Health & Wellness

Why you should always close the toilet lid: Images show how germ-infested water droplets are thrown far into the air when you flush

Joe Pinkstone
Daily Mail.com
Tue, 03 Nov 2020 12:35 UTC

Harpic, the chemical company, used high-speed specialist cameras to capture the firework display of aerosol particles caused by a toilet's sloshing water in a studio

Comment: Leaving aside for the moment how this information is in part being used to further scare the public about coronavirus, the following data is useful to remember - and act on - for any number of infectious or sickening particles spread by toilet water droplets.

A series of startling photos have captured what really happens when a toilet is flushed with the seat lid still up.

Harpic, the chemical company, used high-speed specialist cameras to capture the firework display of aerosol particles spewed into the air by a toilet's sloshing water.

The striking visuals add to a growing movement to encourage people to put the lid down before flushing. A July study found coronavirus particles can be sprayed in a cloud up to three foot high by a single flush.

survey of 2,000 Britons found 55 per cent of UK adults don't close the lid when flushing the toilet - despite almost three quarters (72 per cent) saying they are more hygiene aware than ever before.

Toilet bowl water remains contaminated for several flushes after becoming exposed to harmful pathogens.

Comment: 'Because Covid' was the reason behind the following study, but again - good to know in any case since 'the virus' ain't the only virus!

Toilets are a daily necessity but also become dangerous if used improperly, especially against the current scenario of a global pandemic. This paper has used the CFD approach to clarify how toilet flushing can promote virus transmission. The flushing processes of two different types of toilets (single-inlet flushing and annular flushing) have been simulated, and in particular, the fluid flow characteristics and the movement of aerosol particles during flushing have been investigated. Several alarming conclusions can be summarized as follows:

- Strong turbulence has been observed to be generated by both flushing methods.

- An upward velocity of as much as 5 m/s is produced, which is certainly capable of expelling aerosol particles out of the toilet bowl.

- Some 40%-60% of the total number of particles can rise above the toilet seat to cause large-area spread, with the height of these particles reaching 106.5 cm from the ground.

- Even in the post-flushing period (35 s-70 s after the last flushing), the upward velocity of the diffused particles can reach 0.27 cm/s-0.37 cm/s, and they continue to climb.

- The data analysis indicates that given the same amount of water and the same gravitational potential energy, annular flushing causes more virus spread.

Faced with these alarming results, we advocate several safe procedures to adopt when using a toilet:

1. Put the toilet lid down before flushing, which can basically prevent virus transmission.

2. Clean the toilet seat before using it, since floating virus particles could have settled on its surface.

3. Wash hands carefully after flushing, since virus particles may be present on the flush button and door handle.

This paper may also enlighten toilet manufacturers and prompt them to produce better designed toilets in which the lid is automatically put down before flushing and cleaned before and after flushing.

Many popular surgeries are ineffective and are no better than a placebo

Ross Pomeroy
realclearscience.com
Sat, 07 Nov 2020 15:41 UTC

When you take a pharmaceutical drug, you expect it to have undergone rigorous testing to ensure that it's safe and effective. You probably have the same expectations for when you're going under the knife. But surgeries aren't actually required to face that same level of scrutiny. As Dr. Chuck Dinerstein, Medical Director at the American Council on Science and Health, explained:

"A new therapy involving a medication requires the approval of the FDA, and that requires evidence that the new drug is at least "non-inferior" to what is already available. Not so for a new surgical technique or device. For my surgical brethren, all we need is a good idea and our "can do" attitude takes over, and we try out a new technique, instrument or operation. Once the novel surgical "treatment" is being used, then we can do those studies, "non-inferior" may be more our opinion than a statistical finding."

So, in a sense, surgeries can be trusted as much as surgeons' and anatomists' expertise can be trusted. For the overwhelming majority of surgical procedures, this works out just fine, but for some, it does not.

The greatest offender may be arthroscopic knee surgery. Performed some 700,000 times per year in the United States, it is the most popular orthopedic surgery. During the procedure, a surgeon makes a small incision over the knee joint, then might remove inflamed tissue, repair a meniscus, or remove bone fragments or cartilage, among other potential actions. Unfortunately, two years post-operation, patients experience little to no benefit in terms of pain or knee function compared to patients who managed their knee pain more conservatively through actions like weight loss, exercise, and the use of over-the-counter pain medications.

Mandatory face masks even more dangerous for asthmatics

Adebayo Folorunsho-Francis
Healthwise
Sun, 17 May 2020 18:18 UTC

Medical professionals have warned that people with chronic asthma who use face masks, especially the surgical and clothing type, are exposing themselves to hypoxia.

Hypoxia is a condition in which the body or a region of the body is deprived of adequate oxygen supply at the tissue level.

The World Health Organisation described asthma as a common lung condition that causes sporadic breathing difficulties, adding that its strongest risk factors are inhaled substances and particles that may provoke allergic reactions or irritate the airways.

Speaking exclusively with PUNCH HealthWise, Senior Registrar, Paediatric Department of Massey Street Children Hospital, Lagos, Dr. Mary Uche-Iwuh, explained that, except for social gatherings, asthmatics may not necessarily need to wear face masks.

Operation Warp Speed — A technocratic chess piece?

Dr. Joseph Mercola
Mercola.com
Sun, 01 Nov 2020 07:19 UTC

In this interview, investigative journalist Whitney Webb, who does both independent work and collaborations with The Last American Vagabond, discusses the little-known details of Operation Warp Speed, a joint operation between U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Department of Defense to produce a fast-tracked COVID-19 vaccine and other therapeutics.

As you may have noticed by now, Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and a host of other platforms are censoring information relating to COVID-19 in general and vaccine information in particular. Many commentators who touch on these issues have been deplatformed altogether, so information on these crucial topics are getting harder to come by.

"We're at a point where the line between Silicon Valley and the national security state has become so blurred, you really can't distinguish where one begins and where the other ends," Webb says. This in large part helps explain how and why big tech is getting away with such blatant censorship as deplatforming of individuals who discuss issues the mainstream media refuse to touch.

"You can definitely make the argument that it's state censorship to a degree," she says. "I think it's quite telling that a lot of these companies, from the very beginning of their existence, had some sort of funding from U.S. intelligence."

Download Interview Transcript

Comment: See also:

Deprescribe the world! New study shows low-carb diets would save BILLIONS currently wasted on drugs. But will Big Pharma allow it?

Malcolm Kendrick
RT
Tue, 03 Nov 2020 20:25 UTC

The work of a British family doctor demonstrates that stopping eating carbohydrates helps with blood pressure, diabetes and weight loss - helping save lives during Covid-19. But the medical industry doesn't want you to know this.

If you want to avoid dying of Covid-19, one of the most important things you can do, if you are overweight, is to shed the pounds

A recent study by an international team of researchers using data from 399,000 patients found that people with obesity who contracted coronavirus were 113 percent more likely than people of healthy weight to end up in hospital, 74 percent more likely to be admitted to intensive care, and 48 percent more likely to die.

Why? Well, the 'why' centres around the damaging effect of raised blood glucose on endothelial cells and... it gets complicated.

Objective:Health - The Pharma Deluge: How Much Medication is Too Much?

Sott.net
Tue, 03 Nov 2020 00:00 UTC

Back in the good old days, people would generally take a medication, one at a time, when they were sick, and discontinue it when they were well. But we currently live in an age where it is relatively common for people, particularly the elderly, to be taking multiple medications, (often 10 or more) for years, if not a lifetime. This is known as polypharmacy: the concurrent use of multiple medications by a patient, and the problem is only growing.

In the US, 31% of older adults were taking 5 or more medications per year in 2006. Five years later, that number had increased to 36% . In a Swedish population study, 17% of adults were taking five or more drugs per day in 2006. This had increased to 19% in 2014.

To make matters worse, their are few to no studies actually looking at the effects of taking multiple drugs at a time - particularly in elderly patients. The fact is, no one knows what this is actually doing to us.

Join us on this episode of Objective:Health when we explore the question: Do we really need all these drugs?

And check us out on Brighteon and lbry.tv!

For other health-related news and more, you can find us on:

♥Twitter: https://twitter.com/objecthealth
♥Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/objecthealth/
♥Brighteon: https://www.brighteon.com/channel/objectivehealth

♥And you can check out all of our previous shows (pre YouTube) here.

Running Time: 00:31:48

Download: MP3 — 29.1 MB

T-cell study adds to debate over duration of COVID-19 immunity

Kate Kelland
Reuters
Mon, 02 Nov 2020 07:40 UTC

A small but key UK study has found that "cellular immunity" to the pandemic SARS-CoV-2 virus is present after six months in people who had mild or asymptomatic COVID-19 - suggesting they might have some level of protection for at least that time.

Scientists presenting the findings, from 100 non-hospitalised COVID-19 patients in Britain, said they were "reassuring" but did not mean people cannot in rare cases be infected twice with the disease.

"While our findings cause us to be cautiously optimistic about the strength and length of immunity generated after SARS-CoV-2 infection, this is just one piece of the puzzle," said Paul Moss, a professor of haematology at Britain's Birmingham University who co-led the study.

"There is still a lot for us learn before we have a full understanding of how immunity to COVID-19 works."

Experts not directly involved with the study said its findings were important and would add to a growing body of knowledge about potential protective immunity to COVID-19.

Comment: The study can be found here. See also:

The ten worst Covid decision-making failures

Prof Carl Heneghan & Tom Jefferson
The Spectator
Sun, 01 Nov 2020 08:00 UTC

Dealing with a pandemic requires a clear aim, planning, intelligence and supreme flexibility to react to the unknown. However, ever since reports broke in the West of a newly-identified virus in Wuhan in January, this has not been the case in Britain. The result? We have suffered a very high death toll, and substantial social and economic damage has been inflicted on our society. It did not need to be this way. Our Covid-19 outcome could have been very different if certain mistakes were not made. Here we list some of the major decision-making blunders made over the last eight months.

1. Lack of a clear aim

In March, Health Secretary Matt Hancock set out 'to protect the NHS by building it up and flattening the curve. And to protect life by safeguarding those who are most vulnerable.' As it became increasingly clear that the NHS wasn't overwhelmed, however, the aim became muddied.

A grown-up debate between suppression and control of the spread of Covid-19 has not been played out. Hancock considers suppressing Covid is the only way until the cavalry (a vaccine) arrives.

Comment: See also:

South Korea reports 83 deaths among people given flu jabs amid safety concerns

RT
Sat, 31 Oct 2020 00:00 UTC

South Korea has reported that 83 people have died after receiving flu shots, a week after Seoul said it would probe its mass vaccination program. The government continues to insist the deaths aren't linked to the jab.

The country's public health agency, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA), announced on Saturday that 83 people in total have died after participating in a free vaccination initiative billed as a way to offset potential complications from Covid-19.

Most of the deaths involved the elderly, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported, citing figures provided by the KDCA. Of the total number of fatalities, 37 people were in their 70s, followed by 34 people aged 80 or older. Four deaths involved people in their 60s, while eight individuals who passed away were under 60.

Comment: See also:

Are vaccines really 'safe and effective'?

J.B. Handley
jbhandleyblog.com
Thu, 29 Oct 2020 06:25 UTC

Men of science have made abundant mistakes of every kind; their knowledge has improved only because of their gradual abandonment of ancient errors, poor approximations, and premature conclusions.

— George Sarton, founder, History of Science Society

The message that vaccines are safe and effective made perfect sense to my wife Lisa and me. Our beautiful boys would be fully vaccinated. I'd been vaccinated, and my wife had been vaccinated. It was the easiest decision two parents could make. You even get to kill two birds with one stone: protect your babies from infectious disease and contribute to herd immunity, and so protect others. What was the risk of something bad happening from a vaccine? The number thrown around — and still in wide use today — was "one in a million."

Losing faith in my pediatrician and ultimately the entire medical establishment triggered a massive case of cognitive dissonance for me, as it does for so many parents who trusted their pediatricians with their children's lives. Could my pediatrician be leading me astray? Could these vaccines really be harming my son? Are those crazy parents actually right? It's an alienating, disturbing, troubling path that many autism parents must walk. In many cases the parents of children with autism were the most compliant when it came to mainstream medical care — our children typically received every vaccine and medical intervention recommended to us by our trusted doctors. We're not "anti-vaxxers"; we're mostly "ex-vaxxers," the compliant parents who learned the hard way.