trendingpolitics |In a brazen attempt to punish those who choose to resist the
edicts coming from the state legislature and governor’s office, a
proposed bill by the New York state legislature would allow the
government to forcibly detain anyone without trial if they’re deemed a
public health threat.
The bill, A.416,
is among a trove of new draconian Covid restrictions and vaccine
mandate bills set to be voted on during the next legislative session
starting on January 5th.
According to the bill’s text, A.416
would “allow the governor or the appropriate health official to order
the removal and detention of any person afflicted with a communicable
disease in the event that there is a state of health emergency declared
by the governor in relation to such disease.”
NY’ers: Pay ATTENTION! This is the plan Democrats have for the entire country. pic.twitter.com/hbgeGeG8x4
“[A]ny person or group removed or detained by order of the
governor or his or her delegate shall be detained for as long as the
department may direct,” subdivision 3 of the bill further states.
As
if this draconian legislation wasn’t enough, New Yorkers on Twitter are
also highlighting several more bills up for a vote next session that is
would empower the government to forcibly make state residents comply,
using mental and physical duress as they deem fit.
BAR |As you know, the U.S. incarcerates its share of political prisoners, with many having been affiliated with the Black Liberation Army and targeted by COINTELPRO.
Why won’t the mainstream media cover the trials, appeals, demands, and
resistance efforts of these political prisoners? Since they have been
deemed “enemies of the state,” are they, as a result, enemies of the
U.S. corporate media as well?
I’m not sure if most Americans have heard of COINTELPRO, but it was a
very frightening, elaborate effort by the United States government to
suppress, fracture and destroy Black liberation groups, anti-racist,
anti-imperialist, Marxist, and feminist movements in the U.S.
This includes groups like the Black Panther Party (BPP) and Black
Liberation Army (BLA). The FBI used covert means to attack these groups
e.g. create infighting, sew discord among its members, attack them in
the media, label them as terrorists, and give them lengthy jail
sentences of decades behind bars. Divide and conquer, like they do
overseas.
Just a few days ago on December 4th, was the anniversary of Fred
Hampton’s assassination in 1969. The FBI infiltrated his security detail
and spied on him, before one night he was drugged and then murdered in
his bed by government agents – all for the crime of combatting poverty,
racism and uniting people under one banner irrespective of race and
class.
Hampton is just one example, but others come to mind, such as Mutulu
Shakur from the BLA, which you mentioned. The government either killed
these activists and revolutionaries or gave them sentences such as 60
years imprisonment— essentially a life sentence— in order to decapitate
these movements. There was a concerted effort to take out people in
positions of leadership and incapacitate Black liberation groups.
The United States and its European allies love pretending they are
civilized, “true democracies,” and that everyone else is barbaric. But
if any of these things happened in another country, you’d hear the U.S.
media howling about “repression by a brutal dictatorship”— but when the
Americans or Europeans do it, it’s fine, apparently. This is why they
portray activists and revolutionaries as violent, disturbers of the
peace who must be penalized. That’s their excuse for repressing change
in America.
These are political prisoners in the true sense of the word:
imprisoned because their ideas and actions challenge the power
structures of the United States. And once they are deemed enemies of the
state, who is going to stand up for them? Certainly not the media. The
media is an arm of the same corporations that control the government.
The media is not interested in standing up for true revolutionaries.
They would rather herald someone like the Facebook whistleblower for
helping liberals advocate more censorship through Big Tech.
It’s not fashionable in America to be a real revolutionary, to really
challenge racism and capitalism. The most “solidarity” you’ll see from
the media and corporations is changing their logos to black and white,
or adopting some marketing gimmicks— things that don’t require them to actually support anti-racism movements, but just give the appearance that they do.
The fact that the state invested so much energy and resources into
destroying these groups shows you how effective they are, and how afraid
they make the power structures of the white, capitalist, Western elites
that rule America.
America claims to stand for justice, equality; it claims to fight for
the underdog and prides itself in being a nation born out of revolution
– but this is what happens to real revolutionaries in the United
States: they are jailed or murdered by the state.
LATimes | Vice President Kamala Harris said Friday that the administration
failed to anticipate the variants that have prolonged and worsened the
COVID-19 pandemic and that she underestimated the role misinformation
would play in prolonging the disease that has killed 800,000 Americans.
“We
didn’t see Delta coming. I think most scientists did not — upon whose
advice and direction we have relied — didn’t see Delta coming,” she
said. “We didn’t see Omicron coming. And that’s the nature of what this,
this awful virus has been, which as it turns out, has mutations and
variants.”
Harris made the comments during a wide-ranging
interview with The Times in her ceremonial office, touching on
immigration, women’s health, the criticism she has received for her
management style and her role as a history-making leader. But the vice
president returned repeatedly to the chief challenge of the Biden
administration: battling a pandemic that — thanks to a new
fast-spreading variant, Omicron — has led many Americans to put travel
plans on hold, cancel holiday parties and stock up again on masks.
“I
get it. I get it. I totally get it,” she said. “I mean, you know, one
of the concerns that I have is the undiagnosed and untreated trauma at
various degrees that everyone has experienced.”
I've been thinking a lot about why the latest surge has hit me so hard and I think it's because I have been fooling myself -- to some extent -- for the last 18 months 🧵
President Biden celebrated “independence” from the virus in an upbeat July 4 speech,
saying, “While the virus hasn’t been vanquished, we know this: It no
longer controls our lives. It no longer paralyzes our nation. And it’s
within our power to make sure it never does again.”
At the time,
some public health experts warned that his optimism was premature, given
that the Delta variant was already a significant threat.
Harris denied that the administration declared victory prematurely, or ever.
“We have not been victorious over it,” she said. “I don’t think
that in any regard anyone can claim victory when, you know, there are
800,000 people who are dead because of this virus.”
Many
Americans, particularly conservatives, resisted Biden’s call to get
vaccinated against COVID-19, a measure public health officials say is
critical to avoid hospitalization and death from the disease. Harris
cited as a singular regret her failure to appreciate the power of
misinformation in dissuading people to trust the vaccine.
“I would
take that more seriously,” she said of the misinformation. “The biggest
threat still to the American people is the threat to the unvaccinated.
And most people who believe in the efficacy of the vaccine and the
seriousness of the virus have been vaccinated. That troubles me deeply.”
The big picture: Data
from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was revised last
weekend for the number of people 65 and older who have received at least
one shot, according to Bloomberg.
The CDC lowered the percentage vaccinated from 99.9%, where it had been for weeks, to 95%, without changing the raw shot totals.
The agency has not returned Axios' request for comment.
What it means: The
change in data indicates that the U.S. has counted too many shots as
first doses when they are instead second doses or booster shots.
By the numbers:CDC data
indicated that 240 million people — or about 72.5% of the population —
had at least one shot and that 203 million — 61.3% — were fully
vaccinated.
But state and local officials reported that it
was improbable for there to be such a huge disparity in vaccination
numbers, Bloomberg reports.
The state of play: Three
states — Illinois, Pennsylvania and West Virginia — found enough
over-counting of first shots to indicate millions of unvaccinated people
had mistakenly been counted as having received a dose.
Pennsylvania
had one of the biggest gaps identified, according to Bloomberg, where
the CDC's estimates of first doses for people 65 and older exceeded
state estimates by about 850,000.
Illinois had more than 500,000
completely unvaccinated people ages 12 and up than initially thought.
But the audit also found 730,000 people who were fully vaccinated and
hadn’t been counted.
What they're saying: James
Garrow, a spokesperson for the Philadelphia Department of Public
Health, which has worked with the state to blend data sets for a more
accurate view of vaccination trends, said "we don’t have any faith in
the numbers on the CDC website, and we never refer to them."
WSJ | “Kyrie has made a personal choice, and we respect his individual
right to choose,” Nets general manager Sean Marks said in October.
“Currently the choice restricts his ability to be a full-time member of
the team, and we will not permit any member of our team to participate
with part-time availability.”
The Nets changed their mind about Irving’s availability with
Covid ripping through their locker room in a spike that coincides with a
sharp increase in cases across the league and the Omicron variant’s
arrival in New York. Brooklyn executives cited a roster that has been
depleted by the coronavirus to explain the unexpected backtracking by a
team sitting in first place in the Eastern Conference even without
Irving. As coach Steve Nash expressed misgivings about pushing the
workload of Durant, who nearly leads the league in minutes after
rupturing his Achilles’ tendon in 2019, the Nets softened their
position.
“We believe that the addition of Kyrie will not only make us a
better team, but allow us to more optimally balance the physical demand
on the entire roster,” Marks said. “We look forward to Kyrie’s return to
the lineup.”
They are likely to be waiting even longer now. The Nets have 53
games left in the regular season. Irving is currently eligible to play
in 24 of them outside of New York and Canada, but that number will
shrink to 21 after the new year.
The whiplash of Irving’s availability wasn’t the only
Covid-related turn of events for the Nets on Saturday. They had managed
to win two straight games while extremely shorthanded this week—they
fielded eight players in one win, the minimum required by the league—in
large part because Durant was sublime. Then he, too, was sidelined.
Durant has said that he is vaccinated and was one of the first public
figures to share that he had Covid in March 2020.
Irving, who has declined to comment on his vaccination status,
remained mostly silent during his absence with the exception of cryptic
messages on social media, including an Instagram video this week that
showed him lacing up his sneakers. He was also spotted at high-school
and college games in New Jersey and Los Angeles while his NBA team was
playing in Brooklyn.
The league’s Covid rules were significantly more onerous for
the tiny minority of unvaccinated players even before the NBA issued a
stricter round of guidance this week in response to the uptick of cases:
There are nearly 60 players out now, including more than a dozen on the
Nets and Knicks alone.
Forbes | A breakthrough Covid-19 coronavirus infection may not be “super” to
have. But can it actually give you what’s being called “super immunity”
on social media? In other words, can a severe acute respiratory syndrome
coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection after being fully vaccinated
against Covid-19 bring you even greater protection? Well, a research letter just published in JAMA offered a small window into this “super” possibility.
If you search for “super immunity” on social media you will find plenty of posts such as the following:
My husband and I were boosted almost a month ago. We (unfortunately) did not gain any superpowers but we DO have super immunity against Omicron which does sound like a supervillain name so I feel like it counts. Get boosted if you are able to prevent major illness <3 https://t.co/HbzYWL2z1M
You’ll also find mention of the study described by the JAMA
research letter. For example, Monica Gandhi MD, MPH, a Professor of
Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and HIV
researcher, used the terms “hybrid immunity” and “super immunity” when
tweeting about the study:
This study shows this too in delta breakthrough infections from Provincetown. Of note, this study also looks at T cells; JAMA study specifically showed increase in IgA levels which are the mucosal antibodyhttps://t.co/StZ5neUFVc
She called it “hybrid immunity,” because the potentially boosted
immune protection may come from a combination of vaccination and then
subsequent infection. Gandhi also referenced another study described in a pre-print uploaded to MedRxiv
that drew blood from 35 vaccinated individuals in Provincetown,
Massachusetts, 14 of whom had had subsequent breakthrough infections.
This pre-print described how the blood of the breakthrough infection
group had 28-fold higher levels of binding antibodies and 34-fold higher
levels of neutralizing antibodies against the SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant
than the blood of the rest. This study also looked at another measure of
immune protection, how the individual’s T cells responded to the virus,
a measure that I described previously for Forbes.
Those with breakthrough infections had a 4.4-fold higher Spike
protein-specific CD8+ T cell responses against the Delta variant than
the rest of the study participants. Take all the results from this
pre-print with a Ugg boot full of salt though. Anyone with a laptop, an
Internet connection, and opposable thumbs can upload a pre-print. It is
not the same as a peer-reviewed study published in a reputable
scientific journal.
We
are a group of expert clinicians who are driven only by our desire to
save lives. We continually update our protocols based on clinical
observations as well as the best studies of modes of prevention and
treatment therapies for COVID-19. For our latest, most comprehensive
clinical guide to the management of COVID-19, please click the following
text, or the box below the logos, to read and download “An Overview of the MATH+, I-MASK+ and I-RECOVER Protocols, A Guide to the Management of COVID-19”, by Dr. Paul Marik.
Ivermectin, an anti-parasitic medicine that is on the WHO’s list of
essential medicines, has been given 3.7 billion times around the globe,
and has won the Nobel prize in 2015 for its global and historic impacts
in eradicating endemic parasitic infections in many parts of the world.
Ivermectin has proven to be highly potent against COVID-19. It has shown
antiviral and anti-inflammatory properties in observational and
randomized controlled studies conducted throughout the world.
Practitioners and Health Ministries who have adopted Ivermectin in
treatment protocols report significant reductions in time to recovery,
hospitalizations, and death. The use of Ivermectin as prophylaxis and
prevention has also been proven in studies to reduce the spread of
infection and offer protection to high-risk individuals.
NYTimes | The
mayor of San Francisco on Friday made a sharp break with the liberal
conventions that have guided her city for decades, declaring a state of
emergency in one of its most crime-infested neighborhoods.
Mayor
London Breed’s announcement came just days after she emphasized the
need for the police to clean up what she has described as “nasty
streets.” At a news conference at City Hall, steps away from where drug
dealers openly peddle fentanyl and methamphetamines, she said, “We are
in a crisis and we need to respond accordingly.” She added, “Too many
people are dying in this city, too many people are sprawled on our
streets.”
The neighborhood, the
Tenderloin, has been ground zero for drug dealing, overdose deaths and
homelessness for years. But Ms. Breed said in an interview that she
reached her “breaking point” in recent weeks after meeting with families
with children who live in the Tenderloin and said they felt constantly
threatened.
Her actions and
startlingly blunt language were a marked change in tone and policy in a
city that has been polarized over homeless encampments and open-air drug
use. Elected as a liberal Democrat, she spoke this week about “a reign
of criminals,” trash strewn across neighborhoods full of “feces and
urine,” and shoplifting at high-end stores that she called “mass looting
events.”
Joe
D’Alessandro, president and chief executive of the San Francisco
tourism bureau, said the city had an image problem and praised the mayor
for addressing it.
“We are excited
and enthusiastic to see some significant steps to make San Francisco a
safer city,” he said. “People are just fed up with some of the stuff
they’ve seen and want to see some action.”
The announcement of a state of emergency specifically targeted the drug overdose crisis: More than twice as many people died of drug overdoses
in San Francisco last year as died from the coronavirus. But Friday’s
announcement is part of a broader, aggressive push to crack down on drug
dealing and improve conditions. In practical terms, Ms. Breed said the
city would no longer tolerate illicit drug users in the streets — giving
them a choice between treatment or arrest.
WaPo | The
U.S. government, over the past few weeks, has made three important
decisions on vaccines without consulting independent panels of experts.
On Nov. 19, the Food and Drug Administration authorized boosters for all adults — regardless of their job or any underlying health conditions. On Nov. 29, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced
that everyone 18 and above should get a booster shot, a revision of
previous guidance that strongly recommended boosters only for those 50
and older. Then, on Dec. 9, the FDA authorized booster shots (of Pfizer) for 16- and 17-year-olds, moving the age of eligibility down from 18.
Before
last month, the standard practice was for the agencies to convene
standing outside advisory committees, whose members inspect the relevant
data, debate it and vote. That did not happen in these cases, meaning
that the costs and benefits of these policy moves, from a medical
perspective, were not fully aired publicly and discussed in advance.
One
of us is the former deputy director of the FDA’s Office of Vaccines
Research and Review; the other is a former acting chief scientist at the
FDA. We believe that much is lost when decisions like these are made
without consulting outside experts — whatever one believes about the
merits of the policies in question.
At
this point in the pandemic, the world faces a host of new questions
related to vaccines and boosting. The recommendations of experts on the
outside advisory committees are needed more than ever — so the
scientific community can understand the empirical bases for decisions,
and so the public can be assured that science, not politics, is driving
vaccine policy.
In
each of the recent decisions we’ve mentioned, at least some experts
would probably have voiced opposition (based on earlier scientific
debates and votes the
two committees had taken, which supported different conclusions). That
these experts were not given a chance to make their cases could hurt the
credibility of these agencies. (In a poll published
in May, conducted by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard
T.H. Chan School of Public Health, 75 percent of American adults said
they trusted the FDA a great deal or somewhat, with 24 percent saying
they felt not much trust or none.)
This
area of research is fast-moving, and much changed between the most
recent meetings of the expert committees (on the booster question) and
the FDA’s decision to authorize boosters for 16- and 17-year-olds —
notably the emergence of the omicron variant. Still, the lack of
involvement of the FDA’s expert panel on that question was striking, and
observers noticed. Helen Branswell, a senior writer for the health and
science publication STAT News, tweeted
that the FDA had “authorized Pfizer booster shots for 16- &
17-years olds, without asking its vax expert panel for advice.” She
added, “This approach sidesteps what would likely have been lengthy
discussion about myocarditis” — an uncommon side effect of the mRNA
vaccines, which had drawn careful study in earlier steps of the approval
process.
In
a news release, the FDA explained that it didn’t convene the outside
committee because approving boosters for 16- and 17-year-olds “does not
raise questions that would benefit from additional discussion by
committee members.” But that is unpersuasive, given the previously
expressed views of panel members. The CDC has not explained why it did
not convene its own panel of vaccine experts for its recent decision.
thescrum | Peter Thiel made his initial fortune by cofounding (and then selling)
the electronic-payments service PayPal. Since that time, Thiel has
created various other enterprises, ranging from venture-capital firms
such as Founders Fund to a data-analysis firm named Palantir. In
addition to his success as a venture capitalist, Thiel is member of the
steering committee of the Bilderberg Meeting, an annual conference where
European and American elites discuss how to maintain and promote
free-market capitalism. He supported Donald Trump’s presidential
campaign, a highlight of which was Thiel’s delivery of a pro–Trump speech
at the Republican National Convention in July 2016. In that speech,
Thiel explained Trump’s rise as a response to national decline resulting
from the damaging consequences of free trade, out-of-control
militarism, increasingly expensive health care, rising student debt, and
stagnant wages. Jamie Galbraith, as noted in Part 1 of this essay,
shares many of these concerns.
Thiel’s explanation for our
national decline has been delivered, with much more detail, in various
other formats over recent years. An essay Thiel wrote for the National Review (2011) elaborates his declinist viewpoint. In that essay, “The End of the Future,”
Thiel argues that technological and scientific progress, the basis for
economic growth, has stalled out. The lack of innovation in energy,
agriculture, medicine, and science in general, he contends, has cut into
standards of living that can no longer be attenuated by accumulation of
consumer debt and cheap goods from free-trade partners, particularly
China. Even gains in the digital tech sector, where Thiel made his
initial fortune, he explains as having stalled out and now amount to
illusory productivity.
So far, Galbraith and Thiel seem to be traversing similar paths,
especially as regards the impediments to growth of rising resource costs
and increased digitization. However, Thiel diverges from the
progressive Galbraith and speculates that the decline in technological
innovation has been concealed by battles over identity politics. It is
here Thiel begins to bring questions of culture and psychology into his
inquiry. As he puts it:
Today’s aged hippies no
longer understand that there is a difference between the election of a
black president and the creation of cheap solar energy; in their minds,
the movement towards greater civil rights parallels general progress
everywhere.
Thiel fleshed out his proposal for
dealing with this decline in a speech delivered at the first National
Conservativism Conference, in July 2019. In “The Star Trek Computer Is Not Enough,” he retraces the ground covered in his earlier National Review
essay while also exploring new themes. He assails Silicon Valley for
its lack of innovation and its too-close-for-comfort relationship with
China, while also attacking China for its unfair trade practices.
Later
in the speech, Thiel also delivers a jeremiad against higher education
for handing out overrated, grade-inflated educations and saddling
students with debt. He claims that, as mentioned in the National Review piece,
the American left ignores national decline by obsessing about identity
politics, while the right is in a state of denial about national decline
as it insists that the U.S. is “exceptional” and immune to such decay.
This is Thiel’s argument for registering a psychological component in
any effort to achieve the national solidarity necessary to channel
government resources into reversing decline. Indeed, Thiel, who is known
for his adherence to libertarian philosophy, acknowledges that
government in the past was capable of achieving amazing feats, such the
Manhattan Project and the Interstate Highway System. Its shambolic
response to the Covid–19 pandemic stands as tragic testimony to the
lapse of “can-do” America.
What, then, is this psychological
factor that can reverse our national decline, so overcoming the hurdles
on right and left? This is Thiel’s question. His reply appears to be the
use of René Girard’s famous scapegoat mechanism to break a societal
bottleneck.
greenwald |The war on "disinformation” is now one of the
highest priorities of the political and media establishment. It has
become the foundational justification for imposing a regime of online
censorship. Around the world, new laws are being enacted in its name to empower the state to regulate discourse. Exploiting this cause, a small handful of billionaires are working in unison with Western security state agencies — under the guise of neutral-sounding names like The Atlantic Council
— to set the limits of permissible thought and decree what is true and
false. Corporate media outlets are attempting to rehabilitate their shattered image by depicting themselves as the bulwark against the rising tide of disinformation.
It
is an understatement to say that this righteous cause is a scam. That
its motive is power and control over speech and thought — to eliminate
dissent and discredit competition — rather than a noble quest for truth
is almost too self-evident to require explanation. No human institutions
should be trusted with the inherently tyrannical power they seek to
arrogate unto themselves: to decree truth and falsity with such
authoritative power that views they have decreed "false” become
prohibited, off-limits, even worthy of punishment.
On December 10, MSNBC aired a segment on Morning Joe
— a purported news report featuring its host Joe Scarborough, the
former GOP Congressman from Florida, and its regular paid contributor
Claire McCaskill, the former two-term Democratic Senator from Missouri —
that packed one lie after the next into two short minutes. The duo was
purporting to explain to its audience the implications of last week's ruling by a British court approving the Biden DOJ's request to extradite Julian Assange to the U.S. to stand trial on espionage charges
in connection with the 2010 publication by WikiLeaks, in partnership
with numerous mainstream media outlets, of a cache of secret documents
revealing various war crimes, lies and corruptions on the part of the
U.S. and UK governments and their allies.
Within the span of two minutes, these NBC personalities told four blatant lies
about the Assange case. I do not mean that they asserted dubious
opinions or questionable narratives or even misleading claims. I mean
that they outright lied about four separate matters that are crucial to
understanding the Biden administration's attempted extradition and
prosecution of Assange. These lies were not just misleading but pernicious, as they were designed not merely to mislead the public but to provoke them to believe that one of the gravest attacks on press freedom in years
— the imprisonment of a journalist for the crime of reporting true and
accurate information about the crimes of power centers — is something
viewers should applaud rather than denounce.
We took the time to dissect this segment and to amass the dispositive proof of their multiple lies not
because we think Scarborough and McCaskill will pay any price or will
have to retract any of this. Of course they will not. They are doing
their job, which is to lie in a way that flatters the ideological
preconceptions of NBC viewers, who hate Assange due to the role his
reporting played in harming the Democratic Party during the 2016
election, which Hillary Clinton herself claims was one of the two primary reasons she lost.
We
did this video report in order to illustrate how easily and reflexively
these corporate outlets lie; to demonstrate that the public's view that
these outlets are completely untrustworthy and contemptible is valid
and correct; and to set the record straight about the Assange case. We
realize that not all subscribers here want to watch a one-hour video,
and for that reason — as we do with all of the video reports we produce
— we will shortly publish a written transcript of the program for our
Substack subscribers. But I really hope people will take the time to
watch this particular video: since the lies came in the form of video,
we therefore concluded that using video to highlight the severity and
intentionality of this lying was the most effective way to demonstrate
how noxious it really is.
THREAD. I noticed something fascinating: many of the reporters concocting the new hysteria over "retail theft" are using the *exact same* words and patterns in each story. It's pretty wild. Let's take a look:
Now researchers in Japan say
they may have taken a step toward boosting human longevity with
successful trials of a vaccine against the cells that contribute to the
ageing process.
In laboratory trials, a drug targeting a protein
contained in senescent cells - those which have naturally stopped
reproducing themselves - slowed the progression of frailty in older
mice, the researchers from Tokyo's Juntendo University said.
The vaccine also successfully targeted the senescent cells in fatty
tissue and blood vessels, suggesting it could have a positive impact on
other medical conditions linked to ageing.
"We can expect that
(the vaccine) will be applied to the treatment of arterial stiffening,
diabetes and other ageing-related diseases," Juntendo professor Toru
Minamino told Japan's Jiji news agency.
What is cellular senescence?
Cells
become senescent when they stop duplicating themselves, often in
response to naturally-occurring damage to their DNA. Cellular senescence
is thought to contribute to the ageing process itself, as well as
ageing-related diseases like Alzheimer's and some cancers.
"Senescent
cells secrete a series of factors that disrupt the function of the
tissue," Dr Salvador Macip, head of the University of Leicester's
Mechanisms of Cancer and Ageing Lab, told Euronews Next.
"They 'call' cells from the immune system, in theory to be cleared by
them (but that eventually fails) and create a chronic low level
inflammation, mixed with fibrosis," Macip said.
Macip was part of an international team of academics from universities in the UK, Spain, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia that published research on another method of tackling senescent cells in October this year.
"The
biological process of ageing is very complex, therefore it is unlikely
that one single strategy will completely stop it or reverse it. However,
there are probably many ways to slow it down, and clearing senescent
cells seems to be one of the easiest and potentially more effective," he
said.
techxplore | The main objective of the recent study by Ozaki and his colleagues was to power an insect-size flying robot
using no-contact, wireless charging technology. The robot created by
the researchers is essentially comprised of a flapping, piezoelectric
actuator that is powered through a 5 GHz dipole antenna.
"One of our robot's key features is a highly efficient flapping
actuation, which is achieved using high-power single-crystal
piezoelectric material and a low-loss layout with two wings facing each
other, like clapping hands," Ozaki said. "This design enables a
power-to-weight efficiency comparable to that of live insects."
A key challenge encountered by engineers who are trying to create
miniature size robots is the thermal runaway caused by power losses. To
overcome this challenge, Ozaki and his colleagues optimized their
robot's circuit design, ensuring that components that generate heat were
not placed closely together or next to each other.
In addition, the researchers used a radiofrequency power receiver
with a power-to-weight density that is significantly higher than that of
off-the-shelf lithium polymer batteries with a similar mass. This
significantly improved the robot's efficiency and operating time.
"I think that our most important finding is that a sub-gram circuit
can receive and handle high power of over 1 W at a distance via an RF
wave," Ozaki said. "This suggests that not only flying robots but also
various other applications that require large power in a small size can be realized without batteries."
To evaluate the effectiveness of their design, Ozaki and his
colleagues carried out a series of experiments. In these tests, they
were able to make the insect-size robot take off seamlessly and without
the need for batteries or wires.
The robot created by this team of researchers weighs only 1.8g, thus
it is over 25 times lighter than other radiofrequency-powered
micro-sized vehicles developed in the past. In the future, it could thus
prove to be highly valuable for conducting complex missions that entail
entering cracks, pipes or other highly confined spaces.
technologyreview | Last week,
Meta (the umbrella company formerly known as Facebook) opened up access
to its virtual-reality social media platform, Horizon Worlds. Early
descriptions of the platform make it seem fun and wholesome, drawing
comparisons to Minecraft. In Horizon Worlds, up to 20 avatars can get
together at a time to explore, hang out, and build within the virtual
space.
But not everything has been warm and fuzzy. According to
Meta, on November 26, a beta tester reported something deeply troubling:
she had been groped by a stranger on Horizon Worlds. On December 1,
Meta revealed that she’d posted her experience in the Horizon Worlds
beta testing group on Facebook.
Meta’s internal review of the
incident found that the beta tester should have used a tool called “Safe
Zone” that’s part of a suite of safety features built into Horizon
Worlds. Safe Zone is a protective bubble users can activate when feeling
threatened. Within it, no one can touch them, talk to them, or interact
in any way until they signal that they would like the Safe Zone lifted.
Vivek Sharma, the vice president of Horizon, called the groping incident “absolutely unfortunate,” telling The Verge, “That’s good feedback still for us because I want to make [the blocking feature] trivially easy and findable.”
It’s
not the first time a user has been groped in VR—nor, unfortunately,
will it be the last. But the incident shows that until companies work
out how to protect participants, the metaverse can never be a safe
place.
“There I was, being virtually groped”
When
Aaron Stanton heard about the incident at Meta, he was transported to
October 2016. That was when a gamer, Jordan Belamire, penned an open letter on Medium describing being groped in Quivr, a game Stanton co-designed in which players, equipped with bow and arrows, shoot zombies.
In
the letter, Belamire described entering a multiplayer mode, where all
characters were exactly the same save for their voices. “In between a
wave of zombies and demons to shoot down, I was hanging out next to
BigBro442, waiting for our next attack. Suddenly, BigBro442’s
disembodied helmet faced me dead-on. His floating hand approached my
body, and he started to virtually rub my chest. ‘Stop!’ I cried … This
goaded him on, and even when I turned away from him, he chased me
around, making grabbing and pinching motions near my chest. Emboldened,
he even shoved his hand toward my virtual crotch and began rubbing.
“There I was, being virtually groped in a snowy fortress with my brother-in-law and husband watching.”
Stanton and his cofounder, Jonathan Schenker, immediately responded with an apology
and an in-game fix. Avatars would be able to stretch their arms into a V
gesture, which would automatically push any offenders away.
Stanton,
who today leads the VR Institute for Health and Exercise, says Quivr
didn’t track data about that feature, “nor do I think it was used much.”
But Stanton thinks about Belamire often and wonders if he could have
done more in 2016 to prevent the incident that occurred in Horizon
Worlds a few weeks ago. “There’s so much more to be done here,” he says.
“No one should ever have to flee from a VR experience to escape feeling
powerless.”
VR sexual harassment is sexual harassment, full stop
A recent review
of the events around Belamire’s experience published in the journal for
the Digital Games Research Association found that “many online
responses to this incident were dismissive of Belamire’s experience and,
at times, abusive and misogynistic … readers from all perspectives
grappled with understanding this act given the virtual and playful
context it occurred in.” Belamire faded from view, and I was unable to
find her online.
A constant topic of debate on message boards after Belamire’s Medium article was whether or not what she had experienced was actually groping if her body wasn’t physically touched.
“I
think people should keep in mind that sexual harassment has never had
to be a physical thing,” says Jesse Fox, an associate professor at Ohio
State University who researches the social implications of virtual
reality. “It can be verbal, and yes, it can be a virtual experience as
well.
“Upon admission to a once-trusted hospital, American patients with
COVID-19 become virtual prisoners, subjected to a rigid treatment
protocol…for rationing medical care in those over age 50. They have a
shockingly high mortality rate…”
“As exposed in audio recordings, hospital executives in Arizona
admitted meeting several times a week to lower standards of care, with
coordinated restrictions on visitation rights. Most COVID-19 patients’
families are deliberately kept in the dark about what is really being
done to their loved ones.”
“The combination that enables this tragic and avoidable loss of
hundreds of thousands of lives includes (1) The CARES Act, which
provides hospitals with bonus incentive payments for all things related
to COVID-19 (testing, diagnosing, admitting to hospital, use of
remdesivir and ventilators, reporting COVID-19 deaths, and vaccinations)
and (2) waivers of customary and long-standing patient rights by the
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).”
“In 2020, the Texas Hospital Association submitted requests for
waivers to CMS. According to Texas attorney Jerri Ward, ‘CMS has granted
“waivers” of federal law regarding patient rights. Specifically, CMS
purports to allow hospitals to violate the rights of patients or their
surrogates with regard to medical record access, to have patient
visitation, and to be free from seclusion.’…The purported waivers are
meant to isolate and gain total control over the patient and to deny
patient and patient’s decision-maker the ability to exercise informed
consent.”
“Creating a ‘National Pandemic Emergency’ provided justification for
such sweeping actions that override individual physician medical
decision-making and patients’ rights. The CARES Act provides incentives
for hospitals to use treatments dictated solely by the federal
government under the auspices of the NIH. These ‘bounties’ must paid
back if not ‘earned’ by making the COVID-19 diagnosis and following the
COVID-19 protocol.”
“The hospital payments include:
* A ‘free’ required PCR test in the Emergency Room or upon admission for every patient, with government-paid fee to hospital.
* Added bonus payment for each positive COVID-19 diagnosis.
* Another bonus for a COVID-19 admission to the hospital.
* A 20 percent ‘boost’ bonus payment from Medicare on the entire
hospital bill for use of remdesivir instead of medicines such as
Ivermectin.
* Another and larger bonus payment to the hospital if a COVID-19 patient is mechanically ventilated.
* More money to the hospital if cause of death is listed as COVID-19, even if patient did not die directly of COVID-19.
* A COVID-19 diagnosis also provides extra payments to coroners.”
“CMS implemented ‘value-based’ payment programs that track data such
as how many workers at a healthcare facility receive a COVID-19 vaccine.
Now we see why many hospitals implemented COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
They are paid more.”
“Outside hospitals, physician MIPS [Merit-based Incentive Payment
System] quality metrics link doctors’ income to performance-based pay
for treating patients with COVID-19 EUA drugs. Failure to report
information to CMS can cost the physician 4% of reimbursement.”
“Because of obfuscation with medical coding and legal jargon, we
cannot be certain of the actual amount each hospital receives per
COVID-19 patient. But Attorney Thomas Renz and CMS whistleblowers have
calculated a total payment of at least $100,000 per patient.” Fist tap Big Don.
Omicron is spreading at a rate we have not seen with any previous variant. I need to be very clear: vaccines alone will not get any country out of this crisis. It’s not vaccines instead of masks, distancing, ventilation or hand hygiene. Do it all. Do it consistently. Do it well. pic.twitter.com/YAVfJXsviQ
3/ I've pondered this question a lot. I've been involved in discussions with @WHO, many IPC and public health researchers and practitioners, politicians in multiple countries etc.
This thread summarizes my understanding of the causes of this situation. I look forward to comments
4/ Early in pandemic, a major historical error in the understanding of the IPC field played a major role
"Droplet transmission" was an important concept in that field... and it is an error that dates from 1910!!
5/ The concept of "sprayborne droplet transmission" was used by Charles Chapin (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_V…),
a prominent US Public Health researcher (later pres. of APHA), to
explain the EMPIRICAL OBSERVATION that transmission increases in close
proximity and decreases with distance
6/ As of the start of the pandemic, @WHO and @CDCgov were completely stuck on the concepts from Chapin (e.g. his seminal 1910 book: ), as exemplified by this @WHO video showing the sprayborne droplets as explanation why distance reduces transmission:
7/ The problem is that Chapin had
made an error. He was pushing "contact infection" that he had
conceptualized, and encountered a lot of resistance (his book: archive.org/details/source…).
8/ Chapin was very intelligent, and
was well aware that short-range airborne transmission could also explain
why distance reduced transmission: we breathe less exhaled air from
someone else as we increased distance
💉 The omicron epidemic is being driven by young, vaccinated people, according to mounting data from countries as diverse as the UK, Denmark and South Africa https://t.co/bTRIBFsCc7
telegraph | The omicron epidemic is being driven by young, vaccinated people,
according to mounting data from countries as diverse as the UK, Denmark
and South Africa.
The new variant has now been detected in more than 60 countries, including 24 in Europe, with a similar pattern of infection and characteristics being reported across the globe.
But while the speed and the vaccine evading properties of the virus
are now established, there is as yet no firm verdict on its virulence or
severity.
“Generally those first cases are in relatively young, relatively
healthy and – in the context of Europe – in relatively highly vaccinated
groups,” Dr Catherine Smallwood, a senior emergency officer at the
World Health Organization’s Europe office, told the Telegraph.
Data from Denmark
– a world leader in genetic sequencing – shows that, of 3,437 omicron
cases detected, just over 70 per cent have been among those younger than
40, according to the breakdown from the Statens Serum Institut
published on Monday.
Some 75 per cent of these cases were in fully vaccinated individuals, the institute added, confirming that even the double jabbed can carry the virus.
Daily cases in Denmark have surged by a third since early December,
despite almost 80 per cent of the population being double vaccinated.
The country tightened restrictions at the end of last week –
introducing a midnight curfew on bars and restaurants and closing
schools early for the Christmas holidays – but experts estimate omicron
could become the dominant variant as soon as Wednesday.
Neighbouring Norway, which has so far reported 958 cases, also
introduced new Covid control measures on Monday, with the Prime Minister
warning that the situation is “serious”.
Preliminary data suggests the pattern of spread is, so far, similar worldwide.
Analysis from the European Centre for Disease Control found 72 per
cent of early cases were in those under 40, while the US said the
majority of the 43 infections detected so far were in this same age
bracket. American authorities also revealed that 79 per cent of people
infected were vaccinated.
Prof Emmanuel Andre, head of the national reference lab for Covid-19
in Belgium, said the country is two weeks behind the UK, where omicron
cases jumped by 50 per cent on Monday and the first death with the
variant was confirmed.
“Most infections documented at this early stage are among younger age groups,” he told the Telegraph,
citing work, travel, sports competitions and schools as possible
explanations. But Prof Andre added that Christmas celebrations could
“amplify” omicron’s spread.
opendemocracy | Neoliberalism was the form of capitalism that came, chronologically,
after colonialism, driving markets back into the public sectors of the
former colonial powers, allowing capital to monetise and extract wealth
from their soft underbellies. Surveillance capitalism, led by the data
giants, is taking its place.
As academic and writer Shoshana
Zuboff has argued, under surveillance capitalism, the new biggest
companies on the planet make money from drilling markets into our souls.
Facebook, Google and Amazon profit by turning each of us into an
individual cell of their vast, multidimensional spreadsheets, and
pinning us into these corners with endless streams of advertisements
telling us who we are and what we need to buy to make us whole.
As cultural politics lecturer Ben Little
points out to me, it shouldn’t be any surprise that people respond to a
breed of capitalism that exists to sell them new versions of their own
identities by pushing back, by insisting that that’s not who they are,
nor what it means to be who they are.
Data giants, Little says,
want our identities to be hard, static and regimented, so we “align more
neatly with commodities”. Anything that challenges this, he argues,
“becomes a form of resistance not just to traditional forms of
conservative hierarchy” but also to the very logic of modern capitalism.
Largely,
this resistance isn’t done individually: it’s done through collective
exploration and expression. Because while social media tries to profit
by selling people versions of who they might be, it also creates
opportunities for connections that allow people to discuss and discover
other versions of themselves.
Ultimately, identity is never an
individual matter. It’s always about how we relate to each other and
make sense of society: if I was the only person I’d ever met, I wouldn’t
see myself as having a race or a class or a gender. But it’s also about
how we’re related to, and made by, society. The construction of how we
see ourselves in the world is always an iterative process – Facebook
imposes its algorithm and we build our own groups.
And this isn’t
new. National identities were largely invented when capitalist printing
presses convened communities in the 19th century. Social media allows
people to gather from across the planet in their own communities. Gender
roles were foisted on people by church, state and capital. More than
ever, we are getting together and reinventing them. The class system was
built to facilitate control, and racial hierarchies to justify empire,
and people like the Common Sense Group feel a deep sense of moral panic
when these identities are prodded, poked and pulled apart.
arstechnica | As COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations rise sharply in Missouri,
local health departments are abandoning efforts to stop the spread of
the pandemic disease, saying their hands have been tied by the state's
attorney general and a recent court ruling.
One local agency, the Laclede County Health Department, northeast of
Springfield, announced that it has ceased all COVID-19-related work,
including case investigations, contact tracing, quarantine orders, and
public announcements of current cases and deaths.
"While this is a huge concern for our agency, we have no other
options but to follow the orders of the Missouri Attorney General at
this time," the department wrote in a Facebook post on December 9.
Laclede county, which has around 35,000 residents, is averaging 17
new cases per day, a 71 percent increase over two weeks, and test
positivity sits at around 9 percent. Hospitalizations have risen 48
percent in the last two weeks. Only 35 percent of the county is fully
vaccinated.
Overall, Missouri is currently seeing a surge in COVID-19 cases. The
state is averaging over 2,700 new COVID-19 cases per day, a 68 percent
increase over the past two weeks. Daily hospitalizations are averaging
over 1,700, a 45 percent increase over the past two weeks. Approximately
52 percent of the state is fully vaccinated, well below national
coverage, and around a dozen of the state's 114 counties have
vaccination percentages in the 20s.
Still, health officials in Laclede and elsewhere are pulling back
rather than ramping up health prevention measures, citing a December 7
letter from state Attorney General Eric Schmitt. The letter informed
them of a recent court ruling that stripped state health agencies of a
variety of disease-prevention powers, particularly regarding issuing
isolation and quarantine orders. "You should stop enforcing and
publicizing any such orders immediately," the letter read.
The ruling comes from Judge Daniel Green of the Cole County Circuit Court, who entered a judgment on November 22 in the case of Shannon Robinson, et. al., v. Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS).
Robinson and her co-plaintiffs challenged health agencies' powers to
issue restrictions to prevent the spread of disease, such as ordering
quarantines. Attorney General Schmitt defended DHSS in the case and has
refused to appeal its outcome.
Green ruled, essentially, that it was unconstitutional for the state
to delegate disease prevention powers to unelected health officials.
"The authority that the DHSS regulations purport to grant to an
administrative official to implement control measures and create and
enforce orders is open-ended discretion—a catch-all to permit naked
lawmaking by bureaucrats throughout Missouri," Green wrote in his
judgment.
Specifically, Green ruled that regulations 19 CSR 20-20.040(2) G-I,
19 CSR 20-20.040(6), and 19 CSR 20-20.050(3) all violate the state's
constitution (codes found here,
highlighted in yellow). Collectively, those regulations charge local
health authorities with the responsibility of establishing
disease-control measures, investigating clusters or outbreaks of
illness, and implementing appropriate control measures when necessary.
Those control measures can include isolation, quarantine, disinfection,
immunization, establishment closures, notification of people potentially
exposed, and communication with the public over potential risks and
prevention strategies. Regulation 19 CSR 20-20.050(3) specifically deals
with quarantine and isolation powers and authorizes closures of schools
and other public and private gathering places.
Green wrote in his judgment that local health officials should
refrain from taking actions on communicable disease prevention "that
require independent discretion in a manner inconsistent with this
opinion."
Free To A Good Home
-
I know what gooning is same as I know what felching is but I don't care to
remind myself all that often about it. The Internet just keeps exposing the
ni...
If Free Will Is False, Destiny Is True
-
Free will is like God: perhaps dead, its absence having something to say
about morality (what Nietzsche meant by “Gott ist tot” was that the
Christian God ...
FREE BOOK: On Nonviolence
-
“Michael Barker’s interrogation of nonviolent protest tactics and regime
change is both timely and important. Drawing on cases ranging from American
democr...
Return of the Magi
-
Lately, the Holy Spirit is in the air. Emotional energy is swirling out of
the earth.I can feel it bubbling up, effervescing and evaporating around
us, s...
Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
-
sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
arrived at the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
He ...
-
(Damn, has it been THAT long? I don't even know which prompts to use to
post this)
SeeNew
Can't get on your site because you've gone 'invite only'?
Man, ...
First Member of Chumph Cartel Goes to Jail
-
With the profligate racism of the Chumph Cartel, I don’t imagine any of
them convicted and jailed is going to do too much better than your run of
the mill ...
