737 replies to this topic

[Victoria Watcher]

Looks like these monkeys took the glory hole advice to heart.

 

 

 

 

https://www.cnn.com/...-hnk/index.html

 

 

 

 

 

 

Japanese zookeepers believe they have solved the mystery of how a gibbon became pregnant despite living alone in her cage.

 

Momo, a 12-year-old white-handed gibbon, shocked her keepers at the Kujukushima Zoo and Botanical Garden in Nagasaki in February 2021 when she gave birth despite having no known male companionship.

 

Now two years later, following a DNA test on her baby, the zoo has worked out who the father is – and even has a theory about how the gibbons mated.

 

The test showed the father to be Itō, a 34-year-old agile gibbon, who was in an adjacent enclosure to Momo around the time she became pregnant.

 

The zoo told CNN on Friday it believed that Momo and Itō had managed to mate through a small hole in a steel plate between their enclosures. The hole measured about 9 millimeters (0.3 inch) in diameter.

 

The baby ape – who is yet to be named – now weighs around 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds) and is “growing healthily” under Momo’s loving attention, the zoo said.

 

“It is a precious life born into the world, we will continue to take good care of him and hope that he will live a healthy long life,” said Hideki Hisano, deputy director of the zoo.

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 12 February 2023 - 08:30 AM.

[Victoria Watcher]

Immunity acquired from a Covid infection is as protective as vaccination against severe illness and death, study finds

 

The immunity generated from an infection was found to be “at least as high, if not higher” than that provided by two doses of an mRNA vaccine.

 

https://www.nbcnews....lness-rcna71027

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 17 February 2023 - 07:37 AM.

[amor de cosmos]

Bigtree falsely claimed governments and health departments had killed people with overdoses of hydroxychloroquine “so they could say it doesn’t work,” and told the crowd, “I am going to take that to a court of law.” He also swore never to forgive the media for their role in the pandemic. “New York Times, CNN, MSNBC,” he cried, “The blood is on your hands! We will never forget that you did that.” 
 
While the rhetoric was overheated, even for Bigtree, it’s also an indicator of the moment we’re in. As COVID cases continue to gradually decline, and with the U.S. government declaring it will end the formal public health emergency on May 11, the pandemic is, in the view of many people, receding into the rearview mirror. (This despite the fact that the disease continues to kill many people every day, especially endangering the elderly and becoming a leading cause of death for children.)
 
And major anti-vaccine figures are now seizing their chance to enact what they see as justice—and do a little fundraising and image-burnishing in the process.  Besides Bigtree’s nonspecific legal threats, we have Children’s Health Defense, the most moneyed and influential anti-vaccine organization in the U.S., led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. CHD is often involved in strange and frequently doomed litigation, but recently, and with much fanfare, it launched a new one: an antitrust lawsuit against major news organizations and social media outlets, which they accused of conspiring to “collectively censor online news” about COVID. The defendants included frequent anti-vax targets like the Washington Post and the BBC, and the plaintiffs are a veritable who’s who of people making bogus health claims, including CHD itself; Ty and Charlene Bollinger, who run websites and sell products devoted to making bogus claims about cancer and vaccines; Jim Hoft, who founded right-wing news site Gateway Pundit, and Joseph Mercola, a longtime figure in the natural health world who’s also been a major funder of the anti-vax movement. The lawsuit made quite a bit of noise in conservative media and the anti-vaccine world—and it allowed CHD to continue asking for donations for its general litigation fund.
 
*snip*
 
Anti-vaxxers worldwide have also falsely claimed that Pfizer vaccines have been banned in Thailand after Princess Bajrakitiyabha of the Thai royal family “fell into a coma” after a booster shot, as many social media posts have claimed. Thailand’s Department of Disease control called this “fake news” in a Facebook post, and asked citizens not to share it. (The princess collapsed in December due to what the palace said was a bacterial infection, not a booster shot; updates on her current condition  haven’t been made public, but the palace said in a previous statement she’d also had a brain aneurysm.) Anti-vaccine figures on places like Telegram have nonetheless claimed that Thailand is “convening war crimes tribunals” against Pfizer, which is not how anything works. 
 
In all, this rash of grandiose legal threats, doomed lawsuits and excitable rumors of foreign prosecutions has a lot in common with the basic shape of QAnon beliefs. It promises that justice will be served, evildoers will be dragged into the light and prosecuted, and those who doubted “the COVID narrative” will be vindicated. (Elsewhere, the former light of QAnon’s hopes and dreams, Donald Trump, has declared he will bring back public executions if he’s elected president again.) 
 
More than anything, the people making money in the anti-vaccine world need to keep their audience’s hope, and their attention, as long as they possibly can. The false promises are yet another way to keep them in their seats.

https://www.vice.com...d-legal-revenge

[amor de cosmos]

Immunity acquired from a Covid infection is as protective as vaccination against severe illness and death, study finds

*sigh* ...a few paragraphs into the article:
 

Still, experts stress that vaccination is the preferable route to immunity, given the risks of Covid, particularly in unvaccinated people.
 
“The problem of saying ‘I’m gonna get infected to get immunity’ is you might be one of those people that end up in the hospital or die,” Murray said. “Why would you take the risk when you can get immunity through vaccination quite safely?”

[max.bravo]

With billions$$ already invested in vaccines, of course there’s no incentive to prefer them…

[Victoria Watcher]

“If not higher” the report says.


The immunity generated from an infection was found to be “at least as high, if not higher” than that provided by two doses of an mRNA vaccine.



Just like healthy young people should not get the flu shot. They should not get the Covid vaccines.

[Nparker]

...Just like healthy young people should not get the flu shot. They should not get the Covid vaccines.

They certainly shouldn't be forced or coerced into getting any shots.

[sebberry]

“If not higher” the report says.


The immunity generated from an infection was found to be “at least as high, if not higher” than that provided by two doses of an mRNA vaccine.

 

Are you just trying to distract from the Emergency Act Inquiry that didn't end up taking the side of the truckers?

 

The risk of death and long term complications from a COVID infection is substantially higher than the vaccine.  But go ahead and keep peddling the natural immunity approach.

[sebberry]

“If not higher” the report says.


The immunity generated from an infection was found to be “at least as high, if not higher” than that provided by two doses of an mRNA vaccine.



Just like healthy young people should not get the flu shot. They should not get the Covid vaccines.

 

https://www.cidrap.u...abnormalities-2

 

COVID's aftermath: Persistent organ damage at 1 year, lung abnormalities at 2

[LJ]

Are you just trying to distract from the Emergency Act Inquiry that didn't end up taking the side of the truckers?

 

 

Decision given by a judge who has been a lifelong liberal and has worked on liberal election campaigns.

[amor de cosmos]

An epidemic outbreak of Marburg virus in Equatorial Guinea, Central Africa, was confirmed this week, the first time the virus has occurred there. At least 16 cases have been detected, and nine deaths.

 

There are no approved treatments for Marburg virus, which is closely related to Ebola virus, but vaccines are in development. Following an unprecedented Ebola epidemic in West Africa in 2014 that caused more than 28,000 cases and 11,000 deaths, drugs and vaccines against Ebola were developed.

 

*snip*

 

While researchers will trial Marburg vaccines currently in development against this epidemic, non-phamaceutical measures are the best hope for controlling the epidemic rapidly. That means excellent surveillance and case detection, finding and isolating sick people, tracing their contacts, and quarantine of contacts to prevent transmission.

 

The infrastructure and planning for this can be substantial, including physical sites for isolation and quarantine. During the Ebola epidemic in Nigeria, a rapid and effective response included use of an abandoned building to isolate and treat patients rather than risk further hospital outbreaks.

 

The importance of identifying and isolating cases was seen in West Africa in 2014, where lack of hospital beds resulted in people dying in the street and worsening spread. One study found if 70% or more of infected people were isolated in a hospital bed, the epidemic could have been controlled without any drugs or vaccines. However it was very late in the epidemic when field hospitals were erected to overcome hospital bed shortages.

 

Use of personal protective equipment is also crucial, especially for health workers who are at increased risk of filovirus infections. Disinfection and safe disposal of biological waste is also important. Funerals where washing of the body is a cultural practice can also spread infection.

 

Health promotion and effective, culturally appropriate communication is needed to ensure compliance with health measures. During the Ebola epidemic in 2014, a team of people trying to raise awareness about Ebola were killed by locals who were fearful of the epidemic and mistrusting of foreigners. These lessons must be heeded if the Marburg epidemic grows.

https://theconversat...-worried-200082

[Victoria Watcher]

https://www.nytimes....dates-work.html

 

[Mike K.]

Good thing we forced people out of their garages and into public bars for human contact, in the name of safety.

[sebberry]

https://www.nytimes....dates-work.html

 

screenshot-www.nytimes.com-2023.02.23-11_45_40.png

 

 

[sebberry]

https://www.wsws.org...3/2e51-f23.html

 

Stephens bases his conclusions on a poorly researched meta-analysis from the British-based Cochrane Library, as well as an interview with its lead author, Oxford epidemiologist Tom Jefferson, in which Jefferson voices false positions on the science of airborne transmission of the coronavirus.

Stephens emphatically asserts that masking in general and mask mandates in particular have had zero efficacy in reducing the spread of COVID-19 and other respiratory illnesses, writing, “When it comes to the population-level benefits of masking, the verdict is in: Mask mandates were a bust. Those skeptics who were furiously mocked as cranks and occasionally censored as ‘misinformers’ for opposing mandates were right.”

[...]

In his op-ed, Stephens fails to explain that the Cochrane meta-analysis warned that “the high risk of bias in the trial, variation in outcome measurement, and relatively low adherence with the interventions during the studies hampered drawing firm conclusions.”

[...]

[sebberry]

What are they worried about?  It's only the flu...

https://www.theguard...ter-girls-death

 

The discovery of two cases of bird flu within the same family in Cambodia has highlighted the concern over potential human-to-human spread of the virus, although experts have stressed the risk remains low.

On Thursday, Cambodian authorities reported an 11-year-old girl from Prey Veng province had died from H5N1, with subsequent testing of 12 of her contacts revealing that her father also had the virus.

[...]

[todd]

Syphilis cases on the rise across the province, warns B.C. Centre for Disease Control

“..Infectious syphilis cases have been increasing since 2010. However, the number of infectious syphilis cases have increased more dramatically in the past two years, doubling from about 1,000 cases in 2019 and 2020 each to nearly 2,000 cases in 2022...”: https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.6750090

[Nparker]

Mandatory chastity belts and **** cages.

[sebberry]

Mandatory chastity belts and **** cages.

 

 

You're just making the point for masks and distancing to curtail covid transmission... 

[Victoria Watcher]

Whatever happened to MonkeyPox?