Did a Racoon Dog Start the Pandemic?

Posted on by Thor

Genetic material collected at the Wuhan Chinese Market where the first human cases of COVID-19 were identified show raccoon dog DNA commingled with COVID-19. Some scientists believe COVID most likely jumped from animals to people, others believe the virus could have been leaked from one of the several Wuhan coronavirus research facilities. The genetic material collected does not prove that a racoon dog stated the pandemic. Human DNA was also found in the sample. A human may have infected the animal, or the animal may have never harbored the virus.

The samples were collected from surfaces at the Huanan Seafood Market in early 2020 in Wuhan, where the first human cases of COVID-19 were found in late 2019. The racoon dogs, named for their raccoon-like faces, are often bred for their fur and sold for meat in animal markets across China. Some of the COVID positive samples were collected from a stall known to be involved in the wildlife trade. The sample also contained raccoon dog genes. The genetic sequences were recently uploaded to the world’s biggest public virus database by scientists at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

The genetic sequences were then removed from the internet, but not before a French biologist spotted the information by chance and shared it with a group of scientists based outside China that’s looking into the origins of the coronavirus. The WHO stated that “this data could have and should have been shared three years ago.”

The inconclusive analysis did not find the virus within any animal, nor did it find any hard evidence that racoon dogs infected humans.

Beauty

Posted on by Thor

The Daily Mail ran this inane headline: “Unattractive people are more likely to keep wearing masks in the post-COVID era study suggests.” The study was published in Frontiers in Psychology. The study theorized that narcissists who consider themselves attractive are less likely to wear a mask because the mask makes it more difficult for them to make a good impression to others. The study was based on 244 people interviewing for jobs. It was discovered that narcissist felt they would appear less attractive. The best way they felt to get a job was to spread the virus. The study did not account for politics of the participants.

I have found quite the opposite to be true. Beautiful people are more likely to wear masks because they care about others. The selfish and narcissistic are the ones who care about no one but themselves. That level of mask less ugliness is impossible to cover with make up.

Another study done more than a year ago at Cardiff University, found that masks make people appear more attractive since they focus attention on the eyes. The first part of the research was carried out in February 2021 by which time the much of the population had become used to wearing masks. Forty-three women were asked to rate on a scale of one to 10 the attractiveness of men with and without a mask. Masked men were found to be more attractive.

The World Health Organization (WHO) continues to recommend the use of masks given the current spread of the COVID-19 globally. Masks should be used as part of a comprehensive strategy of measures to suppress transmission and save lives.

Beautiful people continue to wear masks.

This is a wildfire of the unburnt!

Posted on by Thor

Ignoring COVID does not make it go away. The World Health Organization (WHO) pointed out that, although everyone is tired of hearing about COVID-19 and its restrictions, “we need to face an undeniable fact…the virus is still very much present among us”. Engaging in risky behavior sends the message that COVID isn’t really their problem, that they don’t see a reason to modify their behavior to mitigate risk. To see this behavior just watch the State of the Union Address in which the only member of Congress to wear a mask was Bernie Sanders. The president giving his speech kept coughing.

People feel helpless and out of control. Their only coping mechanism is to pretest the pandemic does not exist. Complacency, denial and ignorance take over for rational thought. People do not want to live in fear, so they ignore the source of the feat rather than facing the fear. The risk has not magically disappeared, they have chosen to ignore the risk. Ignorance is bliss. Ignorance is also death.

 

Off the Cliff

Posted on by Thor

The World Health Organization (WHO) continues to recommend the use of masks by the public in specific situations, and this update recommends their use irrespective of the local epidemiological situation, given the current spread of the COVID-19 globally. Masks are recommended following a recent exposure to COVID-19, when someone has or suspects they have COVID-19, when someone is at high-risk of severe COVID-19, and for anyone in a crowded, enclosed, or poorly ventilated space.

The drive to “end the pandemic” began almost as soon as the pandemic arrived in the U.S. The 45th president downplayed the severity of the pandemic knowing full well that the virus was airborne. Joe Biden has not done any better, proclaiming that the pandemic was over in one TV interview. The economy is always more important than public health.

COVID is airborne. Airborne transmission is different from droplets, which are large particles containing the virus, expelled when you speak, cough, sneeze, etc. Droplets are heavy enough that they will eventually drop to the ground or nearby surfaces, meaning it’s relatively easy to contain: any physical barrier, like a cloth mask or plexiglass barrier might stop the spread. However an airborne virus can remain airborne for much longer. If someone is smoking in a closed room, you can small the smoke from across the room and even further away. I have always maintained a physical distance of 22 feet from others. If I hear or see someone approaching, my mask is always slipped into place.

A quality N-95 mask is needed to stop the virus if you are around others. The problem is the entire country has been groomed to believe the pandemic is over. The pandemic is not over since over 300 people continue to die every day in America. The horror of what is happening in China may never be fully reported. The tired masses have been groomed  for a mass infection. Their desire to return to normal while abandoning all masking, means the county has already driven the car off the cliff.

This is not the end of the pandemic but the end of the beginning of the pandemic.

INFECT and KILL

Posted on by Thor

Attack Big Bird, attack Mickey Mouse, attack M&M’s candy, that is the moral high ground the right wing media use to distract from over two thousand deaths a week in America due to COVID-19. The latest distraction campaign involves attacking M&Ms choice to promote 3 colors of candy, Purple, Brown and Green which equates to the the candy’s trio of female characters. The packaging shows the female characters upside down with the tag line,  to “celebrate women everywhere who are flipping the status quo.”

The advertising campaign works to create a world where everyone feels they belong,” said Gabrielle Wesley, chief marketing officer for Mars Wrigley North America, in a press release. In a world of hate, such a message can not be tolerated. The all-female pack quickly sparked “culture wars” outrage on right-wing news networks and on social media. One anchor said the feminist-forward pack emboldens China. Apparently there is such a thing as “woke” candy. There seems to be outrage over the characters new boots as well. I just don’t get it. None of it makes sense. It is smoke and mirrors.

In the real world, Omicron variants continue to spread world wide, resulting in the World Health Organization (WHO) advising countries worldwide to “consider recommending” that passengers wear masks on long haul flights.  The United States is the hot bed for the new highly transmissible Karkan variant (XBB.1.5). WHO wants to save the world from America’s stupidity and ignorance as the virus once again spreads across America. All domestic flights in America were grounded on January 11, 2023.

 

COVID Happily Ever After?

Posted on by Thor

The COVID-19 pandemic had played out like a fairy tale for most people. In the first act normal everyday life was interrupted by a dark and deadly mythical creature. In the second act heroic scientists helped the millions of people who were dying by creating an invincible vaccine. For many, once they took the vaccine, the story was over, they were vaxed and done and life returned to normal. Masks came off and everyone huddled together indoors to comfort one another, and spread the disease.

However the vaccines do not actually protect against infection, it protects against hospitalization and death. There is also another segment of the population who decided that vaccines were a hoax and they refuse to ever get vaccinated. There is plenty of human wood for the COVID forest fire to continue to burn through.

We are in a relative calm right now, but hospitalizations have begun to climb again due to immune evasive new variants. No one knows how high the next infection wave will rise this winter. Flu which has been on the sidelines because of social isolation and masking is now coming back with a renewed vengeance along with RSV. This winter promises a triple whammy of infections.

The other factor is that the immediate threat from a COVID infection is not always apparent at the first flush of infection. Cardio vascular disease, diabetes, blood clots, along with heart disease, and brain problems are being discovered months and even years after the initial infection.

So just how many people have died due to the pandemic so far? The pandemic directly or indirectly caused 14.9 million deaths in 2020 and 2021, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on May 5, 2022, in its newest attempt to quantify the outbreak’s toll. That’s around 2.7 times more than the 5.42 million COVID-19 deaths the WHO says were previously reported through official channels in the same 2-year period. Over 2,000 Americans continue to die each week from COVID-19 and this seems to have become the accepted new normal.

On top of this, excess deaths are on the rise. Excess deaths are the number of deaths above what would be expected over a 5 year average. Excess deaths are happening in every age group.  The number of excess deaths today is higher that the number of deaths from COVID-19 at the start of the pandemic lockdown. For some reason no one is reporting about this rise in excess deaths. My concern is that these deaths could be the result of the after effects from COVID infections. There is likely collateral damage. I however an not a scientist, so don’t take my word on that point. It is just my suspicion. The long term effect of COVID infections are only now being discovered. And the media remains silent.

Closing the Curtain on COVID?

Posted on by Thor

400 to 500 people continue to die every day due to COVID-19. Every week the number of people who die from COVID is about to the number of people ho died on September 11, 2001 when the twin Towers were attacked. That is our new normal. It is better that the several thousand who were dying every day back in January 2022.

Despite the ongoing death toll, President Joe Biden declared on 60 Minutes that the “the pandemic was over.” Biden himself had COVID twice just recently but with the beast healthcare options available, he and his wife pulled through. If you remember, a year ago for July 4, 2020,  Biden also declared we would be independent of the virus. Like any politician he want to downplay the virus as elections roll around.

So who actually gets to decide when the pandemic ends? No single person can flip a switch and declare a pandemic over. COVID remains a public health emergency in the United States, according to the US Department of Health and Human Services, and it’s still a public health emergency of international concern, or PHEIC, according to US Department of Health and Human Services (WHO).

The World Health Organization did a horrible job on deciding when the pandemic should begin. Had they acted sooner and closed off flights out of China back in 2020, the virus could have been contained and eradicated. Last week, Tedros said the end of the pandemic “is in sight,” but he added that “we are not there yet.” So where is “there”?

Back in 1918, the Spanish Flue pandemic swept across America, starting in a WWI training base in Kansas where my great Grandfather was stationed.  The virus was ignored by press and the president because the country was at war. After a devastating wave of death in the fall of 1918, bodies lay in the streets and mass graves had to be dug. By the beginning of 1919 most mask orders, closures and social distancing orders were lifted. Waves of disease continued through 1920 the year my father was born.

Vaccines and treatments offer some protection from severe disease and death but they do not stop re-infection. The Biden administration has said it intends to stop buying vaccines, tests and treatments, shifting those things to the commercial market.

Dr. Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert who directs the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said, that in his estimation, cases, hospitalizations and deaths are still too high to say the pandemic is over. We also don’t know what variants of the virus could emerge or how our immunity will hold up against them. “I don’t think people really understand what the implications are for this virus,” Osterholm said. “All of us want the pandemic to be over, but you can’t make it go away by just making a policy decision.

Centaurus

Posted on by Thor

A random Twitter user named the new BA2.75 variant of Omicron the Centaurus variant. The name seems to be sticking since all the news outlets have adopted it. BA2.75 was first detected in India in early May 2022. BA.2.75 has also since been detected in about 10 other countries, including the UK, US, Australia, Germany, Canada, and now the San Francisco Bay area in the United States. Centaurus will likely out compete BA5 in the coming weeks.

The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) designated it a “variant under monitoring” on 7 July, meaning there is some indication that it could be more transmissible or associated with more severe disease. The World Health Organization (WHO) is also closely monitoring the new variant, although its chief scientist, Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, said there were not yet enough samples to assess its severity.

Last year Delta seemed to be the worst case scenario, but Omicron which came seemingly out of nowhere was a major curve ball. Since the new variants of the BA lineage of COVID are getting better at evading immune protection form past infection and vaccines, it is becoming clear that the virus can not be treated like the common flu. It will be a problem for generations.

Korean Military Fight Omicron

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North Korea is battling an explosive COVID-19 outbreak. Experts are raising concerns that the virus could devastate a country where few have been vaccinated against the disease, medical supplies are limited and the health system in a dilapidated state.

Dictator Kim Jong Un, ordered the army to get to work “on immediately stabilizing the supply of medicines in Pyongyang”, where officials said the Omicron BA.2 variant was confirmed in at least one death last week.

As of 6pm on May 16, 2022, five days after announcing the outbreak, North Korea had reported a total of 1.48 million cases of ‘fever’, It also announced a further six deaths. It is almost guaranteed that those numbers are but a fraction of the actual totals since the dictator can in his own mind do no wrong.

The North Korean dictator had been offered assistance from South Korea, China, and the World Health Organization (WHO) but all help has been refused. Kim, who considers himself a god like figure, thinks that he is the only one who can help his people. Rather than accept vaccines from abroad, he thinks his nation will find the best cure for COVID.

Kim has said the outbreak is causing “great turmoil” in the country and on Sunday visited pharmacies neat the capital’s Taedong river, state media KCNA reported.

Despite the public health crisis, new satellite imagery indicates North Korea has resumed construction at a long-dormant nuclear reactor and officials in Washington and Seoul have warned that Kim is preparing to conduct another nuclear test.

Analysts have warned Kim could speed up nuclear testing plans to distract the population from the outbreak.

A huge military parade in North Korea on April 25, 2022 was likely a superspreader event that quickly spread the virus through the county. Send in the tanks.

Putin’s Plague

Posted on by Thor

Putin has unleashed a plague on his own people, Europe and the world. Conflict and infectious disease are intimately entwined.

March 11, 2022 marked two years since the global spread of COVID-19 was characterized as a pandemic.

Detection and control of emerging infectious diseases in conflict situations are major challenges due to multiple risk factors known to enhance emergence and transmission of infectious diseases. These include inadequate surveillance and response systems, destroyed infrastructure, collapsed health systems and disruption of disease control programs, and infection control practices even more inadequate than those in resource-poor settings, as well as insecurity and poor coordination among humanitarian agencies.

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, World Health Organization (WHO) Director- General, reported that so far, WHO has delivered 81 metric tonnes of supplies, and WHO is establishing a pipeline of supplies for health facilities throughout Ukraine, especially in the most affected areas. On March 8, 2022, the World Health Organization delivered five metric tons of medical supplies to Kyiv to support surgical care for 150 trauma patients, and other supplies to manage a range of health conditions for 45,000 people for a month. So far, WHO has verified 18 attacks on health facilities, health workers and ambulances, including ten deaths and 16 injuries. These attacks deprive whole communities of health care.

More than two million people have left Ukraine and WHO is supporting neighboring countries to provide health care for refugees, most of whom are women and children. Some of the main health challenges we see are hypothermia and frostbite, respiratory diseases, lack of treatment for cardiovascular diseases and cancer, and mental health issues. WHO personnel have been deployed to neighboring countries to provide mental health and psycho social support. I thank all my WHO colleagues, and all our partners in Ukraine and its neighbors and all over the world, who continue to work to protect and promote health, even in the most difficult situations.

The only real solution to this situation is peace. WHO continues to call on the Russian Federation to commit to a peaceful resolution to this crisis and to allow safe, unimpeded access to humanitarian assistance for those in need.  Putin’s Plague of war however continues unabated. The Pandemic has not ended.