COVID 19 HAIKU

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COVID 19 HAIKU

Postby fruhmenschen » Fri Apr 24, 2020 11:53 am

https://bangordailynews.com/2020/04/24/ ... nd-others/




Midcoast
A Maine girl sold her toys and used the money to support health care workers and others




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_for_Radicals


Rules for Radicals

The Rules
1. "Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have."
2. "Never go outside the expertise of your people."
3. "Whenever possible go outside the expertise of the enemy."
4. "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules."
5. "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon."
6. "A good tactic is one your people enjoy."
7. "A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag."
8. "Keep the pressure on."
9. "The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself."
10. "The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition."
11. "If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside."
12. "The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative."
13. "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."




https://theintercept.com/2020/04/23/cor ... dent-debt/



Hospital Workers Like Me Are Waging a War Against Coronavirus. Where Is Our GI Bill?
Elizabeth May
April 23 2020, 7:00 a.m.






https://theintercept.com/2020/04/24/qua ... -covid-19/

Quack-in-Chief Donald Trump Asks If Bleach Injections or Tanning Could Cure Covid-19
Robert Mackey
April 24 2020, 6:33 a.m.




https://newsmaven.io/pinacnews/citizen- ... yxZ4PCiSTQ

WATCH: Cops Continue to Shoot Man in Walmart after he Drops Bat he was Wielding




https://newsmaven.io/pinacnews/cops-gon ... 5lXxj3ZNyA



Police Chief Solicits 14-year-old for Sex who turns out to be Adult Activist

Stow Police Chief Ralph "Rusty" Marino was thrilled to learn the 14-year-old boy he was chatting with online had a six-inch penis, the same size as his.







https://newsmaven.io/pinacnews/war-on-p ... uQpFonQijw


Security Guard Attacks Men for Recording from Sidewalk, Smashing their Cameras




https://www.nydailynews.com/coronavirus ... story.html



Drugmaker asked FDA authorization to use HIV drug to treat coronavirus patients, then tripled its price

By MURI ASSUNÇÃO

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
APR 23, 2020 | 5:53 PM






https://joshmitteldorf.scienceblog.com/ ... om-part-2/



Where did COVID-19 come from? Part 2

Posted on April 21, 2020

Last week, I outlined genetic evidence that the present pandemic had its origin in a laboratory. In the segment below, I tell two stories of how this might have occurred, one as leak from an American lab and one from a Chinese lab. I was surprised to find that there is a history of collaborative work between American and Chinese bioweapons labs on exactly the kind of Coronavirus responsible for the current epidemic, in which a protein that binds with ACE2 was artificially spliced onto the genome of the bat virus ancestor.

Here’s a puzzle worthy of Sherlock Holmes’s story of the dog who didn’t bark. The Chinese are eagerly promoting narratives about the SARS-CoV2 virus originating in America, while the Americans assume that, of course, the virus evolved where the first cases were identified, in Wuhan, China. But both sides agree, SARS-CoV2 had a natural origin, and had nothing to do with genetic engineering or breeding in a laboratory.  As we shall see below there are credible links to both the Wuhan Institute of Virology and to the US bioweapons HQ at Fort Detrick, MD and a university lab at Chapel Hill.
Why wouldn’t these two propaganda machines be eager to demonize one another by promoting stories about leaks from the other’s weapons lab? If one but not the other of these spin-control states were too eagerly dismissing the bioweapons



http://anthraxvaccine.blogspot.com/2020 ... rates.html


Thursday, April 23, 2020
Coronavirus: mortality rates, questionable data, treatment. Part 3


Mortality rates and spread

We have had over 6 weeks of quarantine.  I earlier pointed out that there is an average 4 week lag between exposure to SARS-CoV-2 and death (or recovery) for those with a significant Covid-19 illness.  So, if the quarantine was going to work as planned, we should now be able to see whether the number of cases and deaths have dropped significantly as a result.  Have they?

Let's look at some (mostly) official figures. For the US, daily mortality rose to about a peak of 2,000 per day on April 6.  Since then, mortality has held steady.  While it stopped rising, it has not fallen.  Based on mortality alone, the number of people to whom each infected person passes the infection on, has dropped considerably (from estimates that varied between 2.3 and 5.7).  It may even be as low as 1.  But that is still not good enough to allow normal life to restart.  To get back to normal, we need new infections to get down so low that we can do case finding and tracking for every single one.

There were over 32,000 new infections in the US diagnosed in the past 24 hours, the highest number yet.  While expanded testing accounts for some of the rise, we are nowhere near putting a lid on covid's spread.

NYC

NY state was hit hardest, so let's focus there. NY has had a total of 15,740 deaths. The number of people currently hospitalized is 15,021, down from a peak over 18,000, of whom 5,016 are in ICUs.  Recorded deaths have dropped from about 800 to about 500 per day in NY.  

But there are questions about the numbers.  CDC has instructed doctors who complete death certificates to stop using Covid-19 as the immediate cause of death, and to instead list it as the underlying cause of death.  According to Bob Hennelly at Salon,

...on April 15 New Jersey's Office of Vital Statistics and Registry, in accordance with the CDC's National Vital Statistics System, had ordered that deaths of confirmed or suspected COVID-19 patients should no longer be reported with that disease as the immediate cause of death... "Last week, because of changes on the national level, the primary cause of death can no longer be COVID-19. It can be a secondary cause or a consequence of the primary cause of death. But the primary cause of death must be something other than the virus itself."

Furthermore, Hennelly noted in an article written 2 weeks earlier, that NYC's Emergency Medical Services were being called for up to ten times more cardiac arrests per shift than in the same period a year ago.  These were likely not being counted as Covid deaths. His reporting suggested these deaths were disproportionately occurring in racial and ethnic minorities.

Gov. Cuomo reported a preliminary study of 3,000 New Yorkers, of whom 13.9% had antibodies to coronavirus.  But NY is the hardest-hit state, and that still leaves 86% of New Yorkers without antibodies and presumably vulnerable.

Vo, Italy 

A preprint study from a small town in northern Italy was just released. In February, over 70% of its eligible population, over 2,000 people, received nasal swab tests 2 weeks apart.  About 43% of those who had a positive swab had no symptoms. Seventeen percent of those positive (but about 30% with symptoms) required hospitalization.

These data support earlier studies, which showed that most of those who become infected do develop disease. Less than half were asymptomatic. 

Plan B

While a general hope was that SARS-CoV-2 might slowly spread through the population and confer immunity without significant cost, that seems unlikely, based on these and other data. The vast majority of Americans remain uninfected and without immunity.

The bottom line is that the current level of quarantine will not solve the Covid problem. It did end the exponential rise in the number of infections, and prevented (or at least postponed) a collapse of the medical system.  But it does not appear that the elapse of time will yield immunity without predictably high morbidity and mortality. 

We desperately need effective treatments and preventives.  Patients need cures.  The 88% mortality rate of those who were placed on ventilators in NY's largest hospital system is unacceptable.

In China, patients received a multitude of different treatments, simultaneously.  While that may create datasets that are hard for researchers, who seek to determine the efficacy of single treatments, to untangle, it might improve dismal mortality rates.

The duty of a treating physician is exclusively to the patient, not to the fidelity of a pharma or grant-supported dataset or clinical trial.  It is time to throw the kitchen sink at our patients, and especially try vitamin and nutraceutical combinations that are unlikely to cause harm.  These are being used in some hospitals and by some physicians already.

Furthermore, treatment needs to be started early.  The common medications used for viral diseases: influenza, herpes simplex and varicella zoster infections (acyclovir, famciclovir, valacyclovir, oseltamvir) are all recommended to be started within 48 hours of the onset of symptoms.  Guidelines that recommend withholding safe medications, or waiting until patients are severely ill and hospitalized before using them, provide no valid scientific or ethical justification for doing so. They should be consigned to the scrap heap.

Changes made by CDC to reporting guidelines for Covid-19 death certificates may corrupt mortality data. Out-of-hospital deaths may also do so.  Cities and states need their epidemiologists to scrutinize all deaths to make sure Covid deaths are correctly assigned. The data used by the federal government to make critical decisions about managing the pandemic must be accurate. It is not clear they are.


Posted by Meryl Nass, M.D. at 9:57 PM 0 comments




https://www.nydailynews.com/coronavirus ... story.html

Once concentrated in cities, coronavirus begins spread into Trump Country

By TIM BALK

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
APR 23, 2020 | 6:04 PM



https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/24/us/georg ... index.html



Georgia reopens hair salons, gyms and bowling alleys despite rise in coronavirus deaths





https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... virus-data



Native Americans being left out of US coronavirus data and labelled as 'other'





https://www.rt.com/news/486742-death-me ... -evidence/



‘Death by meteorite’: Turkish researchers claim to have proof of world’s first space-rock fatality



https://www.rt.com/news/486749-nanohybr ... -medicine/



A spoonful of sugar? Scientists develop coated ‘nanohybrid’ vehicle for precise drug delivery INSIDE the brain



https://theintercept.com/2020/04/23/eve ... ss-donors/



DONORS TO TOP FUNDRAISING DEMOCRAT IN NEW YORK CONGRESSIONAL RACE INCLUDE JOHN NEGROPONTE, GEORGE W. BUSH’S INTELLIGENCE CHIEF
Akela Lacy
April 23 2020, 2:22 p.m.




https://theintercept.com/2020/04/22/cor ... york-city/

OVERWHELMED MORGUE WORKERS STRUGGLE TO GIVE CORONAVIRUS VICTIMS DEATH WITH DIGNITY
Sharon Lerner
April 22 2020, 2:00 p.m.



https://bangordailynews.com/2020/04/20/ ... h-baskets/



Aroostook
Fort Kent family famous for making snowshoes craft brown ash baskets





http://www.heatisonline.org/contentserv ... ethod=Full

TV Network News gave less than 4 hours to climate change in
Major news networks devoted less than 4 hours to climate change in 2019. Total.
fruhmenschen
 
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Re: COVID 19 HAIKU

Postby fruhmenschen » Fri Apr 24, 2020 11:38 pm

http://anthraxvaccine.blogspot.com/2020 ... e-not.html

Friday, April 24, 2020
Did this Virus Come from a Lab? Maybe Not — But it Exposes the Threat of a Biowarfare Arms Race/ Sam Husseini @ Salon
https://www.salon.com/2020/04/24/did-th ... arms-race/

Dangerous pathogens are captured in the wild and made deadlier in government biowarfare labs. Did that happen here?
SAM HUSSEINI

There has been no scientific finding that the novel coronavirus was bioengineered, but its origins are not entirely clear. Deadly pathogens discovered in the wild are sometimes studied in labs — and sometimes made more dangerous. That possibility, and other plausible scenarios, have been incorrectly dismissed in remarks by some scientists and government officials, and in the coverage of most major media outlets.
Regardless of the source of this pandemic, there is considerable documentation that a global biological arms race going on outside of public view could produce even more deadly pandemics in the future.
While much of the media and political establishment have minimized the threat from such lab work, some hawks on the American right like Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., have singled out Chinese biodefense researchers as uniquely dangerous. But there is every indication that U.S. lab work is every bit as threatening as that in Chinese labs. American labs also operate in secret, and are also known to be accident-prone.
The current dynamics of the biological arms race have been driven by U.S. government decisions that extend back decades. In December 2009, Reuters reported that the Obama administration was refusing even to negotiate the possible monitoring of biological weapons.Much of the left in the U.S. now appears unwilling to scrutinize the origin of the pandemic — or the wider issue of biowarfare — perhaps because portions of the anti-Chinese right have been so vocal in making unfounded allegations.
Governments that participate in such biological weapon research generally distinguish between "biowarfare" and "biodefense," as if to paint such "defense" programs as necessary. But this is rhetorical sleight-of-hand; the two concepts are largely indistinguishable.
"Biodefense" implies tacit biowarfare, breeding more dangerous pathogens for the alleged purpose of finding a way to fight them. While this work appears to have succeeded in creating deadly and infectious agents, including deadlier flu strains, such "defense" research is impotent in its ability to defend us from this pandemic.
The legal scholar who drafted the main U.S. law on the subject, Francis Boyle, warned in his 2005 book "Biowarfare and Terrorism" that an "illegal biological arms race with potentially catastrophic consequences" was underway, largely driven by the U.S. government.
For years, many scientists have raised concerns regarding bioweapons/biodefense lab work, and specifically about the fact that huge increases in funding have taken place since 9/11. This was especially true after the anthrax-by-mail attacks that killed five people in the weeks after 9/11, which the FBI ultimately blamed on a U.S. government biodefense scientist. A 2013 study found that biodefense funding since 2001 had totaled at least $78 billion, and more has surely been spent since then. This has led to a proliferation of laboratories, scientists and new organisms, effectively setting off a biological arms race.
Ebola outbreak in west Africa in 2014, the U.S. government paused funding for what are known as "gain-of-function" research on certain organisms. This work actually seeks to make deadly pathogens deadlier, in some cases making pathogens airborne that previously were not. With little notice outside the field, the pause on such research was lifted in late 2017.
During this pause, exceptions for funding were made for dangerous gain-of-function lab work. This included work jointly done by U.S. scientists from the University of North Carolina, Harvard and the Wuhan Institute of Virology. This work — which had funding from USAID and EcoHealth Alliance not originally acknowledged — was published in 2015 in Nature Medicine.
A different Nature Medicine article about the origin of the current pandemic, authored by five scientists and published on March 17, has been touted by major media outlet and some officials — including current National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins — as definitively disproving a lab origin for the novel coronavirus. That journal article, titled "The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2," stated unequivocally: "Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus." This is a subtly misleading sentence. While the scientists state that there is no known laboratory "signature" in the SARS-Cov-2 RNA, their argument fails to take account of other lab methods that could have created coronavirus mutations without leaving such a signature.

Indeed, there is also the question of conflict of interest in the Nature Medicine article. Some of the authors of that article, as well as a February 2020 Lancet letter condemning "conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin" — which seemed calculated to minimize outside scrutiny of biodefense lab work — have troubling ties to the biodefense complex, as well as to the U.S. government. Notably, neither of these articles makes clear that a virus can have a natural origin and then be captured and studied in a controlled laboratory setting before being let loose, either intentionally or accidentally — which is clearly a possibility in the case of the coronavirus.
Facts as "rumors"
This reporter raised questions about the subject at a news conference with a Center for Disease Control (CDC) representative at the now-shuttered National Press Club on Feb. 11. I asked if it was a "complete coincidence" that the pandemic had started in Wuhan, the only place in China with a declared biosafety level 4 (BSL4) laboratory. BSL4 laboratories have the most stringent safety mechanisms, but handle the most deadly pathogens. As I mentioned, it was odd that the ostensible origin of the novel coronavirus was bat caves in Yunnan province — more than 1,000 miles from Wuhan. I noted that "gain-of-function" lab work can results in more deadly pathogens, and that major labs, including some in the U.S., have had accidental releases.
CDC Principal Deputy Director Anne Schuchat said that based on the information she had seen, the virus was of "zoonotic origin." She also stated, regarding gain-of-function lab work, that it is important to "protect researchers and their laboratory workers as well as the community around them and that we use science for the benefit of people."
I followed up by asking whether an alleged natural origin did not preclude the possibility that this virus came through a lab, since a lab could have acquired a bat virus and been working on it. Schuchat replied to the assembled journalists that "it is very common for rumors to emerge that can take on life of their own," but did not directly answer the question. She noted that in the 2014 Ebola outbreak some observers had pointed to nearby labs as the possible cause, claiming this "was a key rumor that had to be overcome in order to help control the outbreak." She reiterated: "So based on everything that I know right now, I can tell you the circumstances of the origin really look like animals-to-human. But your question, I heard."
This is no rumor. It's a fact: Labs work with dangerous pathogens. The U.S. and China each have dual-use biowarfare/biodefense programs. China has major facilities at Wuhan — a biosafety level 4 lab and a biosafety level 2 lab. There are leaks from labs. (See "Preventing a Biological Arms Race," MIT Press, 1990, edited by Susan Wright; also, a partial review in Journal of International Law from October 1992.)
Much of the discussion of this deadly serious subject is marred with snark that avoids or dodges the "gain-of-function" question. ABC ran a story on March 27 titled "Sorry, Conspiracy Theorists. Study Concludes COVID-19 'Is Not a Laboratory Construct.'" That story did not address the possibility that the virus could have been found in the wild, studied in a lab and then released.
On March 21, USA Today published a piece headlined "Fact Check: Did the Coronavirus Originate In a Chinese Laboratory?" — and rated it "FALSE." That USA Today story relied on the Washington Post, which published a widely cited article on Feb. 17 headlined, "Tom Cotton keeps repeating a coronavirus conspiracy theory that was already debunked." That article quoted public comments from Rutgers University professor of chemical biology Richard Ebright, but out of context and only in part. Specifically, the story quoted from Ebright's tweet that the coronavirus was not an "engineered bioweapon." In fact, his full quote included the clarification that the virus could have "entered human population through lab accident." (An email requesting clarification sent to Post reporter Paulina Firozi was met with silence.)
Bioengineered ≠ From a lab
Other pieces in the Post since then (some heavily sourced to U.S. government officials) have conveyed Ebright's thinking, but it gets worse. In a private exchange, Ebright — who, again, has said clearly that the novel coronavirus was not technically bioengineered using known coronavirus sequences — stated that other forms of lab manipulation could have been responsible for the current pandemic. This runs counter to much reporting, which is perhaps too scientifically illiterate to perceive the difference.
In response to the suggestion that the novel coronavirus could have come about through various methods besides bioengineering — made by Dr. Meryl Nass, who has done groundbreaking work on biowarfare — Ebright responded in an email:
The genome sequence of SARS-CoV-2 has no signatures of human manipulation.
This rules out the kinds of gain-of-function (GoF) research that leave signatures of human manipulation in genome sequences (e.g., use of recombinant DNA methods to construct chimeric viruses), but does not rule out kinds of GoF research that do not leave signatures (e.g., serial passage in animals). [emphasis added]
Very easy to imagine the equivalent of the Fouchier's "10 passages in ferrets" with H5N1 influenza virus, but, in this case, with 10 passages in non-human primates with bat coronavirus RaTG13 or bat coronavirus KP876546.
That last paragraph is very important. It refers to virologist Ron Fouchier of the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, who performed research on intentionally increasing rates of viral mutation rate by spreading a virus from one animal to another in a sequence. The New York Times wrote about this in an editorial in January 2012, warning of "An Engineered Doomsday."
"Now scientists financed by the National Institutes of Health" have created a "virus that could kill tens or hundreds of millions of people" if it escaped confinement, the Times wrote. The story continued:
Working with ferrets, the animal that is most like humans in responding to influenza, the researchers found that a mere five genetic mutations allowed the virus to spread through the air from one ferret to another while maintaining its lethality. A separate study at the University of Wisconsin, about which little is known publicly, produced a virus that is thought to be less virulent.
The word "engineering" in the New York Times headline is technically incorrect, since passing a virus through animals is not "genetic engineering." This same distinction has hindered some from understanding the possible origins of the current pandemic.
Fouchier's flu work, in which an H5N1 virus was made more virulent by transmitting it repeatedly between individual ferrets, briefly sent shockwaves through the media. "Locked up in the bowels of the medical faculty building here and accessible to only a handful of scientists lies a man-made flu virus that could change world history if it were ever set free," wrote Science magazine in 2011 in a story titled "Scientists Brace for Media Storm Around Controversial Flu Studies." It continues:
The virus is an H5N1 avian influenza strain that has been genetically altered and is now easily transmissible between ferrets, the animals that most closely mimic the human response to flu. Scientists believe it's likely that the pathogen, if it emerged in nature or were released, would trigger an influenza pandemic, quite possibly with many millions of deaths.
In a 17th floor office in the same building, virologist Ron Fouchier of Erasmus Medical Center calmly explains why his team created what he says is "probably one of the most dangerous viruses you can make" — and why he wants to publish a paper describing how they did it. Fouchier is also bracing for a media storm. After he talked to ScienceInsider yesterday, he had an appointment with an institutional press officer to chart a communication strategy.
Fouchier's paper is one of two studies that have triggered an intense debate about the limits of scientific freedom and that could portend changes in the way U.S. researchers handle so-called dual-use research: studies that have a potential public health benefit but could also be useful for nefarious purposes like biowarfare or bioterrorism.
Despite objections, Fouchier's article was published by Science in June 2012. Titled "Airborne Transmission of Influenza A/H5N1 Virus Between Ferrets," it summarized how Fouchier's research team made the pathogen more virulent:
Highly pathogenic avian influenza A/H5N1 virus can cause morbidity and mortality in humans but thus far has not acquired the ability to be transmitted by aerosol or respiratory droplet ("airborne transmission") between humans. To address the concern that the virus could acquire this ability under natural conditions, we genetically modified A/H5N1 virus by site-directed mutagenesis and subsequent serial passage in ferrets. The genetically modified A/H5N1 virus acquired mutations during passage in ferrets, ultimately becoming airborne transmissible in ferrets.
In other words, Fouchier's research took a flu virus that did not exhibit airborne transmission, then infected a number of ferrets until it mutated to the point that it was transmissible by air.
In that same year, 2012, a similar study by Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin was published in Nature:
Highly pathogenic avian H5N1 influenza A viruses occasionally infect humans, but currently do not transmit efficiently among humans. ... Here we assess the molecular changes ... that would allow a virus ... to be transmissible among mammals. We identified a ... virus ... with four mutations and the remaining seven gene segments from a 2009 pandemic H1N1 virus — that was capable of droplet transmission in a ferret model.
In 2014, Marc Lipsitch of Harvard and Alison P. Galvani of Yale wrote regarding Fouchier and Kawaoka's work:
Recent experiments that create novel, highly virulent and transmissible pathogens against which there is no human immunity are unethical ... they impose a risk of accidental and deliberate release that, if it led to extensive spread of the new agent, could cost many lives. While such a release is unlikely in a specific laboratory conducting research under strict biosafety procedures, even a low likelihood should be taken seriously, given the scale of destruction if such an unlikely event were to occur. Furthermore, the likelihood of risk is multiplied as the number of laboratories conducting such research increases around the globe.
Given this risk, ethical principles, such as those embodied in the Nuremberg Code, dictate that such experiments would be permissible only if they provide humanitarian benefits commensurate with the risk, and if these benefits cannot be achieved by less risky means.
We argue that the two main benefits claimed for these experiments — improved vaccine design and improved interpretation of surveillance — are unlikely to be achieved by the creation of potential pandemic pathogens (PPP), often termed "gain-of-function" (GOF) experiments.
There may be a widespread notion that there is scientific consensus that the pandemic did not come out of a lab. But in fact, many of the most knowledgeable scientists in the field are notably silent. This includes Lipsitch at Harvard, Jonathan A. King at MIT and many others.
Just last year, Lynn Klotz of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation wrote a paper in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists entitled "Human Error in High-biocontainment Labs: A Likely Pandemic Threat." Wrote Klotz:
Incidents causing potential exposures to pathogens occur frequently in the high security laboratories often known by their acronyms, BSL3 (Biosafety Level 3) and BSL4. Lab incidents that lead to undetected or unreported laboratory-acquired infections can lead to the release of a disease into the community outside the lab; lab workers with such infections will leave work carrying the pathogen with them. If the agent involved were a potential pandemic pathogen, such a community release could lead to a worldwide pandemic with many fatalities. Of greatest concern is a release of a lab-created, mammalian-airborne-transmissible, highly pathogenic avian influenza virus, such as the airborne-transmissible H5N1 viruses created in the laboratories of Ron Fouchier in the Netherlands and Yoshihiro Kawaoka in Madison, Wisconsin.
"Crazy, dangerous"
Boyle, a professor of international law at the University of Illinois, has condemned Fouchier, Kawaoka and others — including at least one of the authors of the recent Nature Medicine article in the strongest terms, calling such work a "criminal enterprise." While Boyle has been embroiled in numerous controversies, he's been especially dismissed by many on this issue. The "fact-checking" website Snopes has described him as "a lawyer with no formal training in virology" — without noting that he wrote the relevant U.S. law.
As Boyle said in 2015:
Since September 11, 2001, we have spent around $100 billion on biological warfare. Effectively we now have an Offensive Biological Warfare Industry in this country that violates the Biological Weapons Convention and my Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989.
The law Boyle drafted states: "Whoever knowingly develops, produces, stockpiles, transfers, acquires, retains, or possesses any biological agent, toxin, or delivery system for use as a weapon, or knowingly assists a foreign state or any organization to do so, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both. There is extraterritorial Federal jurisdiction over an offense under this section committed by or against a national of the United States."
Boyle also warned:
Russia and China have undoubtedly reached the same conclusions I have derived from the same open and public sources, and have responded in kind. So what the world now witnesses is an all-out offensive biological warfare arms race among the major military powers of the world: United States, Russia, Britain, France, China, Israel, inter alia.
We have reconstructed the Offensive Biological Warfare Industry that we had deployed in this county before its prohibition by the Biological Weapons Convention of 1972, described by Seymour Hersh in his groundbreaking expose "Chemical and Biological Warfare: America's Hidden Arsenal." (1968)
Boyle now states that he has been "blackballed" in the media on this issue, despite his having written the relevant statute. The group he worked with on the law, the Council for Responsible Genetics, went under several years ago, making Boyle's views against "biodefense" even more marginal as government money for dual use work poured into the field and critics within the scientific community have fallen silent. In turn, his denunciations have grown more sweeping.
In the 1990 book "Preventing a Biological Arms Race," scholar Susan Wright argued that current laws regarding bioweapons were insufficient, as there were "projects in which offensive and defensive aspects can be distinguished only by claimed motive." Boyle notes, correctly, that current law he drafted does not make an exception for "defensive" work, but only for "prophylactic, protective or other peaceful purposes."
While Boyle is particularly vociferous in his condemnations, he is not alone. There has been irregular, but occasional media attention to this threat. The Guardian ran a piece in 2014, "Scientists condemn 'crazy, dangerous' creation of deadly airborne flu virus," after Kawaoka created a life-threatening virus that "closely resembles the 1918 Spanish flu strain that killed an estimated 50m people":
"The work they are doing is absolutely crazy. The whole thing is exceedingly dangerous," said Lord May, the former president of the Royal Society and one time chief science adviser to the UK government. "Yes, there is a danger, but it's not arising from the viruses out there in the animals, it's arising from the labs of grossly ambitious people."
Boyle's charges beginning early this year that the coronavirus was bioengineered — allegations recently mirrored by French virologist and Nobel laureate Luc Montagnier — have not been corroborated by any publicly produced findings of any U.S. scientist. Boyle even charges that scientists like Ebright, who is at Rutgers, are compromised because the university got a biosafety level 3 lab in 2017 — though Ebright is perhaps the most vocal eminent critic of this research, among U.S. scientists. These and other controversies aside, Boyle's concerns about the dangers of biowarfare are legitimate; indeed, Ebright shares them.
Some of the most vocal voices to discuss the origins of the novel coronavirus have been eager to minimize the dangers of lab work, or have focused almost exclusively on "wet markets" or "exotic" animals as the likely cause.
The media celebrated Laurie Garrett, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author and former senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, when she declared on Twitter on March 3 (in a since-deleted tweet) that the origin of the pandemic was discovered: "It's pangolins. #COVID19 Researchers studied lung tissue from 12 of the scaled mammals that were illegally trafficked in Asia and found #SARSCoV2 in 3. The animals were found in Guangxi, China. Another virus+ smuggled sample found in Guangzhou."
She was swiftly corrected by Ebright: "Arrant nonsense. Did you even read the paper? Reported pangolin coronavirus is not SARS-CoV-2 and is not even particularly close to SARS-CoV-2. Bat coronavirus RaTG13 is much closer to SARS-CoV-2 (96.2% identical) than reported pangolin coronavirus (92.4% identical)." He added: "No reason to invoke pangolin as intermediate. When A is much closer than B to C, in the absence of additional data, there is no rational basis to favor pathway A>B>C over pathway A>C." When someone asked what Garrett was saying, Ebright responded: "She is saying she is scientifically illiterate."
The following day, Garrett corrected herself (without acknowledging Ebright): "I blew it on the #Pangolins paper, & then took a few hours break from Twitter. It did NOT prove the species = source of #SARSCoV2. There's a torrent of critique now, deservedly denouncing me & my posting. A lot of the critique is super-informative so leaving it all up 4 while."
At least one Chinese government official has responded to the allegation that the labs in Wuhan could be the source for the pandemic by alleging that perhaps the U.S. is responsible instead. In American mainstream media, that has been reflexively treated as even more ridiculous than the original allegation that the virus could have come from a lab.
Obviously the Chinese government's allegations should not be taken at face value, but neither should U.S. government claims — especially considering that U.S. government labs were the apparent source for the anthrax attacks in 2001. Those attacks sent panic through the U.S. and shut down Congress, allowing the Bush administration to enact the PATRIOT Act and ramp up the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Indeed, in October 2001, media darlings like Richard Butler and Andrew Sullivan propagandized for war with Iraq because of the anthrax attacks. (Neither Iraq nor al-Qaida was involved.)
The 2001 anthrax attacks also provided much of the pretext for the surge in biolab spending since then, even though they apparently originated in a U.S. or U.S.-allied lab. Indeed, those attacks remain shrouded in mystery.
The U.S. government has also come up with elaborate cover stories to distract from its bioweapons work. For instance, the U.S. government infamously claimed the 1953 death of Frank Olson, a scientist at Fort Detrick, Maryland, was an LSD experiment gone wrong; it now appears to have been an execution to cover up for U.S. biological warfare.
Regardless of the cause of the current pandemic, these biowarfare/biodefense labs need far more scrutiny. The call to shut them down by Boyle and others needs to be clearly heard — and light must be shone on precisely what research is being conducted.
The secrecy of these labs may prevent us ever knowing with certainty the origins of the current pandemic. What we do know is this kind of lab work comes with real dangers. One might make a comparison to climate change: We cannot attribute an individual hurricane to man-made climate disruption, yet science tells us that human activity makes stronger hurricanes more likely. That brings us back to the imperative to cease the kinds of activities that produce such dangers in the first place.
If that doesn't happen, the people of the planet will be at the mercy of the machinations and mistakes of state actors who are playing with fire for their geopolitical interests.
Posted by Meryl Nass, M.D. at 10:52 PM 0 comments
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Re: COVID 19 HAIKU

Postby fruhmenschen » Mon Apr 27, 2020 2:16 pm

https://www.thedailybeast.com/former-fb ... -side-feds

FBI Agent With Rolex-and-Gucci Tastes Worked for Mobsters on the Side: Feds

DOUBLE AGENT?
The former G-man is accused of taking big-time bribes from a corrupt lawyer and laundering them through his lice-removal business
Updated Apr. 25, 2020 10:06AM ET
Published Apr. 24, 2020 10:28PM ET





https://www.fredericksburg.com/local/ex ... ab883.html



FBI agent gets 7 years for having sex with a child



http://headwatersproductions.com/1994/0 ... -the-past/

FBI agent Child Abuse expert sued by 3 daughters for having sex with them
when they were 2 years old

Four Sisters Confront Dad and the Past
March 20, 1994/
Brennan, P. (1994, March 20). “Four Sisters Confront Dad And The Past”. The Washington Post.
At times, “Ultimate Betrayal” (Sunday at 9 on CBS) is not an easy movie to watch. Based on a true story of incest and physical abuse, it follows four





http://archive.boston.com/news/nation/a ... sex_abuse/




FBI internal affairs chief John Conditt
pleads guilty to having sex with 6 year old children

WASHINGTON — The former chief internal watchdog at the FBI has pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a 6-year-old girl and has admitted he had a history of molesting other children before he joined the bureau for a two-decade care






https://www.cnn.com/2012/05/15/justice/ ... index.html


Top FBI agent charged with child porn distribution





https://www.ctpost.com/news/article/For ... -86217.php

Scout leader, FBI agent William Hutton indicted on child sex abuse charge





https://billingsgazette.com/news/nation ... 16caa.html


Montana FBI agent William Buie sentenced to prison for child pornography






https://www.denverpost.com/2008/01/15/f ... lt-charge/

FBI agent David Allan Johnson arrested on child sexual assault charge




http://anthraxvaccine.blogspot.com/2020 ... e-not.html




Friday, April 24, 2020
Did this Virus Come from a Lab? Maybe Not — But it Exposes the Threat of a Biowarfare Arms Race/ Sam Husseini @ Salon

https://www.salon.com/2020/04/24/did-th ... arms-race/

Dangerous pathogens are captured in the wild and made deadlier in government biowarfare labs. Did that happen here?
SAM HUSSEINI




The Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth, Human Right for Kids, and R Street are sending the attached letter to state parole boards asking them to prioritize the review of individuals serving lengthy sentences for crimes they committed while they were still children, especially those who are particularly vulnerable to developing serious complications due to COVID-19. We also ask parole boards to suspend supervision fees during this time of economic crisis, to not condition release on completing programming that my be currently unavailable, to utilize video hearings, etc.

We would like to have additional signatories, so if your organization would like to sign on to the letter, please reply to me by noon ET on Monday, April 27.

Thanks so much!



Preston Shipp (he/him)
Senior Policy Counsel
The Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth (CFSY)
1319 F Street NW, Suite 303
Washington, DC 20004

pshipp@fairsentencingofyouth.org
(615) 604-3506
VIDEO | The CFSY at 10
The CFSY’s Racial Justice Belief Statement




Young and middle-aged people, barely sick with covid-19, are dying from strokes
Doctors sound alarm about patients in their 30s and 40s left debilitated or dead. Some didn’t even know they were infected.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2 ... -patients/




https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... r-BB13asMj




Michael Flynn lawyers claim client was 'set up' as FBI denies reports of exculpatory evidence cover-up



https://www.blueridgenow.com/opinion/20 ... le-dossier

Lake: FBI still owes us rational explanation on Steele dossier





https://whowhatwhy.org/2020/04/25/trump ... usinesses/


APRIL 25, 2020 | TED RALL
TRUMP WANTS TO INJECT TAXPAYER MONEY STRAIGHT INTO HIS BUSINESSES





https://whowhatwhy.org/2020/04/24/rooft ... of-flight/



APRIL 24, 2020 | ANDREA THOMPSON
ROOFTOP WIND POWER MIGHT TAKE OFF BY USING KEY PRINCIPLE OF FLIGHT





https://whowhatwhy.org/2020/04/25/cloud ... -ice-loss/



APRIL 25, 2020 | TIM RADFORD
CLOUDLESS SKIES HASTEN GREENLAND’S ICE LOSS






https://theintercept.com/2020/04/24/new ... joe-biden/



NEW EVIDENCE SUPPORTING CREDIBILITY OF TARA READE’S ALLEGATION AGAINST JOE BIDEN EMERGES
Ryan Grim
April 24 2020, 2:39 p.m.




https://theintercept.com/2020/04/25/cor ... dent-jail/




AS A FEDERAL HALFWAY HOUSE CONFIRMS ITS FIRST COVID-19 CASE, RESIDENT WHO RAISED ALARMS IS SENT BACK TO JAIL
Liliana Segura
April 25 2020, 11:30 a.m.





https://theintercept.com/2020/04/24/bol ... ns-brazil/




BRAZIL JUSTICE MINISTER RESIGNS OVER BOLSONARO’S INTERFERENCE IN INVESTIGATIONS — AND IMPEACHMENT TALK RAMPS UP
Andrew Fishman, Cecília Olliveira





https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/04/24 ... president/

APRIL 24, 2020
Two Mentally Challenged Candidates to Choose Between for US President?
by DAVE LINDORFF
The US is hurtling into uncharted waters as a polity, with the two likely candidates for president this November both clearly suffering from significant cognitive impairment and evidence of continuing mental decline.
Back in 1980, the American voters elected a man, Ronald Reagan, who unbeknownst to them already had the beginnings of Alzheimer’s dementia. By 1984 and his campaign for a second





https://www.motherjones.com/coronavirus ... d-testing/


The Hippie Town Where Everybody Could Get a Coronavirus Test





https://www.motherjones.com/coronavirus ... oney-back/


Utah Was Really Into Trump’s Miracle Cure. Now It Wants Its Money Back.



https://www.motherjones.com/2020-electi ... guilfoyle/


Trump’s Family Is Making Even More Money Off His Campaign Than We Previously Knew





https://www.thenation.com/article/world ... ilization/


Vietnam May Have the Most Effective Response to Covid-19





https://www.thenation.com/article/cultu ... ry-review/


The Good of All
Lorraine Hansberry’s radical imagination.
By Elias Rodriques



https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing ... les-report



Coronavirus detected on air pollution particles: report
BY MARINA PITOFSKY - 04/25/20 08:00 PM EDT



https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/ ... -no-longer



Saturday, April 25, 2020
byCommon Dreams
As Poll Show Nearly 90% Democratic Support, Biden Told Hostility to Medicare for All 'No Longer Tenable Position for You'
"Hey, ⁦Joe Biden, ⁩ as a Democrat running for president in a pandemic, this looks like a popular idea."




https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/ ... omers-amid


Friday, April 24, 2020
Calling US Postal Service 'A Joke,' Trump Demands Four-Fold Price Hike for Customers Amid Covid-19 Pandemic
Such a move, say critics, "would be a disaster for millions of Americans who rely on USPS."



https://www.nydailynews.com/sports/foot ... story.html

Patriots draft kicker with tattoo of far-right paramilitary group

By CHARLES MCDONALD

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
APR 25, 2020 | 6:20 PM




https://saraacarter.com/schiff-blocks-r ... -the-dark/


Schiff Blocks Release Of Declassified Russia Probe Transcripts, Keeping Americans In The Dark
By Sara Carter -
April 25, 2020
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Re: COVID 19 HAIKU

Postby fruhmenschen » Thu Apr 30, 2020 2:59 am

http://anthraxvaccine.blogspot.com/




Wednesday, April 29, 2020

Another expert challenges assertions that SARS-CoV-2 was not genetically engineered/ GM Watch


Another expert challenges assertions that SARS-CoV-2 was not genetically engineered

Details
Published: 27 April 2020

Prof Stuart Newman believes genetic engineering may have been involved at some point in the virus’s history
Another expert on biotechnology has attacked the evidence being used to quash suggestions that SARS-CoV-2, the virus strain that causes COVID-19, might have been genetically engineered. Professor Stuart Newman, professor of cell biology and anatomy at New York Medical College, says that a key argument used to deny that it could be a genetically engineered strain that escaped from a laboratory actually points to the exact opposite. In other words, it indicates that SARS-CoV-2 could well be genetically engineered and that it could have escaped from a lab.
The evidence that is being cited as proving that SARS-CoV-2 is “not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus” is a paper published by the immunologist Kristian Andersen and colleagues in Nature Medicine. As Adam Lauring, an associate professor of microbiology, immunology and infectious diseases at the University of Michigan Medical School, has noted, Andersen’s paper argues that, "the SARS-CoV-2 virus has some key differences in specific genes relative to previously identified coronaviruses – the ones a laboratory would be working with. This constellation of changes makes it unlikely that it is the result of a laboratory 'escape’.”

But Professor Newman says that this is totally unconvincing because “The ‘key differences’ were in regions of the coronavirus spike protein that were the subject of genetic engineering experiments in labs around the world (mainly in the US and China) for two decades.”
So not only does Newman think that the virus could have escaped from a lab, he also thinks that it could have originated in a virus stock that had undergone genetic engineering at some point.

In an email interview with GMWatch, Newman, who is editor-in-chief of the journal Biological Theory and co-author (with Tina Stevens) of the book Biotech Juggernaut, amplified this speculation by noting, “The Nature Medicine paper points to variations in two sites of the spike protein of the new coronavirus that the authors claim must have arisen by natural selection in the wild. However, genetic engineering of one of these sites, the ACE2 receptor binding domain, has been proposed since 2005 in order to help generate vaccines against these viruses (see this paper). It is puzzling that the authors of the Nature Medicine commentary did not cite this paper, which appeared in the prominent journal Science.”

Moreover, Newman added, “The second site that Andersen et al. assert arose by natural means, a target of enzyme cleavage not usually found in this class of viruses, was in fact introduced by genetic engineering in a similar coronavirus in a paper they do cite. This was done to explore mechanisms of pathogenicity.”

Newman said that he does not believe that these changes were deliberately introduced to increase the pathogenicity of any single strain, but that SARS-CoV-2 may have had genetically engineered components in its history before being inadvertently introduced into the human population.

Newman is not the only scientist that has spoken out about the possibility of a genetically engineered element to the virus. We recently published an article in which the molecular geneticist Dr Michael Antoniou also cast doubt on these assertions. Dr Antoniou set out a method by which the virus could have been genetically manipulated and selected for increased infectivity in the laboratory.

Neither Dr Antoniou, nor Prof Newman, nor we ourselves make any suggestion that, in the event that genetic engineering was involved, the intention was to create a bioweapon. Such “enhanced infectivity” research is carried out on viruses all over the world (and not just in China) to investigate their behaviour and to develop vaccines and other therapies, as well as for “biodefence” purposes.

But the question of whether genetic engineering did play a part in the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 must continue to be investigated so that humanity can place appropriate limits and safeguards on such research.

Posted by Meryl Nass, M.D. at 11:07 PM 0 comments


NIH funded coronavirus research in Wuhan to make more virulent viruses/Newsweek


Great detailed pieces from Newsweek, which has been delving into the US government's financial support for "gain of function" (which means increasing the virulence of a pathogen) research in Wuhan, China, which might have contributed to the formation of SARS-CoV-2. They were posted April 27, and 29. From the latest story:
The NIH research consisted of two parts. The first part began in 2014 and involved surveillance of bat coronaviruses, and had a budget of $3.7 million. The program funded Shi Zheng-Li, a virologist at the Wuhan lab, and other researchers to investigate and catalogue bat coronaviruses in the wild. This part of the project was completed in 2019.
A second phase of the project, beginning that year, included additional surveillance work but also gain-of-function research for the purpose of understanding how bat coronaviruses could mutate to attack humans. The project was run by EcoHealth Alliance, a non-profit research group, under the direction of President Peter Daszak, an expert on disease ecology. NIH canceled the project just this past Friday, April 24th, Politico reported. Daszak did not immediately respond to Newsweek requests for comment.
The project proposal states: "We will use S protein sequence data, infectious clone technology, in vitro and in vivo infection experiments and analysis of receptor binding to test the hypothesis that % divergence thresholds in S protein sequences predict spillover potential."
In layman's terms, "spillover potential" refers to the ability of a virus to jump from animals to humans, which requires that the virus be able to receptors in the cells of humans. SARS-CoV-2, for instance, is adept at binding to the ACE2 receptor in human lungs and other organs...
In 2019, with the backing of NIAID, the National Institutes of Health committed $3.7 million over six years for research that included some gain-of-function work. The program followed another $3.7 million, 5-year project for collecting and studying bat coronaviruses, which ended in 2019, bringing the total to $7.4 million.
Many scientists have criticized gain of function research, which involves manipulating viruses in the lab to explore their potential for infecting humans, because it creates a risk of starting a pandemic from accidental release.
Ads by scrollerads.com

SARS-CoV-2 , the virus now causing a global pandemic, is believed to have originated in bats. U.S. intelligence, after originally asserting that the coronavirus had occurred naturally, conceded last month that the pandemic may have originated in a leak from the Wuhan lab. (At this point most scientists say it's possible—but not likely—that the pandemic virus was engineered or manipulated.)
Dr. Fauci did not respond to Newsweek's requests for comment. NIH responded with a statement that said in part: "Most emerging human viruses come from wildlife, and these represent a significant threat to public health and biosecurity in the US and globally, as demonstrated by the SARS epidemic of 2002-03, and the current COVID-19 pandemic.... scientific research indicates that there is no evidence that suggests the virus was created in a laboratory..."
In other words, until you can find the evidence proving we funded this virus, NIH (and Fauci in particular) is admitting nothing. How likely do you think it is that the evidence still exists?

Posted by Meryl Nass, M.D. at 10:24 PM 0 comments


Theory of how SARS-CoC-2 was created in a lab/ Prof Nikolai Petrovsky


Dr. Petrovsky, of Flinders University, Australia, was asked his opinion on the origin of SAR-2 and wrote the following:
"An extremely important but still unanswered question is what was the source of COVID-19 virus. While COVID-19 has close similarities to SARS and other bat viruses no natural virus matching to COVID-19 has been found in nature despite an intensive search to find its origins. This raises the very legitimate question of whether the COVID-19 virus might be the result of human intervention.

Certainly, our and other analyses of the genomic sequence of the virus do not reveal any artificial gene inserts that would be the hallmark of a gene jockey, genetic engineers who manipulate or even create viruses by splicing in artificial inserts into their genome. These are generally easily recognisable and hence clear signatures of human intervention in the creation of a virus. The fact that these artificial inserts are not present has been interpreted by some to mean this virus is not the result of human manipulation.

However, this logic is incorrect as there are other ways in which humans can manipulate viruses and that is caused by natural selection. What do I mean? All viruses and bacteria mutate and adapt to their environment over time, with selection of the fittest individuals for survival in that particular environment.

Take a bat coronavirus that is not infectious to humans, and force its selection by culturing it with cells that express human ACE2 receptor, such cells having been created many years ago to culture SARS coronaviruses and you can force the bat virus to adapt to infect human cells via mutations in its spike protein, which would have the effect of increasing the strength of its binding to human ACE2, and inevitably reducing the strength of its binding to bat ACE2.

Viruses in prolonged culture will also develop other random mutations that do not affect its function. The result of these experiments is a virus that is highly virulent in humans but is sufficiently different that it no longer resembles the original bat virus. Because the mutations are acquired randomly by selection there is no signature of a human gene jockey, but this is clearly a virus still created by human intervention.

My group in collaboration with other Australian researchers have been using a modelling approach to study the possible evolutionary origins of COVID-19 by modelling interactions between its spike protein and a broad variety of ACE2 receptors from many animals and humans.

This work which we will publish on a prepress server next week shows that the strength of binding of COVID-19 to human ACE2 far exceeds the predicted strength of its binding to the ACE2 of any of the other species. This points to the virus having been selected for its high binding to human ACE2. In the absence of evidence of historic human infections with this virus, which could result in such selection, this either is a remarkable coincidence or a sign of human intervention.

This, plus the fact that no corresponding virus has been found to exist in nature, leads to the possibility that COVID-19 is a human-created virus. It is therefore entirely plausible that the virus was created in the biosecurity facility in Wuhan by selection on cells expressing human ACE2, a laboratory that was known to be cultivating exotic bat coronaviruses at the time. Is so the cultured virus could have escaped the facility either through accidental infection of a staff member who then visited the fish market several blocks away and there infected others, or by inappropriate disposal of waste from the facility that either infected humans outside the facility directly or via a susceptible vector such as a stray cat that then frequented the market and resulted in transmission there to humans.

Whilst the facts cannot be known at this time, the nature of this event and its proximity to a high-risk biosecurity facility at the epicentre of the outbreak demands a full and independent international enquiry to ascertain whether a virus of this kind of COVID-19 was being cultured in the facility and might have been accidentally released."

Posted by Meryl Nass, M.D. at 9:49 PM 0 comments


Viral Shedding Continues Up to 6 Weeks After Coronavirus Symptom Onset


(Reuters Health) - Patients may continue to shed the SARS-CoV-2 virus for up to six weeks after symptoms emerge, a small study of recovered COVID-19 patients suggests. One third tested positive 4 weeks after start of symptoms... so when can you go back to work after getting COVID?

Dr. Zhang and colleagues summarized their experience with 56 COVID-19 patients (median age 55; 61% men) admitted to Tongi Hospital in Wuhan in January and February. Throat or deep nasal cavity swab samples were collected on different dates after symptom onset. SARS-CoV-2 was diagnosed by real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) assays All patients had mild-moderate infection.

As reported in Clinical Infectious Diseases, 299 RT-PCR assays were performed (about five tests per patient). The longest duration between symptom onset and an RT-PCR test was 42 days, whereas the median duration was 24 days.

In the first three weeks after symptom onset, the majority of RT-PCR results were positive for SARS-CoV-2. From week three onward, negative results increased. All tests were negative at week six after symptom onset.

The rate of positive results was highest at week one (100%), followed by 89.3%, 66.1%, 32.1%, 5.4% and 0% at weeks two, three, four, five and six, respectively.

Posted by Meryl Nass, M.D. at 6:36 PM 1 comments
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Re: COVID 19 HAIKU

Postby fruhmenschen » Fri May 01, 2020 11:35 pm

My go to person for COVID 19 is Meryl Nass MD who
lives in Maine where I reside.
I have personally known her for over 5 years.

She was the first Doctor , to my best knowledge,
to publish a research paper dealing with a country
using a biological weapon against it’s own people.

This is her post for today May 1 2020.

http://anthraxvaccine.blogspot.com/2020 ... tried.html


Friday, May 1, 2020
Spooky history: 3 scientists who tried to silence debate on the possible lab origin of COVID-19, previously tried to kill debate on the origin of AIDS
http://www.aidsorigins.com/covid-19-and ... ids-debate

Ed Hooper took a very deep dive into the origin of AIDS in his highly lauded book, The River. How did HIV jump species from monkey to man? While blamed by some on the consumption of bush meat, Hooper suggested that the use of monkey kidneys to manufacture live polio vaccines, in the Belgian Congo, was a much more likely explanation. Today, the consumption of bat meat has been offered as the route by which SARS-CoV-2 leapt to humans.

Nature Medicine ran a highly cited (including by the Director of the NIH, Francis Collins) article on March 17 which insisted that it was the final word on the subject of COVID'S origin, and should "end any speculation about deliberate genetic engineering."

While there are many curious things about that article, which I and others have noted, Ed Hooper discovered an astonishing coincidence. Three of the five authors of the Nature Medicine paper had tried to influence him regarding the origin of AIDS, separately, many years earlier. Two of them had debated him and published papers insisting they had disproved the oral polio vaccine theory of AIDS origin. The third author, a virologist who frequently strays from virology, claimed AIDS had been around for hundreds of years.

I believe this coauthor, Robert Garry, attempted to misdirect the discourse on the cause of anthrax vaccine's toxicity. He reported it was exclusively due to squalene. Had his claim been accepted, anthrax vaccines that omitted squalene would have been wrongly deemed safe.

You have to scratch your head. Are these scientists longstanding members of a "clean-up" crew, whose role is to misdirect us from a potential laboratory contribution to the two most deadly epidemics of modern times? And to misdirect us about potential safety issues in vaccines?

The Bible says, "Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them."

Here are Ed Hooper's thoughts on the debate regarding the origins of COVID-19 and AIDS.
Posted by Meryl Nass, M.D. at 10:53 PM 0 comments
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Re: COVID 19 HAIKU

Postby fruhmenschen » Sun May 03, 2020 1:44 am

http://anthraxvaccine.blogspot.com/



Saturday, May 2, 2020
The feds have failed us; but we can solve some of the basic questions about COVID-19 at the state and local level
My state has had 1156 positive COVID cases, 0.1% of the population, and 30 new cases in the last day. Twenty-two percent of cases have been in healthcare workers. New cases peaked in early April. My county has had only 10 diagnosed cases, though we don't know how many people who have second homes here, and are sheltering in them, are affected. They are not counted in our totals.

In any event, the case numbers are small enough for Department of Health employees to do case finding, trace contacts, and maybe identify some asymptomatic spreaders. Is this happening? This is the basic way public health professionals respond to many infectious diseases, for example tuberculosis, syphilis and hepatitis.

Mapping out the spread of the disease at the individual level would be extremely useful. There are so many basic questions that need to be answered, and this would help provide some answers. What were the risk factors in each case? How many people were infected through close contact? How many by touching infected surfaces? How many by simply breathing the same indoor air as someone else? Would opening windows help? What are our highest risk behaviors? Does wearing a homemade mask, never tried before, reduce cases? Are surgical masks acceptable for healthcare workers' safety?

What treatment did each case receive, or administer to themself? Were vitamins, supplements, medications used? How long did the illness last? Did early treatment prevent hospitalizations? Shorten the course? Did any recovered cases spread the disease to others? Is there actual evidence of reinfection?

These data could be collected by employees with minimal training. They would be useful in my state, even with just 1156 cases. But think how valuable they would be if collected, as much as possible, throughout the country. Throughout the world?

Our federal experts are clearly failing us. They present us with no safe off ramps, except for that faraway and elusive vaccine. (See final paragraph for info on what happened the last time the federal government rushed into a vaccine program for all.)*
----------------------------

Perhaps generating our own data, at the state or local level, is something we can do, now, to help us find our way out of the maze.

The lockdown should have bought precious time, during which we could figure out how to resupply needed medical and protective equipment, identify drugs that were useful and plan how to obtain them in sufficient supply. We could have learned what countries with low death rates did right, and try to emulate them. We could have figured out which tests were accurate, approved them, stopped the rest from being used, and expanded the production of the good ones.

But these past weeks seem to have been squandered. There is still not enough PPE, so how will there be enough if we have a second large wave of cases? Testing is an unregulated jungle.

And instead of identifying and resolving the issue of effective drugs, our top COVID doctor (Fauci) greenlighted a scheme to alter the endpoints of NIAID's clinical trial of remdesivir, not just once but twice, to make the drug appear to have a little efficacy. Meanwhile, he railed against hydroxychloroquine. Subsequently, over thirty states have limited hydroxychloroquine prescribing, most commonly restricting the drug to severe, hospitalized cases. Yet 3 of 4 hospital systems in San Diego, for example, are using it. Is Fauci playing us, claiming we need better data before it can be recommended, but then refusing to fund any trials to obtain that data, when the stakes could not be higher? And offering a nothingburger instead.

Since hydroxychloroquine reduces viral load, it should be given as early as possible. Didier Raoult, France's most famous infectious disease doctor, says it does not work when its use is delayed. With over 1 million diagnosed cases, why are the American people still in the dark about almost every aspect of this pandemic, and especially about how the treatments that have been used, have done?

It's past time to start gathering our own detailed data, at the state and local level. Encourage your governor to participate and be a hero. Time to light a candle in the dark, and dig our own way out.
-----------------

*The WaPo tells us today about the disaster that occurred the last time the federal government decided to produce a vaccine at warp speed. But for a much better understanding of that fiasco, read Maurice Hilleman's JAMA article, or take a detailed peek behind the curtain of the federal health bureaucracy in this study of the 1976 swine flu program, produced by the National Academy of Sciences.

Posted by Meryl Nass, M.D. at 9:36 PM 0 comments
Faking results: Fauci's NIAID-paid Remdesivir Study changed its Outcome Measures Twice, in order to show even a whiff of benefit
Screen-Shot-2020-04-30-at-2.06.47-PM.png (1137×637)

Below you can go to the ClinicalTrials.gov site for the NAIAD Remdesivir trial (ACTT) that Fauci claimed created a new "standard of care" for COVID-19. The same Fauci who claimed to be a purist about hydroxychloroquine, demanding well designed randomized clinical trials before using it, has done the unthinkable in medicine: changed the goalposts, twice, on his remdesivir study in order to provide the appearance of benefit.
Even then, benefit was quite small.

A month ago, I wondered if Fauci was a fraud and a hypocrite. He has now proven he is both. When will Trump hire a competent doctor to lead an effective response to COVID-19? Preferably one who was not, like Fauci, responsible for funding the creation of novel, virulent coronaviruses.
History of Changes for Study: NCT04280705
Adaptive COVID-19 Treatment Trial (ACTT)
Latest version (submitted April 23, 2020) on ClinicalTrials.gov
Posted by Meryl Nass, M.D. at 3:32 PM 0 comments
UK has world's highest COVID mortality, but has not revealed what treatments led to its Prime Minister's rapid recovery
The UK has had a surge in diagnosed cases and deaths over the past few weeks. Its lockdown started late compared to the rest of western Europe. The initial strategy was to protect the most vulnerable and allow the rest of the country to develop herd immunity. Some say that is still part of the strategy.

Then Boris Johnson wound up in the ICU. There has still been no reporting on what treatment he received, despite reports he was "responding to treatment," even on a website for doctors which provided a day by day account of his progress. Boris Johnson needed a "significant level of specialist treatment" at the worst points of his battle against coronavirus, according to his spokesman, and he himself said there was no question but that the NHS had saved his life. He certainly made a rapid recovery, and left the ICU having avoided ventilation.

His fiancee was also ill, but but did not require hospitalization, and 3 days ago gave birth to a healthy baby boy.

The UK is just behind Italy in the number of deaths (over 28,000) and 15% of those with a positive diagnosis in the UK have died. This makes the UK the country with the highest rate of deaths to positive COVID-19 diagnoses in the world. By comparison, the US mortality rate has remained stable over the past week, with a 5.8% mortality rate (66,383 deaths) of the total who have been diagnosed with COVID-19 (1,138,834 Americans).

You might think the people of the UK would be interested in learning exactly what the prime minister's "significant level of specialist care" entailed, and whether applying it in the rest of the UK might reduce its abysmal COVID-19 mortality rate.
Posted by Meryl Nass, M.D. at 1:55 PM 0 comments
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Re: COVID 19 HAIKU

Postby fruhmenschen » Sun May 03, 2020 11:34 pm

http://anthraxvaccine.blogspot.com


Sunday, May 3, 2020
The N95 Debacle. Hospitals refuse to allow staff to wear their own personal N95 masks, presumably to cover their incompetent stocking practices, despite high rates of healthcare worker infections/ Scientific American

https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... ious-risk/

With medical supplies in high demand, federal authorities
say health workers can wear surgical masks for protection while treating COVID-19 patients—but growing evidence suggests the practice is putting workers in jeopardy.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently said lower-grade surgical masks are “an acceptable alternative” to N95 masks unless workers are performing an intubation or another procedure on a COVID patient that could unleash a high volume of virus particles.
But scholars, nonprofit leaders and former regulators in the specialized field of occupational safety say relying on surgical masks—which are considerably less protective than N95 respirators—is almost certainly fueling illness among front-line health workers, who likely make up about 11% of all known COVID-19 cases.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that that’s one of the reasons that so many health care workers are getting sick and many are dying,” said Jonathan Rosen, a health and safety expert who advises unions, states and the federal government.
As of April 23, more than 21,800 health care workers had gotten the coronavirus and 71 had died, according to a House Education and Labor Committee staffer briefed by the CDC.
The CDC’s advice contrasts with another CDC webpage that says a surgical mask does “NOT provide the wearer with a reliable level of protection from inhaling smaller airborne particles and is not considered respiratory protection.”
Put simply, in worker safety, “a surgical mask is not PPE,” or personal protective equipment, said Amber Mitchell, president and executive director of the International Safety Center and immediate past chair of the occupational health and safety section of the American Public Health Association.
The allowance for surgical masks made more sense when scientists initially thought the virus was spread by large droplets. But a growing body of research shows it’s spread by minuscule viral particles that can linger in the air as long as 16 hours...

Posted by Meryl Nass, M.D. at 8:08 PM 0 comments



Murder Most Foul: the Perps behind COVID-19/ Ronnie Cummings

https://www.organicconsumers.org/blog/m ... d-covid-19

... But here we are. As our new reality sinks in, as we adjust to lockdowns and home schooling and long lines at grocery stores, as we look for ways to protect ourselves and our families—and as some grieve for lost loved ones—most of us are also seeking answers.
Why does this virus cause so many mysterious symptoms? Why are some cases mild, others deadly? How can we protect ourselves? Whose advice should we follow?
But the biggest questions of all are these: Where did COVID-19 come from? And how can we prevent this from ever happening again?
The answers to these questions may be too disturbing to ponder, especially while we’re still grappling with the impact of the virus on nearly every aspect of our lives.
But our failure to investigate, and directly address, the origins of COVID-19 almost certainly guarantees our failure to protect ourselves from future, possibly even more deadly, pandemics...



Posted by Meryl Nass, M.D. at 7:45 PM 0 comments



https://www.opednews.com/articles/Inter ... rtcomments

International Lawyer Dr. Boyle's Testimony Must be Used to Back Away from Bio Warfare by 193 Heads of State
By Stephen Fox       (Page 1 of 4 pages) (View How Many People Read This)   8 comments

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A recent interview with bioweapons expert Dr. Francis Boyle, published by GreatGameIndia and conducted by Geopolitics & Empire, has been exploding across the world the past few days as the truth is emerging on the origins of the coronavirus bioweapon







https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny ... story.html



SEE IT: NYPD cop making arrest for social distancing violation punches and takes down bystander

By THOMAS TRACY and WES PARNELL

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
MAY 03, 2020 | 1:53 PM



https://www.pressherald.com/2020/05/03/ ... pandemic/#


Maine prisons pressured to release more inmates, and information, during pandemic
At least a dozen governors and the U.S. attorney general have taken explicit steps in recent weeks to reduce the number of people in prison, such as issuing commutations or expanding the criteria for early release.




https://reason.com/2020/05/01/north-car ... ffic-stop/



North Carolina Supreme Court: Flipping Off Cop Did Not Justify Traffic Stop
A state trooper believed a man driving by and flipping the bird at the cops constituted disorderly conduct. (It didn't.)
ZURI DAVIS | 5.1.2020 5:15 PM



https://thechiefleader.com/news/news_of ... d88ec.html


Councilman Wants Cop Hiring Freeze To Limit Cuts in Education Funding Burden



https://www.news-gazette.com/news/publi ... a21e7.html




Public defender’s office to represent ex-UI cop



https://www.foxnews.com/media/trey-gowd ... -fbi-notes


Gowdy on FBI notes from Michael Flynn investigation: 'We need an FBI that we can trust'






https://www.axios.com/fbi-michael-flynn ... ea9e0.html



Inside FBI director Chris Wray's fate



https://www.crimeonline.com/2020/05/03/ ... de-report/



FBI-informant husband of ‘Cult Mom’ Lori Vallow’s niece wore a wire, spied on his new bride: Report






https://dailycaller.com/2020/05/02/bide ... ade-story/



Biden Delegate Candidate Wants FBI To Investigate Journalists Who Broke Tara Reade Story






https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/884w ... to-animals

Watch This AI Algorithm Change Humans into Animorphs
AI researcher Xander Steenbrugge used machine learning generative models to turn people into animals and back again.
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Re: COVID 19 HAIKU

Postby fruhmenschen » Thu May 07, 2020 12:38 pm

https://www.americanswhotellthetruth.or ... government


The Coronavirus and Why We Have Government

Submitted by editor on 04 April 2020 - 11:34am


The U.S. government’s dismal lack of preparation for the coronavirus pandemic encourages us to ask why people have governments. 
The answers are twofold: one basic, the other particular to now and to the United States.
The basic answer to the why of government is similar to what Robert Frost said about poetry;  it’s a hedge against chaos. Ideally governments are instituted in large multi-faceted societies to maintain order and justice and to provide a fair framework for settling disputes, conducting business, and protecting rights equally for all people - creating the conditions where life can flourish now and in the future. Governments are also responsible for the security of the state, protecting it from both internal and external threats. The point is that we want our government to act for the common good and to be, in general, as unobtrusive as possible so that people are free to live their lives as good citizens, enjoying their liberty and their pursuit of happiness. Ralph Nader said, “...the pursuit of justice is the condition of the pursuit of happiness.” That statement encapsulates and justifies good governance. If a state can provide as much justice as possible, the people will be free to pursue as much happiness as possible. Martin Luther King, Jr.,  put it slightly differently but meant the same when he defined the American Dream as: “The riches of freedom and the security of justice.”
To succeed democratic governments must take on a further responsibility: education of the people. Not indoctrination, but the education of citizens as critical thinkers with strong knowledge of the country's history free of myth and propaganda, while also teaching what is expected of good citizens. How else can we have a government of, by and for the people? People need to know about those times when the government failed to live up to or protect its own ideals and why that happened.These failures must be taught honestly because they are the lessons people need in order to confront current failures. Many Americans would like to believe that the United States is the world’s greatest democracy and that the words of the Pledge of Allegiance “...with liberty and justice for all,” are, in fact, true. But, if your education has taught you that those things are true, then I’d like to give you a good deal on the Brooklyn Bridge. Citizenship begins with knowledge, responsibility and vigilance.
So much for a simplistic, but basic, explanation of why we have a government. Note: I have said nothing about our government’s need to project intimidating force as the world’s sole superpower, nor using that power for securing natural resources, markets or labor. Those are what we might call ‘add-ons,’ not the fundamental role - having more to do with profit-driven economics than with a definition of good democratic government. However, the bulk of our financial resources are allocated to sustain that power of Empire.
What I’m interested in right now is how the coronavirus lays bare a terrible failure of our government. We should all know by now that multiple agencies and experts warned for many years that such a pandemic was not only possible but likely and that we were not prepared in terms of medical equipment and facilities. An essential responsibility of government is to prepare for such likely contingencies. If it doesn’t, what good is it? Lack of preparation exponentially increases the scope of the crisis, the harm done and the degree of suffering. Lack of preparation also ensures that those leaders who have failed in their responsibility will blame others and make the failure political. Crises like  COVID-19 should not be political. When leaders say. “We could never have seen this coming,” they are lying. 
As bad as this situation is, we all need to understand that our government has failed us in many other ways, some potentially worse. Because the corona situation is so all-consuming, it has eclipsed the political struggle over preparation for the Climate Emergency, which is proceeding unabated and unmitigated as we hyperventilate (quite reasonably) about the paucity of ventilators. The catastrophic climate crisis underway will quite likely impact many more people than the coronavirus, and unlike the virus, will not, at some point, run its course. The failure  of the U.S. government to act comprehensively and proactively in response to the climate situation should make each of us ask why we allow such disastrous negligence to continue.
But it’s worse. Our government habitually prepares for military emergencies that it invents. Twenty years ago in the wake of 9/11, the Bush administration, in the name of imminent attack, lied to the American people about the necessity for preemptively attacking the country of Iraq.  This lie was not a mistake; it was a premeditated crime, a crime against humanity. Millions of people killed, trillions of dollars wasted, environments destroyed and poisoned, and time - time that our government had to prepare for real crises - squandered. Of course, the weapons dealers, the war profiteers, the banks, the fossil fuel companies have made astounding profits. That means the peoples’ money (our taxes) has been gifted by the government to the very people who are destroying the climate and not preparing for real crises, so that they can continue to profit. We call that corruption.
When governments fail like ours has failed, exactly what kind of allegiance do we owe? The people owe no allegiance to a corrupt government. But we owe total allegiance to our fellow humans, to the ideals that bind us morally and politically, to our children and to the future. Which means we can’t walk away from this crisis and can’t walk away from what the pandemic has taught us about the failure of our government. Like the health care workers who have toiled so courageously and tirelessly to save victims of the virus, we, as citizens, need to show the same dedication to reinstituting an honest government whose primary interest is health, welfare and justice for the people and the planet. Who else can fix this problem? We are called to act
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Re: COVID 19 HAIKU

Postby fruhmenschen » Fri May 15, 2020 11:26 pm

http://anthraxvaccine.blogspot.com/2020 ... 7-sam.html

Friday, May 15, 2020
Perspectives on the Pandemic. Episode 7, Sam Husseini


I have worked with investigative reporter Sam Husseini to help with background information on biodefense, biological warfare, lab escapes. Sam was featured in this


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JbOvjtnPpE


1 hour documentary about gain of function research, biolabs, and the origin of SARS-CoV-2. He provides a profound and detailed discussion of these subjects in this extremely worthwhile film, made by John Kirby.



Posted by Meryl Nass, M.D. at 7:09 PM
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Re: COVID 19 HAIKU

Postby fruhmenschen » Tue May 19, 2020 6:02 pm

Tuesday, May 19, 2020
CDC: Chloroquine works against SARS: 2005 International Virology Journal





Fooled again.  US CDC proved efficacy of chloroquine for SARS 15 years ago.

Virol J. 2005; 2: 69.

Chloroquine is a Potent Inhibitor of SARS Coronavirus Infection and Spread

Published online 2005 Aug 22. doi: 10.1186/1743-422X-2-69
Corresponding author.
Martin J Vincent: ‮vog.cdc@tnecnivm‬; Eric Bergeron: ‮ac.cq.mcri@eregreb‬; Suzanne Benjannet: ‮ac.cq.mcri@snajneb‬; Bobbie R Erickson: ‮vog.cdc@1noskcirEB‬; Pierre E Rollin: ‮vog.cdc@nilloRP‬; Thomas G Ksiazek: ‮vog.cdc@kezaisKT‬; Nabil G Seidah: ‮ac.cq.mcri@nhadies‬; Stuart T Nichol: ‮vog.cdc@lohciNS‬

Abstract
Background
Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is caused by a newly discovered coronavirus (SARS-CoV). No effective prophylactic or post-exposure therapy is currently available.
Results
We report, however, that chloroquine has strong antiviral effects on SARS-CoV infection of primate cells. These inhibitory effects are observed when the cells are treated with the drug either before or after exposure to the virus, suggesting both prophylactic and therapeutic advantage. In addition to the well-known functions of chloroquine such as elevations of endosomal pH, the drug appears to interfere with terminal glycosylation of the cellular receptor, angiotensin-converting enzyme 2. This may negatively influence the virus-receptor binding and abrogate the infection, with further ramifications by the elevation of vesicular pH, resulting in the inhibition of infection and spread of SARS CoV at clinically admissible concentrations.
Conclusion
Chloroquine is effective in preventing the spread of SARS CoV in cell culture. Favorable inhibition of virus spread was observed when the cells were either treated with chloroquine prior to or after SARS CoV infection. In addition, the indirect immunofluorescence assay described herein represents a simple and rapid method for screening SARS-CoV antiviral compounds.
This article has been cited by other articles in PMC.

Posted by Meryl Nass, M.D. at 11:30 AM
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Re: COVID 19 HAIKU

Postby Grizzly » Thu May 21, 2020 12:28 am

THE GREAT DIVIDE

build back better
your betters say
creative destruction
hooray! hooray!

you never would have
gone along
so we sang
the pandemic song

you dirty hordes
make the planet sick
with fertile wombs
and dumb fuck sticks

with you inside
the earth rebounds
culling is kindness
up is down

I sense confusion
your furrowed brow
your sovereign delusion
you’re not our cow

at the appointed time
go bang your pans
or loudly howl
or clap your hands

those who question
are not your tribe
ignore their protests
the great divide

is our greatest tool
since the cross
to win the mind
some hearts get tossed


~William Skink
“The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.”

― Joseph mengele
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Re: COVID 19 HAIKU

Postby fruhmenschen » Sat May 23, 2020 1:09 pm

http://anthraxvaccine.blogspot.com/



Saturday, May 23, 2020
A Lancet study with over-the-top data tries to sound a death knell for chloroquine, fails
A big news story came out today regarding the results of a Lancet study of chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin in hospitalized Covid-19 patients. The first author is, naturally, from Harvard.

What the authors found were considerably higher rates of arrhythmia and death in the patients who received a chloroquine drug, with even worse outcomes if patients received azithromycin (Z-pak) too.

Important, smart doctors were interviewed, and they said things like, "Now we know these drugs kill." "Stop using them, except possibly in a clinical trial setting."

Maybe the Lancet study is giving us the last word on the chloroquine drugs and Covid-19.

But let me tell you a few things about this study that give me pause.

The retrospective study included 96,000 people, of whom nearly 15,000 received chloroquine drug. Now those are really large numbers, so this should be a well powered study. How did the authors get so much data? The second author, Sapan S Desai (SSD), founder of Surgisphere Corporation, appears to have provided it. Which makes me wonder how the 671 hospitals or the 96,000 patients felt about their medical and financial data being used, with no ethical review...
"Acquisition of data and statistical analysis of the data were supervised and performed by SSD...
SSD is the founder of Surgisphere Corporation.
The Surgical Outcomes Collaborative (Surgisphere Corporation, Chicago, IL, USA) consists of de-identified data obtained by automated data extraction from inpatient and outpatient electronic health records, supply chain databases, and financial records. The registry uses a cloud-based health-care data analytics platform that includes specific modules for data acquisition, data warehousing, data analytics, and data reporting."
The data came from 671 hospitals on 6 continents. Wow. And here is just a bit of what the authors tell us about data collection:
"The standardised Health Level Seven-compliant data dictionary used by the Collaborative serves as the focal point for all data acquisition and warehousing. Once this data dictionary is harmonised with electronic health record data, data acquisition is completed using automated interfaces to expedite data transfer and improve data integrity. Collection of a 100% sample from each health- care entity is validated against financial records and external databases to minimise selection bias. To reduce the risk of inadvertent protected health information disclosures, all such information is stripped before storage in the cloud-based data warehouse...The data collection and analyses are deemed exempt from ethics review."
You harmonise the data, then you improve its integrity. Wait, what? The only way to improve the integrity of electronic data is to compare it to hard copies of the data. I am guessing that what the authors mean is that data points that an algorithm determined were incorrect got changed or dropped. And financial records were available, too. How the heck did that happen? Then Surgisphere stored all of this in the cloud, after de-identifying it.

Besides the privacy issues (having a private US company get hold of blended medical and financial records from 671 hospitals on 6 continents) is the issue of the accuracy of this data and analysis. Could the data have been manipulated? I doubt data accuracy was checked with 671 individual hospitals...who might not have been happy their data were being used... How do you verify the validity of data from so many different sites?

In the UK, 33% of 17,000 hospitalized patients died from Covid-19. A Chinese study found 28% of those hospitalized died. A US study revealed a 21% mortality rate in those hospitalized for Covid-19. Another US study had a 20.3% mortality in hospitalized patients, but found that those who received chloroquine drugs were sicker than those who did not.

Yet in the Surgisphere Corporation dataset of 96,000 hospitalized patients, only 11.1% of hospitalized patients died. And in the control group, who did not get any chloroquine drugs, in-hospital mortality was only 9.3%. Mortality in the chloroquine groups ranged from 18% to 23.8%.

I find the data presented in this Lancet article hard to believe. The mortality rates in the non-chloroquine patients are simply too good to be true. It is also possible that the chloroquine patients were a sicker cohort. In any event, their mortality rates are in keeping with overall rates in the US, and are better than published rates in the UK and China.

How did this group of hospitals do twice as well as the US, and 3 times as well as the UK in preventing Covid deaths???

I don't think the debate on use of these drugs is over.

Posted by Meryl Nass, M.D. at 12:11 AM 0 comments
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Re: COVID 19 HAIKU

Postby JackRiddler » Sat May 23, 2020 4:50 pm

Never visited this thread before until just now. I happened to think of a haiku to post here.

You know, if you want people to read your compilations, you could always give them a relevant title.
We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.

To Justice my maker from on high did incline:
I am by virtue of its might divine,
The highest Wisdom and the first Love.

TopSecret WallSt. Iraq & more
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Re: COVID 19 HAIKU

Postby dada » Sat May 23, 2020 5:58 pm

JackRiddler » Sat May 23, 2020 4:50 pm wrote:Never visited this thread before until just now. I happened to think of a haiku to post here.

You know, if you want people to read your compilations, you could always give them a relevant title.


I read them. Maybe I don't count as people, though. What would constitute a relevant title?
Both his words and manner of speech seemed at first totally unfamiliar to me, and yet somehow they stirred memories - as an actor might be stirred by the forgotten lines of some role he had played far away and long ago.
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Re: COVID 19 HAIKU

Postby JackRiddler » Sat May 23, 2020 6:27 pm

dada » Sat May 23, 2020 4:58 pm wrote:
JackRiddler » Sat May 23, 2020 4:50 pm wrote:Never visited this thread before until just now. I happened to think of a haiku to post here.

You know, if you want people to read your compilations, you could always give them a relevant title.


I read them. Maybe I don't count as people, though. What would constitute a relevant title?


You count as people. Also, good people. Also, annoying people.
We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.

To Justice my maker from on high did incline:
I am by virtue of its might divine,
The highest Wisdom and the first Love.

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