Plagues
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Syringe

Booster shots may be needed within 12 months, US officials say

Nicoletta Lanese
Live Science
Thu, 15 Apr 2021 19:37 UTC
COVID Jab
© Shutterstock

People vaccinated against COVID-19 may require booster shots within nine to 12 months of their initial vaccination, Reuters reported.

Evidence suggests that the coronavirus vaccines developed by Pfizer and Moderna offer at least six months of robust protection from COVID-19 infection. But even if this protection lasts for longer, several highly-transmissible viral variants are now circulating; that means people may need a regular booster shots to bolster immunity to the virus, Dr. David Kessler, chief science officer for President Joe Biden's COVID-19 response task force, said at a congressional committee meeting on Thursday (April 15).

"The current thinking is those who are more vulnerable will have to go first," in terms of getting their booster shots, Kessler said.

From early on in the pandemic, experts predicted that officials may need to roll out multiple generations of COVID-19 vaccines and that regular booster shots may be necessary, since experts couldn't know then how long vaccine-generated immunity would last, Live Science previously reported. And there's always the potential for new virus variants to emerge and thwart the current vaccines, raising the risk of so-called breakthrough infections, meaning infections among fully vaccinated people.

Breakthrough infections are completely expected, as none of the COVID-19 vaccines are 100% protective against the coronavirus. The CDC has been monitoring for such infections since the vaccine rollout began, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, told the House subcommittee hearing, according to Reuters.

Comment:
Barf Bag
© Sodahead


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Attention

DARPA working on COVID vaccine - Implantable microchip to detect virus

Steve Watson
Summit News
Mon, 12 Apr 2021 18:31 UTC
DARPA Vaccine
© Screenshot

The Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is working on a COVID vaccine that will work on all variants and has developed an implantable microchip that it says will continuously monitor the human body for signs of the virus.

Retired Colonel Matt Hepburn, an army infectious disease physician heading up DARPA's response to the pandemic, appeared on 60 Minutes to demonstrate the technology.

Holding up a vial of green tissue-like gel, which contains the chip, Hepburn proclaimed "You put it underneath your skin and what that tells you is that there are chemical reactions going on inside the body, and that signal means you are going to have symptoms tomorrow."

"It's like a 'check engine' light," Hepburn added, noting that those with the chip "would get the signal, then self-administer a blood draw and test themselves on site."

"We can have that information in three to five minutes," Hepburn continued, adding "As you truncate that time, as you diagnose and treat, what you do is you stop the infection in its tracks."
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Info

Living fossil discovered below Earth's surface say researchers

Lauren Fuge
Cosmos Magazine
Mon, 12 Apr 2021 02:13 UTC
Death Valley Drilling
© Duane Moser, Desert Research InstituteEquipment for subsurface sampling of microbes in Death Valley, California. New research led by Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences has revealed that a group of microbes, Candidatus Desulforudis audaxviator, have been at an evolutionary standstill for millions of years.
A microbe that feeds on radioactivity has been at an evolutionary standstill for up to 175 million years, researchers say.

First discovered three kilometres down a South African gold mine, the microbe (Candidatus Desulforudis audaxviator) lives in water-filled pockets inside rocks far below the surface, feeding off the energy created in chemical reactions caused by natural radioactivity in minerals.

The research team, led by the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in the US, set out to understand how this microbe evolves in isolation. They discovered other populations in Siberia and California: two very different environments that the team expected would lead to clear differences between the populations as they adapted to their surroundings.

"We thought of the microbes as though they were inhabitants of isolated islands, like the finches that Darwin studied in the Galapagos," says co-author Ramunas Stepanauskas from Bigelow.

But when they examined the genomes of 126 microbes from three different continents, they were almost identical.

The researcher ruled out cross-contamination, and found no evidence that the microbes could have travelled long distances, seeing as they are unlikely to last in the presence of oxygen or survive on the surface.
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Attention

Covid madness: Can't board rescue vessels until vaccinated

Eric Worrall
WattsUpwithThat
Sun, 11 Apr 2021 13:04 UTC
St Vincent Volcano Eruption
© DW
The volcano on the Caribbean Island of St Vincent has erupted. Cruise liners and Ferries are rushing to the scene to evacuate people caught by the eruption - but people are not allowed to board the cruise liners until they receive a Covid vaccination.
Caribbean's St Vincent island volcano erupts after 16,000 people evacuated

Posted Yesterday at 1:37am, updated Yesterday at 2:03am

An explosive eruption of the La Soufriere volcano in the Caribbean has rocked the island of St Vincent following mandatory evacuation orders from the local government.

More than 16,000 residents had been evacuated as volcanic activity increased ahead of the eruption, which took place on Friday morning local time.

Evacuees have been given temporary homes on cruise ships and in safer parts of the island.

...

Evacuees told to get vaccinated

The new eruption followed mandatory evacuation orders issued on Thursday for people who lived near the volcano.

The pandemic could hamper evacuation efforts.

Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves said in a press conference that people had to be vaccinated if they went aboard a cruise ship or were granted temporary refuge on another island.

He said two Royal Caribbean cruise ships were expected to arrive by Friday and a third one in the coming days, as well as two Carnival cruise ships by Friday.

Source: - Caribbean's St Vincent island volcano erupts after 16,000 people evacuated
I don't blame the rescuers - they are doing the right thing, putting their very expensive ships in danger to rescue people. Volcanic ash could easily cause millions of dollars worth of damage just by landing on the ships, or by getting sucked into the engine air intakes. So they deserve recognition for their courage and compassion.

What I blame is the world's obsession with Covid.
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Attention

Mental Prison - You can't win. Don't even try!

James Corbett
Corbett Report
Mon, 29 Mar 2021 01:29 UTC
Chained Elephant
© Corbett Report
Imagine you find a prisoner in an unlocked jail cell. Confused, you ask him why he's sitting there when the door to his cell isn't even locked.

"Oh, it's unlocked? I didn't check."

You assure him it's unlocked and ask again why he doesn't leave.

"Why bother? They'll probably catch me before I get out."

You look around in confusion. You explain to him that this isn't even a prison. That he's simply been told to wear an orange jumpsuit and stay in an unlocked room, but he doesn't have to comply. All he has to do is leave.

"Even if I get away, they'll just find me and bring me back here. Might as well just stay put."

Do you think this story is ridiculous? Of course it is. But the situation it details is all too true. In fact, researchers have known for half a century the mechanism by which people can be made to effectively lock themselves up inside their own mental prison . . . and it didn't take long for the intelligence agencies to put that research to use.

Today, let's explore the startling true story of how and how the public has been conditioned into a (false) sense of helplessness, and — more important by far — what you can do to break that conditioning.
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Attention

Fauci and The Variants

Eric Peters
EricPetersAuto
Sat, 20 Mar 2021 18:58 UTC
Corona
© Wochenblick.at
It sounds like an '80s synth band but the tune is more like the braying of a defective donkey.

Perhaps you saw the exchange between Pope Fauci and Senator Rand Paul over Mask Wearing Forever, which the Pope of Sickness insists on.

Paul inquired of his Holiness, why dost thou continue to wear thy vestment in view of the fact that thou hast been anointed with the Holy Water (i.e., the "vaccine" - which ostensibly renders the recipient immune from the 'Rona, else why bother taking it and with it, whatever risk of unknown problems it may cause)?

The Pope's reply was what one would expect of any religious leader: Just believe. For I saith so.

And, obey.

Rand - playing the part of a latter-day Martin Luther - questioned the Pope about this, demanding to know what evidence could be adduced to substantiate the Holy Assertion that wearing a vestment or two served other than a ritualistic purpose. None was forthcoming.
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Attention

Covid much less deadly says new study

Sebastian Rushworth, M.D.
SebastianRushworth.com
Thu, 18 Mar 2021 03:22 UTC
COVID Virus
© Sebastian Rushworth.com/
An article was recently published in the British Medical Journal that reported on a matched cohort study which compared the risk of dying for those infected with the new British variant (a.k.a. B.1.1.7) and those infected with the older covid variants.

A matched cohort study is a type of observational study where you take a group of people with some condition and then try to find a similar group without the condition to match against. Then you follow the two cohorts over time and see if they differ in some meaningful outcome (like death). Since it is an observational study, it can only show correlation. It can't prove the existence of a cause and effect relationship, but that doesn't stop many people acting like it does.

The article has resulted in fear-mongering headlines in news media around the world. Just to take the first example I could find, Al-Jazeera published an article with the headline: "UK variant up to 100% deadlier more deadly, study finds".

Those darn studies, they're always finding things. It's like a never-ending game of whack-a-mole. You knock one down here, and another one pops up over there. Anyway, let's look in to the study some detail, and see if the claim is true.

There were two criteria that had to be fulfilled for a person to be included in the study. They had to have a PCR-test positive for covid at some point between the beginning of October 2020 and the end of January 2021. And they had to be over 30 years old. The authors don't provide any reason for the second criterion. The only reason I can see for removing people under the age of 30 is that they pretty much never die when they get covid, and including them would therefore have resulted in less impressive mortality numbers, which would have made it a little bit harder to use the results as part of public fear mongering campaigns.
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Researchers find key to preventing killer allergic reactions - embedded in our own immune systems.


The Australian National University
Thu, 11 Mar 2021 22:58 UTC
Immune System
© Beacon Pace
Researchers have discovered a function in the immune system that could hold the key to treating allergic conditions like asthma and stop life-threatening anaphylaxis.

Experts from The Australian National University (ANU) have unearthed a natural way the body prevents autoimmune disease and allergies. The process is driven by a protein in the body called neuritin.

"We found this absolutely fascinating mechanism of our own bodies that stops the production of rogue antibodies that can cause either autoimmunity or allergies," senior author, ANU Professor Carola Vinuesa, said.

"It's been known for years that neuritin has a role in the brain and in the nervous system but we found an abundance of neuritin in the immune system and its mechanism - which has never been described in biology.

"We have shown it is one of our immune system's own mechanisms to prevent autoimmunity and allergy and now we have the evidence, we can go on to harness that for treatment."

The researchers say they set out over five years ago to bridge a knowledge gap on how the immune system works following an educated guess that neuritin might have a regulatory function in stopping allergies and autoimmune disease.

The study, published today in Cell, found neuritin can prevent the production of pathogenic antibodies.
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Attention

A coming COVID catastrophe - Dire warning from a vaccine developer

Del Bigtree
The HighWire
Thu, 11 Mar 2021 21:13 UTC
Covid19 Vaccine
© YouTube
World renown vaccine specialist, Geert Vanden Bossche, gave a groundbreaking interview this week risking his reputation and his career by bravely speaking out against administration of #Covid19 vaccines. In what may be one of the most important stories ever covered by The Highwire, the vaccine developer shared his extreme concerns about these vaccines in particular and why we may be on track to creating a global immunity catastrophe.

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Attention

Impossible things - and COVID19

Dr.Malcolm Kendrick
Dr.Malcolm Kendrick Org
Sat, 06 Mar 2021 18:00 UTC
"Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things."

"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
6 Impossible Things
© Etsy.com
1: 'The Concept of Coronavirus Herd Immunity Is Deadly and Dangerous'

Since COVID19 first hurtled over the horizon, before landing upon us all with great force, I find that I have been asked to believe in many impossible things. First, I was told that attempting to create herd immunity was not achievable. It would also be extremely dangerous and would inevitably result in many hundreds of thousands of excess deaths.

Then the vaccines arrived at fantastical speed and I was told that mass vaccination, by creating herd immunity, would be the factor that would allow us to conquer COVID19 and return to normal life. I am not entirely sure which of these things is impossible, but one of them must be.

2: 'Vaccines, on the other hand, are believed to induce stronger and longer lasting immunity.'

I was then told the vaccine would provide greater immunity than being infected with COVID19. Which was interesting. I am not sure if this is actually impossible, but it seemed unlikely that anyone could make such statements after about three hundred people had actually been studied, and just two months had passed.

At the time I was aware of two people proven to have been re-infected with COVID19, out of about ten million cases. So, getting infected certainly seemed to provide a pretty good degree of immunity. A re-infection rate of 0.00005%

I also know that vaccinations can only ever really create an attenuated response. Whereas a full-blown infection triggers a full-blown immune response. So, I think it is pretty close to impossible that vaccination can provide greater protection than that from getting the actual disease. Which is why I think it is utterly bonkers we are actually vaccinating people who have circulating antibodies in their blood.
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