I read a lot of absurdities about censorship in Academia, much of it full of bias and a bit of hysteria.
I am most familiar with McWhorter from his books on linguistics (some lectures are on youtube, or you can find his books via Scribd or you can find some on Internetarchives). He is a clear writer and a good teacher.
the Twitter revelations show a lot of censorship of opinions and how US government offices intervened to destroy the political opposition of the democrats. So Musk got some old fashioned JFK liberals (who are left wing but believe in free speech) and you can follow it there.
LOL. So when do we JFKliberals retake the Democratic party from the extremists? Oh, never mind.
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I have noted in other posts about the censorship of covid.
It wasn't just in the USA: bit scandal in the UK Press is a whistleblower who showed that government did the same thing.
.
..
77th Brigade was involved in countering misinformation online relating to Coronavirus
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023...
The Army’s “information warfare” unit
Monitored covid lockdown critics
The 77th Brigade, specialist to counter disinformation,
and other online activity deemed harmful to the UK,
..................
,a discussion of the background that inspired Orwell's 1984...
ScottAdams (Dilbert) comments about recent reports that Measles is capable of wiping out immunity for other diseases and wonders if Covid might do the same thing.
Uh, Scott Scott Scott: the effect of measles on the immune system has been known for years:
A JAMA article in 1932 noted that children with measles often had their latent Tuberculosis become active. And when I worked in Africa 40 years we knew this: Often the kids who didn't die of measles would develop TB or croup/RSV a couple of weeks later. Indeed, a recent article in Nature wrote about this in 2019
In the podcast, he discusses long covid and wonders if this is also associated with immune problems, but mainly he wonders how common is long covid, where people are weak, tired, and have various symptoms that interfere with their ability to work.
But actually a lot of diseases do this: the problem of mononucleosis causing severe fatigue in college students is well known. And I've seen it after viral/mycoplasm pneumonia. And now there are reports from India about a similar problem after having Dengue.
So is my lack of energy due to lazyness, or long Dengue?
By the way: There is a huge Dengue epidemic in Asia going on right now. But it is being ignored in the western press because most people don't die of it, and it is not spreading so far to the west.
Yes, there is a vaccine for Dengue but it has potential lethal side effects, something that the Philippines learned about only after they were used as guinea pigs to test the vaccine. And no one wants to publicize this embarassing episode for fear of making people distrust vaccines that actually save lives. We saw this in the Philippines, where parents hearing about the problem refused to get their kids routine immunizations, so kids died of measles and other diseases that routine baby shots prevent.
Sigh.
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If you liked Covid, you'll love the next "we are all gonna die" epidemic:
Bird flu is resulting in the death of millions of chickens and other birds, but Nature magazine notes it now is spreading mink to mink at a farm in Spain and the problem is that minks are mammals. What happened?
Genetic sequencing showed that the animals were infected with a new variant of H5N1, which includes genetic material from a strain found in gulls, as well as a genetic change known to increase the ability of some animal-flu viruses to reproduce in mammals. The new variant puts bird flu in “uncharted territory”, says Wendy Puryear, a virologist at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. Researchers have warned that, without careful precautions, the disease might eventually spread among people.
the same scientists who still insist that covid came from nature, not a lab leak, (and condemning you if you dare to suggest otherwise), are now on record defending bird flu manipulations. To save live of course.
The government really has a strong interest on behalf of all of us, in the public, in knowing when researchers want to make a virus more lethal or more transmissible, and understanding how that would be done and why that would be done, and whether the benefits are worth it," says Tom Inglesby, director of the Center for Health Security at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Oh, but scientists would never manipulate bird flu to make it more transmissable to humans, so why worry.
Except they already have.
...in 2011, there was an outcry after government-funded researchers altered a bird flu virus that can be deadly in people. Their lab work made this virus more contagious in the lab animals that are stand-ins for people.
italics mine.
Critics said they'd created a super flu. Proponents said that viruses sometimes have to be manipulated in the lab to see what they might be capable of; in nature, after all, mutations occur all the time and that is how pandemic strains emerge.
and these same scientists are annoyed that the US Government dares to try to stop them from similar experiments in the future.
...Ron Fouchier, the virologist at Erasmus University Medical Center in the Netherlands, whose lab did the bird flu experiments over a decade ago, said in an email that he'd hoped the experience of going through a pandemic would simulate more research, not "unnecessarily delay or restrict it."
why? Because SCIENCE.
"I am avidly, absolutely pro-science and pro-research, and in particular pro-infectious disease research," says Inglesby.
But he says there's a very small part of that research "where there is the potential for very high risk if things go wrong, either by accident or on purpose. And so we have to get the balance right, between the risks that could unfold and the potential benefits."
update: The Houston NPR article has been edited yesterday, but the original one can still be found on Miami NPR:
this video is from 8 years ago:
Murphy's law says that if anything can go wrong, it will.
And lab accidents releasing pathogens are so common that there is a Wikipedia page about it.
Captain Trips call your office. They are at it again.
If you have a scientific background you might want to read the whole thing.
Virology under the Microscope—a Call for Rational Discoursetranslation: IF you question our positionn, you are irrational.
But they do list a lot of success stories by similar research.
The problem? Few of these examples were gain of function research that mutated viruses to make them more lethal or more easily transmissable. Much of the examples are about making the viruses weaker, or how to use viruses to enhance the immune response for vaccines (as was done for the British AZ vaccine and some of the Ebola vaccines).
Unlike the Philippines, where libel laws let you sue pesky reporters in the USA, you have to rely on the trusted MSM and social media such as youtube to ban controversial stories that go against the official policy.
So when Project Veritas released a video where a guy said Pfizer was doing (forbidden) gain of function research on covid, guess what happened? Yup: the actual video was taken off youtube, and ignored by much of the MSM. But they did but allow the big Pharm to protest that's not what they said.
nearly everything out there is highly politicized, so again I link to Dr. Campbell.
Dr Campbell discusses Pfizer's press release, and seems to be puzzled about what are they talking about.
In this video, he starts by explaining what is meant by gain of function research
then comments:
Back to Pfizer press release
In the ongoing development of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine,
Pfizer has not conducted gain of function or directed evolution research.
italics mine
Working with collaborators, we have conducted research where the original SARS-CoV-2 virus has been used to express the spike protein from new variants of concern.
This work is undertaken once a new variant of concern has been identified by public health authorities.
This research provides a way for us to rapidly assess the ability of an existing vaccine to induce antibodies that neutralize a newly identified variant of concern.
I think this is saying they are only using the new varients to check if their vaccine would work, not manipulating the virus to see these new variants. This would be necessary to make vaccines to save lives.
Uh Oh:
In a limited number of cases when a full virus does not contain any known gain of function mutations, such virus may be engineered to enable the assessment of antiviral activity in cells.
italics mine.
translation: no we don't manipulate the virus to make a new new virus so we can make a vaccine to protect people: except when we do.
The Project vertias video is banned from youtube, but you can see it on Twitter
So, is this just a guy who is making things up after a few drinks to impress his date, or is he spilling the beans under the influence of alcohol?
Alas, to find the really critical analysis of what is going on, you have to go to right wing sites like Tucker Carlson, where political agendas might cloud the scientific discussion and the risk benefit ratio.
Attention you guys: This is a scientific issue where there should be a discussion about what is going on, including a trusted third party to check what is actually going on in their labs.
I should add that I had a cousin who did research for Merck, and need to note that those doing research on new drugs and vaccines are trying to help the sick, not make money.
Yes, criticize the problem cases, but don't pretend that a small percentage of corrupt people are the rule.
I was just listening to a highfalutin video discussion of geopolitics, and one thing the expert noted that China had a problem because they don't allow criticism or nay sayers.
So I think it is a good thing that at least this type of non PC discussion can now be done on Twitter, where the fair minded can criticize while flaming the nut cases who exaggerate.
There is a lot of hysteria in the right wing anti vax blogs about covid vaccine causing sudden cardiac death. Crazy, no?
Alas, this is one time the conspiracy theorists are correct: Repeated covid boosters result in an increase in cardiac pathology, probably related to an immunity problem since it also can happen with the actual disease. And although rare, it is probably frequent enough for many European countries to forbid giving boosters to the young who are at little risk from the latest omicron version of covid.
But not all sudden cardiac deaths are from Covid Vaccine.
We have had several friends and relatives who were young men die of sudden death.
No, not from the vaccine, but from Bangungot. All these cases happened before the covid epidemic so it wasn't a vaccine complication.
Bangungot is when a young man who is apparently in good health groans in the middle of the night as if he is having a nightmare, and is found dead in the morning. Folk belief attributes this to an fat evil spirit aka Batibat who suffocates them out of revenge.
But medically it is believed to be a cardiac irregularity because the electrical system of heart has a problem, and stress (including alcohol, drugs, a nightmare, exercize etc.) can cause an irregular heartbeat and death.
If someone sees this happening, CPR and a quick use of a cardiac defibillator can save a life. But when it happens in the middle of the night, usually it is too late to stop the person from dying.
But in two cases of our friends who died of it here, the cardiac arrest was seen and CPR was done. One, a teacher who had survived after CPR from an earlier episode, but died from his second attack. Another son of a friend was resusitated, but delay in restarting the heart resulted in significant brain damage.
Sigh.
The first time I remember reading about this problem was after American doctors saw young Cambodian refugees dying suddenly. They speculated it might be from yellow rain or other chemicals used during the war, but then some Asian doctors pointed out that sudden death in young apparently healthy men was something that is seen in East and Southeast Asia.
Noliso;i Article about this syndrome, which is called Banbungot in the Philippines.
Medically speaking, what is bangungot?
While “bangungot” isn’t a medical term, the medical community has taken note of (and further studied) this phenomenon. The scientific community has dubbed it sudden unexplained nocturnal death syndrome or SUNDS.
Another interesting thing to note is that bangungot isn’t a universally occurring phenomenon. SUNDS mostly occurs in parts of the world like the Philippines, Thailand, and Japan. In Thailand, the phenomenon is called lai tai, and in Japan, it’s referred to as pokkuri.
One of the theories is that it is from acute hemorrhagic pancreatitis.
I've treated quite a few people with acute hemorrhagic pancreatitis, usually from alcoholic abuse, but also from gall stones or taking the seizure medicine Depakote.
They are sick, but usually don't die of sudden death: it takes a few hours or days and it is quite painful so they do end up in the Emergency room. But not always: I did have one case of a mentally retarded girl with seizures who took Depakote and was found dead in bed, and the autopsy showed this.
Pancreatitis causes acute dehydration and electrolyte imbalance, so yes you can find them dead in bed if they get an irregular heartbeat from this.
and that might explain why a Filipino Japanese neighbor, known to be an alcoholic, died last year of a heart attack.
But many of these deaths are probably genetic and there is a family history of sudden death.
Brugada syndrome is most commonly caused by an inherited cardiac sodium-channel gene mutation. It manifests as an abnormal electrocardiogram pattern, of which three repolarisation patterns are recognised.
So families (including our family) where there is a history of sudden death need to have a routine EKG to check for the subtle changes that suggest this potentially fatal problem.
Alas, Defribrillators are too expensive for most Filipinos, and alas most people die after their first episode because no one is there to do CPR.
Medline plus has another article on this syndrome if you are interested in learning about it.
Heart attacks are common in out town, and not just from Bangungot.
yes, we also have young people such as our neighbor's daughter, a known drug abuser, dying of sudden cardiac deaths from shabu (metheamphetamine),
But more commonly, heart attack detahs are older people who have a history of diabetes, high blood pressure, or high choleseterol (ASCVD).
But when it is a young man who dies in his sleep, it is assumed to be Bangungot.
So the 15 year old in the neighborhood who just got his second Covid booster so he could attend in class high school was found dead in bed last week, there is a question: Bangungot or covid?
Lancet has a series of articles saying we need to reset medicine because humans are equal to animals.
I am putting the articles here in a series to fisk their lack of scientific rigor, and also so that I don't have to keep going to their website to read them but can fisk the article at my leisure
The notion that the wellbeing of an individual is directly connected to the wellbeing of the land has a long history in Indigenous societies.
Define Ïndigenous societies. Indigenous societies are not a monolith. Give an example with pros and cons. And don't overlook the fact that many of them have left these pristine environments to live and intermarry with others. And don't overlook that many of them use slash and burn techniques or overgraze the land. And don't overlook that their lifestyle is only "sustainable" due to high maternal child mortality, and don't forget the kidnapping of wives and infanticide in those Amazon tribes so beloved by Pope Francis.
Nowadays, the term One Health has become an important concept in global health.
The One Health High-Level Expert panel defines One Health as “an integrated, unifying approach that aims to sustainably balance and optimise the health of people, animals, and ecosystems. It recognises the health of humans, domestic and wild animals, plants, and the wider environment (including ecosystems) are closely linked and inter-dependent.”
True, but this is also rhetoric of the ecology minded, and again the devil is in the details of exactly what they mean to implement to do this.
On Jan 19, we published a new four-part Series online on One Health and global health security, which analyses current understanding of potential public health emergencies and explores how effective adoption of One Health could improve global health security. Although the Series focuses on pandemic preparedness,
so basic public health. And how they are the saviors who will impose their plans to "ïmprove global health security"
One Health goes way beyond emerging infections and novel pathogens; it is the foundation for understanding and addressing the most existential threats to societies including antimicrobial resistance, food and nutrition insecurity, and climate change.
again, rhetoric. And lumps microbial resistance with food insecurity and climate change as threats to society.
Modern attitudes to human health take a purely anthropocentric view—that the human being is the centre of medical attention and concern.
why yes. Because we are humans who are endowed by the Creator with certain rights, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And because medicine from ancient times has been about treating the sick. You want to do environmental stuff, fine. But it is not medicine. (emphasis mine).
One Health places us in an interconnected and interdependent relationship with non-human animals and the environment. The consequences of this thinking entail a subtle but quite revolutionary shift of perspective: all life is equal, and of equal concern.
Ah so here we see the rhetorical trick: we need to take care of the earth (following their guidelines) to stay well, but hey, human lives are not more important than wild animals. (we in the Philippines saw this type of thinking when an alligator killed a school girl and the locals trapped him. The westerners lamented the action of the locals who didn't respect the animals dignity. As for the school girl, hey, she was only a poor Filipina girl so who cares. A similar attitude can be found in Nat Geo specials about tiger or crocadiles killing people in India: more concern about the animals than the poor villagers).
This understanding is fundamental to addressing pressing health issues at the human–animal–environment interface.
For example, providing a growing global population with healthy diets from sustainable food systems is an urgent unmet need. It requires a complete change to our relationship with animals.
Actually, despite the propaganda, starvation deaths have gone down.
Indeed, anyone involved in farming could see it is green policies that are going to cause famine: until the recent crisis, i.e. man made fertilizer and fuel shortage, food was becoming more abundant and cheaper.
I call this a man made crisis, because although it is blamed on Covid and Putin it is actually due to green policies that stopped fracking of natural gas in the US, and of course the west who is pushing the Ukraine war instead of trying to make peace there.
Dirty little secret: the greens opposed the original green revolution (that requires fertilizer to grow these crops) that saved millions of life. And these same eco warrors are are now opposing GM crops that would enable less use of pesticides and could also increase protein in the crops to enhance nutrition.
The EAT-Lancet Commission takes an equitable approach by recommending people move away from an animal-based diet to a plant-based one, which not only benefits human health, but also animal health and wellbeing.
Translation: You will eat bugs and like it. A top down tyranny not only telling you what to eat, but insisting you be happy with this man made crisis. And why do I suspect bird flu killing the chicken industry and African swine flu killing pigs and Foot and Mouth disease killing ruminants are examples of failure of these health minded people stopping these epidemics, because they want to implement low protein vegetarianism on the world. Kwashiorkor anyone?
The COVID-19 pandemic provides an important example of the need for a One Health approach.
Analyses of the successes and failures in managing the pandemic have prioritised health systems and the provision of vaccines and antivirals.
Fair enough.
But understanding the causes of the pandemic demands a broader ecological perspective. This lesson has not been fully learned and so we remain susceptible to future lethal emerging infectious diseases.
The Series recommends the involvement of more environmental health organisations to better integrate environmental, wildlife, and farming issues to help address challenges relating to disease spillover.
WTF?
I should note that the original excuse for all of this animal spillover stuff was the Ebola epidemics, which was caused by eating Bush meat (infected monkeys, because poor people will eat anything, and as my adopted son from South America instructed me: Mom, sometimes you are weak and just need to eat meat).
The first epidemic in Liberia causd hysteria and took awhile to control partly due to the destruction of the infrastructure of that country due to a long civil war, but three later epidemics were actually handled by routine public health methods, using local resources, to discover cases, do ring vaccination, vaccination of the population nearby and isolation of the victims.
Similarly, yellow fever outbreaks are spill overs from animals, but again those epidemics in Brazil and Angola were controlled by mass immunizations and anti mosquito policies (draining or treating standing water, mosquito nets).
But this argument loses it's meaning when you talk about Covid2.
Covid was not a disease spill over from an animal. It was virus manipulated by man (actually a woman scientist) doing gain of function research. And through carelessness, it leaked out of the lab,
To make things worse, not only did the Chinese government and WHO try to deny there was an epidemic, and later saying yes there is an epidemic but it's not infectious, and then yes there was an epidemic but hey it came from a bat in a wet market (just ignore the lab doing gain of function experiments on the covid 2 virus). Indeed, Lancet was part of this coverup: Despite Lancet's attempt to silence the whistle blowers by allowing the head of Ecohealth to insist that covid was a disease spillover from bats, and if you even hinted that maybe the lab was the origin, you would be silenced.
Now we come to the really chilling part of their Humans are not more important than animals point of view.
One implication of a One Health approach is the need to reduce human pressure on the environment—an important medical intervention in itself.
Translation: we need population control of all those poor people who want to grow food and whose farms diminish the area of wild animals who look so nice in Nat Geo TV shows, and a pristine habitat that looks so nice on our instagram posting when we visit as eco tourists.
So Mrs Bill Gates is using money to push contraception on Africans and the West of using the WHO to push contraception on and abortion as a human right.
Next topic please:
Take antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Driven by antimicrobial use and misuse in human, animal, and environmental sectors, and the spread of resistant bacteria and resistance genes within and between these sectors, AMR inflicts a huge global toll. An estimated 1·2 million people died in 2019 from antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections with another 4·95 million deaths associated with bacterial AMR globally. Only by applying a One Health approach can action to address AMR be achieved.
yes, a problem, and excess use of antibiotics in the animal industry is a topic that is discussed by farmers. But it is the modern factory farm methods of raising chickens, pigs, cattle, and fish that lets poor people to have access to cheap protein. People on traditional low protein diets tend to die a lot from infectious diseases, especially Tuberculosis.
Lancet might estimate that 1.2 million people die of antibiotic resistant diseases, but please don't ignore that 250 thousand of these deaths are because of counterfeit drugs or vaccines that are commonly sold in their world countries: And this is a problem of corruption and crime that could be stopped.
One huge concern is the risk of worsening inequalities as One Health networks are largely situated and resourced in high-income countries. The current One Health architecture of institutions, processes, regulatory frameworks, and legal instruments has led to a fragmented, multilateral health security landscape.
As the second paper in The Series points out, a more egalitarian approach is needed, one that is not paternalistic or colonial in telling low-income and middle-income countries what they should do.
For example, demanding that wet markets be closed to halt an emerging zoonosis might be technically correct, but if it does not account for those who make their livelihoods from such markets, One Health will only worsen the lives of those it claims to care about. Decolonisation requires listening to what countries say and what their needs are.
well, the need of the Philippines is basic infrastucture and jobs.
As the global economic crisis continues (The World Bank forecasts a sharp downturn in growth and soaring debt that will hit developing countries the hardest), One Health needs to be implemented sensitively.
yes, the wrong headed plans of the elite to handle the Covid crisis and stop the use of fossil fuels etc. are all economic decisions made by those in charge of the world. But apparantly that won't stop you from telling us what to do.
The reality is that One Health will be delivered in countries, not by concordats between multilateral organisations, but by taking a fundamentally different approach to the natural world, one in which we are as concerned about the welfare of non-human animals and the environment as we are about humans.
Italics mine.
there is it again: animals and environment more important than human beings. And they expect us not to notice.
In its truest sense, One Health is a call for ecological, not merely health, equity.
Again, ecological equity. What does this mean in the real world?
Three guesses.
......................
Update: Fast forward to 25 minutes or so and they note that medicine is not about treating society but about the individual
My last post was about EcoHealth offering to fund a lab here in the Philippines: Not to help us with animal diseases that affect the local food supply, of course, but to do research on diseases in wildlife that could become epidemic in the future.
Hello: We need to to diagnose and treat diseases such as bird flu or African Swine Flu or Blue ear disease in pigs. You know, for ten years, we didn't eat beef (or waterbufflo beef) but with the local small farmers losing their pigs, and now bird flu affecting the chicken farm, we eat beef two or three times a week.
Yes, we eat fish once or twice a day: usually local freshwater fish from fish farms or small ponds where they can be grown. Ironically the fish in the sea is all around us, but China is busy overfishing all around us, and destroying the ecology in the West Philippine sea while harassing Filipino fishermen from their traditional fishing grounds.
But never mind: Usually the China friendly US MSM ignores this, and when they do notice Chinese aggression they write it up in a neutral way, as if those dangerous fishermen are attacking China who just had to defend themselves. LINKLINK.
We are farmers, and going broke thanks to the high price of diesel and fertilizer, made worse by US policies that shut down fracking and pipelines and excess regulations that affect making fertilizer at a time when the Ukraine/Russian supplies are unavailable.
But regular animal epidemics are affecting our food supply,, from African swine flu to bird flu and the worry that Foot and mouth disease that is spreading in Indonesia will spread to the Philippines.
The History guy has a talk about animal flu: When horses were made sick and how that affected society.
(fast forward to skip ad)
....
the HistoryGuy points out how sick horses caused problems in transportation, and that the morality of animals was low.
But Foot and Mouth disease epidemics are more serious:
This article is about foot and mouth disease epidemics in the Philippines, the last major outbreak was in 1995, and they actually screened you in the airport and disinfected the bottom of your shoes before going on an airplane.
But this was not the first epidemic:
FMD was first documented in Manila in 1902 from cattle imported in Hong Kong. It was not until 1908 however, that the first epidemic occurred when a shipment of infected cattle from Hong Kong arrived in Manila, spreading the disease to 25 provinces. From then on until prior to World War II, the disease was recorded almost every year, but only in ruminants
the article goes on to note later epidemics affected other animals.
And here in the Philippines, the death of the waterbuffalo from the epidemic in the early 1900s made it difficult to plant rice and led to famine.
This could happen again, since many farmers still use the waterbuffalo to grow rice.
Luckily, in our area, over the past 15 years, water buffalos have slowly been replaced by a large rototiller called a hand plow, (which uses diesel...uh oh: Diesel is now increasing in price... Sigh).
this Australian newspaper article from last year notes how importing meat from contaminated animals could lead to epidemics of not only FMD but also African swine flu (which is how it was spread to Luzon from China two years ago).
So far, no FMD here, but you see the problem: famine is coming and we could go bankrupt from the high price of growing rice, while the poor will just become malnourished because they can't afford a decent diet.
Studying pathogens that could cause pandemics in animals or humans is important. So having biolabs in a country that can identify germs that cause outbreaks killing animals is important. Once identified, stopping the spread by using vaccines or by culling infected anaimals has to be done; and often the lab, once the pathogen is identified, can make a vaccine to stop the spread.
This is basic public health, as every farmer knows.
The Philippines has such labs that monitors sick animals, and finds what is making them sick.
For example, if you read the Hot Zone, you might have noticed the monkeys who had the Ebola Reston infection (which does not make humans sick) were bred in a Philippine farm.
The presence of Ebola Reston was discovered when the local Agriculture department was investigating a pig epidemic (that turned out to be blue ear diseas), but they found some of the pigs tested positive for the Ebola Reston virus.
so why worry? Well, animal diseases affect the food supply, and some can even make people in contact with these animals sic.
For example, bird flu can make people sick if they are in close contact with the infected bird. And it only needs a mutation or two for bird flu to become a human epidemic with a high mortality similar to the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic, something scientists have been worried about for years.
But the main problem is that such epidemics make the price of meat, milk and eggs soar, leading to protein malnutrition in the poor who can't afford this food.
In recent years, we have had bird flu and African Swine flu affecting our food supply here in the Philippines, and it's only a matter of time until the latest outbreak of Foot and Mouth disease spreads here from an Indonesian outbreak.
So such labs are needed.
Yet when these labs are funded by the US Dept of Defense, the suspicion goes up.
Is the US DoD innvolved to help stop civilian farm animal epidemics, or are they investigating animal diseases to be prepared if an enemy spreads an animal disease that mustates to infect civilians, either accidentally or as a form of biowarfare?
And epicemics caused by accidental release by a lab studying a germ is not unknown, as lab leaks of SARS and Brucellosis from Chinese labs has shown.
The suspicion that the present covid epidemic was a lab leak was pooh poohed by many, including the head of the Ecolab, who just happened to have funded gain of function research on bat covid.
This is a big scandal, as is the censorship of many aspects of the covid epidemic in medical journals, the MSM and in the social media. I am not talking about censorship of self proclaimed experts who are making money by being anti vax types, but the censorship against those with PhD's or MD's who actually are qualified to question the data.
So fast forward to the present.
Ecohealth, the entity that funded bat research in Wuhan, was just granted 3 million dollars for Philippine research.
MANILA, Philippines — The House Makabayan bloc has expressed concerns over the reported construction of an animal disease diagnostic laboratory in Tarlac City with funding from the United States’ Defense Threat Reduction Agency (US-DTRA).
...The Mkabayan group has been accused of being associated with the local communist party, a common accusation against leftist groups and human rights activists.
“According to the DA, the new Regional Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory (RADDL) in Barangay Paraiso, Tarlac City will provide advanced services through modern technologies to ensure a healthy and resilient animal sector in Central Luzon,” the resolution read.
if you read the article, they are questioning that the funding came from the US Dept of Defense, not the US Dept of Agriculture.
The lawmakers warned that the US-DRTA is the official combat support agency of the US for countering weapons of mass destruction: chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and high explosives.
“A civilian laboratory was constructed using funds of a foreign military agency, which has the responsibility of managing and integrating the US defense department’s chemical and biological defense science and technology programs,” the measure reads...
“Allowing the US defense department to influence civilian agricultural initiatives gives rise to reasonable suspicions on the true objectives of these projects in the Philippines,” the measure stated.
Let's put this into perspective.
When the African swine flu was killing pigs in China, the Philippines banned imports of meat products from there, since these could spread the disease to here if the pigs ate garbage with infected scraps.
The cause is probably corruption, but with the hostilities of China who has been slowly stealing the fish and petroleum resources from the Philippines in the West Philippine sea, you can see how easy biological warfare could destroy the country's food supply while letting the usual suspects make a profit selling or smuggling in food.
...But aside from the US security sector, foreign-funded biolaboratories and research are being set up by foreign-funded nonprofits such as the Ecohealth Alliance in different parts of the world, including the Philippines.
The lawmakers said the Philippines should closely look into the activities of both the US-DTRA and EcoHealth Alliance to ensure that the Philippines will not be used as launch zones for geopolitical objectives and biological threats to the world.
Translation: China could claim such labs were part of biowarfare against them, and use this as an excuse to invade the Philippines, similar to how one of Russia's excuses in invading the Ukraine was claiming similar animal biolabs there were not to stop local diseases but for biowarfare against them..
Being open to outsiders who can check on what's going on is the best way to monitor labs for safety lapses or for illicit experiments, such as the gain in function experiments which had been done in the Wuhan lab on bat flu.
The need for oversight of such labs is not just something that worries the left wing parties in the Philippines.
The Defense Department doled out millions of dollars to the same nonprofit that funneled federal grant money to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for bat coronavirus research — with most of the Pentagon money going toward murky research on countering biological weapons.
Ebright, a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Rutgers University and lab director at the school’s Waksman Institute of Microbiology, told the Post that such awards from the defense and intelligence communities are distributed “outside the normal processes” for such research, with no transparency and oversight beyond what can be provided by members of Congress.
In this shadowy, near-impenetrable world, Ebright explained, EcoHealth acts as one of many “funding subcontractors” directing money from a “blank check written by [government] program officers who often go on to be employed” by the same non-profits to whom they once doled out taxpayer cash.
I repeat: Biolabs do important work in discovering the causes of illness in animals (and humans), and in developing vaccines to stop the spread of such diseases.
But such labs should be regulated by outsiders to stop accidental lab leaks or illicit experimentation.
I had seen fictional films about trained dolphins used for war, but never thought those stories wre real.
Well, I was wrong.
StrategyPage has an essay on using dolphins and seals, not for suicide missions (as usually implied by the fictional movies) but to tow ropes or find stuff in the ocean, like mines, something that trained animals, usually dogs, do above ground.
it took four decades of trial and error for the navy to determine how its dolphins could perform certain military functions like finding mines close to shore...
The human handlers finally found a way to teach the dolphins how to find mines and report what they have found. The dolphins are rewarded with food and affection. Although the navy still classifies the program as "experimental," recent exercises using the dolphins shows that the sea mammals are ready for prime time.
Here is a video about the program.
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by the way: The SP article also discusses military dogs, who are used not just for guard duty but to detect mines etc.
the nuances in this talk suggest that early in the epidemic, the original Covid killed people, but the vaccines were mainly given to high risk folks, so it probably saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
But now that covid has evolved into a disease that is similar to influenza, which mainly kills people who are old or frail, there is a big debate among health care personnel if the side effects of the vaccine are worse than the disease, especially for young people who are at low risk for severe complications or death.
This is why many question the policy that insists that young people receive repeated booster shots, especially now that data is now being released that shows that the complication rate, although low, is higher after second etc. boosters.
If there is an immune problem here, repeated booster shots would increase the risk of developing the problem.
Much of this has been denied or ignored in the past, which is why it is disturbing that a study done over a year ago in Taiwan on the Moderna (mRNA) vaccine showed a one percent problem of cardiac problems, but what was disturbing is that this study showed the rate of this complication was worse after the secojnd dose.
the BMJ did a study last year, which showed a very low incidence of myocarditis aftere a single shot, so there should have been a "heads up" to officials that booster shots might add to toxicity/autoimmune problems, and that this needed to be monitored closely.
The increased toxicity after repeated doses might be why the news is reporting so many sudden cardiac deaths this year, whereas they were rare last year: it might be becaause the rate seems to be higher after numerous doses, if the Taiwan study is correct.
Dr. C previously reported a study of autopsies from Germany that showed evidence of myocarditis in those who died of sudden death post covid vaccine..
Sigh.
It is important to note that the success of the various vaccines against the original more lethal covid strain probably saved hundreds of thousands of people.
And it also should be noted that in the past, we often had short shut downs of meetings, schools, and churches during influenza epidemics, although usually this was a done by local authorities where the disease was causing problems.
So, early in the covid epidemic, it was needed.
But prolonged economic and school shutdowns was probably not needed, after the vaccines were given to the elders and high risk patients, which would have been three months after the vaccines were released.
and the elephant in the room: The hysteria about masks while readmitting infectious covid patients back into nursing home, which in one estimate caused 20 thousand lives lost in Pennsylvania alone when this policy was implemented by now Surgeon General Doctor Levine.
Here in the Philippines, masking is not a problem because mask use is common for TB and influenza prevention (where we use masks stop the spittle emitted when coughing or talking), but in the US, the policy was politicized into a sign of obedience to obey the science.
That is why some people noted that despite the propaganda, these policies might have more to do with politics than with science:
the demonstrations that were allowed at the peak of the epicemic, even though it was known that covid was more highly fatal in minority communities where these occurred.
And like the failure of the CDC to shut down the raves and parties that spread monkey pox, it shows how PC politics has infiltrated the US government public health establishment.
In summary:
The problems of side effects should have be given a headsup much earlier.
For example, I got the AZ British vaccine, which was found to cause blood clots, especially in the young. I even did a blog post about the risk, which was higher in the young than in we elders. So some countries banned this vaccine except for elders, where the risk of clots was lower and the risk of death was higher.
but the mRNA vaccine had been found to give the best protection against even the later strains of covid, hence the push to give repeated boosters of the mRNA vaccine.
This makes sense to the frail and elderly, but you know, things have changed: The vaccines don't work well against the omicron strains, but these newer strains have a low mortality.
Giving a vaccine with significant side effects to those at low risk against a weakened strain of covid that doesn't kill is simply a bad decision.
In the meanwhile, China is being confronted with a new version that is even less fatal and more infectious than the omicron. And the Sinovax, which didn't work very well against the original covid, doesn't work at all against this strain. So of course China has opened their airports and is allowing their people to spread it all over the world.
With Chinese new year coming this week, and with China allowing people to travel outside the country, we will probably get an outbreak of this latest mild omicron strain.
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update: Discussion of stroke, including the problems of the AZ vaccine which was known to cause blood clots.
I usually stay out of arguments about gun control, because they seem to be more about parroting cliches than actually stopping gun deaths.
The dirt little secrest is that most homicide deaths from guns are drug and gang related and affect black males the most, which is why it is taboo to discuss. These homicides are done by small guns, not the rifles they want to ban. However, the majority of gun deaths are actually suicide deaths by guns tend to be white males, related to depression and/or substance abuse, and this is rarely discussed either.
My grandfather was a cop, and he had a friend whose child accidentally killed himself playing with a service revolver, so my grandfather would no have guns in his house, and my father never learned to shoot a gun, and we had no guns in our house.
I had to learn to shoot when I joined the National Guard: But only rifles; when I was told I could as an officer carry a handgun, I took a waiver not to do this, knowing that there was no way I would ever shoot anyone, even in a war.
In other words, I am ambivalent about guns: I am pro gun control but until the discussion in the US is more nuanced and honest one doubts either side will be willing to make a compromise.
Fast forward to retiring to the Philippines.
My husband always had a handgun for protection, especially as drugs started infiltrating our placid rural area: doctors were a target because narcotics and money, and as a veteran he knew how to use a gun.
But here in the Philippines, they are stricter about guns.
The first president Marcos confiscated all the guns, which is why there are so many security guards at stores and malls.
but for protection in the home, a lot of folks just hid them, including my husband who kept his handgun in a safe, just in case.
But what astonished me was when he opened the safe and pulled out a World War II submachine gun to clean and check it. He was a WWII vet, at least during the end of the war, when he essentially was doing patrols in this rural area against Japanese stragglers who would kill for food or revenge.
However, when he had his second stroke, he gave away his guns, meaning that now we only have dogs and a machete for protection.
George, the killer labrador is waiting to bite you
At least four neighbors were killed by home invasion robberies since I moved here, so the threat was real.
Thanks to Duterte's war on drugs, we now feel a bit safer, which is why he was so popular. And one does hope that the new president Marcos will continue the fight so we are not taken over by drug cartels or the Chinese mafia.
So I won't need a gun... unless China decides that hey, Luzon used to be owned by China so why don't we take it over after we conquer Taiwan?
In that case, a small submachine gun would come in handy.
As the black hole tears away the outer, loose gases from the star, they form into threads which wrap around the black hole in a way similar to rolling sphaghetti on a fork.
Often the dense part of the star escapes, however.
In astrophysics, spaghettification (sometimes referred to as the noodle effect)[1] is the vertical stretching and horizontal compression of objects into long thin shapes (rather like spaghetti) in a very strong, non-homogeneous gravitational field. It is caused by extreme tidal forces.
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Westerners eat spaghetti by picking up strands and twirling them around our fork.
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however, I should note that this is not how you eat the long strands of Ramen in Asia, where slurping is permitted.
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so how do Filipinos eat their spaghettti? This guy is Canadian, so he usesTwirl and slurp technique.
The late Anthony Bourdain warmed Filipino hearts with his love of Jolibee.
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I should note that Filipino Spaghetti has a sweet sauce that resembles the sauce of SpaghettiOs that kids love. It also does not have sausage, but hot dogs in it, and often it is topped with grated Eden Cheese (a mild Cheddar).
The entire series of the Durant's Story of Civilization can be found on interenet archives LINK
Some are only for 14 day borrow, but thanks to the Library of India posting their books there, many can be downloaded to read at leisure, since they are too long to read in 14 days.
And for those of us who listen to audiobooks/ lectures (I play them in the background when I sleep, to lessen the noise of cars and dogs and crowing roosters during the night), they also have the audiobook versions of some of these available. LINK
The entire series can also be found on Youtube. But this means you have to play the video, or as I do, download them as audio and/or rip them to an mp3
True, they are old fashioned, western centric and not entirely PC, and usually have a bias against religion, but they are readable: and that in itself is a recommendation for those of us layfolk who want to learn history.
and what is ignored by the PC is that once you have a basic knowledge, you can then go and build upon that knowledge for more nuance or other points of view.
Durant's history not only includes the usual kings/ empire/ battles, but discusses the ideas of those civilizations.
For example, in Vol one, he not only discussed the ancient civilizations of the Middle East, but he had a description of the bible and he includes famous quotes from history and poetry.
There are three things too wonderful for me, four that I cannot understand:
The way of an eagle in the air;
the way of a serpent upon a rock;
the way of a ship in the midst of the sea;
and the way of a man with a maid.
The Bible and Christian religion is part of the heritage of Western civilization, but since Bible reading was removed from public schools, one wonders if the kids are allowed to learn the stories or the famous quotes that their elders were taught routinely.
without this basic knowledge, much of the classic literature references will have to be explained to them. And of course, it makes them vulnerable to the trendy "new atheists" who quote out of context to emphasize only the faults of religion, and use straw man arguments to ridicule today's believers.
I read that the Russian and other communist countries taught anti religion but that reading the great Russian writers like Tolstoy kept the faith alive.
This used to be true for the West, but now it is the time of the great forgetting.
It's a direct line that is missed; Martin Luther King was inspired by Ghandi, who was inspired by Tolstoy, who was inspired by Jesus.
but instead, the history is that of Marxism that not only falsifies history but inspires hatred.
But like the story of how the Irish Saved Civilization remind us, the seeds of renewal might be found in the most likely places
“What will be lost, and what saved, of our civilization probably lies beyond our powers to decide. No human group has ever figured out how to design its future. That future may be germinating today not in a boardroom in London or an office in Washington or a bank in Tokyo, but in some antic outpost or other -- a kindly British orphanage in the grim foothills of Peru, a house for the dying in a back street of Calcutta run by a fiercely single-minded Albanian nun, an easy-going French medical team at the starving edge of the Sahel, a mission to Somalia by Irish social workers who remember their own Great Hunger, a nursery program to assist convict-mothers at a New York Prison -- in some unheralded corner where a great-hearted human being is committed to loving outcasts in an extraordinary way.”
― Thomas Cahill, How the Irish Saved Civilization:.
