Category: Corona Virus

Four years ago, everyday life took a significant turn.

This weekend marks four years since the start of the Bay Areas COVID-19 shelter-in-place order, one of the strictest measures in response to COVID-19 in the continental United States.

Since the start of the pandemic, 7 million people died worldwide. In the U.S., 1 million people died.

Some businesses shuttered, some bounced back and others are still using the lessons learned.

The World Health Organization ended the COVID-19 emergency last May.

More here:

Marking 4 years since COVID-19 shut down the Bay Area - NBC Bay Area

Due to coronavirus concerns and confined to staying at home, Sarah Rightmire of North Tustin, smiles as she gets a virtual hug from her doctor, Diane Nugent, MD, of the Center for Inherited Blood Disorders in Orange during a telehealth appointment on Friday, March 20, 2020. Also attending the meeting at the table are, Cheri Sawyers, RN, and Crystal Tang, scribe. (Photo by Mark Rightmire, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Even horrible events sometimes bring good things.

COVID-19 killed at least 3 million people worldwide, reported the World Health Organization. I contracted it myself three times. The first was quite bad, the others like a medium cold. A friend ended up in the ICU for a week.

Yet here are four good developments to come from the coronavirus pandemic.Our American system of liberties was tested, and held firm.

In Jan. 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court threw out President Bidens mandate for 84 million American workers to get a COVID-19 vaccine. The court ruled on technical grounds the Occupational Safety and Health Administration exceeded the authority given it by Congress.

I should point out that, although I didnt get the COVID vax because I thought it was developed too quickly, I am not an anti-vaxxer, and in recent years have been jabbed for shingles, pneumonia, the flu and Hepatitis-B.

But I have Canadian friends who were forced to get the COVID vax to keep their jobs. Thats no freedom. For Americans, COVID was a freedom test we passed.

2. Telehealth reforms advanced. Formerly called telemedicine, the federal governments own website, telehealth.hhs.gov, lists some of the post-COVID changes, such as, There are no geographic restrictions for originating site for behavioral/mental telehealth services.

In California, on April 3, 2020, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued Executive Order N-43-20, which relaxed regulations on the use of telehealth services to engage in the provision of medical, surgical, or other health care services, as well as for mental health.

Unfortunately, it didnt last. In January this year, the Los Angeles-based Reason Foundation released its 3rd Annual State Policy Agenda of Telehealth Innovation. California scored improvements needed in most areas. The best area was allowing telehealth by any mode; the worst was maintaining barriers to telehealth across state lines.

Co-author Vittorio Nastasi told me, In 2023, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 1369, allowing cross-state telehealth services under very limited circumstances. This was a good step, but other states like Florida have gone much further.

3. The economy survived a strong shock. Four years ago, federal and state policies shut down almost the entire U.S. economy, with most of the world following. The price of a barrel of oil fell below $0. On April 14, 2020 the International Monetary Fund branded it the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s. It warned, April World Economic Outlook projects global growth in 2020 to fall to -3 percent. President Trump and Congress spent $4 trillion on keeping the economy afloat all of it borrowed money were still paying for.

But as soon as the shutdowns lifted, the economy came roaring back. Why? As horrible as COVID was, it wasnt the Black Death of 1346-1353, which killed one-third to two-thirds of Europeans, depending on locality.

U.S. taxes remained relatively low. No vast new regulations were imposed. Industries werent socialized on the Soviet model. Although Trump got some new tariffs passed before the pandemic hit, they werent very high. Americas capitalist system quickly adapted to the new realities. Thats what markets do. It was another stress test America passed fairly well.

4. School choice advanced. Libertarians like me writing on education have long criticized the dumbing down and radicalization of public-school curriculums caused by the power teachers unions. With their kids at home taking classes online, many parents were shocked at what they saw.

School choice also thrived. Future Ed recently tallied just four new private-school scholarship programs among the states in 2018-20, but 20 from 2021-23. None was in California. Yet here, too, parents want choice, not teacher-union dictates.

In sum, COVID was a terrible time. But we Americans made the best of it. Its too bad California, supposedly the center of global innovation, continues to lag in many areas.

John Seiler is on the SCNG Editorial Board and blogs at johnseiler.substack.com

Read the original here:

Four good things that came from the awful coronavirus pandemic - OCRegister

The US government (USG) funded and supported a program of dangerous laboratory research that may have resulted in the creation and accidental laboratory release of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that caused the Covid-19 pandemic. Following the outbreak, the USG lied in order to cover up its possible role. The US Government should correct the lies, find the facts, and make amends with the rest of the world.

A group of intrepid truth-seekersjournalists, scientists, whistleblowershave uncovered a vast amount of information pointing to the likely laboratory origin of SARS-CoV-2. Most important has been the intrepid work of the The Intercept and US Right to Know (USRTK), especially investigative reporter Emily Kopp at USRTK.

Based on this investigative work, the Republican-led House Committee on Oversight and Accountability is now carrying out an important investigation in a Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. In the Senate, the leading voice for transparency, honesty, and reason in investigating the origin of SARS-Cov-2 has been Republican Senator Rand Paul.

The evidence of a possible laboratory creation revolves around a multi-year US-led research program that involved US and Chinese scientists. The research was designed by US scientists, funded mainly by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Department of Defense, and administered by a US organization, the EcoHealth Alliance (EHA), with much of the work taking place at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).

The US owes the full truth, and perhaps ample financial compensation, to the rest of the world, depending on what the facts ultimately reveal.

Here are facts that we know as of today.

First, the NIH became the home for biodefense research starting in 2001. In other words, the NIH became a research arm of the military and intelligence communities. Biodefense funding from the Defense Department budget went to Dr. Anthony Faucis division, the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

Second, NIAID and DARPA (in the Defense Department) supported extensive research on potential pathogens for biowarfare and biodefense, and for the design of vaccines to protect against biowarfare or accidental laboratory releases of natural or manipulated pathogens. Some of the work was carried out at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories of the NIH, which manipulated and tested viruses using its in-house bat colony.

Third, NIAID became a large-scale financial supporter of Gain of Function (GoF) research, meaning laboratory experiments designed to genetically alter pathogens to make them even more pathogenic, such as viruses that are easier to transmit and/or more likely to kill infected individuals. This kind of research is inherently dangerous, both because it aims to create more dangerous pathogens and because those new pathogens can escape from the laboratory, either accidentally or deliberately (e.g., as an act of biowarfare or terrorism).

Fourth, many leading US scientists opposed GoF research. One of the leading opponents inside the government was Dr. Robert Redfield, an Army virologist who would later be the Director of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) at the start of the pandemic. Redfield suspected from the start that the pandemic resulted from NIH-supported research, but says that he was sidelined by Fauci.

Fifth, because of the very high risks associated with GoF research, the US Government added additional biosafety regulations in 2017. GoF research would have to be carried out in highly secure laboratories, meaning at Biosafety Level 3 (BSL-3) or Biosafety Level 4 (BSL-4). Work in a BSL-3 or 4 facility is more expensive and time-consuming than work in a BSL-2 facility because of the added controls against an escape of the pathogen from the facility.

Sixth, one NIH-backed research group, EcoHealth Alliance (EHA), proposed to move some of its GoF research to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). In 2017, EHA submitted a proposal to the US Governments Defense Advanced Research Projects (DARPA) for GoF work at WIV. The proposal, named DEFUSE, was a veritable cookbook for making viruses like SARS-CoV-2 in the laboratory. The DEFUSE plan was to investigate more than 180 previously unreported strains of Betacoronavirus that had been collected by WIV, and to use GoF techniques to make these viruses more dangerous. Specifically, the project proposed to add protease sites like the furin cleavage site (FCS) to natural viruses in order to enhance the infectivity and transmissibility of the virus.

Seventh, in the draft proposal, the EHA director boasted that the BSL2 nature of work on SARSr-CoVs makes our system highly cost effective relative to other bat-virus systems, prompting the lead scientist on the EHA proposal to comment that US scientists would freak out if they learned of US government support for GoF research at WIV in a BSL2 facility.

Eighth, the Defense Department rejected the DEFUSE proposal in 2018, yet NIAID funding for EHA covered the key scientists of the DEFUSE project. EHA therefore had ongoing NIH funding to carry out the DEFUSE research program.

Ninth, when the outbreak was first noted in Wuhan in late 2019 and January 2020, key US virologists associated with NIH believed that the SARS-CoV-2 had most likely emerged from GoF research, and said so on a phone call with Fauci on February 1, 2020. The most striking clue for these scientists was the presence of the FCS in SARS-CoV-2, with the FCS appearing at exactly the location in the virus (the S1/S2 junction) that had been proposed in the DEFUSE program.

Tenth, the top NIH officials, including Director Francis Collins and NIAID Director Fauci, tried to hide the NIH-supported GoF research, and promoted the publication of a scientific paper(The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2) in March 2020 declaring a natural origin of the virus. The paper completely ignored the DEFUSE proposal.

Eleventh, some US officials began to point their fingers at WIV as the source of the laboratory leak while hiding the NIH-funding and EHA-led research program that may have led to the virus.

Twelfth, the above facts have come to light only as a result of intrepid investigative reporting, whistleblowers, and leaks from inside the US Government, including the leak of the DEFUSE proposal. The Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services determined in 2023 that NIH did not adequately oversee the EHA grants.

Thirteenth, investigators have also realized in retrospect that researchers at Rocky Mountain Labs, together with key scientists associated with EHA, were infecting the RML Egyptian fruit bats with SARS-like viruses in experiments closely linked to those proposed in DEFUSE.

Fourteenth, the FBI and Department of Energy have reported their assessments that the laboratory escape of SARS-CoV-2 is the most likely explanation of the virus.

Fifteenth, a whistleblower from inside the CIA has recently charged that the CIA team investigating the outbreak concluded that SARS-CoV-2 most likely emerged from the laboratory, but that senior CIA officials bribed the team to report a natural origin of the virus.

The sum of the evidence and the absence of reliable evidence pointing to a natural origin (see here and here) adds up to the possibility that the US funded and implemented a dangerous GoF research program that led to the creation of SARS-CoV-2 and then to a worldwide pandemic. A powerful recent assessment by mathematical biologist Alex Washburne reaches the conclusion beyond reasonable doubt that SARS-CoV-2 emerged from a lab He also notes that the collaborators proceeded to mount what can legitimately be called a disinformation campaign to hide the laboratory origin.

A US-funded laboratory origin of Covid-19 would certainly constitute the most significant case of governmental gross negligence in world history. Moreover, there is a high likelihood that the US Government continues to this day to fund dangerous GoF work as part of its biodefense program. The US owes the full truth, and perhaps ample financial compensation, to the rest of the world, depending on what the facts ultimately reveal.

We need three urgent actions. The first is an independent scientific investigation in which all laboratories involved in the EHA research program in the US and China fully open their books and records to the independent investigators. The second is a worldwide halt on GoF research until an independent global scientific body sets grounds rules for biosafety. The third is for the UN General Assembly to establish rigorous legal and financial accountability for governments that violate international safety norms through dangerous research activities that threaten the health and security of the rest of the world.

Link:

What Might the US Owe the World for Covid-19? - Common Dreams

delawareonline.com wants to ensure the best experience for all of our readers, so we built our site to take advantage of the latest technology, making it faster and easier to use.

Unfortunately, your browser is not supported. Please download one of these browsers for the best experience on delawareonline.com

See the original post:

Long COVID affected 1 in 4 Delawareans who had virus - The News Journal

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan on Friday announced that the citys new transit center will be named after Jason Hargrove, a city bus driver who died of COVID-19 in 2020.

As this terminal is being built, I thought to myself that we need to do something to remember Jason Hargrove, to remember the courage of all the men and women in those very dangerous and deadly days, Duggan said about city workers such as police, firefighters and transit workers.

The site of the transit center is the former Dairy Cattle Barn at the State Fairgrounds. It will open in May.

Hargrove, who was 50, posted on March 21, 2020, a video on Facebook about a maskless passenger coughing on him. In the video, Hargrove urged members of the public to be more respectful and considerate toward bus drivers.

For us to get through this and get over this, yall need to take this seriously. Theres folks dying out here because of this sh-t, Hargrove said on the video.

He died a few days later, leaving behind his wife, Desha Hargrove, and six children.

The first two cases of COVID were diagnosed in Michigan on March 10, 2020. The states first coronavirus deaths were recorded on March 18 of that year, according to Michigan health officials. The World Health Organization reports there have been more than 7 million reported deaths worldwide from COVID-19, with 1.2 million deaths in the United States.

A total of 44,728 people have died of COVID in Michigan as of March 12, according to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.

Desha Hargrove attended the Friday event and thanked Duggan, City Council members and other city employees.

My heart is overjoyed, Hargrove said. Im grateful.

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX

SUBSCRIBE

Read more from the original source:

New Detroit transit center named after bus driver who died of COVID-19 Michigan Advance - Michigan Advance

From spring break parties to Mardi Gras, many people remember the last major "normal" thing they did before the novel coronavirus pandemic dawned, forcing governments worldwide to issue stay-at-home advisories and shutdowns.

Even before the first case of COVID-19 was detected in the U.S., fears and uncertainties helped spur misinformations rapid spread. In March 2020, schools closed, employers sent staff to work from home and grocery stores called for social distancing to keep people safe. But little halted the flow of misleading claims that sent fact-checkers and public health officials into overdrive.

Some people falsely asserted COVID-19s symptoms were associated with 5G wireless technology. Faux cures and untested treatments populated social media and political discourse. Amid uncertainty about the viruss origins, some even proclaimed COVID-19 didnt exist at all. PolitiFact named downplay and denial about the virus its 2020 Lie of the Year.

Four years later, peoples lives are largely free of the extreme public health measures that restricted them early in the pandemic. But COVID-19 misinformation persists, although its now centered mostly on vaccines and vaccine-related conspiracy theories.

PolitiFact has published more than 2,000 fact-checks related to COVID-19 vaccines alone.

"From a misinformation researcher perspective, [there has been] shifting levels of trust," said Tara Kirk Sell, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. "Early on in the pandemic, there was a lot of: this isnt real, fake cures, and then later on, we see more vaccine-focused mis- and disinformation and a more partisan type of disinformation and misinformation."

Here are some of the most persistent COVID-19 misinformation narratives we see today:

A loss of trust in the vaccines

COVID-19 vaccines were quickly developed, with U.S. patients receiving the first shots in December 2020, 11 months after the first domestic case was detected.

Experts credit the speedy development with helping to save millions of lives and preventing hospitalizations. Researchers at the University of Southern California and Brown University calculated that vaccines saved 2.4 million lives in 141 countries from January 2021 to August 2021 alone. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data shows there were 574 U.S. deaths attributed to COVID-19 the week of March 2, down from nearly 26,000 at the pandemics height in January 2021, as vaccines were just rolling out.

But on social media and in some public officials remarks, misinformation about COVID-19 vaccine efficacy and safety is common.U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. built his 2024 campaign on a movement that seeks to legitimize conspiracy theories about the vaccines. We made that our 2023 Lie of the Year.

PolitiFact has seen claims that spike proteins from vaccines are replacing sperm in vaccinated males. (Thats False.) Weve researched the assertion that vaccines can change your DNA. (Thats misleading and ignores evidence). Social media posts poked fun at Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce for encouraging people to get vaccinated, asserting that the vaccine actually shuts off recipients hearts. (No, it doesnt.) And some people pointed to an American Red Cross blood donation questionnaire as evidence that shots are unsafe. (We rated that False.)

Experts say this misinformation has real-world effects.

A Nov. 2023 survey by KFF found that only 57% of Americans "say they are very or somewhat confident" in COVID-19 vaccines. And those who distrust them are more likely to identify as politically conservative: Thirty-six percent of Republicans compared with 84% of Democrats say they are very or somewhat confident in the vaccine.

Immunization rates for routine vaccines for other conditions have also taken a hit. Measles had been eradicated for more than 20 years in the U.S. but there have been recent outbreaks in states including Florida, Maryland and Ohio. Floridas surgeon general has expressed skepticism about vaccines and rejected guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about how to contain potentially deadly disease spread.

The vaccination rate among kindergarteners has declined from 95% in the 2019-20 school year to 93% in 2022-23, according to the CDC. Public health officials have set a 95% vaccination rate target to prevent and reduce the risk of disease outbreaks. The CDC also found exemptions had risen to 3%, the highest rate ever recorded in the U.S.

Unsubstantiated claims that vaccines cause deaths other illness

PolitiFact has seen repeated and unsubstantiatedclaims that COVID-19 vaccines have caused mass numbers of deaths.

A recent widely shared post claimed 17 million people had died because of the vaccine, despite contrary evidence from multiple studies and institutions such as the World Health Organization and CDC that the vaccines are safe and help to prevent severe illness and death.

Another online post claimed the booster vaccine had eight strains of HIV and would kill 23% of the population. Vaccine manufacturers publish the ingredient lists; they do not include HIV. People living with HIV were among the people given priority access during early vaccine rollout to protect them from severe illness.

We have also seen COVID-19 vaccines blamed for causing Alzheimers and cancer. Experts have found no evidence the vaccines cause either conditions.

"You had this remarkable scientific or medical accomplishment contrasted with this remarkable rejection of that technology by a significant portion of the American public," said Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia.

About 70% of Americans have completed a primary series of COVID-19 vaccination, more than three years after they became available, according to CDC figures. About 17% have gotten the most recent bivalent booster.

False claims often pull from and misuse data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. The database, run by the CDC and Food and Drug Administration, allows anybody to report reactions after any vaccine. The reports themselves are unverified, but the database is designed to help researchers find patterns for further investigation.

A November 2023 survey published by Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania found 63% of Americans think "it is safer to get the COVID-19 vaccine than the COVID-19 disease" that was down from 75% in April 2021.

Celebrity deaths falsely attributed to vaccines

Betty White, Bob Saget, Matthew Perry, and DMX are just a few of the many celebrities whose deaths were falsely linked to the vaccine. The anti-vaccine film "Died Suddenly" tried to give credence to false claims that the vaccine causes people to die shortly after receiving it.

Dr. Cline Gounder, editor at large for public health at KFF Health News and an infectious disease specialist, said these claims proliferate because of two things cognitive bias and more insidious motivated reasoning.

"It's like saying I had an ice cream cone and then I died the next day, the ice cream must have killed me," she said. And those with pre-existing beliefs about the vaccine seek to attach sudden deaths to the vaccine.

Gounder experienced this personally when her husband, the celebrated sports journalist Grant Wahl, died while covering the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. Wahl died of a ruptured aortic aneurysm but anti-vax accounts falsely linked his death to the COVID-19 vaccine, forcing Gounder to publicly set the record straight.

"It is very clear that this is about harming other people," said Gounder, who was a guest at United Facts of America in 2023. "And in this case, trying to harm me and my family at a point where we were grieving my husband's loss. What was important in that moment was to really stand up for my husband, his legacy, and to do what I know he would have wanted me to do, which is to speak the truth and to do so very publicly."

False claims the pandemic was planned or government-orchestrated

We continue to see false claims that the pandemic was planned by government leaders and those in power.

At any given moment, Microsoft Corp. co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates, World Economic Forum Chair Klaus Schwab and former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci are blamed for orchestrating pandemic-related threats.

In February, Rep. Matt Rosendale, R-Mont., falsely claimed Fauci, "brought" the virus to his state a year before the pandemic. There is no evidence of that. Gates, according to the narratives, is using dangerous vaccines to push a depopulation agenda. Thats False. And Schwab has not said he has an "agenda" to establish a totalitarian global regime using the coronavirus to depopulate the earth and reorganize society. Thats part of a conspiracy theory thats come to be called "The Great Reset" that has been debunked many times.

The United Nations World Health Organization is frequently painted as a global force for evil, too, with detractors saying it is using vaccination to control or harm people. But the WHO has not declared that a new pandemic is happening, as some have claimed. Its current pandemic preparedness treaty is in no way positioned to remove human rights protections or restrict freedoms, as one post said. And the organization has not announced plans to deploy troops to corral people and forcibly vaccinate them. The WHO is, however, working on a new treaty to help countries improve coordination in response to future pandemics.

Continued here:

Four years after shelter-in-place, COVID-19 misinformation persists - PolitiFact

NEW DELHI: The Covid-19 pandemic in more probability had an unnatural origin than a natural one with a potential source being a lab accident or leak, according to new research that employed a commonly used risk analysis tool to arrive at this conclusion. Originally designed to distinguish between natural epidemics and deliberate biological attacks, researchers modified the Grunow-Finke Tool (mGFT) by tweaking the criteria to determine the likelihood of the nature of the pandemic's origin. The study, findings of which were published in the journal Risk Analysis, said the possibility of a laboratory origin of the Covid pandemic cannot be easily dismissed. The mGFT tool, previously applied to smaller outbreaks, contains 11 criteria such as intensity and dynamics of the pandemic, including its rapid and unusual geographic spread, an unusual strain of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus and peculiarities in clinical symptoms experienced. The researchers at the University of New South Wales, Australia, assigned points from one to three to each criterion based on available evidence collected from literature and case data from the public source 'Our World in Data' that gathers information from the WHO, John Hopkins University and official government reports. Factors such as biological risk of bat virus research at Wuhan Institute of Virology, unusual strain, pandemic intensity and dynamics were assigned points of three, three, and two, respectively, while clinical symptoms was assigned two points. Each criterion was multiplied by a weighting factor (1-3) to compute a score. A final score of more than 50 per cent favoured unnatural origins, while less favoured natural origins. The final score that the mGFT algorithm calculated produced a total of 41 out of 60 points. Being more than 50 per cent, the researchers concluded a higher probability of COVID-19 originating unnaturally, with a focus on lab accidents or leaks as potential sources.

Expand

Read the original here:

Covid-19 origin in more probability unnatural than natural, lab leak potential source: New study - The Times of India

While COVID-19 is now endemic and accepted, no one knew what to expect when a novel coronavirus began spreading in early 2020.

In February 2020, Renee and Clyde Smith were celebrating their wedding anniversary with an international vacation that left them stranded off the coast of Japan aboard the Diamond Princess cruise.

The Diamond Princess left Yokohama for a 15-day cruise on Jan. 20, 2020. One man from Hong Kong left the ship when it docked there five days later, and checked into a hospital.

Feb. 4 is when they found out that a man who had disembarked at Hong Kong actually had been diagnosed with the virus, Renee Smith said. So, they told our captain that no one could leave the ship.

As Americans watched Wuhan, China, with worry and fear, the 80-year-old couple tested positive for the novel coronavirus with no knowledge of what that might mean. Though both remained asymptomatic, the Smiths were forced to quarantine in Japan. They were some of the first to contract COVID-19.

The virus causing COVID-19 had not even been named yet.

It took another week before the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) chose "severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)" because the virus is genetically related to the coronavirus responsible for the SARS outbreak of 2003.

Viruses are named based on their genetic structure to facilitate the development of diagnostic tests, vaccines and medicines. Virologists and the wider scientific community do this work, so viruses are named by the ICTV.

While they were in the Japanese hospital, a friend told them new virus was like influenza, though Clyde Smith said he and his wife never even felt flu-like symptoms.

A CT scan showed pneumonia in his lungs, but he never felt short of breath. He said he wouldnt have even known about the pneumonia without that scan.

Staff treated them well and the expense of the care was taken care of, too.

"The real miracle of our time in Japan was the Japanese government paid every penny: They covered the entire cost," Clyde Smith said, again, in March 2024. "And that wouldn't happen here. If we were here in a hospital for three-and-a-half weeks as we were there, we'd have been wiped out financially."

The room in Tachikawa Hospital was tiny, but had a gorgeous view of Mt. Fuji. Clyde Smith said it was the newest, most modern and fanciest hospital he ever stayed at.

"The beds were absolutely wonderful," Renee Smith said. "They were firm and nice and they had the best pillows I've ever slept on. There were kind of like beanbag head pillows. They were so comfortable, though."

Former President Donald Trump did not want infected Americans to return home, and was furious with senior advisers over their decision to allow 14 Americans, including the Smiths, who tested positive for coronavirus to return to the United States from Japan. Officials assured that infected patients would remain in quarantine overseas.

As people began panic buying and hoarding supplies, the Smiths enrolled in an Emory study looking at antibody levels.

They've continued to participate in studies through Emory University's Hope Clinic.

"We've been donating a lot of blood," Clyde Smith said. "They'll take six or eight tubes of blood from us each time we go, about every three months, to study our reaction to the vaccine and to the episode Renee had and see how the antibodies are holding out."

Renee Smith did contract COVID-19 again, and this time she fell very ill.

"Oh, I did about a year and a half ago, maybe even longer than that," she said. "It was during the summer and Paxlovid saved me. I never did go to the hospital or anything. I was very, very sick."

The prescription medicine Paxlovidis used to treat mild-to-moderate COVID in adults who are at high risk for severe symptoms, including hospitalization or death.

It's not approved for use as pre-exposure or post-exposure treatment for prevention of the disease.

The Smiths said theyve kept up with every update of the COVID vaccine and currently have sore arms after getting a booster shot this week.

The now-84-year-old couple also keeps up with the Japanese nurses who cared for them, one of whom got married and had a baby after they left.

"She first sent us a picture of the baby about a year and a half ago; so cute." Renee Smith said. "But, yesterday I guess it was, she sent us a picture of that same child who's now 2 years old."

They aren't deterred by their experiences, and plan to travel to England later this year.

"We have some grandchildren there, and we're going to go see the twins, who just turned 14, get confirmed," Renee Smith said. "And this will be the third time we've seen them, because England is a long way away."

It will be the first trip outside the United States for the couple since 2020.

Originally posted here:

One of the first Georgians with COVID-19, now 84, discusses vaccines, reinfection - GPB News

The La Salle County Health Department will issue its final weekly COVID-19 update effective on March 28, the department said in a news release on Friday.

As we near the end of respiratory virus season, and the first anniversary of the declaration ending the national and public-health emergency for COVID-19 (May 11, 2023), the department will no longer be updating its website and social media pages with this information, the release said.

The county agency said it will continue to monitor and track COVID-19, as it does with all reportable diseases.

The department said if the situation changes or the department feels that, based on conditions, a return to reporting is necessary, it will adjust accordingly.

Remember to do your part by washing your hands, the news release said. Covering your cough, and staying home when sick.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updates the COVID-19 County Check weekly.

Visit https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#maps_new-admissions-rate-county to find hospital admission levels and prevention steps by county.

See more here:

La Salle County Health Department to no longer issue weekly COVID-19 updates, effective March 28 - Shaw Local News Network

For the third time in less than a year, Arizona Republican lawmakers listened intently and offered no pushback during a special hearing at the state Senate that was billed as examining the states response to the COVID-19 pandemic but was instead rife with conspiracy theories, misinformation and fear-mongering about vaccines and public health.

In May 2023, the Novel Coronavirus Southwestern Intergovernmental Committee featured testimony from a group of supposed health experts who spread misinformation about vaccines and the pandemic during the committees time. Then, in October 2023, the committee met again, bringing some of the same experts.

On Friday, the committee once again convened, bringing more of the same people to speak.

The committee had previously faced criticism for its awkward name, which has been promoted in abbreviated form by the QAnon-friendly political nonprofit The America Project. The abbreviated name, NCSWIC, is a commonly used abbreviation in the QAnon world, where it means Nothing Can Stop What Is Coming, alluding to predictions of arrests and executions of members of the Deep State.

The Republican elected officials on the panel were state Sens. Frank Carroll and Janae Shamp and state Rep. Steve Montenegro, who chairs the state House of Representatives Health and Human Services Committee. Sen. T.J. Shope was scheduled to be on the panel but Carroll said he filled in for the senator, who was not able to attend.

Shamp, who was present at the U.S. Capitol for Jan. 6, has spread a multitude of QAnon conspiracy theories online for years, including a post with NCSWIC in it.

Montenegro works for the America Project which has promoted QAnon and QAnon influencers.

U.S. Reps. Eli Crane and Paul Gosar were listed on the agenda as being a part of the committee but were nowhere to be seen and did not provide pre-recorded video messages, as they have done in the past two committees.

As a frontline caregiver who worked in the ICU during the height of the pandemic, I was very disappointed today during the Novel COVID South Western Intergovernmental Committee that there was a palpable lack of celebration or even gratitude for the folks who comforted loved ones and held their hands during a frightening time of uncertainty, Brandi Giles, a registered nurse and Director of Preventable Diseases for the Arizona Families for Vaccines, said in a statement to the Arizona Mirror.

These attempts to undermine our health care heroes do a disservice to the people of Arizona, science and public health across the nation, Giles said.

Dr. Peter McCoullough yet again boldly proclaimed that the COVID-19 virus came from a lab in Wuhan, China. There is no consensus on the origin of the virus.

The spike protein was intentionally engineered in a Chinese security lab in Wuhan China, McCoullough said, adding that the United States worked alongside China and claimed that Dr. Anthony Faucci, who led the federal governments work to combat COVID-19, was part of it.

McCoullough is known for spreading unfounded claims, especially around the origins of the virus. He previously has stated that he believed the pandemic was planned and has promoted the QAnon conspiracy film Plandemic.

McCoullough has become a darling to those in both QAnon and the broader conspiracy world, appearing regularly on shows like the one hosted by antisemite Stew Peters, who said the COVID vaccine is a bioweapon. Peters also was behind multiple QAnon conspiracy documentaries that made dubious claims about the vaccine, including that it included snake venom.

McCoullough has also appeared on disgraced retired Gen. Michael Flynns Reawaken America tour, where he has denounced drag shows and gender identity issues.

And McCoullough has spread a false claim that millions of people have been killed by the vaccine. The notion comes from a highly flawed analysis of data claiming that mortality rates were spiking because of the vaccine. He also spread similar claims, such as saying that more than 500,000 people in the United States were killed by the vaccine, an idea based on a misrepresentation of United Kingdom data.

He has also alluded to a conspiracy theory widely adopted by QAnon adherents, which was featured in a discredited film, claiming that blood clots found in peoples bodies were caused by the COVID vaccine.

That film, Died Suddenly, suggests the vaccine is all part of a shadowy plot to depopulate the world. But experts who have examined the films claims have said that many of the clots appear to be post-mortem clots. Cases of blood clots caused by the vaccine are very rare, according to one study that found only approximately 1,000 cases out of 2 million.

The movie also deceptively featured incidents that occurred before the pandemic in 2020, but presented them as consequences of vaccination.

The panel Friday also featured a presentation by Sedona-based Dr. Robert Apter, who prefaced his presentation with a slide stating that his opinions do not represent those of any organization he is associated with and none of the material presented should be construed as medical advice.

Apter rose to prominence among the anti-vaccination crowd for his use of the drug ivermectin. The drug became popular with conservatives and anti-vaccination advocates as a COVID-19 treatment, which led some people to seek out a version of the drug intended for horses instead of humans and poison control hotlines saw an increase in calls.

Ivermectin, which is primarily used for treating parasitic worms and is not an antiviral drug, has not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat COVID-19. One form of the medication that is approved by the FDA is used for treating people with intestinal diseases and roundworms.

Apter and others claimed that the drug was effective in treating their COVID-19 patients, which they met digitally through the service MyFreeDoctor.com. The founder of the website has spread misinformation about COVID-19 and had told conspiracy theorist Alex Jones that the pandemic could be ended with bombings and assassinations.

Apter claimed Friday that Indias adoption of ivermectin led to the countrys reduction in cases, though there have been no conclusive reports connecting ivermectin and a decline in cases in India.

Apter and another panelist, Dr. Mary Talley Bowden, have been engaged in a legal battle with the FDA over statements the agency made about ivermectin during the pandemic. A federal appeals court recently reversed a lower courts decision that their case could not move forward. Bowden said they are in the discovery phase currently.

Bowden has had her license suspended, resigned from a hospital she worked at and has faced multiple complaints.

Apter also claimed that there is a worldwide coordinated agenda that created the virus, vaccine and response.

Speakers also chose to rail against hospitals and pharmacies, claiming that hospitals should not have seen a single death during the pandemic and that pharmacies were beholden to Big Pharma.

The panel claimed that antiviral drug remdesivir was dangerous and was the cause behind deaths in hospitals. Studies have shown that the drug has increased positive outcomes for patients with long COVID and has helped in early treatment of the virus.

Bowden also spoke about how she filed up to 20 complaints against pharmacists for not prescribing medications such as ivermectin. All the complaints were dismissed.

I would find other means to, you know, incentivize them to comply, Bowden said.

Now Bowden runs a non-profit that she said aims to get politicians to pledge to ban the jab.

Banning the COVID-19 vaccines and remdesivir were talking points across the panel.

Do not get a COVID-19 vaccine. And we eventually will come together and we will get it pulled from the market, Shamp said, also repeating a widely debunked claim that patents were filed for COVID-19 in 2015. Later, Shamp falsely said that inserts for the vaccine were left blank and patients could not get any information on the vaccine.

The committee also heard from Prescott-area Dr. Stephen Hale, who, before speaking, said his employer, the Veterans Administration, were making him read a statement saying the views and opinions are his own and do not reflect the views of the VA.

There is no reason for anyone at all to get a COVID vaccine, Hale told the committee, adding that a paper published by The Lancet on the ineffectiveness of hydroxychloroquine at treating the virus was a hit piece and totally bogus.

McCoullough and others also advocated for a regimen that includes hydroxychloroquine and other drugs that have not been proven to adequately treat COVID. Those who say the protocol is effective often cite a study by McCoullough on its use.

However, later studies featuring much larger sample sizes have concluded that the protocol done by McCoullough, as well as hydroxychloroquine, were not effective and had no impact on treating COVID.

Fridays meeting mostly touched again on claims that were said in the last two committees which have all largely been debunked.

Shamp, who came to Senate leadership with the idea for the committee, said she intends to hold another one later this year.

Read the rest here:

Yet again, the AZ legislature hosts a COVID hearing full of misinformation - Arizona Mirror