A new strain of avian flu, similar to the infectious virus that has triggered past pandemic fears, has been discovered by scientists in Russia after an outbreak of a previously unknown disease in the country's south.

On Saturday, Anna Popova, the head of health watchdog Rospotrebnadzor told journalists that experts at the Vector Institute in Siberia had "isolated genetic material" from a new influenza variant.

The samples they tested came from seven employees of a poultry farm in southern Russia, which registered a bird flu outbreak in December last year.

Thirty-one people have died in an outbreak of plague that erupted in northeastern DR Congo three months ago, health officials and experts said on Friday.

"We have more than 520 cases... of which more than 31 have been fatal," Patrick Karamura, health minister in Ituri province, where plague is endemic, told AFP.

The cases are the bubonic form of the disease, except for five cases of pneumonic plague and two of septicaemic plague, he said.

I'm going to start this article by revealing my own biases. I'm not sure where the idea that alcohol might be healthy comes from. It's pretty well established that alcohol is poisonous to all living organisms. That's why we use it to disinfect surfaces, and why I lather my hands in it several times per hour when I'm working in the hospital. It interferes with the functioning of cell membranes, and at high enough doses it causes the cell membranes to fall apart completely, killing the immersed organisms. That's the reason it is such an effective disinfectant. It doesn't take a great leap to think that something that interferes with the functioning of our cell membranes might not be too good for us.

As an interesting aside, the alcohol disinfectant I use to rub my hands in at work is perfectly drinkable, if you're desperate enough. Which is why the nurses generally remove all the disinfectant containers from the patient's room if they know the patient has an alcohol addiction.

Alcohol is a very energy dense molecule. One gram of alcohol (a.k.a. ethanol) contains 7 calories. This can be compared to carbohydrates and protein, which both provide 4 calories per gram, and fat, which provides 9 calories. This is probably why we've evolved the ability to metabolize alcohol and turn it in to energy in the first place. Those of our ancestors who could eat any fermented fruit they happened to come across were less likely to starve. Which is the reason why it's possible to subsist (for a while at least) on a diet consisting entirely of alcohol. It's also the reason alcoholics generally develop severe vitamin deficiencies - they're getting most of their energy needs met from a source that is completely devoid of other nutrients. I don't recommend.

So where does the idea that moderate alcohol consumption is healthy come from? My guess would be that the companies that sell alcohol have something to do with it. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to find that they'd seeded the scientific literature with articles supporting the healthiness of alcohol, just as the sugar industry has seeded the literature with articles supporting the healthiness of sugar. It could also have something to do with the fact that moderate alcohol consumption is part of the mediterranean diet, which we've been told for decades is one of the healthiest ways to eat.

Anyway, enough about my various preconceptions. Let's get to the science. I'm going to focus here on overall mortality, because it doesn't matter if alcohol for example were to decrease your risk of getting cardiovascular disease but at the same time increased your risk of getting cancer by as much or more. What matters is the overall effect on longevity.

Since I started medical school in 1976, until 2020, I have heard the dogma that viral diseases are not treatable (with some exceptions such as antivirals for HIV/AIDS), certainly not with antimicrobials. My older son, a newly minted general surgeon, was educated much more recently, but with the same misunderstanding. Since viral diseases are not treatable, our only weapon is vaccination. A friend who spent his life as an academic university physician retiring in 2016 had never heard this fact either. As the "pandemic" broke out, I constantly watched and read online publications. After reading about the Chinese, Indian, and Korean use of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), an antimalarial agent, against coronavirus, within an hour I found more than 20 scientific papers, written in the last 40 years on the use of lysosomotropic agents — specifically chloroquine — to treat viruses. Like Rip Van Winkle, I suddenly awoke, after decades, to a completely new medical reality.

After my review of the Pfizer/BioNTech SARS-CoV-2 virus vaccine, I was regularly asked if I would do the same for the Moderna vaccine. I will do that in this blog.

Regarding a discussion of the study into the efficacy and safety of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, I refer you to one of my previous blogs:

https://www.janbhommel.com/post/het-pfizer-biontech-vaccin-tegen-het-sars-cov-2-virus

The study into efficacy and safety of the Moderna vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 virus was published on December 30 in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) (1). This study shows great similarities to the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine efficacy and safety study, however there are some differences. Overall, the Moderna study makes a better impression than the Pfizer/BioNTech study, as I will discuss below.

I have spent large chunks of my life trying to untangle medial data and research. COVID19 has long since defeated me. I have been unable to make any sense of the information we are bombarded with daily. So, I decided to go back to basics.

At the start of the COVID19 saga, I was interested to know what the infection fatality rate (IFR) was likely to be. I felt I could then have a go at comparing it to other diseases, primarily influenza.

The infection fatality is the number of people infected with the virus who then die. This is very different to the case fatality rate (CFR), which is the number of people infected with the disease who become unwell enough (sometimes, but not always) to be admitted to hospital - the 'cases'. Who then die.

Before COVID19 appeared, there used to be a reasonably clear distinction between the infection fatality rate (IFR), and the case fatality fate (CFR) and it is important that they should not get mixed up. Because the case fatality rate is almost always far higher than the infection fatality rate - as you would expect. People who are ill enough to go into hospital are far more likely to die than people who do not suffer any symptoms. Bear this in mind

Another thing to bear in mind is that, at the start of any epidemic it is simpler to establish the case fatality rate, because most people who are seriously ill end up in hospital and/or will have tests to see if they have the disease in question. Those with no symptoms may never cross the path of a medical professional and are very unlikely to be tested.

What is the ratio between the two? It depends on the virus. With Ebola the infection fatality rate and case fatality rate are closely matched - more than fifty per cent of people who are infected, die. With the common 'coronavirus' cold, the spread is far wider, maybe a hundred to one, or a thousand to one - perhaps more.

An Israeli tropical-disease expert says he has new proof that a drug used to fight parasites in third-world countries could help reduce the length of infection for people who contract coronavirus.

Prof. Eli Schwartz, founder of the Center for Travel Medicine and Tropical Disease at Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer, last week completed a clinical trial of the US Food and Drug Administration-approved drug ivermectin, a broad-spectrum antiparasitic agent that has also been shown to fight viruses.

The double-blind, placebo-controlled study included 100 people with mild to moderate cases of the disease who were not hospitalized for the virus. It tested whether ivermectin could shorten the viral shedding period, allowing them to test negative for coronavirus and leave isolation in only a few days.

According to his still unpublished data, Schwartz said the drug was shown to help "cure" people of the virus within just six days. Moreover, the chances of testing negative for coronavirus were three times higher for the group who received ivermectin than the placebo, he told The Jerusalem Post.

Many of us have friends or family who plan on getting the vaccine. Maybe they truly believe they are in danger. Maybe they think it's better safe than sorry. Maybe they just want to be able to go to the pub again.

If you know someone who is planning on getting vaccinated against Covid19, ask them these five questions. Make sure they understand exactly what they're asking for.

1. Did you know that we have NEVER successfully vaccinated against ANY coronavirus?

No successful vaccine against a coronavirus has ever been developed.

Scientists have been trying to develop a SARS and MERS vaccine for years, with nothing to show for it. In fact, some of the failed SARS vaccines actually caused hypersensitivity to the SARS virus. Meaning that vaccinated mice could potentially get the disease more severely than unvaccinated mice.

Tattoo artists in Europe are fighting a new ban on two commonly-used green and blue pigments, saying that losing these ink ingredients would be a disaster for their industry and their art.

Meanwhile, in the United States, where about a third of Americans have a tattoo, tattoo ink is almost completely unregulated and there's little known about what's in tattoo ink.

Some artists here say the European restrictions don't make any sense.

Dr. Michael Yeadon is the former Vice President and Chief Scientific Advisor at Pfizer. He and Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg filed a petition with the European Medicines Agency on December 1, 2020. The petition asks the agency to halt trials for the Pfizer BioNTech BNT162b shot and all other mRNA trials until study designs conform with more universal methods.

One of their concerns involves Syncytin-1. The protein is responsible for placenta development during pregnancy.

Placentas provide oxygen and food to fetuses. They also eliminate waste from the baby. Syncytin-1 is "also found in homologous form in the spike proteins of SARS viruses," according to the petition. The mRNA shots would thus inhibit or eliminate Syncytin-1, and prevent or obstruct pregnancy.