayek concluded that they each had a common endpoint – the development of a totalitarian state. Despite their contrasting social and economic goals, each necessitated the central consolidation of power and the explicit planning of an economy to achieve those goals.

As such, their distinct political flavours were largely irrelevant to their ultimate destination. Position along the political axis was less important than most commentators predicted. The binary Hayek was interested in, rather than left wing versus right wing, was whether the state uses its authority to promote individual freedom or to restrict it.

Hayek saw that the wartime governments of Nazi Germany, fascist Italy and communist Russia all fell within the latter category: they sacrificed the freedom of individuals to empower the state to achieve its own goals.
In doing so, their citizens suffered similarly. Repression, poverty and death are the consequence of a government which has taken ownership of those responsibilities previously held by individual citizens.

Hayek’s argument faced an uphill struggle. Despite its enormous popularity among classical liberals and conservative policymakers, we continue to view the political machines of the first half of the 20th century through the lens of their self-assigned labels, rather than under Hayek’s consequentialist umbrella of totalitarian collectivism.

His criticism of socialism is not a left versus right argument, but a general observation of the tendency of systems of government who accumulate economic power to achieve social goals to veer towards repression. The different political labels are just different positions along the road to serfdom, valuing centralised economic planning over individual liberty.

By transcending traditional political labels, and regrouping governments in terms of how they wield the formidable power of the state, The Road to Serfdom gains its enduring appeal. Its lessons are a stern warning to any who believe that a government can accumulate vast powers and maintain them for purely beneficent purposes.

The road described by Hayek, one in which citizens entitled to commercial freedom, private property and the rule of law might ultimately see their individual sovereignty become secondary to the aims of the state, is worryingly benign in its superficial appearance. The transition is not particular to any time or place or political position. There is no discontinuity or abrupt transition of power. The passage by which individuals find themselves subservient occurs gradually, and often in places where commentators would not believe it possible.

To Hayek, economic freedom is as inseparable from individual liberty. When the economic freedom of the individual is handed over to the state it is a key step towards totalitarian government. Economic freedom is a necessary condition of individual liberty. Individual liberty cannot long exist without economic freedom.

Hayek observes that the transition of power from individuals to the state is almost always voluntary, at least initially. Military coups and political assassinations generally happen late along the road, after the state power has already amassed considerable power, and are more symptom than cause. More important is the steady and insidious sacrifice of economic liberty performed by citizens in exchange for security.

Individuals expect their government to fill an ever-greater role within the economic function of their country and as such within their lives, and those in government desiring power are all too happy to accept.
The transfer of power is too slow to set alarm bells ringing, but it is never without cost, and when it occurs steadily it allows the state to gradually acquire instruments of enormous social and economic influence. The nature of society is such that it eventually becomes psychologically reliant on the state; with every new problem its citizens turn to their central planners in expectation of a solution. Expedience takes precedence over personal responsibility.

And as this power is accumulated, instead of the instruments of the states serving their citizens, a change begins to occur. Citizens are increasingly asked to serve the instruments of the state, rather than the other way around, often to fulfil some vague goal of general welfare.

We have seen this during the current pandemic with the ever-present “Protect the NHS” slogan. Yet few have dared to ask why we are being asked to sacrifice those hard-won liberties in the name of a state institution. To those who would point out the apparent selfishness of such questioning, Hayek notes that those crises which precipitate the transition of power from the individual to the collective are often driven initially by conceptions of the “public good” in which a unified national response is demanded.

The NHS was, of course, founded with the most noble of intentions. But that does not mean we should not question why we have now, over 70 years on from its birth, found ourselves in a situation in which every facet of public life has been redirected to protect an instrument of the state, to which the political careers of our central planners are intrinsically bound.

The path towards an oppressive society generally begins with protective measures enacted with good intentions, as has happened with Covid-19. A common early step on the road is national emergency. This might be war, economic depression, political gridlock, or a pandemic. Citizens are willing to accept that a temporary curtailment of individual liberty is necessary to overcome a national crisis.

An asymmetry between the urgency the initial crisis demanded and the public’s hunger to protect their personal liberties is exploited. There is an assumption that freedoms lost will be quickly regained. This asymmetry, taken at the flood, allows early sceptics to be easily smothered. Yet power remains centralised even after the initial crisis passes. Arguments that “what’s good in wartime is good in peacetime” arise. Those individuals who might personally gain from the accumulation of power are reluctant to hand back controls to citizens who previously relinquished it in good faith. An exit strategy is not forthcoming.

These difficulties are exacerbated in “advanced” nations. The institutions of the state in Britain have reached such a point that these is little aspect of public life not regulated by departmental oversight. Substantial influence is held over increasingly high-resolution aspects of individual lives. The bloat of party manifestos at each election is testament to this, and the growing intrusion of the state into our lives primes it for an executive who is willing to wield that power without restraint.

A state which readily accepts responsibility for the minutiae of the lives of its citizens will inevitably infantilise them to a certain degree. And when new difficulties arise, citizens are emotionally conditioned to expect the state to intervene again. The individual’s sphere of influence is whittled away as the collectivist sphere of government expands to form an increasingly comprehensive political and moral narrative.

Rather than face the difficulty of building a policy consensus during Covid-19, we have instead seen the concentration of executive powers outside the reach of parliamentary scrutiny. The policies implemented have no clear goal (“save lives” is vague, unhelpful, and, one would hope, the natural default goal of policy anyway) and no clear exit strategy.

The scope has expanded beyond measures which might be considered within the realm of public health to absurdly detailed prescriptions for how we should live. Where we should go to work, what kind of businesses are sufficiently important to continue, who we should socialise with and within which hours, how democratic institutions can assemble, which causes may be legitimately protested.

These goals clearly reach well beyond what could reasonably be described as within the bounds of public health. And with this amassed power, governments seem to implement pitifully detailed restrictions as they try to substitute themselves for common sense: which way to walk within a supermarket, which products are deemed “essential” by the government’s planners, how far apart we must stand, where grandma should sit at the dinner table.

The measures rolled out in the name of a public health emergency are not public health measures. They are, instead, an all-encompassing social and economic prescription for how we must live and work, authorised by an executive using extra-parliamentary measures which they argue that the complexity and seriousness of the situation have necessitated.

Any system of central planning is necessarily a poor imitation of the innumerable complexity captured by a free market economy. The attempts of central committees to assign to products and services values which can only be truly assigned by citizens introduces inefficiency. But Hayek is not advocating for laissez-faire economics. He argues that there does exist a natural duty of government “planning”: to level the playing field for those engaging in commerce and reduce barriers to market entry.

This in opposition to a view of “planning” which uses economic control to achieve specific social goals.
These two categories of planning are necessarily exclusive. Planning cannot be performed with a goal of some social intervention without necessarily distorting markets and producing barriers to free trade, regardless of the purpose. The sweeping measures introduced to reduce the transmission of Covid-19 demonstrate this clearly: small businesses have suffered terribly, while corporate giants such as Amazon have consolidated their grip on the market.

Britain is generally a nation of political consensus. Since the Second World War, with the exception of the advent of Thatcherism, there has been a unidirectional and steady transfer of power from individual citizens into the hands of government. Being so willing to accept the prescriptions of government in regulating the most minute of aspects of our everyday lives, we prepared the stage for an event such as this current pandemic, precipitating a dramatic shift from a society in which the individual is sovereign to one in which their needs are secondary to those of the state and its institutions.

Hayek’s ultimate message is that, as far as the relationship between the state and its subjects goes, nothing is free. That which the government gives us necessarily requires the sacrifice of individual responsibility. Security is not without cost, and freedom can only be protected at a price. The only truly progressive system is one which respects the individualism above collectivism.

Those lives we might save by reducing transmission with lockdowns will ultimately be paid for down the line. Either through those conditions which we have decided secondary in priority to Covid-19, those heart attacks, strokes and cancer being diagnosed and treated too late, or through the innumerable opportunity cost of stifled innovation in a society whose government has obtained greater economic and social control since the Second World War. Freedom, hard-won, is easily lost.

 

[marsh]

DC Police Reject FOIA Request For Records Related to Their Probe of Siege of Capitol - Insider Leaked Maps, Internal Docs to Help Assist Rioters Navigate Building | The Gateway Pundit | by Cristina Laila

What did Pelosi and McConnell know of the planned attack on the US Capitol before the House impeached President Trump for inciting violence?

www.thegatewaypundit.com

DC Police Reject FOIA Request For Records Related to Their Probe of Siege of Capitol – Insider Leaked Maps, Internal Docs to Help Assist Rioters Navigate Building

By Cristina Laila
Published January 13, 2021 at 10:25pm

What did Pelosi and McConnell know of the planned attack on the US Capitol before the House impeached President Trump for inciting violence?

President Trump was blamed for the siege of the US Capitol last Wednesday, however the FBI confirmed the attack was planned several days in advance.

Investigative reporter John Solomon dropped a bombshell on Wednesday night and said the DC police rejected his FOIA request for records pertaining to their investigation of the siege of the U.S. Capitol.
The DC police said release of the records would be ‘personally embarrassing’ and privacy invading to release the documents.

“We’re gonna fight for those documents but something tells me what’s in those documents has some very very big relevance to what happened on The Hill and the question I have is what did Nancy Pelosi know, what did Mitch McConnell know about these threats beforehand,” John Solomon told former Missouri Governor Eric Greitens. “If they didn’t know then, it’s an intelligence failure of the police. If they did know there’s something they didn’t tell us before we went into this impeachment.”

Solomon said the FBI, NYPD and USCP had prior knowledge of plans for violence at the US Capitol, including intel threatening murder of police officers.

If this was a planned attack, you can’t accuse the President of inciting a spontaneous attack when it was planned days before.

John Solomon also said that inside sources leaked maps, internal documents helping to assist rioters enter and navigate the Capitol building.

The US Attorney is bringing a conspiracy case which is further proof the siege was planned.

WATCH:

View: https://youtu.be/n3d6P1sT6MU
11:59 min

 

[jward]

Eric
@IAmTheActualET

Kansas contact tracing data shows 0.91% of cases can be traced back to restaurants and bars, with a whopping 0 deaths resulting from them

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1349543888864899072

View: https://twitter.com/IAmTheActualET/status/1349543888864899072?s=20

 

[marsh]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9HuPNurruo
6:38 min
Tocilizumab (Actemra) & Sarilumab (Kevzara) for COVID 19
•Jan 14, 2021


Doctor Mike Hansen

Tocilizumab (Actemra) & Sarilumab (Kevzara) for COVID 19 Tocilizumab (Actemra) & Sarilumab (Kevzara) are IL-6 inhibitors that are being studied for COVID 19. Good news came from a preprint of a trial run by REMAP-CAP, a multihospital group of researchers who are investigating multiple treatment options for COVID 19 simultaneously. Patients in the U.K.'s intensive care units with COVID 19 might be eligible to receive tocilizumab, a medication used to treat rheumatoid arthritis, other inflammatory diseases, and cytokine storm. The potential benefits of this drug include saving lives and reducing hospitalizations by seven to 10 days. U.K. researchers reported in a recent study that is yet to be peer-reviewed that patients receiving standard care have a mortality rate of 36% In comparison, those receiving tocilizumab or sarilumab have a mortality rate of 27%, a reduction in relative risk of mortality of 24%.

#covid #covid19 #coronavirus COVID Update Today by Doctor Mike Hansen (YouTube Video Playlist) https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...

The REMAP-CAP study, which has not been peer-reviewed but shows good results led to the recommendation to make tocilizumab available for ICU patients. The study is a randomized controlled study that enrolled over 800 patients. Patients received either tocilizumab, sarilumab, or standard care. Eligibility criteria for the study included being admitted to the ICU with severe pneumonia and requiring respiratory support with a positive diagnosis of COVID 19. Contraindications to receiving tocilizumab include an allergy to the medication, a coexisting infection, more than 24 hours after being admitted to the ICU, elevated liver enzymes, low platelet counts, low white blood cell counts, or being immunocompromised. Patients could also receive dexamethasone or remdesivir as indicated.

One of the main issues with COVID 19 is the severe respiratory distress associated with the disease. Severe respiratory distress has been linked to a cytokine storm. One molecule involved that stimulates the hyperinflammatory state or cytokine storm is interleukin-6 ( IL-6). The level of IL-6 has been tracked as a marker for the severity of COVID 19 disease.

Tocilizumab is a recombinant humanized monoclonal antibody approved to treat cytokine storm by targeting IL-6. Isolated observational studies early in 2020 showed that tocilizumab decreased other markers for inflammation, such as C-reactive protein. Tocilizumab targets IL-6, whether membrane-bound or free in the blood. Side effects include upper respiratory infections, sore throats, headache, elevated blood pressure, and abnormal liver function. There are many drug-drug interactions with tocilizumab. Tocilizumab stays in the blood for about 14 days. During this time, patients are at increased risk of having an undiagnosed infection progress and, therefore, are warned to report the first signs or symptoms of any infection. The patient will not exhibit fever and signs of inflammation while on this medication. This means that a hidden infection can advance without notice. The results of the study released by the REMAP-CAP investigators were more optimistic than the results of previous studies.

Doctor Mike Hansen, MD Internal Medicine | Pulmonary Disease | Critical Care Medicine

 

[marsh]

Azar: States Must Stop Micromanaging Vaccine Distribution, 'We Don't Have Orders' from States for Available Vaccine Doses

On Wednesday's broadcast of the Fox Business Network's "Varney & Co.," HHS Secretary Alex Azar said that there aren't enough orders from the states | Clips

www.breitbart.com

Azar: States Must Stop Micromanaging Vaccine Distribution, ‘We Don’t Have Orders’ from States for Available Vaccine Doses

IAN HANCHETT13 Jan 202114

On Wednesday’s broadcast of the Fox Business Network’s “Varney & Co.,” HHS Secretary Alex Azar said that there aren’t enough orders from the states for all the coronavirus vaccine doses that are available, urged states to end “micromanagement” by bureaucracy, and said that it’s better to have the vaccine used on lower-priority individuals than thrown out.

Azar said, “[W]e’ve got 38 million doses of vaccine available, but…only 27 million have been distributed. Because we don’t have orders for all the vaccine that we’ve got. We’ve got to get the states to accelerate their administration by opening up the aperture to more people. They’ve got to open up to age 65 and above, age 64 and below that have comorbidities and risks because this is the way we protect our most vulnerable citizens. And we’ve seen variable performance. You know, some states are at 80% of vaccines administered that they’ve received, some like New York are at 30%. This micromanagement bureaucracy from the center has to stop.”

Azar specifically mentioned West Virginia and Connecticut as states that have done a good job with vaccine distribution.

He later added, “I would rather get — have it used on lower-priority individuals than thrown away, and I would rather have lower-priority individuals get vaccinated than to sit around waiting for the perfect to be the enemy of the good to get all high-priority people first.”

 

[marsh]

Politico: Biden's heralded COVID board has no idea what his plan is either

Competence.

hotair.com

Politico: Biden’s Heralded COVID Board Has No Idea What His Plan Is Either
ED MORRISSEYPosted at 2:20 pm on January 14, 2021

Joe Biden will unveil his plan to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic this evening in a prime-time address. No one will be more surprised by it than the advisers that supposedly formed it, according to Politico. Despite Biden’s claim that he would assemble the best and brightest for his COVID-19 advisory board to develop a comprehensive plan to deal with it, as of last night none of its members had even been briefed on what Biden will propose:

When President-elect Joe Biden announced his Covid-19 advisory board in November, he promised its health care experts would play a critical role in shaping his pandemic response plan.

But, on the eve of Biden’s Thursday rollout, the board members are largely in the dark about the plan’s details, according to three people familiar.

Biden’s Covid-19 response — portions of which will be laid out by the president-elect in a prime-time speech here — is expected to serve as a blueprint for pandemic efforts across the government, including a range of initiatives designed to boost testing, speed the development of new coronavirus therapies and distribute vaccines to hundreds of millions of Americans.

But most of the Covid advisory board, which Biden formed within days of the election as part of an effort to demonstrate that ending the pandemic would be his top priority, will not be briefed on the plan until tomorrow afternoon.

So what exactly will Biden unveil today? If you missed Jazz’ post from earlier today, be sure to read it now, but thus far the groundbreaking plan is to, er, continue what we’re already doing. To wit: Biden will apparently announce that he plans to vaccinate as many people as possible while pushing Americans to maintain social-distancing disciplines, including mask-wearing. On the latter point, having a president endorse that practice a little more enthusiastically might have an impact on its adoption, but otherwise it’s the same as Biden’s other COVID-19 declarations — to do what Donald Trump has already done.

Of course, those might be the larger goals. What matters is how Biden plans to deliver on them. What will the incoming administration do to accelerate vaccinations, beyond what the CDC has already recommended in reducing reliance on rollout priorities? What will they do to support and expand social-distancing protocols while allowing for better access to in-person commerce? Those might be very good drill-downs into the Captain Obvious bullet points, but that would require, y’know, working with some experts.

The fact that the advisory board hadn’t even been briefed on those Captain Obvious plans is beyond laughable, but it raises a bigger question. Has Biden prepared at all for this pandemic? He’s certainly talked a lot about it — again, mostly by saying he’d do what Trump is already doing — but his pitch was that he would bring a lot more competence to the execution of those plans. How much competence could Biden be adding if he’s not even consulting with his own expert board in developing a detailed plan on delivery?

Looks like we’ll be finding out soon … the hard way.

 

[marsh]

woops wrong thread - sorry, it happens