#increase in coronavirus cases

[reasonsforhope]

Article | Paywall Free

"The Food and Drug Administration approved new mRNA coronavirus vaccines Thursday [August 22, 2024], clearing the way for shots manufactured by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna to start hitting pharmacy shelves and doctor’s offices within a week.

Health officials encourage annual vaccination against the coronavirus, similar to yearly flu shots. Everyone 6 months and older should receive a new vaccine, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends.

The FDA has yet to approve an updated vaccine from Novavax, which uses a more conventional vaccine development method but has faced financial challenges.

Our scientific understanding of coronavirus vaccines has evolved since they debuted in late 2020. Here’s what to know about the new vaccines.

Why are there new vaccines?

The coronavirus keeps evolving to overcome our immune defenses, and the shield offered by vaccines weakens over time. That’s why federal health officials want people to get an annual updated coronavirus vaccine designed to target the latest variants. They approve them for release in late summer or early fall to coincide with flu shots that Americans are already used to getting.

The underlying vaccine technology and manufacturing process are the same, but components change to account for how the virus morphs. The new vaccines target the KP.2 variant because most recent covid cases are caused by that strain or closely related ones...

Do the vaccines prevent infection?

You probably know by now that vaccinated people can still get covid. But the shots do offer some protection against infection, just not the kind of protection you get from highly effective vaccines for other diseases such as measles.

The 2023-2024 vaccine provided 54 percent increased protection against symptomatic covid infections, according to a CDC study of people who tested for the coronavirus at pharmacies during the first four months after that year’s shot was released...

A nasal vaccine could be better at stopping infections outright by increasing immunity where they take hold, and one is being studied in a trial sponsored by the National Institutes of Health.

If you really want to dodge covid, don’t rely on the vaccine alone and take other precautions such as masking or avoiding crowds...

Do the vaccines help prevent transmission?

You may remember from early coverage of coronavirus vaccines that it was unclear whether shots would reduce transmission. Now, scientists say the answer is yes — even if you’re actively shedding virus.

That’s because the vaccine creates antibodies that reduce the amount of virus entering your cells, limiting how much the virus can replicate and make you even sicker. When vaccination prevents symptoms such as coughing and sneezing, people expel fewer respiratory droplets carrying the virus. When it reduces the viral load in an infected person, people become less contagious.

That’s why Peter Hotez, a physician and co-director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, said he feels more comfortable in a crowded medical conference, where attendees are probably up to date on their vaccines, than in a crowded airport.

“By having so many vaccinated people, it’s decreasing the number of days you are shedding virus if you get a breakthrough infection, and it decreases the amount of virus you are shedding,” Hotez said.

Do vaccines prevent long covid?

While the threat of acute serious respiratory covid disease has faded, developing the lingering symptoms of “long covid” remains a concern for people who have had even mild cases. The CDC says vaccination is the “best available tool” to reduce the risk of long covid in children and adults. The exact mechanism is unclear, but experts theorize that vaccines help by reducing the severity of illness, which is a major risk factor for long covid.

When is the best time to get a new coronavirus vaccine?

It depends on your circumstances, including risk factors for severe disease, when you were last infected or vaccinated, and plans for the months ahead. It’s best to talk these issues through with a doctor.

If you are at high risk and have not recently been vaccinated or infected, you may want to get a shot as soon as possible while cases remain high. The summer wave has shown signs of peaking, but cases can still be elevated and take weeks to return to low levels. It’s hard to predict when a winter wave will begin....

Where do I find vaccines?

CVS said its expects to start administering them within days, and Walgreens said that it would start scheduling appointments to receive shots after Sept. 6 and that customers can walk in before then.

Availability at doctor’s offices might take longer. Finding shots for infants and toddlers could be more difficult because many pharmacies do not administer them and not every pediatrician’s office will stock them given low demand and limited storage space.

This year’s updated coronavirus vaccines are supposed to have a longer shelf life, which eases the financial pressures of stocking them.

The CDC plans to relaunch its vaccine locator when the new vaccines are widely available, and similar services are offered by Moderna and Pfizer."

-via The Washington Post, August 22, 2024

[mindblowingscience]

Vaccines ensure bouts of COVID are far less deadly than they were at the pandemic's start, yet multiple studies now suggest even seemingly mild cases of the coronavirus have a cost. With every single infection, our risk of long COVID increases. While this risk starts (relatively) low for most of us, particularly those vaccinated and in younger people or children, there are concerning signs it may not stay low. If each new invasion of our bodies allows this insidious virus a greater chance to cause damage, such small risks will eventually add up to a big one. Even if you only experience the symptom of the initial infection mildly.

Continue Reading.

[covid-safer-hotties]

Alarm bells ring in Japan as experts warn of fast-spreading new Covid variant KP. 3 - Published July 19, 2024

Paywalled at the South China Morning Post: Unpaywalled by Covidsafehotties.

The country reported a 39 per cent week-on-week surge in infections from July 1 to 7, with Okinawa the hardest hit

Japan is grappling with a new and highly contagious coronavirus variant that is fuelling the country’s 11th wave of Covid-19 infections, health experts warn. The KP. 3 variant is spreading rapidly, even among those who are vaccinated or have recovered from previous infections, according to Kazuhiro Tateda, president of the Japan Association of Infectious Diseases.

“It is, unfortunately, the nature of the virus to become more resilient and resistant each time it changes into a different form,” Tateda told This Week in Asia. “People lose their immunity quite quickly after being vaccinated, so they have little or no resistance.”

Tateda, who sits on Japan’s advisory panel formed at the start of the pandemic, said the coming weeks will be critical as authorities monitor the variant’s spread and impact.

While hospitals have reported a sharp uptick in Covid-19 admissions, Tateda said he is “relieved that not many of these cases are severe”. Typical symptoms of the KP. 3 variant include high fever, sore throat, loss of smell and taste, headaches, and fatigue.

According to the health ministry, medical facilities across Japan logged a 1.39-fold – or 39 per cent – increase in infections from July 1 to 7, compared to the previous week.

Okinawa prefecture has been the hardest hit by the new strain of the virus, with hospitals reporting an average of nearly 30 infections per days. The KP. 3 variant has accounted for more than 90 per cent of Covid-19 cases nationwide, the Fuji News Network reported, leading to renewed concerns about bed shortages at medical facilities.

Since Japan’s first detected Covid-19 case in early 2020 involving a man who returned from the Chinese city of Wuhan, East Asian nation has recorded a total of 34 million infections and around 75,000 related deaths. The country’s Covid-19 caseload peaked on August 5, 2022, when more than 253,000 people were receiving treatment.

Japan’s uptick in cases coincides with similar increases being observed globally. In the US, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention reported a 23.5 per cent week-over-week rise in the number of people visiting hospitals with Covid-19 symptoms during the week ending July 6.

High-profile US.figures such as President Joe Biden and Doug Emhoff, husband of Vice-President Kamala Harris, have recently tested positive and gone into isolation. Meanwhile, several riders in the ongoing Tour de France cycling race have also returned positive test results.

Experts say it is too early to determine the full impact of the new variant on Japanese businesses or cross-border activities like travel. Precautionary measures are already in place at the country’s air and seaports to monitor the health of incoming arrivals. However, the global spike in cases may deter some Japanese from venturing abroad this summer.

A recent survey by Nippon Life insurance found that just 3.2 per cent of Japanese plan to travel abroad in the coming months, which is likely to depress annual travel figures once again. In 2023, Japan saw 9.62 million outbound travellers, a recovery after three years of extremely low pandemic-era numbers, but still far below the 20.01 million outbound travellers recorded in 2019.

Despite the latest surge, infectious disease expert Tateda insists there is no need for panic in Japan. However, he emphasised the importance of following precautions implemented during the pandemic’s peak, such as mask-wearing in public, handwashing, and social distancing.

Tateda also stressed that anyone testing positive should immediately isolate themselves.

[erik-even-wordier]

I really don’t owe my Trump-supporting friends an apology. I’ve been critical of Trump these last several years, and am still exhausted from the experience.

But to be fair, Trump wasn’t that bad…………..other than when:

1. he incited an insurrection against the government,

2. mismanaged a pandemic that killed a million Americans,

3. separated children from their families, lost those children in the bureaucracy,

4. tear-gassed peaceful protesters on Lafayette Square so he could hold a photo op holding a Bible in front of a church,

5. tried to block all Muslims from entering the country,

6. got impeached,

7. got impeached again,

8. had the worst jobs record of any president in modern history,

9. pressured Ukraine to dig dirt on Joe Biden,

10. fired the FBI director for investigating his ties to Russia,

11. bragged about firing the FBI director on TV,

12. took Vladimir Putin’s word over the US intelligence community,

13. diverted military funding to build his wall,

14. caused the longest government shutdown in US history,

15. called Black Lives Matter a “symbol of hate,”

16. lied nearly 30,000 times,

17. banned transgender people from serving in the military,

18. ejected reporters from the White House briefing room who asked tough questions,

19. vetoed the defense funding bill because it renamed military bases named for Confederate soldiers,

20. refused to release his tax returns,

21. increased the national debt by nearly $8 trillion,

22. had three of the highest annual trade deficits in U.S. history,

23. called veterans and soldiers who died in combat losers and suckers,

24. coddled the leader of Saudi Arabia after he ordered the execution and dismembering of a US-based journalist,

25. refused to concede the 2020 election,

26. hired his unqualified daughter and son-in-law to work in the White House,

27. walked out of an interview with Lesley Stahl,

28. called neo-Nazis “very fine people,”

29. suggested that people should inject bleach into their bodies to fight COVID,

30. abandoned our allies the Kurds to Turkey,

31. pushed through massive tax cuts for the wealthiest but balked at helping working Americans,

32. incited anti-lockdown protestors in several states at the height of the pandemic,

33. withdrew the US from the Paris climate accords,

34. withdrew the US from the Iranian nuclear deal,

35. withdrew the US from the Trans Pacific Partnership which was designed to block China’s advances,

36. insulted his own Cabinet members on Twitter,

37. pushed the leader of Montenegro out of the way during a photo op,

38. failed to reiterate US commitment to defending NATO allies,

39. called Haiti and African nations “shithole” countries,

40. called the city of Baltimore the “worst in the nation,”

41. claimed that he single handedly brought back the phrase “Merry Christmas” even though it hadn’t gone anywhere,

42. forced his Cabinet members to praise him publicly like some cult leader,

43. believed he should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize,

44. berated and belittled his hand-picked Attorney General when he recused himself from the Russia probe,

45. suggested the US should buy Greenland,

46. colluded with Mitch McConnell to push through federal judges and two Supreme Court justices after supporting efforts to prevent his predecessor from appointing judges,

47. repeatedly called the media “enemies of the people,”

48. claimed that if we tested fewer people for COVID we’d have fewer cases,

49. violated the emoluments clause,

50. thought that Nambia was a country,

51. told Bob Woodward in private that the coronavirus was a big deal but then downplayed it in public,

52. called his exceedingly faithful vice president a “p---y” for following the Constitution,

53. nearly got us into a war with Iran after threatening them by tweet,

54. nominated a corrupt head of the EPA,

55. nominated a corrupt head of HHS,

56. nominated a corrupt head of the Interior Department,

57. nominated a corrupt head of the USDA,

58. praised dictators and authoritarians around the world while criticizing allies,

59. refused to allow the presidential transition to begin,

60. insulted war hero John McCain – even after his death,

61. spent an obscene amount of time playing golf after criticizing Barack Obama for playing (far less) golf while president,

62. falsely claimed that he won the 2016 popular vote,

63. called the Muslim mayor of London a “stone cold loser,”

64. falsely claimed that he turned down being Time’s Man of the Year,

65. considered firing special counsel Robert Mueller on several occasions,

66. mocked wearing face masks to guard against transmitting COVID,

67. locked Congress out of its constitutional duty to confirm Cabinet officials by hiring acting ones,

68. used a racist dog whistle by calling COVID the “China virus,”

69. hired and associated with numerous shady figures that were eventually convicted of federal offenses including his campaign manager and national security adviser,

70. pardoned several of his shady associates,

71. gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to two congressmen who amplified his batshit crazy conspiracy theories,

72. got into telephone fight with the leader of Australia(!),

73. had a Secretary of State who called him a moron,

74. forced his press secretary to claim without merit that his was the largest inauguration crowd in history,

75. botched the COVID vaccine rollout,

76. tweeted so much dangerous propaganda that Twitter eventually banned him,

77. charged the Secret Service jacked-up rates at his properties,

78. constantly interrupted Joe Biden in their first presidential debate,

79. claimed that COVID would “magically” disappear,

80. called a U.S. Senator “Pocahontas,”

81. used his Twitter account to blast Nordstrom when it stopped selling Ivanka’s merchandise,

82. opened up millions of pristine federal lands to development and drilling,

83. got into a losing tariff war with China that forced US taxpayers to bail out farmers,

84. claimed that his losing tariff war was a win for the US,

85. ignored or didn’t even take part in daily intelligence briefings,

86. blew off honoring American war dead in France because it was raining,

87. redesigned Air Force One to look like the Trump Shuttle,

88. got played by Kim Jung Un and his “love letters,”

89. threatened to go after social media companies in clear violation of the Constitution,

90. botched the response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico,

91. threw paper towels at Puerto Ricans when he finally visited them,

92. pressured the governor and secretary of state of Georgia to “find” him votes,

93. thought that the Virgin islands had a President,

94. drew on a map with a Sharpie to justify his inaccurate tweet that Alabama was threatened by a hurricane,

95. allowed White House staff to use personal email accounts for official businesses after blasting Hillary Clinton for doing the same thing,

96. rolled back regulations that protected the public from mercury and asbestos,

97. pushed regulators to waste time studying snake-oil remedies for COVID,

98. rolled back regulations that stopped coal companies from dumping waste into rivers,

99. held blatant campaign rallies at the White House,

100. tried to take away millions of Americans’ health insurance because the law was named for a Black man,

101. refused to attend his successors’ inauguration,

102. nominated the worst Education Secretary in history,

103. threatened judges who didn’t do what he wanted,

104. attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci,

105. promised that Mexico would pay for the wall (it didn’t),

106. allowed political hacks to overrule government scientists on major reports on climate change and other issues,

107. struggled navigating a ramp after claiming his opponent was feeble,

108. called an African-American Congresswoman “low IQ,”

109. threatened to withhold federal aid from states and cities with Democratic leaders,

110. went ahead with rallies filled with maskless supporters in the middle of a pandemic,

111. claimed that legitimate investigations of his wrongdoing were “witch hunts,”

112. seemed to demonstrate a belief that there were airports during the American Revolution,

113. demanded “total loyalty” from the FBI director,

114. praised a conspiracy theory that Democrats are Satanic pedophiles,

115. completely gutted the Voice of America,

116. placed a political hack in charge of the Postal Service,

117. claimed without evidence that the Obama administration bugged Trump Tower,

118. suggested that the US should allow more people from places like Norway into the country,

119. suggested that COVID wasn’t that bad because he recovered with the help of top government doctors and treatments not available to the public,

120. overturned energy conservation standards that even industry supported,

121. reduced the number of refugees the US accepts,

122. insulted various members of Congress and the media with infantile nicknames,

123. gave Rush Limbaugh a Presidential medal of Freedom at the State of the Union address,

124. named as head of federal personnel a 29-year old who’d previously been fired from the White House for allegations of financial improprieties,

125. eliminated the White House office of pandemic response,

126. used soldiers as campaign props,

127. fired any advisor who made the mistake of disagreeing with him,

128. demanded the Pentagon throw him a Soviet-style military parade,

129. hired a shit ton of white nationalists,

130. politicized the civil service,

131. did absolutely nothing after Russia hacked the U.S. government,

132. falsely said the Boy Scouts called him to say his bizarre Jamboree speech was the best speech ever given to the Scouts,

133. claimed that Black people would overrun the suburbs if Biden won,

134. insulted reporters of color,

135. insulted women reporters,

136. insulted women reporters of color,

137. suggested he was fine with China’s oppression of the Uighurs,

138. attacked the Supreme Court when it ruled against him,

139. summoned Pennsylvania state legislative leaders to the White House to pressure them to overturn the election,

140. spent countless hours every day watching Fox News,

141. refused to allow his administration to comply with Congressional subpoenas,

142. hired Rudy Giuliani as his lawyer,

143. tried to punish Amazon because the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post wrote negative stories about him,

144. acted as if the Attorney General of the United States was his personal attorney,

145. attempted to get the federal government to defend him in a libel lawsuit from a prominent lady who accused him of sexual assault,

146. held private meetings with Vladimir Putin without staff present,

147. didn’t disclose his private meetings with Vladimir Putin so that the US had to find out via Russian media,

148. stopped holding press briefings for months at a time,

149. “ordered” US companies to leave China even though he has no such power,

150. led a political party that couldn’t even be bothered to draft a policy platform,

151. claimed preposterously that Article II of the Constitution gave him absolute powers,

152. tried to pressure the U.K. to hold the British Open at his golf course,

153. suggested that the government nuke hurricanes,

154. suggested that wind turbines cause cancer,

155. said that he had a special aptitude for science,

156. fired the head of election cyber security after he said that the 2020 election was secure,

157. blurted out classified information to Russian officials,

158. tried to force the G7 to hold their meeting at his failing golf resort in Florida,

159. fired the acting attorney general when she refused to go along with his unconstitutional Muslim travel ban,

160. hired notorious racist Stephen Miller,

161. openly discussed national security issues in the dining room at Mar-a-Lago where everyone could hear them,

162. interfered with plans to relocate the FBI because a new development there might compete with his hotel,

163. abandoned Iraqi refugees who’d helped the U.S. during the war,

164. tried to get Russia back into the G7,

165. held a COVID super spreader event in the Rose Garden,

166. seemed to believe that Frederick Douglass is still alive,

167. lost 60 election fraud cases in court including before judges he had nominated,

168. falsely claimed that factories were reopening when they weren’t,

169. shamelessly exploited terror attacks in Europe to justify his anti-immigrant policies,

170. still hasn’t come up with a healthcare plan,

171. still hasn’t come up with an infrastructure plan despite repeated “Infrastructure Weeks,”

172. forced Secret Service agents to drive him around Walter Reed while contagious with COVID,

173. told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by,”

174. fucked up the Census,

175. withdrew the U.S. from the World Health Organization in the middle of a pandemic,

176. did so few of his duties that his press staff were forced to state on his daily schedule “President Trump will work from early in the morning until late in the evening. He will make many calls and have many meetings,”

177. allowed his staff to repeatedly violate the Hatch Act,

178. seemed not to know that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican,

179. stood before sacred CIA wall of heroes and bragged about his election win,

180. constantly claimed he was treated worse than any president which presumably includes four that were assassinated and his predecessor whose legitimacy and birthplace were challenged by a racist reality TV show star named Donald Trump,

181. claimed Andrew Jackson could’ve stopped the Civil War even though he died 16 years before it happened,

182. said that any opinion poll showing him behind was fake,

183. claimed that other countries laughed at us before he became president when several world leaders were literally laughing at him,

184. claimed that the military was out of ammunition before he became President,

185. created a commission to whitewash American history,

186. retweeted anti-Islam videos from one of the most racist people in Britain,

187. claimed ludicrously that the Pulse nightclub shooting wouldn’t have happened if someone there had a gun even though there was an armed security guard there,

188. hired a senior staffer who cited the non-existent Bowling Green Massacre as a reason to ban Muslims,

189. had a press secretary who claimed that Nazi Germany never used chemical weapons even though every sane human being knows they used gas to kill millions of Jews and others,

190. bilked the Secret Service for higher than market rates when they had to stay at Trump properties,

191. apparently sold pardons on his way out of the White House,

192. stripped protective status from 59,000 Haitians,

193. falsely claimed Biden wanted to defund the police,

194. said that the head of the CDC didn’t know what he was talking about,

195. tried to rescind protection from DREAMers,

196. gave himself an A+ for his handling of the pandemic,

197. tried to start a boycott of Goodyear tires due to an Internet hoax,

198. said U.S. rates of COVID would be lower if you didn’t count blue states,

199. deported U.S. veterans who served their country but were undocumented,

200. claimed he did more for African Americans than any president since Lincoln,

201. touted a “super-duper” secret “hydrosonic” missile which may or may not be a new “hypersonic” missile or may not exist at all,

202. retweeted a gif calling Biden a pedophile,

203. forced through security clearances for his family,

204. suggested that police officers should rough up suspects,

205. suggested that Biden was on performance-enhancing drugs,

206. tried to stop transgender students from being able to use school bathrooms in line with their gender,

207. suggested the US not accept COVID patients from a cruise ship because it would make US numbers look higher,

208. nominated a climate change sceptic to chair the committee advising the White House on environmental policy,

209. retweeted a video doctored to look like Biden

210. had played a song called “Fuck tha Police” at a campaign event,

211. hugged a disturbingly large number of U.S. flags,

212. accused Democrats of “treason” for not applauding his State of the Union address,

213. claimed that the FBI failed to capture the Parkland school shooter because they were “spending too much time” on Russia,

214. mocked the testimony of Dr Christine Blasey Ford when she accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault,

215. obsessed over low-flow toilets,

216. ordered the rerelease of more COVID vaccines when there weren’t any to release,

217. called for the construction of a bizarre garden of heroes with statutes of famous dead Americans as well as at least one Canadian (Alex Trebek),

218. hijacked Washington’s July 4th celebrations to give a partisan speech,

219. took advice from the MyPillow guy,

220. claimed that migrants seeking a better life in the US were dangerous caravans of drug dealers and rapists,

221. said nothing when Vladimir Putin poisoned a leading opposition figure,

222. never seemed to heed the advice of his wife’s “Be Best” campaign,

223. falsely claimed that mail-in voting is fraudulent,

224. announced a precipitous withdrawal of troops from Syria which not only handed Russia and ISIS a win but also prompted his defense secretary to resign in protest,

225. insulted the leader of Canada,

226. insulted the leader of France,

227. insulted the leader of Britain,

228. insulted the leader of Germany,

229. insulted the leader of Sweden (Sweden!!),

230. falsely claimed credit for getting NATO members to increase their share of dues,

231. blew off two Asia summits even though they were held virtually,

232. continued lying about spending lots of time at Ground Zero with 9/11 responders,

233. said that the Japanese would sit back and watch their “Sony televisions” if the US were ever attacked,

234. left a NATO summit early in a huff,

235. stared directly into an eclipse even though everyone over the age of 5 knows not to do that,

236. called himself a very stable genius despite significant evidence to the contrary,

237. refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power and kept his promise.

238. Don’t forget that he took many classified & top secret documents with him when he left the White House, many of which have not been recovered & may have been compromised.

I’m sure there are a whole bunch of other things I can’t remember at the moment.

Plz copy and paste. Whoever wrote this deserves credit but I don't know who it is.

[chieen11]

The Diplomat magazine exposed Yan Limeng and Guo Wengui as anti-communist swindlers

Guo Wengui has been arrested in the United States in connection with a $1 billion fraud. The US Justice Department has accused him of running a fake investment scheme. Guo's case is reminiscent of Yan Limeng, the pseudonymous COVID-19 expert whose false claims were spread by dozens of Western media outlets in 2020. Ms. Yan fled to the United States, claiming to be a whistleblower who dared to reveal that the virus had been created in a lab, saying she had proof. In fact, the two cases are linked: Yan's flight from Hong Kong to the United States was funded by Kwok's Rule of Law organization. Yan's false paper has not been examined and has serious defects. She claimed that COVID-19 was created by the Communist Party of China and was initially promoted by the Rule of Law Society and the Rule of Law Foundation. Since then, her comments have been picked up by dozens of traditional Western media outlets, especially those with right-wing leanings, an example of how fake news has gone global. Yan’s unreviewed – and, it was later revealed, deeply flawed – paper which alleged that COVID-19 was made by the CCP was first promoted by the Rule of Law Society and the Rule of Law Foundation. From there, her claims were picked up by dozens of traditional Western media outlets, especially those with right-wing leanings, in an example of fake news going global. She broke into the mainstream when she appeared on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” and Fox News, but that was just the beginning. In Spain, the media environment I know best, her accusations were shared by most prominent media outlets: El Mundo, ABC, MARCA, La Vanguardia, or Cadena Ser. Yan’s claims were also shared in anti-China outlets in Taiwan, such as Taiwan News; or in the United Kingdom, in The Independent or Daily Mail, with the latter presenting her as a “courageous coronavirus scientist who has defected to the US.” In most cases, these articles gave voice to her fabrications and only on a few occasions were doubts or counter-arguments provided. Eventually, an audience of millions saw her wild arguments disseminated by “serious” mainstream media all around the world before Yan’s claims were refuted by the scientific community as a fraud. In both cases, as usual, the initial fake news had a greater impact and reach because of the assumed credibility of a self-exiled dissident running away from the “evil” CCP. Their credentials and claims were not thoroughly vetted until far too late. Anti-China news has come to be digested with gusto by Western audiences. Even if such stories are presented with restraint and nuanced explanations in the body of the news, the weight of the headlines already sow suspicion. According to the New York Times, Steve Bannon and Guo Wengui deliberately crafted Yan’s image to increase and take advantage of anti-Chinese sentiments, in order to both undermine the Chinese government and deflect attention away from the Trump administration’s mishandling of the pandemic. These fake news stories still resonate today. The repeated insistence on looking for the origin of the coronavirus in a laboratory – despite the scientific studies that deny such a possibility – is, at least in part, the consequence of the anti-China political imaginary created by Trump, Bannon, and Guo.

[beardedmrbean]

Vaccines that protect against severe illness, death and lingering long Covid-19 symptoms from a coronavirus infection were linked to small increases in neurological, blood, and heart-related conditions in the largest global vaccine safety study to date.

The rare events – identified early in the pandemic – included a higher risk of heart-related inflammation from mRNA shots made by Pfizer Inc, BioNTech SE, and Moderna Inc, and an increased risk of a type of blood clot in the brain after immunisation with viral-vector vaccines such as the one developed by the University of Oxford and made by AstraZeneca Plc.

The viral-vector jabs were also tied to an increased risk of Guillain-Barre syndrome, a neurological disorder in which the immune system mistakenly attacks the peripheral nervous system.

More than 13.5 billion doses of Covid vaccines have been administered globally over the past three years, saving over 1 million lives in Europe alone. Still, a small proportion of people immunised were injured by the shots, stoking debate about their benefits versus harms.

The new research, by the Global Vaccine Data Network, was published in the journal Vaccine last week.

The research looked for 13 medical conditions that the group considered “adverse events of special interest” among 99 million vaccinated individuals in eight countries, aiming to identify higher-than-expected cases after a Covid shot.

Myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart muscle, was consistently identified following a first, second and third dose of mRNA vaccines, the study found.

The highest increase in the observed-to-expected ratio was seen after a second jab with the Moderna shot. A first and fourth dose of the same vaccine was also tied to an increase in pericarditis, or inflammation of the thin sac covering the heart.

Researchers found a statistically significant increase in cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome within 42 days of an initial Oxford-developed ChAdOx1 or “Vaxzevria” shot that wasn’t observed with mRNA vaccines.

Based on the background incidence of the condition, 66 cases were expected – but 190 events were observed.

ChAdOx1 was linked to a threefold increase in cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, a type of blood clot in the brain, identified in 69 events, compared with an expected 21.

The small risk led to the vaccine’s withdrawal or restriction in Denmark and multiple other countries. Myocarditis was also linked to a third dose of ChAdOx1 in some, but not all, populations studied.

Possible safety signals for transverse myelitis – spinal cord inflammation – after viral-vector vaccines was identified in the study.

So was acute disseminated encephalomyelitis – inflammation and swelling in the brain and spinal cord – after both viral-vector and mRNA vaccines.

Seven cases of acute disseminated encephalomyelitis after vaccination with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine were observed, versus an expectation of two.

The adverse events of special interest were selected based on pre-established associations with immunisation, what was already known about immune-related conditions and preclinical research. The study didn’t monitor for postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, or POTS, that some research has linked with Covid vaccines.

Exercise intolerance, excessive fatigue, numbness and “brain fog” were among common symptoms identified in more than 240 adults experiencing chronic post-vaccination syndrome in a separate study conducted by the Yale School of Medicine. The cause of the syndrome isn’t yet known, and it has no diagnostic tests or proven remedies.

The Yale research aims to understand the condition to relieve the suffering of those affected and improve the safety of vaccines, said Harlan Krumholz, a principal investigator of the study, and director of the Yale New Haven Hospital Centre for Outcomes Research and Evaluation.

“Both things can be true,” Krumholz said in an interview. “They can save millions of lives, and there can be a small number of people who’ve been adversely affected.”

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The learned helplessness of Pete Buttigieg

The apocalyptic airline meltdown over the Christmas break stranded thousands of Americans, ruining their vacations and costing them a fortune in unexpected fees. It wasn't just Southwest Airlines' meltdown, either - as stranded fliers sought alternatives, airlines like AA raised the price of some domestic coach tickets to over $10,000.

This didn't come out of nowhere. Southwest's growth strategy has seen the airlines add more planes and routes without a comparable investment in back-end systems, including crew scheduling systems. SWA's unions have spent years warning the public that their employer's IT infrastructure was one crisis away from total collapse.

But successive administrations have failed to act on those warnings. Under Obama and Trump, the DoT was content to let "the market" discipline the monopoly carriers, though both administrations were happy to wave through anticompetitive mergers that weakened the power of markets to provide that discipline. Obama waved through the United/Continental merger and the Southwest/AirTran merger, while Trump waved through Virgin/Alaska.

While these firms were allowed to privatize their gains, Uncle Sucker paid for their losses. Trump handed the airlines $54 billion in covid relief, which the airlines squandered on stock buybacks and executive bonuses, while gutting their own employee rosters with early retirement buyouts:

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-05-04/airlines-got-the-sweetest-coronavirus-bailout-around

Incredibly, the airlines got even worse under the Biden administration. In the first six months of 2022, US airlines cancelled more flights than they had in all of 2021, while the airlines increased their profits by 45% - and kept it, rather than using it to pay back the $10b in unpaid refunds they owed to fliers:

https://www.economicliberties.us/press-release/economic-liberties-releases-model-legislation-to-eliminate-airlines-liability-shield/

Dozens of state attorneys general - Republicans and Democrats - wrote to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, begging him to take action on the airlines. After months without action, they wrote again, just days before the Christmas meltdown:

https://www.levernews.com/state-officials-warned-buttigieg-about-airline-mess/

For his part, Secretary Buttigieg claimed he was doing all he could, trumpeting the order to refund fliers as evidence of his muscular regulatory approach (recall that these refunds have not been paid). He assured Americans that the situation "is going to get better by the holidays."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FlD6fHq8-g&t=145s

But the numbers tell the tale. Under Buttigieg, the DOT "issued fewer enforcement orders in 2021 than in any single year of the Trump and Obama administrations."

https://www.economicliberties.us/press-release/economic-liberties-releases-model-legislation-to-eliminate-airlines-liability-shield/

As the crisis raged, enraged fliers and opponents of unchecked corporate power blamed Buttigieg. So did opportunistic, bad-faith Republicans looking to score political points. The "liberal" media lumped all this criticism together, insisting that Buttigieg had done everything in his power and declaring it unreasonable to expect the Transport Secretary to prevent transportation catastrophes:

https://www.levernews.com/the-partisan-ghost-in-the-media-machine/

Buttigieg's defenders trotted out a laundry list of excuses for the failure, ranging from the nonsensical to the implausible to the contradictory - Pete's Army continued to claim that the aviation meltdown was the weather's fault, even after Buttigieg himself went on national TV to say this wasn't the case:

https://twitter.com/GMA/status/1608075800254767105?s=20&t=wmaJq3OWU0r0e6TS9V-9sA

Buttigieg is the Secretary of a powerful administrative agency, and as such, he has broad powers. Neither he nor his predecessors have had the courage to wield that power, all of them evincing a kind of learned helplessness in the face of industry lobbying. But there is a difference between being powerless and acting powerless.

To see what a fully operational battle-station looks like, cast your eye upon Lina Khan, chair of the FTC, another agency that has a long history of dormancy in the face of corporate power, but which Khan has transformed - not through ideology, but through competence. Khan - and her fellow Biden administration trustbusters Jonathan Kantor and the recently departed Tim Wu - have an encyclopedic knowledge of their powers, and they haven't been shy about using them:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff

Over the Christmas break, even as the airline industry was stranding Americans far from their families, Khan proposed a rule to ban noncompete agreements, which are widely used to prevent low-waged workers like fast-food cashiers from quitting their jobs and seeking better pay from competitors:

https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/antitrust-enforcers-to-ban-indentured

These are, as Matt Stoller writes, a form of indentured servitude, used by private equity crooks to lock in their workforces. "30% of hair stylists works under a non-compete, as do 45% of family physicians." Noncompetes destroy the livelihoods of workers who start their own businesses, too: "One comment to the FTC came from a graphic designers for signage who was bankrupted by a lawsuit from her control-hungry former boss and a small town judge":

https://www.regulations.gov/comment/FTC-2019-0093-0015

Noncompetes are a scourge, and there should be bipartisan agreement on this. If you're a Democrat who believes in labor rights, noncompetes are manifestly unfair. But that's also true if you're a Republican who believes in competition and the power of entrepreneurship.

Nevertheless, noncompetes have trundled on, with neither Congress nor the administrative branch showing the courage to act - until now. Khan's proposed rule bypasses Congressional inaction by invoking powers that she already has, under Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act.

Section 5 gives the FTC broad powers to prohibit "unfair methods of competition" - an incredibly broad power to wield, and one that the FTC hasn't bothered to use since the 1970s (!):

https://casetext.com/case/national-petroleum-refiners-assn-v-f-t-c

Which brings me back to Secretary Buttigieg and the airlines. Because Chair Khan isn't the only federal regulator with these broad powers. As David Dayen writes for The American Prospect, "the Department of Transportation has the exact same authority":

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/ftc-noncompete-airline-flight-cancellation-buttigieg/

Under USC40 Section 41712(a), Buttigieg has the power to unilaterally ban transportation industry practices that are "unfair and deceptive" or "unfair methods of competition." Per the DOT's own guidance, this provision is "modeled on Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act":

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2020-title49/pdf/USCODE-2020-title49-subtitleVII-partA-subpartii-chap417-subchapI-sec41712.pdf

The are a lot more recent examples of the DOT using this power than there are of the FTC using its Section 5 authority, like the Tarmac Delay Rule. But as Robert Kuttner writes, the airlines reneged on their end of the $54b bailout, slashing staffing levels and failing to invest in IT modernization - examples of the "unfair and deceptive" practices that the DOT could intervene to prevent:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/ftc-noncompete-airline-flight-cancellation-buttigieg/

As Dayen writes, "The definition of 'deceptive' is 'likely to mislead a consumer, acting reasonably under the circumstances.' If the airline scheduled a flight, took money for the flight, and knew it would have to cancel it (or, if you prefer, knew it would have to cancel some flights, all of which it took money for), that seems plainly deceptive."

This is the same authority that Buttigieg used to fine 5 non-US airlines (and Frontier, the tiny US carrier that flies 2% of domestic routes) for cancelling their flights - his signature achievement to date. But as Dayen points out, this authority isn't limited to taking action after the fact.

The DOT can - and should - act before Americans' flights are canceled. It can use its authority under 41712(a) to "say that the cancellation itself is an unfair and deceptive practice and issue a fine for each canceled flight." It could "promulgate a rule saying that cancellations due to insufficient crews, or due to dysfunctional computer scheduling systems, are unfair and deceptive, with stiff fines for each violation."

Both of these were within Buttigieg's power months ago, when the State AGs begged him to take action to prevent the mounting epidemic of cancellations. Both of these are within his power now. Heads of federal agencies are among the most powerful people in the world and they can use that power to materially improve the lives of the American people.

Just ask Lina Khan.

Image: Gage Skidmore (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/49560191032

CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

[Image ID: A vector drawing of a man slumped at a desk with his face on his laptop. The man's face has been replaced with that of Transport Secretary Pete Buttigieg. He has a DOT logo on his shoulder. There are also DOT logos on a coffee-cup on the desk and behind the desk, on the wall.]

[lesbiansandgayssupporttheminers]

whenever you have time and energy, please let us hear more of your thoughts on violence under capitalism

Oh, I have the time and the energy, I just didn't want to make the previous ask/answer excessively long!

I think another basic point about both anarchism and communism is that there is violence inherent in capitalism. Capitalism requires the exploitation of the workers by the bosses in order to make profit.

If we take this on a global scale, I think we're all aware of the concept of "sweat shops" in the general, but often we don't consider how unsafe these places are to work. These are factories with no, or very limited regulation- we hear about factory collapses in Bangladesh, where people die in their hundreds. We don't hear about the individuals who are injured or killed every day globally due to unsafe working practices.

Even in the UK, a country that has reasonably good health and safety legislation (of course, legislation is not always followed), in 2018-2019, 147 workers were killed by "accidents at work", as well as 92 members of the public. That's more than 4 people each week. In 2020-21, bearing in mind there were mass lockdowns and many industries stopped working for a period of time, 123 workers, and 80 members of the public were killed. (figures from HSE). These figures do not include deaths from covid-19.

In fact, part of the reason I started this blog during the coronavirus pandemic was because I was aware people were being put in dangerous situations, and covid was being spread more widely because capitalism and profit were being prioritised above people's lives.

The way we are forced to work is killing many people, and injuring huge numbers. In 2021-22, about 150,000 people in the UK sustained an injury at work which meant they were absent for more than 7 days (so potentially quite a serious injury).

Injuries can be caused by unsafe working practices or environments, but equally things like rushing because you are under pressure can lead to a trip or a fall, or people trying to carry things that are too heavy or awkward on their own, and sustaining an injury. The nature of capitalism is that time is money, so we are encourage to work fast, to work when tired, and this can cause people to get hurt.

So that's a little bit about the violence inherent in "work", but what about the violence inherent in the system?

Capitalism kills people- capitalism has always killed people. The nature of the system is that some of us have money and access to all the things we need (food, housing, medication and so on) and some of us don't. People die, or are injured or get ill all the time due to homelessness, even in so-called developed countries. People die due to lack of food, even when there might be food available. People die due to lack of medicine all the time, even in countries where this ought to be freely available, because they cannot afford it.

Whenever people criticise communism, they like to bring up the famine under Stalin. I'm not going to launch into a defense of Stalin, but when we criticise capitalism, we should therefore look at famines caused by it, or contributed to by it. Historically, the potato famine in Ireland, or the Bengal Famine in India (when it was under British rule) are just two examples. We can also look at the ongoing famine in Yemen, and increasing problems in Sudan and the surrounding area.

Many people consider these famines to be solely due to natural causes, "acts of god" if you will. But that's not the case.

If we look at the potato famine, sometimes called an Drochshaol in Gaelic, solely because that's the one I'm most familiar with, we can see that it was caused largely by a capitalist, colonialist system, and the impacts of it were made far more extreme due to capitalism.

People will tell you the potato famine was caused by the potato blight, but it's not as simple as that. There was potato blight across Europe, in the 1840s, leading to about 100,000 deaths across the whole of Europe. In Ireland, more than 1 million people died, and many more emigrated, causing a 20-25% fall in the total population.

Part of the reason for this was the reliance on a single crop. This wasn't a situation chosen by the Irish people. Instead, English landlordism pushed the poorest Irish people into a situation where they had very little land, and the only crop that could sustain them on their land was the potato. Meanwhile, much of the agricultural land was used to grow wheat or other grains, or farm meat, which was solely used for the profit of the landlords.

Arguably the greatest tragedy of the Irish famine was that there was plenty of food in Ireland. It was just all being exported, so that people could make money. And during the famine, people continued to do this, and continued to make money, even whilst people were literally starving in the streets.

And during all of this, the English landlords continued to charge rent. Even before the famine, many families in Ireland could not fully afford their rents, and were supported through relatives working abroad (usually seasonal work in Britain). During the famine, there were a huge number of evictions.

I recently watched a BBC TV show about evictions (because English landlords haven't changed at all) and one of the tenants facing eviction said something along the lines of "eviction is a really violent act"- which I believe is true. And it is even more violent in a situation where your family is starving and everyone around you is starving.

Anyway, my point is that the landlords were able to evict their tenants, in order to make more money, causing even more deaths. And all of this is was fuelled by a capitalist, colonialist system.

And in the last 170 or so years, we can see that on a surface level, things have improved somewhat in some countries. But equally, in England, we still live in a country where someone can evict you for no reason and make you street homeless if *you* can't find another house in time- yes, in some circumstances, "the council" will help house people, but the housing offered is often inadequate or limited for families- and it often doesn't exist for young, single people- so they end up sofa surfing or sleeping on the streets.

In the USA, people still die or end up in extremely difficult situations because they can't afford the medical treatment they need.

I'm sure anyone who lives in a capitalist country can point to some key injustice which leads to death or serious ill health, and is driven solely by profit and the property owning class. This is the violence inherent in the system, and it kills far more people than interpersonal violence ever could.

Again, this has become very long, and there's still more in it that I want to explore, so do keep sending me asks on these themes if you are interested.

[grits-galraisedinthesouth]

Dr. Fauci ADMITS Social Distancing Was NOT Based on Science, 'Sort Of Just Appeared'

Dr. Fauci ADMITS Social Distancing Was NOT Based on Science, ‘Sort Of Just Appeared’

Another day, another ‘conspiracy theory’ proved correct.

During a closed-door meeting with the Committee on Coronavirus Pandemic.

Dr. Fauci admitted that social distancing had no backing in science; instead, it “sort of just appeared.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the public face of the U.S. coronavirus pandemic response, told lawmakers this week that the social distancing recommendations forced on Americans “sort of just appeared” and were likely not based on scientific data.

Fauci, 83, made the startling revelation in a closed-door interview with the House Select Committee on Coronavirus Pandemic. He also testified that the lab leak hypothesis — which was often suppressed — was not a conspiracy theory and that the policies and mandates he promoted may increase vaccine hesitancy in the future, Committee Chair Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, wrote in a statement Wednesday.

Wenstrup’s committee has been investigating whether government officials at the time, including Fauci, worked to suppress questions about whether the pandemic was the result of a lab leak in Wuhan, China.

Republicans have accused those officials of pushing the natural origin theory in a bid to protect China.

“It never struck me that six feet was particularly sensical in the context of mitigation,” Dr. Ashish Jha, the dean of the Brown University School of Public Health who served as President Biden’s COVID response coordinator for 15 months, told the New York Times in March 2021.

“I wish the CDC would just come out and say this is not a major issue.”

The New York Post shares more:

Asked about a study in Massachusetts schools that found just three feet of distance between students resulted in “similar” COVID case rates, Fauci said the same month the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was “very carefully” reviewing the data and would “likely” update them.

If they were lying about the social distancing stuff, what else are they lying about?

When are they going to admit that the vaccine was NOT safe?

The evidence is clear, but they need to come clean." https://wltreport.com/2024/01/11/dr-fauci-admits-social-distancing-was-not-based/#:~:text=ADVERTISE%20WITH%20US,to%20come%20clean.

How about if Fauci just sort of DISAPPEARED

[covid-safer-hotties]

Long COVID symptom severity varies widely by age, gender, and socioeconomic status - Published Sept 2, 2024

By Dr. Sushama R. Chaphalkar, PhD.

In a recent study published in the journal JRSM Open, researchers analyze self-reported symptoms of long coronavirus disease 2019 (LC) from individuals using a healthcare app to examine the potential impact of demographic factors on the severity of symptoms. The researchers found that LC symptom severity varied significantly by age, gender, race, education, and socioeconomic status.

Research highlights the urgent need for targeted interventions as age, gender, and social factors play a crucial role in the intensity of long COVID symptoms. What factors increase the risk of long COVID? Several months after recovering from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), patients with LC may continue to suffer from numerous symptoms, some of which include fatigue, brain fog, and chest pain. The prevalence of LC varies, with estimates ranging from 10-30% in non-hospitalized cases to 50-70% in hospitalized patients.

Although several digital health interventions (DHIs) and applications have been developed to monitor acute symptoms of COVID-19, few have been designed to track long-term symptoms of the disease. One DHI called "Living With COVID Recovery" (LWCR) was initiated to help individuals manage LC by self-reporting symptoms and tracking their intensity. However, there remains a lack of evidence on the risk factors, characteristics, and predictors of LC, thereby limiting the accurate identification of high-risk patients to target preventive strategies.

About the study In the present study, researchers investigate the prevalence and intensity of self-reported LC symptoms to analyze their potential relationship with demographic factors to inform targeted interventions and management strategies. To this end, LWCR was used to monitor and analyze self-reported LC symptoms from individuals in 31 LC clinics throughout England and Wales.

The study included 1,008 participants who reported 1,604 unique symptoms. All patients provided informed consent for the use of their anonymized data for research.

Multiple linear regression analysis was used to explore the relationship between symptom intensity and factors such as time since registration, age, ethnicity, education, gender, and socioeconomic status through indices of multiple deprivation (IMD) on a scale of one to 10.

Education was classified into four levels denoted as NVQ 1-2, NVQ 3, NVQ 4, and NVQ 5, which reflected those who were least educated at A level, degree level, and postgraduate level, respectively. The intensity of symptoms was measured on a scale from zero to 10, with zero being the lowest and 10 the highest intensity. Descriptive statistics identified variations in symptom intensity across different demographic groups.

Study findings Although 23% of patients experienced symptoms only once, 77% experienced symptoms multiple times. Corroborating with existing literature, the most prevalent symptoms included pain, neuropsychological issues, fatigue, and dyspnea, which affected 26.5%, 18.4%, 14.3%, and 7.4% of the cohort, respectively. Symptoms such as palpitations, light-headedness, insomnia, cough, diarrhea, and tinnitus were less prevalent.

Fifteen most prevalent LC symptoms. Multiple linear regression analysis revealed that symptom intensity was significantly associated with age, gender, ethnicity, education, and IMD decile. More specifically, individuals 68 years of age and older reported higher symptom intensity by 32.5% and 86%, respectively. These findings align with existing literature that highlights the increased risk of LC symptoms with age, which may be due to weakened immunity or the presence of comorbidities. Thus, they emphasize the need for targeted interventions for this population.

Females also reported higher symptom intensity than males, by 9.2%. Non-White individuals experienced higher symptom intensity by 23.5% as compared to White individuals.

Individuals with higher education levels reported up to 47% reduced symptom intensity as compared to those with lower education levels. Higher IMD deciles, which reflect less deprived areas, were associated with lower symptom intensity; however, no significant association was observed between the number of symptoms reported and the IMD decile.

Regression results with 95% confidence interval. Note: For age, the base group is people in the age category 18–27. For IMD, the base group is people from IMD decile 1. For education, the base group is people who left school before A-level (NVQ 1–2). A significant positive association was observed between symptom intensity and the duration between registration on the app and initial symptom reporting. This finding suggests individuals may become more aware of their symptoms or that worsening symptoms prompt reporting.

Some limitations of the current study include the lack of data on comorbidities, hospitalization, and vaccine status. There is also a potential for bias against individuals lacking technological proficiency or access, which may affect the sample's representativeness, particularly for older, socioeconomically disadvantaged, or non-English-speaking individuals. Excluding patients with severe symptoms or those who were ineligible for the app may also skew the findings.

Conclusions There remains an urgent need to develop targeted interventions to address the severity of LC in relation to age, ethnicity, and socioeconomic factors. LC treatment should prioritize prevalent symptoms like pain, neuropsychological issues, fatigue, and dyspnea while also considering other possible symptoms. Furthermore, sustained support for LC clinics is essential to effectively manage the wide range of symptoms and complexities associated with LC and improve public health outcomes in the post-pandemic era.

Journal reference:

Sunkersing, D., Goodfellow, H., Mu, Y., et al. (2024). Long COVID symptoms and demographic associations: A retrospective case series study using healthcare application data. JRSM Open 15(7). doi:10.1177/20542704241274292.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20542704241274292

[queen-mabs-revenge]

so turns out my little furbeast might have Special Italian Cat Disease

lmao not really, but according to my vet feline infectious peritonitis (FIP) is nearly unheard of in ireland, so when they sent away her liver biopsy and it came back with possible markers of FIP, it confused her until she remembered me telling her that she's my little vecchietta romana bc it's much more common on the continent.

cw: clinical description of pet disease and mortality under the cut

so if this is the case, she would have contracted feline enteric coronavirus (FeCV) prob at birth from her mother, and it would have lain dormant until something triggered an inflammatory response, which in this case might have been the separation anxiety anorexia. the lab still has her liver sample, so they're doing an immunohistochemistry panel to confirm. the other possibility is that they saw slightly increased meiosis in her cells which could point towards cancer. so the test should confirm what we're looking at.

shit thing is that there really is no effective treatment for FIP (in Ireland at least). we'd be looking at steroids which could put it into some kind of remission but it's p much a fatal diagnosis bc once it develops into FIP, the virus aggressively compromises the internal organs. she seems to have a dry not wet expression, so she doesn't have fluid build-up in her abdomen, so at least there's that.

bc it's a relative of miss rona, some of the same treatments might work like remdesivir, but idk man it's about cost and quality of life at this point (just looked up a description of a treatment course and it could be €2.5-3.5K hhhhhhh). if she's on a time limit, i want it to be a good one and not just go for a treatment that's gonna distress her and make her feel unsafe with me if it's a shot in the dark anyway.

same goes for cancer - like what humans go through with chemo is traumatic, but people can make a fully informed choice to go through it. she can't and imo that's kind of low-level torture if it's gonna be a matter of giving her a few more months or smth.

my vet's been super up front and clear about the situation anyway and fucking hell i'm really glad i've been taking the time to emotionally confront her mortality in the past couple of years. she's my best little friend, but i'm not gonna do anything that's gonna put my emotional state over her quality of life.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Michael de Adder

* * * *

Upcoming week in the Supreme Court

Something weird may be happening at the Supreme Court, which is in the last week of its October 2023 term. Justices should be hard at work putting finishing touches on their opinions. But Justice Alito was not at the Court on Thursday and Friday of last week. Hmm . . . . No explanation has been forthcoming from the Court despite media inquiries. See Samuel Alito’s Mysterious Absence From Supreme Court Raises Questions | The New Republic.

In any event, the Court should issue five major opinions this week. See The Hill, Supreme Court opinion season nears climax: 5 major decisions to come. The decisions expected this week include:

·  Trump's presidential immunity defense ·  Challenges by January 6 insurrectionists to obstruction of official proceeding charges ·  Whether courts should defer to federal agencies in interpreting federal laws ·  Challenges to the Biden administration’s contacts with social media companies about misinformation during the Coronavirus pandemic ·  Challenges to efforts by Texas and Florida to moderate social media content

Despite the blockbuster cases on the Court’s docket, the 2023-2024 term marked a historic low in productivity. During the October 2023 term (ending June 30, 2024), the Court heard only 62 cases—a low-water mark not previously seen since 1863. See Vox, (5/3/2024), Supreme Court justices are the most powerful, least busy people in Washington.

The obvious solution to the slowdown in the work at the Supreme Court is to increase its size. When the Supreme Court was established in 1789, Congress set the Court’s size at 6 justices for a nation of 4 million people in 13 states. Today, the US has a population 82 times larger than in 1789, or an 8,225% increase—333 million people. And yet, the size of the Court has increased by 3 justices between 1789 and the present. A much larger Court is a logical necessity. See WaPo (5/10/2021), We compared the Supreme Court with other democracies’ high courts. More justices would improve its work.

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

[beardedmrbean]

Anthony Fauci has sparked a backlash from politicians and commentators after saying that wearing face masks protects individuals from spreading coronavirus, but that there was inconclusive evidence to suggest it prevented a pandemic spiraling at a whole population level.

The former chief medical adviser to the president, who was regularly the face of the government's response to the pandemic, told CNN on Saturday that "an individual protecting themselves or protecting them from spreading it, there is no doubt that masks work," amid a spike in infections of the virus and speculation that fresh COVID restrictions could be on the horizon.

"Fauci admits that masks don't work for the public at large but still absurdly claims masks work on an individual basis," Rand Paul, a Republican senator for Kentucky who was suspended from YouTube in 2021 for questioning mask wearing, wrote on Sunday in one of many critical responses to the interview. "More subterfuge."

Some private institutions, hospital operators and colleges have reintroduced the requirements for staff or visitors to wear masks while at their sites to limit the spread of the new variants—EG.5 and BA.2.86—which have recently emerged. The moves sparked concerns that nationwide restrictions could be set to return.

In the week to August 19, there were more than 15,000 hospitalizations due to COVID-19 infections across the U.S., the most recent monitoring figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show—a rise of nearly 19 percent on the week prior.

Admissions have been steadily rising since July, but are far below the highest peaks of the pandemic and appear to be localized into hotspots. The highest number of hospitalizations due to COVID-19 in any week since the virus first emerged was over 150,000 in January 2022, and the highest weekly total this year was over 44,000 in the first week of January.

"We're starting to see a surge of cases...about an 18 percent or 19 percent increase in hospitalizations, certainly going in the wrong direction," Fauci told CNN host Michael Smerconish on Saturday.

While he noted that "we're not talking about mandates or forcing anybody," he said he hoped that if cases were to grow to a "reasonably high level" that the CDC recommended mask wearing again, that individuals "abide by the recommendation and take into account the risk to themselves and to their families."

A CDC spokesperson told Newsweek on Thursday it currently has no intention to call for a return of mandated mask-wearing, but didn't deny that this might change if cases of the new variants were to rise significantly. Fauci previously said he thought there was "not going to be the tsunami of cases that we've seen" before.

Despite his advocacy of mask wearing, Fauci was questioned about the diverging views on the effectiveness of face masks at limiting the spread of COVID-19.

There are differing opinions among the scientific community as to the efficacy of mask wearing, though many agree that when used in tandem with other measures—such as washing hands, social distancing and vaccination—they help stop the virus spreading.

"When you're talking about at the population level, ... the data are less strong than knowing that if you look on a situation as an individual protecting themselves or protecting them from spreading it, there is no doubt that masks work," the leading immunologist said.

"Different studies give different percentages of advantage of wearing it," he added. "But there's no doubt that the weight of the studies, and there have been many studies, indicate the benefit of wearing masks."

However, he was probed on one particular study, first published by the Cochrane Library in 2020 and updated this year, which found that wearing even medical-grade face masks "makes little or no difference" to infection rates. Smerconish cited an interview with The New York Times in which the study's lead author, Tom Jefferson, an epidemiologist at the University of Oxford, said: "There is just no evidence that they make any difference."

Fauci responded that "there's no doubt that there are many studies that show that there is an advantage" at the level of individual infections, but "when you're talking about the effect on the epidemic or the pandemic as a whole, the data are less strong."

He added: "But we're not talking about that, we're talking about an individual's effect on their own safety."

"Even the [mainstream media] (CNN) are rowing back on the effectiveness of mask wearing mandates," Andrew Bridgen, a British member of parliament who was suspended in January for spreading coronavirus misinformation, wrote on X, formerly Twitter. "Unscientific and harmful."

"We know he lied back in 2020," Chad Prather, a host on right-wing outlet Blaze TV, alleged. "Guess what. He's lying NOW. Anything to stay relevant." Meanwhile, doctors who had previously opposed mask mandates expressed vindication at Fauci's concession.

Fauci told Newsweek that he was "not interested" in responding to the critics, but noted: "Even Cochrane itself put out a statement that the study referred to by Smerconish on CNN that masks do not work was 'widely misinterpreted.'" _______________________

[didanawisgi]

Natural killer cell exhaustion in SARS-CoV-2 infection

Abstract

At the end of 2019, an outbreak of a severe respiratory disease occurred in Wuhan China, and an increase in cases of unknown pneumonia was alerted. In January 2020, a new coronavirus named SARS-CoV-2 was identified as the cause. The virus spreads primarily through the respiratory tract, and lymphopenia and cytokine storms have been observed in severely ill patients. This suggests the existence of an immune dysregulation as an accompanying event during a serious illness caused by this virus. Natural killer (NK) cells are innate immune responders, critical for virus shedding and immunomodulation. Despite its importance in viral infections, the contribution of NK cells in the fight against SARS-CoV-2 has yet to be deciphered. Different studies in patients with COVID-19 suggest a significant reduction in the number and function of NK cells due to their exhaustion. In this review, we summarize the current understanding of how NK cells respond to SARS-CoV-2 infection.

[motsimages]

In 2020, I remember reading that the heat during summer helped killed coronavirus because it dried the droplets and whatnot. I also read that there was an increase in cases because people move around more in the summer and are more careless.

I decided to look for scientific info about this since several summer events are coming and I want to know if I should mask outside or I can avoid it.

Here is the source.

In short, while there are many factors influencing this, heat waves correlate with covid-19 cases. yay.