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I am locked down very, very badly in a police state. On the weekend, China-loving Premier Daniel Andrews declared his own state a disaster because of Coronavirus figures that, while bad by Australian standards, would be the envy of most of the rest of the world. This is the Aussie equivalent of the type of treacherous stupidity that Pat Buchanan condemned in Houston in 1992 when he spoke of “politicians who only know how to build themselves up by tearing America down” Dictator Dan’s stage four lockdown fining people found more than 5 km from home $AUD 1652 ($US1,170) and...

<p>ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE (AP) — President Donald Trump says he will take action as soon as Saturday to ban Chinese-owned video app TikTok from the United States.</p> <p>Trump made the announcement to reporters Friday on Air Force One as he returned from Florida.</p>

The week of July 26 saw six days of memorial services for the late congressman, U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D, GA). Some were big events, with lots of people in attendance. Since he was a politician, he had politicians speaking at his nationally-televised funerals. And that’s certainly fair. But here’s the odd thing… I lost a very dear friend, a few months ago. Not from “The Virus”… no, she was 89, and she had been suffering from Parkinson's and Alzheimer's for 5 years. It was just old age. She hasn't had her funeral yet. In fact, her family has scheduled...

Could a simple drug that has been on the market for decades be used to treat COVID-19? A research team led by Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU)'s Professor Yaakov Nahmias says that early research looks promising; their findings appear in this week's Cell Press Sneak Peak. Over the last three months, Nahmias and Dr. Benjamin tenOever at New York's Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have focused on the ways in which the SARS-CoV-2 changes patients' lungs in order to reproduce itself. Their major finding? This virus prevents the routine burning of carbohydrates. As a result, large amounts of...

Illinois and New York currently have low positivity rates and the media treats their governors as if they are geniuses. But over four months into the virus, through July 21st: Florida has ten million more residents than Illinois, and 2,200 fewer deaths. Texas has 17.5 million more residents, and 3,200 fewer deaths. The positivity rate on deaths in Illinois is clearly much higher. New York has almost 25% of deaths in the U.S. They have 28,000 more deaths than Florida, with two million fewer residents. Yet the media constantly genuflects to Cuomo while ripping Desantis. Texas has 29,000 fewer deaths than...

Accumulating evidence supports ending isolation and precautions for persons with COVID-19 using a symptom-based strategy. This update incorporates recent evidence to inform the duration of isolation and precautions recommended to prevent transmission of SARS-CoV-2 to others, while limiting unnecessary prolonged isolation and unnecessary use of laboratory testing resources. Key findings are summarized here... 3. A large contact tracing study demonstrated that high-risk household and hospital contacts did not develop infection if their exposure to a case patient started 6 days or more after the case patient’s illness onset (Cheng et al., 2020). 4. Although replication-competent virus was not isolated 3...

Wuhan, in short, is a rather unlikely epicentre for a natural zoonotic transfer. In contrast, to suspect that Sars-CoV-2 might have come from the WIV is both reasonable and obvious. Was Sars-CoV-2 created in a lab? The fourth virologist interviewed was Nikolai Petrovsky of Flinders University. Petrovsky first addressed the question of whether the natural zoonosis pathway was viable. He told the Media Centre:“no natural virus matching to COVID-19 has been found in nature despite an intensive search to find its origins.” In his statement, Petrovsky goes on to describe the kind of experiment that, in principle, if done in...

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported the 12th straight week of a declining coronavirus death rate in the U.S. "Based on death certificate data, the percentage of deaths attributed to pneumonia, influenza or COVID-19 (PIC) decreased from 8.1% during week 27 to 6.4% during week 28, representing the twelfth week of a declining percentage of deaths due to PIC," the CDC website states. SEE HERE: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covidview/index.html The CDC says the numbers "will likely change as more death certificates are processed, particularly for recent weeks," but a 12-week decline is a well-established trend that just so happens to...

Even as global studies on Covid-19 treatment are yet to arrive on a consensus on the benefits of administration of Hydroxychloro-quine (HCQ) to contain the transmission of coronavirus, the Vadodara administration has begun analysing the effects of the drug in containing the cases in the city. The Vadodara health department has prepared a report analysing its drive of administering HCQ since April, taking a sample of over one lakh residents who took a course of the anti-malarial drug as prophylactic. Until Wednesday, the Vadodara Municipal Corporation (VMC) has administered the drug to 3.42 lakh persons, including health workers and other...

I would have to believe that the majority of veteran Freepers are over 50. Most prolific posters. How would we know if and when we lose our favorites, and or their family members?

Given that the majority of people who get the virus are asymptomatic, we can no longer assume that even the serology tests are capturing anywhere near the full number of people who already got the virus, because many who had the virus test negative for antibodies. Earlier this month, a study from the University of California found, “Growing evidence suggests that asymptomatic and mild SARS-CoV-2 infections, together comprising >95% of all infections, may be associated with lower antibody titers than severe infections.” They estimate that only 40% of asymptomatic patients would retain antibodies for 180 days, 60% of mildly symptomatic,...

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A second wave of Chinese communist virus outbreaks in Beijing is higher than Wuhan," experts say. At present, the city's community into a state of war. Beijing residents say funeral homes burn the bodies of the dead every day. The Beijing National Defense University was sealed, and several military hospitals were full, including the Armed Police Hospital.

Call for resignation or removal It is unknown how Gov. DeWine came to the decision to nominate Acton, but if he thought he was getting a Department of Health Director without an abortion agenda, it now appears he was wrong. “Operation Rescue calls on Amy Acton to resign, and if she will not do that, we call on Gov. Mike DeWine to fire her and appoint a new director who will not surreptitiously defy the laws of Ohio and rulings of the courts to keep dangerous abortion facilities open,” said Newman.

Latest coronavirus news as of 5 pm on 9 June Highest daily jump in worldwide coronavirus cases so far The highest daily increase in worldwide coronavirus cases yet was recorded on Sunday, with 136,000 new cases confirmed, World Health Organization (WHO) director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told journalists yesterday. “Although the situation in Europe is improving, globally it is worsening,” he said. Almost 75 per cent of the cases confirmed on 7 June were from only 10 countries, mostly in the Americas and South Asia, The Guardian reports. Other coronavirus developments Maria Van Kerkhove, head of the WHO’s emerging diseases...

Planned programs for mass vaccinations to combat the coronavirus pandemic may appear to be voluntary, but they will determine where people are allowed to travel and shop and even whether or not they can leave their homes, warns the religious-liberty legal group Liberty Counsel. "Before being allowed into any building, including offices, grocery stores and even pharmacies, users must display their COVID app status to officials or their deputies monitoring the doors," Liberty Counsel says. Billionaire Bill Gates is "touring the world" promoting the idea of a "digital health certificate," which the European Union already is considering.

Results: The addition of zinc sulfate did not impact the length of hospitalization, duration of ventilation, or ICU duration. In univariate analyses, zinc sulfate increased the frequency of patients being discharged home, and decreased the need for ventilation, admission to the ICU, and mortality or transfer to hospice for patients who were never admitted to the ICU. After adjusting for the time at which zinc sulfate was added to our protocol, an increased frequency of being discharged home (OR 1.53, 95% CI 1.12-2.09) reduction in mortality or transfer to hospice remained significant (OR 0.449, 95% CI 0.271-0.744).

Fresh evidence of China’s shocking cover-up of the pandemic outbreak has been found in censored media reports from Wuhan. Samples taken from sick patients and analysed by at least five laboratories had confirmed the existence of a lethal new coronavirus before China told global health authorities about an infectious disease that it claimed was unidentified. The reports obtained by The Mail on Sunday reveal that one team even found the virus was ‘clearly contagious’ while others had unravelled its genetic composition – vital for developing diagnostic tests and vaccines.

The World Health Organization is now calling for nations to encourage the general public to wear fabric masks in areas where there continues to be intense spread of the novel coronavirus -- and for all health workers and caregivers to wear medical masks throughout their shift while in clinical areas. These updated recommendations, announced on Friday, are a shift from what WHO previously advised on masks, which was to not wear them if you are not sick or not caring for someone who is sick, in an effort to keep masks available for health workers....

Two months after Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a nearly $1-billion deal with Chinese automaker BYD to purchase respirators, California has yet to receive any of the much-needed N95 masks. And on Friday, state officials announced that they would give the company a second extension to deliver on its promise... ...While state lawmakers said they understood the state's desire to buy the critical supplies, the governor received bipartisan blowback for how his administration handled the deal. Lawmakers said they learned about the $1-billion contract at the same time as the public, when Newsom went on MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show...The governor’s...