americanthinker |In 1949, sometime after the publication of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, Aldous Huxley, the author of Brave New World (1931),
who was then living in California, wrote to Orwell. Huxley had briefly
taught French to Orwell as a student in high school at Eton.
Huxley
generally praises Orwell's novel, which to many seemed very similar to
Brave New World in its dystopian view of a possible future. Huxley
politely voices his opinion that his own version of what might come to
pass would be truer than Orwell's. Huxley observed that the philosophy
of the ruling minority in Nineteen Eighty-Four is sadism,
whereas his own version is more likely, that controlling an ignorant and
unsuspecting public would be less arduous, less wasteful by other
means. Huxley's masses are seduced by a mind-numbing drug, Orwell's
with sadism and fear.
The most powerful quote In Huxley's letter to Orwell is this:
Within
the next generation I believe that the world's rulers will discover
that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as
instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for
power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into
loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience.
Could
Huxley have more prescient? What do we see around us? Masses of
people dependent upon drugs, legal and illegal. The majority of
advertisements that air on television seem to be for prescription drugs,
some of them miraculous but most of them unnecessary. Then comes
COVID, a quite possibly weaponized virus from the
Fauci-funded-with-taxpayer-dollars lab in Wuhan, China. The powers that
be tragically deferred to the malevolent Fauci who had long been hoping
for just such an opportunity. Suddenly, there was an opportunity to
test the mRNA vaccines that had been in the works for nearly twenty
years. They could be authorized as an emergency measure but were still
highly experimental. These jabs are not really vaccines at all, but a
form of gene therapy. There are potential disastrous consequences down the road. Government experiments on the public are nothing new.
LewRockwell | History teaches us that humanity evolves significantly only when it is really afraid: it then first sets up defense mechanisms; sometimes intolerable (scapegoats and totalitarianisms); sometimes futile (distraction); sometimes effective (therapeutics, setting aside if necessary all the previous moral principles). Then, once the crisis is over, it transforms these mechanisms to make them compatible with individual freedom, and to include them in a democratic health policy.
The beginning of the pandemic could trigger one of these structuring fears.
If it is not more serious than the two previous fears linked to a risk of pandemic (the mad cow crisis of 2001 in Great Britain and that of avian flu of 2003 in China), it will first have consequences. significant economic (fall in air transport , fall in tourism and the price of oil ); it will cost about $ 2 million per infected person and will lower the stock markets by about 15%; its impact will be very brief ( China's growth rate only declined during the second quarter of 2003, to explode higher in the third); it will also have consequences in terms of organization (In 2003, very rigorous police measures were taken throughout Asia; the World Health Organization has set up global alert procedures; and certain countries, in particular France and Japan, have built up considerable reserves of drugs and masks).
If it is a little more serious, which is possible, since it is transmissible by humans, it will have truly global consequences: economic (the models suggest to think that this could lead to a loss of 3 trillion dollars, a 5% drop in global GDP) and political ( because of the risk of contagion, the countries of the North will have an interest in ensuring that those in the South are not sick and they will have to ensure that the poorest have access to medicines today 'hui stored for only the richest); a major pandemic will then arise, better than any humanitarian or ecological discourse, the awareness of the need for altruism, at least self-interested.
And, even if, as we can obviously hope, this crisis is not very serious, we must not forget, as with the economic crisis, to learn the lessons, so that before the next inevitable one, we must not forget. set up prevention and control mechanisms and logistical processes for the equitable distribution of drugs and vaccines. For that, we will have to set up a global police force, a global storage and therefore a global tax system. We will then come, much faster than the sole economic reason would have allowed , to set up the bases of a real world government. It is also by the hospital that began in France in the 17th century the establishment of a real state.
In the meantime, we could at least hope for the implementation of a real European policy on the subject. But here again, as on so many other subjects, Brussels is silent. Fist tap BeeDee
unherd |The extraordinary spread in recent
months of what has become known, in the writer Wesley Yang’s phrase, as
“the successor ideology” has encouraged all manner of analysis
attempting to delineate its essential features. Is it a religion, with
its own litany of sin and redemption, its own repertoire of fervent
rituals and iconography? Is this Marxism, ask American conservatives,
still fighting yesterday’s ideological war?
What does this all do to speed along
policing reform, ask bewildered African-Americans, as they observe
global corporations and white celebrities compete to beat their chests
in ever-more elaborate and meaningless gestures of atonement? What kind
of meaningful anti-systemic revolution can provoke such immediate and
fulsome support from the Hollywood entertainment complex, from the
richest oligarchs and plutocrats on earth, and from the media organs of
the liberal state?
If we are to understand the successor ideology as an ideology, it may be useful here, counterintuitively, to return to the great but increasingly overlooked 1970 essay on the “Ideological State Apparatuses,”
or ISAs, by the French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser. Once
influential on the Western left, Althusser’s reputation has suffered
somewhat since he killed his wife in a fit of madness 40 years ago. Of
Alsatian Catholic origin, and a lifelong sufferer from mental illness,
Althusser wrote his seminal essay in a manic period following the évènements of 1968, for whose duration he was committed to hospital.
Composed with a feverish,
hallucinatory clarity, Althusser’s essay aimed to elucidate the manner
in which ideology functions as a means to prop up the political order,
observing that “no class can hold state power over a long period without
at the same time exercising its hegemony over and in the Ideological
State Apparatuses”.
What are these ISAs? Contrasted with
the Repressive State Apparatuses — the police, the army, and so on — the
ISAs are the means by which the system reproduces itself through
ideology: Althusser lists the church, the media and the education system
along with the family, and the legal and political system and the
culture industry as the means through which the ideology of the
governing system is enforced. Althusser here develops Gramsci’s thesis
that the cultural sphere is the most productive arena of political
struggle, and inverts it: instead of being the site of revolutionary
victory, it is where the system reasserts itself, neutering the
possibility of political change through its wielding of the most
powerful weapon, ideology.
It is through ideology, Althusser
asserts, that the ruling system maintains itself in power: “the ideology
of the ruling class does not become the ruling ideology by the grace of
God, nor even by virtue of the seizure of state power alone,” he
states, “it is by the installation of the ISAs in which this ideology is
realised and realises itself that it becomes the ruling ideology.”
In virology, gain-of-function research is employed to better understand current and future pandemics.[1]
In vaccine development, gain-of-function research is conducted to gain a
head start on a virus and to develop a vaccine or therapeutic before it
emerges.[1]
In February 2000, a group at the Utrecht University led by Peter Rottier published a paper on their gain-of-function studies titled "Retargeting of Coronavirus
by Substitution of the Spike Glycoprotein Ectodomain: Crossing the Host
Cell Species Barrier" detailing how they constructed a mutant of the
coronavirus mouse hepatitis virus, replacing the ectodomain of the spike glycoprotein (S) with the highly divergent ectodomain of the S protein of feline infectious peritonitis virus. According to the paper, "the resulting chimeric virus, designated fMHV, acquired the ability to infect feline cells and simultaneously lost the ability to infect murine cells in tissue culture".[2]
The World Health Organization in 2010 developed a "guidance document" for Dual Use Research of Concern (DURC) in the life sciences because "research that is intended [to] benefit, but which might easily be misapplied to do harm".[3]
In May 2013, Hualan Chen, who was then director of the China's National Avian Influenza Reference Laboratory, and colleagues successfully created a new strain of influenza virus through a gain-of-function experiment at the BSL3 approvedHarbin Veterinary Research Institute.[6] The Chinese scientists "deliberately mixed the H5N1 bird-flu virus, which is highly lethal [to birds] but not easily transmitted between [humans], with a 2009 strain of H1N1 flu virus, which is very infectious to humans."[7] This event caused consternation in European biotech circles, as Professor Simon Wain-Hobson of the Pasteur Institute
the Chinese scientists "haven’t been thinking clearly about what they
are doing. It’s very worrying... The virological basis of this work is
not strong. It is of no use for vaccine development and the benefit in
terms of surveillance for new flu viruses is oversold," while Lord May of Oxford
said: "The record of containment in labs like this is not reassuring.
They are taking it upon themselves to create human-to-human transmission
of very dangerous viruses. It’s appallingly irresponsible."[7]
In May 2014, the Bundestag was presented a report written by the National Ethics Council on proposed guidance for governance of GoFR.[8] At the time, some in Germany were concerned over "GoFR pathogenic pandemic microbes raging out of control".[8] Epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch
used "data of past biosafety breaches to calculate that" they occur
with a probability "of 0.01 to 0.1 percent per lab per year."[8]
In December 2014, Veronique Kiermer (at the time on the editorial board of Nature)
discussed the considerations at her place of employment, that go into
the publication of DURC. She came to the conclusion that "the journal's
editorial and review boards should not (and could not) be the only
gatekeepers who decide which research results should be published,
either fully or redacted, 'because it is way too late in the process of
GoFR.'"[8]
By March 2016 the second symposium launched by the Obama
administration reported that funding for gain-of-function research was
provided by government agencies, pharmaceutical research companies,
venture capital funds, colleges and universities, non-profit research
institutions, foundations, and charities.[15]
In May 2016,[16] the NSABB published "Recommendations for the Evaluation and Oversight of Proposed Gain-of-Function Research".[17]
On 9 January 2017, the HHS published the "Recommended Policy
Guidance for Departmental Development of Review Mechanisms for Potential
Pandemic Pathogen Care and Oversight" (P3CO).[16]
On 19 December 2017 under the Trump administration, the NIH
lifted the Obama moratorium into GoFR because it was deemed to be
"important in helping us identify, understand, and develop strategies
and effective countermeasures against rapidly evolving pathogens that
pose a threat to public health,"[18] because on the same day the HHS P3CO Framework restored it.[19][18]
theatlantic |Lurking among the jubilant Americans
venturing back out to bars and planning their summer-wedding travel is a
different group: liberals who aren’t quite ready to let go of pandemic
restrictions. For this subset, diligence against COVID-19 remains an
expression of political identity—even when that means overestimating the
disease’s risks or setting limits far more strict than what
public-health guidelines permit. In surveys, Democrats express more
worry about the pandemic than Republicans do. People who describe
themselves as “very liberal” are distinctly anxious. This spring, after
the vaccine rollout had started, a third of very liberal people were
“very concerned” about becoming seriously ill from COVID-19, compared
with a quarter of both liberals and moderates, according to a study
conducted by the University of North Carolina political scientist Marc
Hetherington. And 43 percent of very liberal respondents believed that
getting the coronavirus would have a “very bad” effect on their life,
compared with a third of liberals and moderates.
Last year, when the pandemic was raging and scientists and public-health
officials were still trying to understand how the virus spread, extreme
care was warranted. People all over the country made enormous
sacrifices—rescheduling weddings, missing funerals, canceling
graduations, avoiding the family members they love—to protect others.
Some conservatives refused to wear masks or stay home, because of
skepticism about the severity of the disease or a refusal to give up
their freedoms. But this is a different story, about progressives who
stressed the scientific evidence, and then veered away from it.
For many progressives, extreme vigilance was in part about opposing Donald Trump. Some of this reaction was born of deeply felt frustration
with how he handled the pandemic. It could also be knee-jerk. “If he
said, ‘Keep schools open,’ then, well, we’re going to do everything in
our power to keep schools closed,” Monica Gandhi, a professor of
medicine at UC San Francisco, told me. Gandhi describes herself as “left
of left,” but has alienated some of her ideological peers because she
has advocated for policies such as reopening schools and establishing a
clear timeline for the end of mask mandates. “We went the other way, in
an extreme way, against Trump’s politicization,” Gandhi said. Geography
and personality may have also contributed to progressives’ caution: Some
of the most liberal parts of the country are places where the pandemic
hit especially hard, and Hetherington found that the very liberal participants in his survey tended to be the most neurotic.
The
spring of 2021 is different from the spring of 2020, though. Scientists
know a lot more about how COVID-19 spreads—and how it doesn’t.
Public-health advice is shifting. But some progressives have not updated
their behavior based on the new information. And in their eagerness to
protect themselves and others, they may be underestimating other costs.
Being extra careful about COVID-19 is (mostly) harmless when it’s
limited to wiping down your groceries with Lysol wipes and wearing a
mask in places where you’re unlikely to spread the coronavirus, such as
on a hiking trail. But vigilance can have unintended consequences when
it imposes on other people’s lives. Even as scientific knowledge of
COVID-19 has increased, some progressives have continued to embrace
policies and behaviors that aren’t supported by evidence, such as banning access to playgrounds, closing beaches, and refusing to reopen schools for in-person learning.
salk | Scientists have known for a while that SARS-CoV-2’s distinctive
“spike” proteins help the virus infect its host by latching on to
healthy cells. Now, a major new study shows that they also play a key
role in the disease itself.
The paper, published on April 30, 2021, in Circulation Research,
also shows conclusively that COVID-19 is a vascular disease,
demonstrating exactly how the SARS-CoV-2 virus damages and attacks the
vascular system on a cellular level. The findings help explain
COVID-19’s wide variety of seemingly unconnected complications, and
could open the door for new research into more effective therapies.
“A lot of people think of it as a respiratory disease, but it’s really a vascular disease,” says Assistant Research Professor Uri Manor,
who is co-senior author of the study. “That could explain why some
people have strokes, and why some people have issues in other parts of
the body. The commonality between them is that they all have vascular
underpinnings.”
Salk researchers collaborated with scientists at
the University of California San Diego on the paper, including co-first
author Jiao Zhang and co-senior author John Shyy, among others.
While
the findings themselves aren’t entirely a surprise, the paper provides
clear confirmation and a detailed explanation of the mechanism through
which the protein damages vascular cells for the first time. There’s
been a growing consensus that SARS-CoV-2 affects the vascular system,
but exactly how it did so was not understood. Similarly, scientists
studying other coronaviruses have long suspected that the spike protein
contributed to damaging vascular endothelial cells, but this is the
first time the process has been documented.
In the new study, the
researchers created a “pseudovirus” that was surrounded by SARS-CoV-2
classic crown of spike proteins, but did not contain any actual virus.
Exposure to this pseudovirus resulted in damage to the lungs and
arteries of an animal model—proving that the spike protein alone was
enough to cause disease. Tissue samples showed inflammation in
endothelial cells lining the pulmonary artery walls.
The team then
replicated this process in the lab, exposing healthy endothelial cells
(which line arteries) to the spike protein. They showed that the spike
protein damaged the cells by binding ACE2. This binding disrupted ACE2’s
molecular signaling to mitochondria (organelles that generate energy
for cells), causing the mitochondria to become damaged and fragmented.
Previous
studies have shown a similar effect when cells were exposed to the
SARS-CoV-2 virus, but this is the first study to show that the damage
occurs when cells are exposed to the spike protein on its own.
The
evidence for aerosol transmission is now so solid that you have to
wonder why just about everyone in authority refuses to sign on. For my part, I start by excluding the possibility that they’re uninformed or misinformed. Something else must be at work.
My
conclusions:
1) The administration, governors, and others - are responding to their
real constituencies who care little about public health and are
clamoring to get the economy back on track without any consequential additional costs;
2) These political authorities know very well that doing so requires A)
ignoring or slighting the fact of aerosol transmission and B) focusing
instead on low-cost distractions such as masks, disinfectants and plexiglass barriers;
3) They also know that this means Covid will continue to be a public emergency, and here's the key;
4) They have gamed a way to avoid any culpability for the resulting wave of additional deaths, lung
transplants and prolonged and perhaps permanent disabilities due to
impairment of long-Covid sufferers’ major organs;
5) The authorities calculate they personally will be fine by the
time they leave office for quiet but plush and safe Covid-free obscurity
(like Newsom at the French Laundry, or in bunkers or off to New Zealand).
6) They want to prevent and delay aerosol mitigation long
enough to turn the rona into a permanent endemic disease, on
purpose and with malice of forethought.
Why?
6A) Investors need a new "big win". The synthetic biology complex wants to sell high-priced high-margin boosters every year for the next
several years. That requires a steady reservoir of
permarona in the population to keep breeding up new
variants that will be used to scare up new supplicants for additional mRNA boosters.
6B) The fact that mRNA therapeutics are themselves dangerous and will worsen the potency of variants may work
to profitably kill off a few billion surplus laborers whose services are no longer needed - all the while making it look like an accident.
khn | Last summer, Global Plasma Solutions wanted to test whether the
company’s air-purifying devices could kill covid-19 virus particles but
could find only a lab using a chamber the size of a shoebox for its
trials. In the company-funded study, the virus was blasted with 27,000 ions per cubic centimeter.
In September, the company’s founder incidentally mentioned that the devices being offered for sale actually deliver a lot less ion power — 13 times less — into a full-sized room.
The company nonetheless used the shoebox results
— over 99% viral reduction — in marketing its device heavily to schools
as something that could combat covid in classrooms far, far larger than
a shoebox.
School officials desperate to calm worried parents bought these
devices and others with a flood of federal funds, installing them in
more than 2,000 schools across 44 states, a KHN investigation found.
They use the same technology — ionization, plasma and dry hydrogen
peroxide — that the Lancet COVID-19 Commission recently deemed “often unproven” and potential sources of pollution themselves.
In the frenzy, schools are buying technology that academic
air-quality experts warn can lull them into a false sense of security or
even potentially harm kids. And schools often overlook the fact that
their trusted contractors — typically engineering, HVAC or consulting
firms — stand to earn big money from the deals, KHN found.
Academic experts are encouraging schools to pump in more fresh air
and use tried-and-true filters, like HEPA, to capture the virus. Yet
every ion- or hydroxyl-blasting air purifier sale strengthens a firm’s
next pitch: The device is doing a great job in the neighboring town.
“It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more people buy these technologies, the more they get legitimacy,” said Jeffrey Siegel, a civil engineering professor at the University of Toronto. “It’s really the complete wild west out there.”
Marwa Zaatari, a member of the American Society of Heating,
Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers’ (ASHRAE) Epidemic Task
Force, first compiled a list of schools and districts using such
devices.
Schools have been “bombarded with persistent salespersons peddling
the latest air and cleaning technologies, including those with minimal
evidence to-date supporting safety and efficacy” according to a report released Thursday by the Center for Green Schools and ASHRAE.
Zaatari said she was particularly concerned that officials in New Jersey are buying thousands of devices made by another company that says they emit ozone, which can exacerbate asthma and harm developing lungs, according to decades of research.
“We’re going to live in a world where the air quality in schools is
worse after the pandemic, after all of this money,” Zaatari said. “It’s
really sickening.”
The sales race is fueled by roughly $193 billion in federal funds
allocated to schools for teacher pay and safety upgrades — a giant fund
that can be used to buy air cleaners. And Democrats are pushing for $100
billion more that could also be spent on air cleaners.
In April, Global Plasma Solutions said further tests show its devices inactivate covid in the air and on surfaces in larger chambers. The company studies still use about twice the level of ions than its leaders have publicly said the devices can deliver, KHN found.
There is virtually no federal oversight or enforcement of safe
air-cleaning technology. Only California bans air cleaners that emit a
certain amount of ozone.
U.S. Rep. Robert “Bobby” Scott (D-Va.), chair of the education and
labor committee, said the federal government typically is not involved
in local decisions of what products to buy, although he hopes for more
federal guidance.
In the meantime, “these school systems are dealing with contractors
providing all kinds of services,” he said, “so you just have to trust
them to get the best expert advice on what to do.”
CNN | President Joe Biden hasn't committed to K-12 schools reopening full-time and in-person in the fall, one of his senior advisers said Sunday, because the coronavirus remains unpredictable.
"He
said 'probably.' He did not say 'absolutely,' " Senior Adviser to the
President Anita Dunn told CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union."
"Because we've all seen this since unfortunately January of 2020. It's
an unpredictable virus. And it is a virus that has -- you know it
mutates. So we can't look in a crystal ball and say what September looks
like."
Dunn's
comments come after Biden said Friday that K-12 schools "should
probably all be open" in the fall for in-person learning after more than
a year of challenges with remote learning and as more Americans get
vaccinated.
"Based
on the science and the (US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention),
they should probably all be open. There's not overwhelming evidence
that there's much of a transmission among these people, young people,"
the President had said during an interview with NBC's "TODAY."
The CDC in February released highly anticipated guidelines
for reopening schools that focus on mask wearing, physical distancing,
washing hands, cleaning facilities and improving ventilation, and
contact tracing, isolation and quarantine. Last month, the agency also made another recommendation
that experts said would allow more schools to open. The CDC relaxed its
physical distancing guidelines for children in schools to recommend
most students maintain at least three feet of distance, down from six
feet.
Dunn
told Tapper if Americans get vaccinated against Covid-19 and if schools
follow CDC guidelines then "we probably should be able to have them
open," encouraging people to seek medical advice before getting a
vaccine.
"If
they have doubts about it they should ask their doctor. They should ask
people who have already gotten it. They should certainly do their own
research," she said.
pjmedia | In the Biden administration, “follow the science” takes second place to “follow the campaign donations from teachers unions.”
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) was heavily lobbied by the
nation’s second-largest teachers union on when to reopen America’s
schools, emails obtained by the New York Post
show. There was extensive communication between the American Federation
of Teachers, the CDC, and the White House in the lead up to the release
of school reopening guidelines in February.
The documents were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act
request by the group Americans for Public Trust and provided to The Post.
Anyone in the United States, any group, has a perfect right to lobby
any federal agency they wish. But don’t you think it would have been
nice to know that the CDC was being influenced by teachers in coming to
the conclusion that schools should remain closed to in-person learning?
The documents show a flurry of activity between CDC
Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, her top advisors and union officials —
with Biden brass being looped in at the White House — in the days before
the highly-anticipated Feb. 12 announcement on school-reopening
guidelines.
“Thank you again for Friday’s rich discussion about forthcoming CDC
guidance and for your openness to the suggestions made by our president,
Randi Weingarten, and the AFT,” wrote AFT senior director for health
issues Kelly Trautner in a Feb 1 email — which described the union as
the CDC’s “thought partner.”
You can’t really say the teachers union was driving the discussion on when to open schools. Or can you?
“We were able to review a copy of the draft guidance document over
the weekend and were able to provide some initial feedback to several
staff this morning about possible ways to strengthen the document,”
Trautner continued. “… We believe our experiences on the ground can
inform and enrich thinking around what is practicable and prudent in
future guidance documents.”
WaPo | Police officers were among the first front-line workers to gain priority access to coronavirus vaccines.
But their vaccination rates are lower than or about the same as those
of the general public, according to data made available by some of the
nation’s largest law enforcement agencies.
The reluctance of police to get the shotsthreatens
not just their own health, but also the safety of people they’re
responsible for guarding, monitoring and patrolling, experts say.
At the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, just 39 percent of employees havegotten
at least one dose, officials said, compared to more than 50 percent of
eligible adults nationwide. In Atlanta, 36 percent of sworn officers
have been vaccinated. And a mere 28 percent of those employed by the
Columbus Division of Police — Ohio’s largest police department — report
having received a shot.
“I think it’s unacceptable,” Joe Lombardo, the head of Las Vegas police and sheriff of Clark County, said of themeager demand for the shots within his force.
The numbers paint a troubling picture of policing and public health. Because officershave high rates of diabetes, heart disease and other conditions, their hesitancyputs them at greater risk of serious illness from the coronavirus
while also undermining force readiness, experts said. Police officers
were more likely to die of covid-19 last year than of all other causes
combined, according to data compiled by the National Law Enforcement
Officers Memorial Fund.
Police
hesitancy also means officers may be vectors of spread to vulnerable
people with whom they interact during traffic stops, calls for service
and other high-contact encounters. That could thwart efforts to restore
community trust in a moment of heightened scrutiny after last month’s conviction of ex-officer Derek Chauvin in the killing of George Floyd.
“Police
touch people,” said Sharona Hoffman, a professor of law and bioethics
at Case Western Reserve University. “Imagine having a child in the car
who’s not vaccinated. People would want to know if a police officer
coming to their window is protected.”
Police ambivalence about immunization finds a parallel among other front-line workers. Just 52 percent of health-care workers surveyed by The Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation between Feb. 11 and March 7 said they had received at least one dose.
One solution is for departments to make vaccination compulsory, according to experts in bioethics and public health, just as somehealth-care settings and institutions of higher education have begun doing.
fox26houston | Fuentes says a supervisor encouraged her to file for a religious exemption.
"And
I said, 'Well, I don't have a religious exemption. I'm not doing this
for religious reasons,' and she said, 'I know, but we'll help you fill
it out, and at least this will save your job,'" Fuentes claims. "So,
because I don't have a religious reason and it's a personal reason, my
beliefs and my feelings aren't as worthy as someone who has a religious
reason?"
Fuentes says when she did not agree to stay quiet about
the reason for her departure, she was not allowed to complete her final
two weeks and escorted out of the hospital.
In response, Houston
Methodist stated they do not advise those who decline the vaccine for
personal reasons to file for a religious exemption. Adding:
"We
have a process in place for the employees who want to request a
religious/medical exemption--- like we have had for the flu shot for
more than a decade. Not all exemptions are granted."
In the
meantime, Fuentes says she was prepared to wear masks at work and show
lab results of COVID-19 antibodies since she'd recovered from the
disease.
She adds, she regularly worked in a surgical unit, but volunteered to work in the COVID-19 unit.
"I
want to be known that I was a safe nurse when I worked at the height of
the pandemic and volunteered to work and did work in the COVID unit.
So, I was a safe nurse then, not vaccinated, and I was able to turn back
around and work in my unit without being tested and without being
vaccinated," Fuentes said.
Houston Methodist adds:
"Our
employees have the choice to stay or leave—we are not forcing anyone to
get a vaccine. But over everything, we must put patients first. It is
our obligation as health care workers to do no harm to our patients, who
are among the most vulnerable in our community."
Generally,
employers are able to require employees to get vaccinated. Clayton
Craighead, an employment attorney in Houston, says there are the two
exemption that both deal with accomodations.
"One of them is an
accomodation under the American with Disabilities Act and the second
exception is an accomodation on a religious basis. In order to establish
an entitlement under the ADA, the employee would have to provide some
sort of documentation from a doctor explaining why he or she, could not
or should not receive the vaccination due to some medical condition or
disability," Craighead explained.
commondreams | The U.S. is facing sustained calls to end its opposition of a
proposal to temporarily lift intellectual property rules for Covid-19
vaccines and related technology as soaring coronavirus cases ravage
India and new reporting spotlights a debate within the Biden
administration over whether to support the patent suspension effort to
help tackle the global pandemic or prioritize Big Pharma's interests.
At issue, as the Washington Postreported Friday, is a proposal
India and South Africa submitted to the World Trade Organization (WTO)
last October to suspend Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights
(TRIPS) rules on Covid-19 vaccines and treatments to boost manufacturing
capacity. It's now cosponsored by 60 nations and backed by over 100 countries as well as hundreds of U.S. and international civil society organizations, former world world leaders and Nobel laureates, and some U.S. lawmakers.
In addition to the U.S., other wealthy nations including the U.K. and
Canada are blocking the proposal—which needs consensus to pass.
The WTO's TRIPS panel met Friday to discuss the proposal, and it's now being revised by its cosponsors.
Asked
Friday whether the U.S. would continue its opposition, White House
press secretary Jen Psaki said the administration has not yet confirmed
its stance and said the White House's "overall objective is to provide
as much supply to the global community and do that in a cost-effective
manner."
consortiumnews |The
unfolding pandemic horror in India has many causes. These include the
complacency, inaction and irresponsibility of government leaders, even
when it was evident for several months that a fresh wave of infections
of new mutant variants threatened the population. Continued massive
election rallies, many addressed by the prime minister, Narendra Modi,
brought large numbers to congested gatherings and lulled many into
underplaying the threat of infection.
The incomprehensible decision to allow a major Hindu religious festival — the Mahakumbh Mela, held every 12 years — to be brought forward
by a full year, on the advice of some astrologers, brought millions
from across India to one small area along the Ganges River and
contributed to ‘super-spreading’ the disease.
The exponential explosion of Covid-19 cases — and it is likely much worse than officially reported,
because of inadequate testing and undercounting of cases and deaths —
has revealed not just official hubris and incompetence but lack of
planning and major deficiencies in the public health system. The
shortage of medical oxygen, for instance, has effectively become a
proximate cause of death for many patients.
Failing Vaccination Program
But
one significant — and entirely avoidable — reason for the catastrophe
is the failing vaccination programme. Even given the global constraints
posed by rich-country vaccine-grabbing and the limits on domestic production set by the TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) agreement, this is unnecessary and unexpected.
India
is home to the largest vaccine producer in the world and has several
other companies capable of producing vaccines. Before the pandemic, 60
per cent of the vaccines used in the developing world for child
immunisation were manufactured in India.
The
country has a long tradition of successful vaccination campaigns,
against polio and tuberculosis for infants and a range of other
diseases. The available infrastructure for inoculation, urban and rural,
could have been quickly mobilised.
In
January, the government approved two candidates for domestic use: the
Covishield (Oxford-AstraZeneca) vaccine, produced in India by the Serum
Institute of India, and Covaxin, produced by Bharat Biotech under a
manufacturing licence from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR)
— other producers could have been similarly licenced to enhance supply.
The
vaccination program officially started on Jan. 16 , with the initial
target of covering 30 million healthcare and frontline workers by the
end of March and 250 million people by July. By April 17 , however, only
37 percent of frontline workers had received both doses (of either vaccine); an additional 30 percent had received only the first.
Low
uptake even among this vulnerable group could have resulted from
concerns about the rapid regulatory approval granted to Covaxin, which
had not completed Phase III trials.
The Indian government also encouraged exports, partly to fulfil
commitments by the Serum Institute of India to AstraZeneca and the
global COVAX facility — partly to enhance its own standing among developing countries.
NYTimes |As medical and social
advances mitigate diseases of old age and prolong life, the number of
exceptionally long-lived people is increasing sharply. The United Nations estimates that there were about 95,000 centenarians in 1990
and more than 450,000 in 2015. By 2100, there will be 25 million.
Although the proportion of people who live beyond their 110th birthday
is far smaller, this once-fabled milestone is also increasingly common
in many wealthy nations. The first validated cases of such
“supercentenarians” emerged in the 1960s. Since then, their global
numbers have multiplied by a factor of at least 10, though no one knows
precisely how many there are. In Japan alone, the population of supercentenarians grew to 146 from 22 between 2005 and 2015, a nearly sevenfold increase.
Given these statistics, you might expect
that the record for longest life span would be increasing, too. Yet
nearly a quarter-century after Calment’s death, no one is known to have
matched, let alone surpassed, her 122 years. The closest was an American
named Sarah Knauss, who died at age 119, two years after Calment. The
oldest living person is Kane Tanaka, 118, who resides in Fukuoka, Japan.
Very few people make it past 115. (A few researchers have even
questioned whether Calment really lived as long as she claimed, though
most accept her record as legitimate based on the weight of biographical
evidence.)
As the global population
approaches eight billion, and science discovers increasingly promising
ways to slow or reverse aging in the lab, the question of human
longevity’s potential limits is more urgent than ever. When their work
is examined closely, it’s clear that longevity scientists hold a wide
range of nuanced perspectives on the future of humanity. Historically,
however — and somewhat flippantly, according to many researchers — their
outlooks have been divided into two broad camps, which some journalists
and researchers call the pessimists and the optimists. Those in the
first group view life span as a candle wick that can burn for only so
long. They generally think that we are rapidly approaching, or have
already reached, a ceiling on life span, and that we will not witness
anyone older than Calment anytime soon.
In
contrast, the optimists see life span as a supremely, maybe even
infinitely elastic band. They anticipate considerable gains in life
expectancy around the world, increasing numbers of extraordinarily
long-lived people — and eventually, supercentenarians who outlive
Calment, pushing the record to 125, 150, 200 and beyond. Though
unresolved, the long-running debate has already inspired a much deeper
understanding of what defines and constrains life span — and of the
interventions that may one day significantly extend it.
The theoretical limits
on the length of a human life have vexed scientists and philosophers
for thousands of years, but for most of history their discussions were
largely based on musings and personal observations. In 1825, however,
the British actuary Benjamin Gompertz published a new mathematical model of mortality,
which demonstrated that the risk of death increased exponentially with
age. Were that risk to continue accelerating throughout life, people
would eventually reach a point at which they had essentially no chance
of surviving to the next year. In other words, they would hit an
effective limit on life span.
Instead,
Gompertz observed that as people entered old age, the risk of death
plateaued. “The limit to the possible duration of life is a subject not
likely ever to be determined,” he wrote, “even should it exist.” Since
then, using new data and more sophisticated mathematics, other
scientists around the world have uncovered further evidence of
accelerating death rates followed by mortality plateaus not only in
humans but also in numerous other species, including rats, mice, shrimp, nematodes, fruit flies and beetles.
In
2016, an especially provocative study in the prestigious research
journal Nature strongly implied that the authors had found the limit to
the human life span. Jan Vijg, a geneticist at the Albert Einstein
College of Medicine, and two colleagues analyzed decades’ worth of
mortality data from several countries and concluded that although the
highest reported age at death in these countries increased rapidly
between the 1970s and 1990s, it had failed to rise since then,
stagnating at an average of 114.9 years. Human life span, it seemed, had
arrived at its limit. Although some individuals, like Jeanne Calment,
might reach staggering ages, they were outliers, not indicators of a
continual lengthening of life.
scitechdaily | In a paper published today (January 13, 2021) in the journal Frontiers in Conservation Science,
the researchers cite more than 150 scientific studies and conclude,
“That we are already on the path of a sixth major extinction is now
scientifically undeniable.”
Among the paper’s co-authors is Daniel Blumstein, a UCLA professor of
ecology and evolutionary biology and member of the UCLA Institute of
the Environment and Sustainability.
Because too many people have underestimated the severity of the
crisis and have ignored experts’ warnings, scientists must continue
speaking out, said Blumstein, author of the 2020 book “The Nature of
Fear: Survival Lessons from the Wild” — but they also must avoid either
sugarcoating the overwhelming challenges or inducing feelings of
despair.
“Without fully appreciating and broadcasting the scale of the
problems and the enormity of the solutions required, society will fail
to achieve even modest sustainability goals, and catastrophe will surely
follow,” he said. “What we are saying is frightening, but we must be
both candid and vocal if humanity is to understand the enormity of the
challenges we face in creating a sustainable future.”
The Earth has experienced five mass extinctions, each accounting for a
loss of more than 70% of all species on the planet. The most recent was
66 million years ago. Now, the paper reports, projected temperature
increases and other human assaults on the environment mean that
approximately 1 million of the planet’s 7 million to 10 million species
are threatened with extinction in the coming decades.
Blumstein said that level of damage could occur
within the next several decades; an extinction affecting as many as 70%
of all species — like the earlier mass extinctions cited in the paper —
could potentially occur within the next few centuries.
One of the major trends discussed in the paper is the explosive
growth of the planet’s human population. There are now 7.8 billion
people, more than double the Earth’s population just 50 years ago. And
by 2050, the figure is likely to reach 10 billion, the scientists write,
which would cause or exacerbate numerous serious problems. For example,
more than 700 million people are starving and more than 1 billion are
malnourished already; both figures are likely to increase as the
population grows.
Population growth also greatly increases the risk for pandemics, the
authors write, because most new infectious diseases result from
human–animal interactions, humans live closer to wild animals than ever
before and wildlife trade is continuing to increase significantly.
Population growth also contributes to rising unemployment and, when
combined with a hotter Earth, leads to more frequent and intense
flooding and fires, poorer water and air quality, and worsening human
health.
nationalgeographic | For hundreds of years, Indigenous communities in what is now British
Columbia cleared small patches amid dense conifer forest. They planted
and tended food and medicine-bearing trees and plants—sometimes
including species from hundreds of miles away—to yield a bounty of nuts,
fruits, and berries. A wave of European disease devastated Indigenous
communities in the late 1700s, and in the 1800s, colonizers displaced
the Indigenous people and seized the land. The lush, diverse forest
gardens were abandoned and forgotten.
A few years ago, Chelsey
Geralda Armstrong, an ethnobotanist at Simon Fraser University, was
invited by First Nation elders to investigate why hazelnut trees were
growing at abandoned village sites near the coast. The plants were far
from their native habitat in the dry interior and seemingly lost among
towering cedars and hemlocks. Armstrong began to suspect she was
studying human-created ecosystems—and they were thriving, even with no
one caring for them. She brought her suspicions to community elders, who
confirmed them by sharing memories of ancestors cultivating edible and
medicinal plants.
Armstrong gathered colleagues to study these ancient gardens’ ecology. In a new paper published this week in the journal Ecology and Society, the team reports a striking finding:
After more than a century on their own, Indigenous-created forest
gardens of the Pacific Northwest support more pollinators, more
seed-eating animals and more plant species than the supposedly “natural”
conifer forests surrounding them.
“When we look at forest gardens, they’re actually enhancing what
nature does, making it much more resilient, much more biodiverse—and, oh
yeah, they feed people too,” says Armstrong.
The paper may be the
first to quantify how Indigenous land stewardship can enhance what
ecologists call functional diversity—a measure of how many goods an
ecosystem provides. It joins a growing scientific literature revealing
that Indigenous people—both historically and today—often outperform
government agencies and conservation organizations at supporting
biodiversity, sequestering carbon, and generating other ecological
benefits on their land. Leaving nature alone is not always the right
course, scientists are finding—and the original land stewards often do
it best.
This is, of course, a claim that Indigenous groups have
long made. Western scientists, by contrast, have often written Native
people out of forests and other ecosystems they helped create. An
increasing number of scientists are now questioning this practice—and in
the process, forcing ecology and conservation to undergo what some
would say is a long-overdue reckoning.
“Western science for too
long has embraced the idea of primordial wilderness,” says Jesse Miller,
an ecologist at Stanford and Armstrong’s coauthor. “We’re seeing this
paradigm shift to recognizing how much of what was thought of as
primordial wilderness were actually landscapes shaped by humans.”
wikipedia | First aired on Thursday 23 June 2011. The final episode looks at the Amazon rainforest - billed as the world's last great wilderness. However, the discovery of geoglyphs uncovered following deforestation in the 1970s and terra preta, provide growing evidence for ancient cities in the heart of the 'virgin forest'.[5]
Ondemar Dias is accredited with first discovering the geoglyphs in 1977
and Alceu Ranzi with furthering their discovery after flying over Acre.[6][7]
The documentary presents evidence that Francisco de Orellana,
rather than exaggerating his claims as previously thought, was correct
in his observations that a complex civilization was flourishing along
the Amazon in the 1540s. It is believed that the civilization was later
devastated by the spread of diseases from Europe, such as smallpox. Some 5 million people may have lived in the Amazon region in 1500, divided between dense coastal settlements, such as that at Marajó, and inland dwellers.[8] By 1900 the population had fallen to 1 million and by the early 1980s it was less than 200,000.[8]
The documentary features interviews with Betty Meggers, William Balée, Anna Roosevelt, José Iriarte, Eduardo Góes Neves, Cristiana Barreto, Francis Mayle, Denise Schaan and Michael Heckenberger.
sci-news | The Llanos de Moxos is a savannah of approximately 126,132 km2 (48,700 square miles) located in the Beni Department of Bolivia in southwestern Amazonia.
The landscape is dotted by earthworks, including raised fields, mounds, canals and forest islands.
“The Llanos de Moxos savannah area floods from December to March and
is extremely dry from July to October, but the mounds remain above the
water level during the rainy season allowing trees to grow on them,”
said lead author Dr. Umberto Lombardo from the University of Bern and
colleagues.
“The mounds promoted landscape diversity, and show that small-scale
communities began to shape the Amazon 8,000 years earlier than
previously thought.”
“Our research confirms this part of the Amazon is one of the earliest centers of plant domestication in the world.”
The researchers looked at the forest islands located within the vast savannah for signs of early gardening.
“We basically mapped large sections of forest islands using remote
sensing. We hypothesized that the regularly shaped forest islands had
anthropic origin,” said co-author Dr. José Capriles, from the
Pennsylvania State University and the Instituto de Investigaciones
Antropológicas y Arqueológicas at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés.
“However, most circular forest islands are in fact artificial and
irregular ones are not. There is not a clear pattern,” Dr. Lombardo
said.
In fact, there are more than 4,700 artificial forest islands in the Llanos de Moxos savannah, according to the scientists.
“Archaeological evidence for plant domestication is very poorly
available, especially in Amazonia where the climate destroys most
organic materials. There is no stone in this area because it is an
alluvial plain (water deposited) and it is hard to find evidence of
early hunter-gatherers,” Dr. Capriles said.
Using microscopic plant silica bodies called phytoliths, found well
preserved in tropical forests, the team documented the cultivation of squash (Cucurbita sp.) at about 10,250 years ago, manioc (Manihot sp.) at about 10,350 years ago and maize (Zea mays) at about 6,850 years ago.
The study involved a large scale regional analysis of 61
archaeological sites, identified by remote sensing, now patches of
forest surrounded by savannah.
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