I watched this too. I told Chaos and my hubby that it affected me like watching footage of 9/11. I had forgotten so much from just 2 years ago. Mass graves, refrigerated trucks for bodies. It's worth the watch.

...don't reach for that joint just yet — the compounds, CBD-A, CBG-A, and THC-A, are non-psychoactive and degrade at high temperatures, which makes smoking or baking less-than-ideal ways to consume them.

Could cannabis prevent COVID? To the authors of a new study, it sure looks like it
But put away the pipe — it appears the compounds that may be most helpful in preventing COVID degrade at high temps
By BRETT BACHMAN

A groundbreaking new study published this week identified what could be an unexpected tool in the world's fight against COVID-19: cannabis.

Yes, you read that right.

According to a peer-reviewed paper published this week in the Journal of Natural Products, titled "Cannabinoids Block Cellular Entry of SARS-CoV-2 and the Emerging Variants," at least three compounds naturally occurring in the cannabis plant were shown in lab tests to be effective at stopping coronavirus molecules from entering human cells. The mechanism effectively mimics the activity of antibodies, with the cannabis compounds attaching themselves to ...

https://www.salon.com/2022/01/12/could- ... s-like-it/

It's a Chinese conspiracy. They created COVID so we'd find the cannabis cure and all get stoned while they took over the world.

The kids are not alright: Data suggests 10% of children with COVID-19 become "long-haulers"
Doctors around the world estimate one in ten children with COVID-19 have long-term side effects
By KARI DEQUINE HARDEN

Eleven-year-old Noah Symons feels like "someone started a fire and then threw my hands into it." He has felt this way for three months, he says, and his feet feel like they are on fire too. Symons been trying to go to school and stay active, but any extra effort results in fatigue and painful flare-ups.

Meanwhile, over the past five months, 16-year-old Lane Perkins has experienced debilitating headaches, severe fatigue, and difficulty concentrating and retaining information. She lost her spot on the traveling softball team and dropped a chemistry class.

For the past 22 months, 14-year-old Anastasia Athienites has had "Covid toes" — a painful blistering rash on her feet. Not long after the rash appeared, she began having heart palpitations, migraines, and cognitive issues.

In the past 23 months, 16-year-old Kitty Mcfarland has battled intense fatigue, an increased heart rate, tightness in her chest, the ability to be in an upright position, severe abdominal pain, headaches, and major cognitive and memory struggles. She couldn't talk properly and could barely get out of bed for the first 8 months of her ordeal, and had to crawl from her bedroom to the bathroom.

The four kids from Colorado, Tennessee, Massachusetts and the United Kingdom have a few things in common: namely, they all contracted a mild case of COVID-19 weeks before the onset of ...

https://www.salon.com/2022/01/22/the-ki ... g-haulers/

COVID-19 contributed to largest single-year decline of life expectancy in Canada: StatCan
Tom Yun

The COVID-19 pandemic led to the largest single-year decline of life expectancy in Canada ever recorded, Statistics Canada said on Monday.

In 2020, life expectancy was 81.7 years, down 0.6 years from 82.3 years in 2019. It's the steepest decrease of life expectancy since national vital statistics started to be logged in 1921.

The largest declines in life expectancy were seen in Quebec, followed by Ontario, the Prairies and British Columbia. The drop in life expectancy for men was also steeper than for women -- 0.7 years for males compared to ...

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavir ... -1.5752169

This article turned up my my FB page - and saw an amazing number of people blaming it on government actions. Not on slow responses or any such thing but instead on the various lockdowns.

That said, I'd be surprised in many (any?) of the commentators actually know how to calculate life expectancy.

Since the pandemic was managed by 14 different governments that took different approaches I'd say their "opinions" are pretty worthless.

I may have posted this a while back, but it bears repeating:

In 2020, for the first time in recorded history, more people died in Alabama than were born in the state. ... The state saw some 64,714 total deaths last year, Harris said, compared with about 57,641 births.

https://www.npr.org/2021/09/20/10389505 ... his%20year.

Oooops ....

UBC-led research team finds nine new coronavirus species

A former UBC post-doctoral research fellow led an international research team in re-analyzing all public RNA sequencing data to uncover almost ten times more RNA viruses than were previously known, including several new species of coronaviruses in some unexpected places.

This planetary-scale database of RNA viruses can help pave the way to rapidly identify virus spillover into humans, as well as those viruses that affect livestock, crops, and endangered species.Dr. Artem Babaian (he/him) is behind the Serratus Project collaboration. It published the stunning results of the research in the prestigious scientific journal Nature this week.

Working with the Cloud Innovation Centre, a public/private collaboration between UBC and Amazon Web Services, the Serratus Project was able to build a “ridiculously powerful” supercomputer on AWS equivalent in power to 22,500 CPUs, said Babaian.

The supercomputer read through 20 million gigabytes of publicly available gene sequence data from 5.7 million biological samples around the world, searching for a specific gene that indicated the presence of ...

https://news.ubc.ca/2022/01/26/ubc-led- ... s-species/

RIGHT WING EXTREMISM

Watch: Anti-Vaxx ‘Expert’ Claims COVID-19 Vaccines Will Turn People Into ‘Transhumanist Cyborgs’ Controlled by 5G
Kyle Mantyla

Sherri Tenpenny is an influential religious-right anti-vaccine activist who has testified before the Ohio state House, appeared on Charlie Kirk’s podcast, and been a speaker at multiple ReAwaken America events, where she has shared the stage with the likes of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, Eric Trump, Mike Lindell, Michael Flynn, Roger Stone, and Alex Jones.

Despite the fact that Tenpenny is an osteopathic doctor with no expertise on vaccines, she regularly appears on right-wing programs where she spreads wild conspiracy theories about COVID-19 vaccines.

Recently, she has begun to claim that COVID-19 vaccines are designed to create “quantum entanglement” between those who take them and the internet in an effort to turn humanity into “transhumanist cyborgs.”

“The stated goal is to depopulate the planet and the ones that are left, either make them chronically sick or turn them into transhumanist cyborgs that can be manipulated externally by 5G, by magnets, by all sorts of things,” Tenpenny said during an appearance on “The Stew Peters Show” Thursday night. “I got dragged through the mud by the mainstream media when I said that in May of last year in front of the House committee in Columbus, [Ohio]. Well, guess what? It’s all true.”

“The whole issue of quantum entanglement and what the shots do in terms of the frequencies and the electronic frequencies that come inside of your body and hook you up to the ‘Internet of Things,’ the quantum entanglement that happens immediately after you’re injected,” she continued. “You get hooked up to ...

https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.c ... -by-by-5g/

And she even uses big words like "quantum entanglement" - now if only she (and her followers) and any idea what those words actually mean

Tenpenny short of a dollar, that one.

The Religious Leaders Caught in the Vaccine Wars
People seeking to obtain an exemption from the shot have found that some clergy see no theological foundation for an excusal.
By Mansee Khurana

Religious texts such as the Bible, the Torah, and the Quran don’t say anything about vaccines—of course, all three texts predate them by hundreds of years. So when faith leaders face questions about immunizations, they generally offer their own interpretations of the scriptures. Such questions, particularly about the applicability of religious exemptions, have become more urgent during the pandemic, forcing clergy to take hard stances for or against excusals.

Even though the Supreme Court recently struck down a federal vaccine-or-test mandate for businesses with more than 100 employees, many Americans still must receive a COVID-19 vaccine in order to resume in-person work. Some people are seeking ways to skirt the obligation, and religious exemptions, which stipulate that a person’s spiritual beliefs can free them from a medical requirement, present one way to do so. In private Facebook groups, for instance, people swap tips on how to convince employers that they don’t need a shot, while others are hiring consulting services for help obtaining an exemption. Many people requesting exemptions have tried to strengthen their case with a written statement from a religious leader, but to some clergy, agreeing to support a person’s claim feels unjustifiable. Instead, faith leaders I spoke with are trying to assuage congregants’ misgivings about the vaccines, and are pushing back against attempts to circumvent public-health measures with scripture.

Religious exemptions from vaccines are currently allowed in 44 states and Washington, D.C., and they typically require an employer to ...

https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/arc ... ne/621387/

Freedom Convoy: Truckers cause chaos in Ottawa after second day of protests
Protesters against a vaccine mandate for truckers crossing the US-Canada border have brought Canada's capital city to a standstill for a second day.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60190452

And the stupid thing about this is, even if Canada were to remove the requirement that truckers be vaccinated in order to come and go from the US, the US government has the same policy so it wouldn't help those Canadian truckers in any case.

RE: #1433-

“If a patient presents with a fever of unknown origin, once that blood is sequenced, you can now connect that unknown virus in the human to a way bigger database of existing viruses. If a patient, for example, presents with a viral infection of unknown origin in St. Louis, you can now search through the database in about two minutes, and connect that virus to, say, a camel in sub-Saharan Africa sampled in 2012.”

That's pretty <bleeping> amazing.

Re #1437

No measurable impact of vaccine mandate on truck volume at the border: Transport minister
Caroline O'Neill

Canada’s transport minister says the vaccine mandate for cross-border truckers hasn’t had an impact on the volume of trucks at the border.

“I am monitoring the volume every day at the border,” Omar Alghabra told Evan Solomon on CTV News Channel’s Power Play Monday.

“Trucking volume has not been measurably impacted at all,” he said, “We have not seen any signs of changes to ...

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/no-meas ... -1.5762056

Reuters botches article on ivermectin and omicron

No, a Japanese company did not find that ivermectin was “effective” against the omicron variant in a clinical trial, as Reuters originally reported on Monday. The wire service was forced to correct the article.

Opinions to start the day, in your inbox. Sign up.
The actual news, as the current version of the article reads, is that ivermectin carries an “‘antiviral effect’ against Omicron and other coronavirus variants in joint nonclinical research.”

The difference between the two versions couldn’t be more dramatic: The mistaken version claimed that ivermectin was effective against omicron in humans; the corrected version claimed that ivermectin showed “antiviral” capabilities against omicron in test tubes. Reuters attributed the news to Kowa Co. Ltd., a Japanese pharmaceutical company.

The antiviral capabilities of ivermectin against SARS-CoV-2 in a test-tube environment are not a matter of breaking news: Research dating to 2020 showed that “a single dose of ivermectin was able to reduce the replication of an Australian isolate of SARS-CoV-2 in Vero/hSLAM cells by 5000-fold.” There were many reasons, however, for skepticism about how that finding would carry over into real-life treatment.

But ivermectin has remained in the spotlight thanks to ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... orrection/

Gotta love that name!!!

Spikevax — the wonderfully named Moderna COVID vaccine is FDA approved
BY THE ORIGINAL SKEPTICAL RAPTOR

Today, 31 January 2022, the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, with the outstanding name of Spikevax, was approved in the USA by the FDA. Spikevax, which went by the name of mRNA-1273 during clinical trials, had been approved under an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) since late 2020. This will be the second COVID-19 vaccine approved by the FDA after Pfizer‘s Cominarty vaccine received FDA approval on 23 August 2021.

This short post (for me, at least) will review the salient points about the FDA approval for Spikevax. And I hope whatever marketing geek at Moderna who came up with that name gets a big ...

https://www.skepticalraptor.com/skeptic ... -approved/

FL Court: You Can’t Force Hospitals To Use Horse Paste
Joe My God

The Tampa Bay Times reports:


Read the full article.

https://www.joemygod.com/2022/01/fl-cou ... xCyxMiYdng

Link to full article plus series of tweets at source

Another one who doesn't "get" Canada.

Canada's trucker protesters aren't who Americans might think


Ottawa (CNN)For days, the army of truckers and their disciples has been honking, marching, demanding and posturing. The "Freedom Convoy" has come to this sleepy capital to protest a mandate that requires truckers entering the country to be vaccinated or comply with testing and quarantine requirements.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/03/opinions ... index.html

The U.S. Army will begin dismissing vaccine holdouts.
Adeel Hassan

American soldiers who have yet to be vaccinated against the coronavirus will be immediately discharged, the Army said on Wednesday, joining other branches of the military, including the Navy and Air Force, that have already begun dismissing vaccine holdouts.

The Pentagon announced a vaccine mandate for the armed forces last August, and the Army set a deadline of Dec. 15, 2021, for all soldiers and reservists on active duty, as well as service-academy cadets, to be vaccinated or apply for an exemption. A vast majority of active-duty Army troops are inoculated.

In a statement on Wednesday, Christine Wormuth, the secretary of the Army, cited the need for combat readiness in announcing that the small number of soldiers still refusing shots would be dismissed.

“Army readiness depends on soldiers who are prepared to train, deploy, fight and win our nation’s wars,” Ms. Wormuth said. “Unvaccinated soldiers present risk to the force and jeopardize readiness. We will begin ...

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/02/us/u ... ndate.html

Re: #1445

"As long as they are not stopped by the police, tolerated by the public and ignored by lawmakers, they will be free to sit on the sidewalk, sleep in the cold and honk into the wind."

Also free to piss into the streets and on buildings, free to steal food from a shelter....They aren't as civilized as people seem to think.

Things have changed now anyway. The police are involved and there is talk of bringing in the military. Meanwhile, at the crossing in Alberta, truckers are breaking thru (or driving around) the barriers. There is talk of a lawsuit from Ottawa. The GoFundMe has frozen the account because their rules state that the money can't be used for illegal activities or for payment for legal defense of the activities. Ottawa says the protest has now crossed into illegal territory. I forget the exact wording.

I'd go a step further and prevent the unvaxed truckers from crossing provincial borders.

Toronto hospitals suggest that staff wear plainclothes when coming into work due to weekend 'Freedom Convoy'
Miriam Katawazi

Some Toronto hospitals say they are tightening security around their sites and suggesting that workers wear plainclothes when coming into work this weekend as the city prepares for the 'Freedom Convoy' protest.

The convoy is making its way to downtown Toronto this weekend to oppose vaccine mandates and other public health restrictions. The protests have come under fire due to alleged incidents of threatening behaviour.

The Mount Sinai Academic Family Health Team issued a notice on Thursday afternoon saying all its primary care appointments will be conducted virtually from Friday to end of day on Monday.

“We have been made aware of plans for a protest at Queen’s Park in Toronto involving a convoy of transport trucks beginning,” the notice stated. “Given Mount Sinai’s close proximity to Queen’s Park, we are monitoring the situation closely and making plans should the protest limit access to the hospital.”

“The safety of our patients and staff is our top priority.”

Mount Sinai said it is working collaboratively with the Women’s College Hospital, UHN and SickKids to ensure a coordinated response, along with the Toronto Police Service and various levels of government.

In Ottawa, the protests have approached a second weekend, a situation that police have called “intolerable.” The protests came under fire after some members were seen holding signs and flags with hateful symbols.

The Women’s College Hospital sent out a memo on Thursday afternoon, saying they are ...

https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/toronto-hosp ... -1.5766916

In New York City Sewage, a Mysterious Coronavirus Signal
For the past year, scientists have been looking for the source of strange coronavirus sequences that have appeared in the city’s wastewater.
By Emily Anthes

Last January, a team of researchers searching for the coronavirus in New York City’s wastewater spotted something strange in their samples. The viral fragments they found had a unique constellation of mutations that had never been reported before in human patients — a potential sign of a new, previously undetected variant.

For the past year, these oddball sequences, or what the scientists call “cryptic lineages,” have continued to pop up in the city’s wastewater.

There is no evidence that the lineages, which have been circulating for at least a year without overtaking Delta or Omicron, pose an elevated health risk to humans. But the researchers, whose findings were published in Nature Communications on Thursday, still have no idea where they came from.

“At this point, what we can say is that we haven’t found the cryptic lineages in human databases, and we have looked all over,” said Monica Trujillo, a microbiologist at Queensborough Community College and an author of the new paper.

The researchers themselves are torn about the lineages’ origins. Some lean toward the explanation that the virus is coming from people whose infections aren’t being captured by sequencing. But others suspect that the lineages may be coming from virus-infected animals, possibly the city’s enormous population of rats. Even then, the favored theory can change from day-to-day or hour-to-hour.

Answers remain elusive.

“I think it’s really important that ...

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/03/heal ... -york.html