Health & Wellness
Using data from the Department of Health Improvement and Disparities (DHID) website I've compared the expected number of deaths from the end of March to the end of September 2020, with the registered number of deaths for the commensurate 28 weeks in 2023.
The data cover 14 causes of death. In Figure 1 you can see that the increase in deaths from heart failure at 26% leads the field, but it's closely followed by cirrhosis and other liver diseases at 22% and diabetes deaths at 19%.
They found eight novel viruses, including one belonging to the same family as Covid
Researchers tasked with preparing the world for future pandemic took almost 700 samples from rodents living in Hainan, just off China's southern coast.
Eight novel viruses — including one belonging to the same family as Covid — were uncovered in the project, funded by the Chinese Government.
Experts said the discovered pathogens had a 'high probability' of infecting humans should they ever cross the species barrier.
Comment: However, as it is, they've not crossed the species barrier and so are not currently considered a threat.
As a result, they called for further experiments on the viruses to determine exactly what their effects on humans could be.
Comment: Viruses, like insects and even larger creatures, are being discovered all the time, and viruses have even been shown to come to our planet from space. However if history is anything to go by, it seems that perhaps one of the greatest viral threats to humanity is a virus that we've encountered before, that which is associated with the bubonic plague. Although it's possible that recombination with another virus may prove critical to its success. Furthermore, it seems that these outbreaks usually occurred alongside Earth Changes, societal breakdown, and famine, which likely facilitated their spread. And in our own time, with the rapidly deteriorating health of the world's population, caused by everything from the experimental covid injections, as well as nutritional deficiencies caused by inflation, the adulteration of the food supply, and food shortages:
- Book Review: New Light on the Black Death by Mike Baillie
- Viruses from space & evolution: Dr. Wickramasinghe explains it all in new video
© iStock
Culex Mosquito Parasite Insect Macro
Culex Mosquito Parasite Insect Macro
This is the first locally acquired case of dengue virus in California that is not associated with travel, according to Manuel Carmona, the city of Pasadena's acting director of Public Health. It is "instead an extremely rare case of local transmission in the continental United States," and is spread by infected mosquito bites, Carmona said.
"The Pasadena Public Health Department is conducting surveillance, and field teams have visited a Pasadena neighborhood to offer information for preventing mosquito breeding around their homes and preventing bites," he said.
Based on years of surveillance and testing, Carmona said that this is "likely" an isolated incident, but the Pasadena Health Department has taken steps to ensure that it doesn't spread.
"The San Gabriel Valley Mosquito and Vector Control District has deployed traps to assess the mosquito population and, importantly, testing to date has not identified any Dengue infected mosquitos. Testing of mosquitos from additional traps will continue over the next few weeks. There is a very low risk of additional dengue exposure in the city."
© Adobestock
Much of the modern food system has been shaped by big agribusiness concerns like Monsanto (now Bayer) and Cargill, giant food companies like Nestle, Pepsico and Kellog's and, more recently, institutional investors like BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street.
For the likes of BlackRock, which invests in both food and pharma, fuelling a system increasingly based on ultra processed food (UPF) with its cheap and unhealthy ingredients is a sure-fire money spinner.
© Copyright africanews Denis Farrell/Copyright 2017 The AP.
Kano state, located in the northern region, has become the epicenter of this health crisis, bearing the brunt of the outbreak with over 500 recorded fatalities. However, there is a glimmer of hope as the number of active cases has recently declined.
Diphtheria is a highly contagious disease that primarily affects the nose and throat and can also lead to skin ulcers. It spreads through coughs, sneezes, and close contact with infected individuals, with severe cases often proving fatal.
© jorgeantonio / Getty
Americans born in 2019 can expect to spend nearly half their lives taking prescription drugs, according to a new study conducted by Jessica Ho, associate professor of sociology and demography at Penn State.
Americans born in 2019 can expect to spend nearly half their lives taking prescription drugs, according to a new study conducted by Jessica Ho, associate professor of sociology and demography at Penn State.
Ho reported her findings this week (Oct. 1) in the journal Demography.
"As an American, I'd like to know what medications I'm putting in my body and how long I can expect to take them," said Ho, who is also an associate of Penn State's Social Science Research Institute. "The years that people can expect to spend taking prescription drugs are now higher than they might spend in their first marriage, getting an education or being in the labor force. It's important to recognize the central role that prescription drug use has taken on in our lives."
Ho used nationally representative surveys conducted by Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from 1996 through 2019 to study prescription drug use across the United States. The surveys include information from approximately 15,000 households chosen annually and collect information every five months, offering better recall than surveys taken once a year. In addition, nearly 70% of survey respondents allow the AHRQ and CDC to verify their prescriptions with their pharmacies, affording the surveys higher levels of accuracy.
The researcher then used mortality data from the National Center for Health Statistics and the Human Mortality Database to estimate how long Americans born in 2019 could expect to live. She then combined this information with the survey data to estimate the percent of their lifetimes they could expect to spend taking prescription medications.
© mayoclinic.org
Cardiovascular risks rise for transgender individuals
Cardiovascular risks rise for transgender individuals
Trans women taking hormones are up to 95 per cent more likely to suffer heart disease. In a new study, researchers found that trans women - people born male who identify as women - taking gender-affirming hormones are almost twice as likely to suffer from any cardiovascular disease as men. The new data is published in the European Journal of Endocrinology.
The study revealed that all transgender people regardless of the sex they were born or the gender they were transitioning to, were at "significantly increased risk" from deadly conditions like heart attacks, strokes, high blood pressure and high blood fat and cholesterol levels.
The experts looked at the health of 2,671 transgender people from Denmark over a five-year period with an average age of 22 and 26 for trans men and women respectively. They compared the incidence of cardiovascular disease with a control group of 26,700 people and presented the results to the European Association for the Study of Diabetes.
People who were "assigned male at birth" and taking oestrogen as a trans woman, were 93 per cent more likely to suffer from cardiovascular disease than men and 73 per cent more likely than women. The incidence rate was around three per cent for trans women, up from around 1.5 per cent for men and 1.7 per cent for women.
Higher risk of type 2 diabetes
Trans men, who were "assigned female at birth", but were taking testosterone were 63 per cent more likely to have some form of heart disease than women, and more than double as likely than men.
A new scientific study by Nakahara et al. tested Covid-vaccinated people to see if they have "silent" changes in heart muscle function that standard radiology tests could detect. The study shows very unsettling results.
Scientists measured myocardial 18Fluorine-fluorodeoxyglucose (18F-FDG) uptake. F-FDG has molecular similarity to glucose. However, 18F-FDG does not metabolise like glucose. Therefore, PET scans could detect it, and its presence shows the heart muscle's abnormally high demand for glucose, indicative of abnormal cardiac function. More about it here.
© T. Nakahara, Y. Iwabuchi, et al
Before I go on, a bit of background. Most development trials in any sector use a product made using small-scale manufacturing facilities or a lab. You don't want to invest in mass production (new machines and tooling and maybe a new factory) until you've got confidence in the design. On the other hand, scaling up production creates new risks. It's a huge subject but to keep it simple just imagine scaling up from making a dozen cup cakes in your kitchen to producing thousands to sell in the shops. You'd encounter massive problems obtaining, measuring and mixing the large amounts of ingredients.
They might have to come from multiple sources and you'd have to assure yourself they were equivalent. Mixing large amounts homogeneously in large vats is harder than in a pudding bowl and cooking them in your kitchen oven. You might have to change the actual production process and even add or substitute new ingredients. There's a high risk that you'll end up with 'different' cup cakes. So unless you compare test results from the first full production batch with the results from the cup cakes you made in your kitchen, you are flying blind.
Comment: See also:
- Blame game begins as MHRA passes the buck: "All the Covid vaccine authorisation decisions were taken by the government minister"
- 'Urgent' British report calls for complete cessation of COVID vaccines in humans
- MHRA admits that it missed Covid vaccine safety signals
- Time for doctors and politicians to stop ignoring the devastating data on vaccines and change course
- Vaccine watchdog won't admit the Covid-19 jabs cause period irregularities despite 4K women reporting problems
- "Open a Public Inquiry into Covid-19 Vaccine Safety": A response to the UK government's response
- The Covid vaccines may affect periods. Are we allowed to talk about this?
Comment: See also: