Wuhan virus 2020

[Jimbuna]

Coronavirus deaths are rising in nearly two-thirds of American states as a winter surge pushes the overall toll toward 400,000

The Italian government faces a crunch Senate vote of confidence this morning, after ex-Prime Minister Matteo Renzi pulled his ministers out of the cabinet in a row over how to spend EU Covid funding. Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte was backed by MPs last night but needs opposition support to survive in the Senate and he’s appealed for stability in the grip of the pandemic.

Germany is set to extend its lockdown today and probably tighten it too, when Chancellor Angela Merkel holds a video meeting with 16 state premiers. One possible measure, brought in by Bavaria yesterday, is the use of FFP2 masks in shops and on public transport. They’re safer but more expensive – Austria is bringing them in later this month too.

French officials have said this morning that home-made fabric masks don’t offer the “necessary guarantees” in public – but Health Minister Olivier Véran says most industrially made masks do provide up to 80% filter protection.

Spain has recorded the highest number of weekend infections – 84,287 – and now has an infection rate of 689 cases per 100,000 people. Top health official Fernando Simón believes the peak of Spain’s third Covid wave has either already been reached or is very close.

Norway says no link has been established between the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and the deaths of 33 elderly people after vaccination. But it’s urged doctors to assess the health of those who are most frail before they are vaccinated.

India aims to inoculate 300 million people by the summer, with frontline and healthcare workers taking priority. While more than 450,000 people have been vaccinated against coronavirus since Saturday, it is far fewer than the government had been aiming for.

Rwanda has imposed a 15-day lock down on its capital, Kigali, as the country battles a second wave of coronavirus cases that has resulted in "unprecedented deaths and transmission rates".

[Rockstar]

The Lab-Leak Hypothesis

For decades, scientists have been hot-wiring viruses in hopes of preventing a pandemic, not causing one. But what if …?

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/arti...pe-theory.html

There is no direct evidence for these zoonotic possibilities, just as there is no direct evidence for an experimental mishap — no written confession, no incriminating notebook, no official accident report. Certainty craves detail, and detail requires an investigation. It has been a full year, 80 million people have been infected, and, surprisingly, no public investigation has taken place. We still know very little about the origins of this disease.

[Jimbuna]

Teachers and police officers could be given a Covid jab as a priority in the second phase of the UK's vaccination programme.

The committee that recommends who has the vaccine will consider prioritising those with "exposure risks"

The UK's inflation rate surged to 0.6% in December from 0.3% in November, new figures say.

That's despite Covid curbs that forced non-essential shops to shut in the run up to Christmas.

Chancellor Angela Merkel appeals to EU countries to agree common measures to curb infections, as she extends Germany's lockdown.

Some 1,610 deaths within 28 days of a positive Covid test were recorded in the UK on Tuesday - the biggest daily figure reported.

There have been more than 96 million cases of the virus worldwide and two million people have died, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

[Jimbuna]

Two hospital trusts are among the first in the UK to begin offering a 24-hour Covid vaccination programme. The University Hospitals of Birmingham and Nottinghamshire's Sherwood Forest Hospitals trusts have been chosen to pilot the round-the-clock jabs from Wednesday. Currently the standard opening time for vaccination centres is 08:00 to 20:00.

[Jimbuna]

German leaders have extended lockdown until 14 February at the earliest and surgical or higher protection masks will now be required in shops and public transport. Chancellor Angela Merkel has appealed to EU countries to agree common measures to stop the spread - or risk border controls coming in. “We can't have [infections] just coming because other countries are taking another route," she said.

The Dutch government is expected to announce the Netherlands’ first coronavirus curfew this lunchtime. The curfew is likely to start on Friday but the hours haven’t been confirmed – with reports of 20:00 or 20:30 being under consideration. Some mayors and political leaders are opposed to the plan.

A Belgian woman who went on a ski holiday in Switzerland over Christmas is being linked to an outbreak that has prompted 5,000 residents in the towns of Edegem and Kontich to have to self-isolate. Belgian reports say her daughter, who wasn’t on the trip, caught Covid and went to school, resulting in two schools being closed. However, only two other schoolchildren in Edegem have tested positive, so the local mayor says most families can now come out of quarantine.

French ski resorts will find out today if they can switch on their ski-lifts for the first time this season, but the news from Paris is not looking good. Infection rates are higher now than last month, with up to 23,608 cases reported on Tuesday. PM Jean Castex says there’s no chance of “putting economic issues ahead of health”.

Slovenian opposition MPs have withdrawn a vote of no confidence in PM Janez Jansa because a number of MPs are in quarantine, so they can’t take part in the vote.

The Mexican army is investigating the theft of Covid-19 vaccines from a hospital in Morelos state.

Zimbabwe's Foreign Minister Sibusiso Moyo has died after succumbing to Covid-19, the government says.

[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by Rockstar

The Lab-Leak Hypothesis

For decades, scientists have been hot-wiring viruses in hopes of preventing a pandemic, not causing one. But what if …?

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/arti...pe-theory.html

CONSPIRACY!

If one of the first thoughts that goes through the head of a lab director at the Wuhan Institute of Virology is that the new coronavirus could have come from her lab, then we are obliged to entertain the scientific possibility that it could indeed have come from her lab. Right then, there should have been a comprehensive, pockets-inside-out, fully public investigation of the Virology Institute, along with the other important virus labs in Wuhan, including the one close by the seafood market, headquarters of the Wuhan CDC. There should have been interviews with scientists, interviews with biosafety teams, close parsings of laboratory notebooks, freezer and plumbing and decontamination systems checks — everything. It didn’t happen. The Wuhan Institute of Virology closed down its databases of viral genomes, and the Chinese Ministry of Education sent out a directive: “Any paper that traces the origin of the virus must be strictly and tightly managed.”

Shi made some WeChat posts early in 2020. “The novel 2019 coronavirus is nature punishing the human race for keeping uncivilized living habits,” she wrote. “I, Shi Zhengli, swear on my life that it has nothing to do with our laboratory.” She advised those who believed rumors, and gave credence to unreliable scientific papers, to “shut their stinking mouths.”

Thanks, that was a very interesting article.

[Skybird]

Mostrly for German speaker,s but if you understand a bit of German and switch on the English auto-translation subtitles...



Another study from Heidelberg released in Decembre shows a general raised risk of dying from Covid if you are Vitamin-D deficient - and the number they found is that the risk is 15 times higher.



The speaker was chief physician for radiology at a municipal clinic, and as pensioner became a specialist in preventive medicine and a specialist in nutritional science. His foundation is for public information on health topics. he has written several books on the topic.

[Catfish]

Rejecting science and expertise, has become a reflection of "loyalty".

[Jimbuna]

[Jimbuna]

The UK is giving 200 vaccinations every minute, Health Secretary Matt Hancock says.

More than five million doses of the vaccine have been given to 4.6 million people, he says.

Glastonbury Festival is cancelled for a second year running due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

It is too early to say whether England's Covid restrictions will be able to end in the spring, UK PM Boris Johnson says.

Coronavirus infection levels may have risen at the start of the latest lockdown, scientists tracking the spread in England say.

Home Secretary Priti Patel will lead a Downing Street briefing at 17:00 GMT

Parents will be given two weeks' notice of return to schools in England, Education Secretary Gavin Williamson says.

Among newly-inaugurated US President Joe Bidens first executive orders are steps to tackle the coronavirus crisis.

EU leaders will meet via video later for a summit focusing on the vaccine rollout and how to contain the spread of new variants of Covid-19

There have been more than 96 million cases of the virus worldwide and two million people have died, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

[Jimbuna]

A further 1,290 deaths have been reported in the UK within 28 days of a positive Covid-19 test.
It means there have now been 94,580 deaths by that measure.
There have also been a further 37,892 cases, according to the Department for Health and Social Care.

A total of 4,973,248 people have now received a first Covid-19 vaccine dose in the UK, according to the latest government figures.
There have also been 464,036 second doses administered in the UK.

There's bad news for the French ski industry – as expected ski lifts will remain closed at the start of next month and the tourism minister says it’s highly unlikely they can reopen later on in February. At least a quarter of a million French jobs rely on the ski season and the government is working on economic support measures.

German health officials are seeing a lower trend in infections since Christmas. Although over 20,000 new infections have been reported in the past 24 hours, the Robert Koch institute says weekly incidence rates are now down to 119 infections per 100,000, the lowest since the start of November.

The mayor of Moscow, Sergei Sobyanin, is lifting some Covid restrictions from tomorrow, with city colleges and sport schools allowed to reopen and capacity at theatres and cinemas raised from a quarter to a half. Schools reopened last week and the mayor says more than 220,000 people in the capital have been vaccinated.

Swedish PM Stefan Lofven has extended a ban on alcohol sales in restaurants after 20:00 until 7 February and told bosses the most important thing they can do is to let staff work from home. Sweden has reported a slight fall in the number of Covid patients in intensive care to 327.

[Skybird]

200 shots every minute in the UK?

In the German federal state I live in, earlier this week 63 vaccination centres all were reported to be shut down. No vaccines.

There are some centres in Germany that had not ever been opened so far.

Another man who re-infected himself, died from the re-infection.

The Brazilian variant is started to be feared more than the British one, it could have a higher re-infection risk, if things go very bad: out-flanking vaccination efforts.

They still debate whether vaccination protects you as good as having suffered through the desease.

German media and claimed experts in them endlessly babble about surgical face masks and FFP2 masks as if these were things discovered just yesterday, and are new. I use these since early February last year - EARLY FEBRUARY LAST YEAR.

What the hell do some supersmart freaks get paid for, I wonder?? You were on the tpilet, you wahs your ahjn ds. You risk infection of respiration tracts, you wear masks. There is a pandemic, you check your immune system. These are nobrainers. Man expertts still behave like a child that stands in awe that there is light when it hits the wall button. It starts to become really hilarious. Head-chopped chicken running around.

First minister president of a federal state announced on the very day when Merkel announced they want to keep schools shut until February 14th that he wants to open schools early.

[Skybird]

Animals experiments have led virologists to believe that vaccinated persons nevertheless are infectous for others and do spread the desease.

Not good. If it now gets found in coming months that the vaccination protects against symptoms less efficiently than having suffered through an earlier cause of the desease, or that the protection time only lasts a few months, we then have something new to party about.

I stick to what I say since months: the most likely best strategy would be and is to boost and modulate the people's individual immune systems and their general effivciency. By healthier eating and food quality, and nutrient supplementation due to the low food quality in the modern Western world. And bettering living style, lowering stress and hectic (both have a significant effect on immune strength, as well as sleep has). Obviously, starting that with cluster bombing the population with Vit-D, is the first choice regarding Covid-19. Vit D pills should become the daily norm in elder caretaking facilities, schools and hospitals.

Heck, for present needs maybe even drinking water from the pipe should be drugged with it. In parts of america they still add, additionally to chlorine, flourine and bromine to it, although medically there is no excuse for this physical assault on people's health and it causes a lot of health issues. Iodine was added to bread and salt by nations decision to fight a "pandemic" of goiters and cretinism (that is mental retardation). How could Vit-D be a concern then to protect vulnerable people from Covid 19 and boost the general public's immune systems? Its at least as safe as adding chlorine to pipe water (and difrerent to Vit-D, consuming chlorine this way has only the practical purpose of keeping the water germ-free, but it backfires on our health for sure, I mean we drink desinfectant there, in principle, and the only halogen that is healthy and needed for the human body, is iodine).

[Skybird]

Scientists are increasingly worried by observations of accelerations of so-called escape mutations. These are mutations resulting from increasing levels of herd immunity, Brazil and South Africa are exmaples. In net effect they reduce the virus' vulnerability to existing immunity-providing anti-bodies that it has already met, may it be from individual immmune reactions, may it be from used vaccines.


It is so far taken as a sign for that indeed a high frequency in adapting vaccines to ever new forms of the virus will be needed, like with the common seasonal flu, just possibly more speed and variation in it (means: worse than common flu vaccination adaptations).

The number of repoirts on people who got reinfected a second time, is slowly growing, also supporting the above theory.

We probably will need to adapt to the idea that with just one double-shot vaccinatioin it will not be done, but those of us wanting to go with vaccination will need to redo it every 6-12 months or so.

Boost/modulate your immune systems, guys. Take those pills. Its your best card, probably, seocnd only to not meeting the virus in the first.

[Jimbuna]

UK Summary

People vaccinated up to and including 20 January 2021
First dose: 4,973,248

Second dose (fully vaccinated): 464,036

Estimated R number 1.2 to 1.3 with a daily infection growth rate range of +2% to +5% as of 15 January 2021.