Viruses & Vaccines
CHICAGO, April 25 (Reuters) – Colombia has restricted the import of beef and beef products coming from U.S. states where dairy cows have tested positive for avian influenza as of April 15, according the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
It is the first country to officially limit trade in beef due to bird flu in cows, in a sign of a broadening economic impact of the virus that has restricted poultry trade globally. Colombia imports a small amount of beef from the U.S. annually, according to government data and market analysts.
In a notice, opens new tab this week on the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service website, which was last updated on April 22, the agency said the ban includes beef products derived from cattle slaughtered in Idaho, Kansas, Michigan, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, South Dakota and Texas.
Colombia imposed temporary restrictions on raw bovine meat products, the notice said. If exporters have a valid import permit, shipments may still be held at the port.
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Read MoreMaine’s highest court has ruled a state board overseeing emergency medical service workers had the authority to impose a COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
That decision from the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, released Thursday, upheld a Superior Court judge’s decision to dismiss a lawsuit brought against the Maine EMS Board.
A group of EMS workers had sued the board claiming it lacked the authority to impose a mandate requiring COVID-19 and influenza vaccines.
The EMS board issued a rule requiring most workers it oversees to be vaccinated against COVID-19 in August 2021. Nearly 97 percent of the state’s EMS workers were vaccinated against COVID-19 before the deadline on Oct. 15, 2021.
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Read MoreFor years, researchers have been working on vaccines that aim to prevent viral infections by strengthening immune defenses at viruses’ doorway to the body: the nose.
A small study recently published in PNAS presents a similar, if lower-tech, idea. Coating the inside of the nose with the over-the-counter antibiotic ointment Neosporin seems to trigger an immune response that may help the body repel respiratory viruses like those that cause COVID-19 and the flu, the study suggests.
The research raises the idea that Neosporin could serve as an “extra layer” of protection against respiratory illnesses, on top of existing tools like vaccines and masks, says study co-author Akiko Iwasaki, an immunobiologist at the Yale School of Medicine and one of the U.S.’ leading nasal vaccine researchers.
The study builds upon some of Iwasaki’s prior research—which has shown that similar antibiotics can trigger potentially protective immune changes in the body—but it’s still preliminary, she cautions. For the new study, her team had 12 people apply Neosporin inside their nostrils twice a day for a week, while another seven people used Vaseline for comparison. At several points during the study, the researchers swabbed the participants’ noses and ran PCR tests to see what was going on inside.
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Read MoreThe overuse of antibiotics could have exacerbated the spread of antimicrobial resistance, according to the World Health Organization.
The World Health Organization on Friday reported “extensive” overuse of antibiotics during the COVID-19 pandemic that could have increased the spread of antimicrobial resistance.
The organization found that only 8% of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 needed antibiotics for bacterial co-infections. However, about 75% of patients were treated with antibiotics. The highest rate of use was among people with severe or critical COVID-19 at 81% on average.
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Read MoreBiotech company Acuitas Therapeutics and Germany-based CureVac (5CV.DE) have settled Acuitas’ lawsuit demanding credit for inventions related to COVID-19 vaccines, according to a filing on Thursday in Virginia federal court.
Acuitas sued CureVac last year in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, claiming its scientists should have been named as co-inventors of CureVac patents covering technology used in messenger RNA (mRNA)-based shots. CureVac told the court on Thursday, opens new tab that they had settled their dispute and will ask to dismiss the case.
Representatives for Acuitas and CureVac did not immediately respond to requests for comment and for more information about the settlement.
Canada-based Acuitas said in the lawsuit, filed last November, that CureVac omitted Acuitas scientists from its patent applications after they collaborated to develop lipid nanoparticle mRNA-delivery technology during the COVID-19 pandemic.
CureVac denied the allegations in a February court filing.
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Read MoreAUTISM rates have escalated from 1 in 10,000 in the 1970s to 1 in 36 today, according to 2024 figures released by the US public health agency Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). As you might expect with such a worrying statistic, the CDC acted promptly and decisively: they renamed April’s ‘Autism Awareness Month’ and are now calling it ‘Autism Acceptance Month’.
This has rightly riled the non-governmental organisation (NGO) Children’s Health Defence (CHD), a campaign group founded in 2016 by a group of concerned parents and chaired by independent presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jnr. CHD said that ‘acceptance’ should be replaced with ‘unacceptable’.
But worse, the horrific increase might have been halted if the government had acted when the vaccine-autism link was first made but they did not. CHD say they have uncovered an alleged fraud used to dismiss the vaccine-autism link and filed a motion on National Autism Day, April 2, to compel the government to release the facts.
The case emerged because paediatric neurologist Dr Andrew Zimmerman, who originally served as an expert medical witness for the government in vaccine injury cases, has signed an affidavit saying that there are ‘exceptions in which vaccinations could cause autism’.
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Read MoreThis is the last of three articles about last Thursday’s Commons debate on excess deaths which was called by Andrew Bridgen MP. You can read the first part here and the second here.
WHO, I wonder, had heard of the Scottish MP Dr Neale Hanvey, or the Alba Party which he leads, before last Thursday’s Commons debate on excess deaths?
Yet his was probably the most remarkable of the speeches that afternoon. He not only laid a very serious charge against the MHRA (‘I can think of no greater betrayal of the MHRA’s clinical governance responsibility’ in relation to the huge numbers of Yellow Card reported adverse events and fatalities) but cited TCW’s Angus Dalgleish’s article and evidence calling for mRNA vaccines to be banned. He also reported extensive research evidence that points to serious vaccine health risks.
He opened his speech by drawing a parallel with the Cass Review, how ‘those of us who spoke up at that time suffered both political and public pile-ons that were very uncomfortable’ but on which he had been vindicated. There was a lesson in this.
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Read MoreIN THE words of Gandhi, first they ignore you; then they ridicule you; then they attack you; and finally, you win. But this can be a laborious process, and ultimate triumph over an authoritarian regime may be hard to foresee. Mainstream media keep approved narratives at the forefront, censoring and suppressing critical perspectives or inconvenient truths.
However during the covid debacle various means of bypassing state and corporate censorship have emerged. ‘A Stand in the Park’, open gatherings of ordinary people in their local park to stand for freedom, was one of the first and has spread across the country. ‘Yellow Boards’ were displayed on busy roundabouts. Stickers proliferated on lampposts. The Light, a free newspaper funded and distributed by volunteers, and independent websites such as TCW have played an important role in confronting propaganda and getting an ‘alternative’ analysis and commentary out there.
In some areas the awakening movement has been particularly effective: Totnes in Devon, Stroud in Gloucestershire, Hull, the Sussex coast (excluding woke Brighton) and Cornwall, among others. London, sadly, is relatively asleep. Those huge rallies against lockdown were largely attended by people who had travelled in by train or bus. Only in certain suburbs was there an appreciable resistance. One of these was Carshalton, where I had lived since 1994.
On January 4 2021, after the government, police and judiciary quashed protests, six of us arranged to meet on Carshalton High Street. This was against the rules at the time, and we felt nervous whenever a police car passed. Steadfastly, we met there every Thursday for at least an hour, our number soon reaching double figures. In March a pharmacy next to our meeting place opened for Covid-19 vaccinations, and sometimes we exchanged derisory comments with people in the queue (‘nutters’ from them, bleating noises in retort).
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Read MoreThe U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) detected a safety signal for seizures in young children following mRNA COVID-19 vaccination, according to a study published Wednesday in JAMA Network Open.
Several days before the FDA reported the safety signal for seizures in young children, the CDC released a new study showing the protection offered by the vaccine against severe illness and hospitalization in children plummeted quickly after vaccination.
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Read More‘I Knew They Were Killing People’: Whistleblower Says COVID Hospital Protocols Led to Patient Deaths
“Hospitals became the place where people go to die instead of the place where people go to get better,” said Zowe (not her real name), a medical coder who worked for several Phoenix, Arizona, hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In an emotional testimonial with Polly Tommey on Children’s Health Defense’s (CHD) “Vax-Unvax” bus earlier this month in Salem, Oregon, the whistleblower exposed the practices and protocols that she believes led to patient deaths.
As a medical coder, Zowe’s job was to review patient records and assign codes for diagnoses and treatments. The codes determined how hospitals and physicians were paid.
“I call it the central intelligence of the hospital or the SimCity level view,” she said.
But Zowe said what she witnessed during the pandemic left her distraught and compelled her to speak out.
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