Tag: coronavirus

A FEMA document about nuclear explosions reveals the utter fatuousness of our bureaucracy

No matter the purpose for which they’re established, bureaucracies often become ends in themselves, self-perpetuating entities that generate paper to justify their existence.  That seems to be the case with FEMA, at least insofar as its rules for nuclear disasters go.  Some poor desk drone was given the task of updating FEMA documents to reflect the CDC’s ridiculous COVID requirements.  That drone worked hard, with the result being that the FEMA guidelines for a nuclear explosion now include masks and social distancing in bomb shelters.

Once again, Libs of Tik Tok has the news on her irreplaceable Twitter account.  She (or someone with whom she communicates) felt that, with Putin threatening to start a nuclear war, it might be useful to check out the government’s guidance for responding to the fallout from a nuclear attack.  That’s how we learn that someone at FEMA laboriously updated FEMA guidelines with CDC requirements about social distancing and masks.

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Biden claims COVID-19 keeps Americans from seeing ‘things have gotten so much better for them’

President Joe Biden claimed the COVID-19 pandemic has made it psychologically difficult for Americans to feel happy despite their improving economic circumstances.

During an extensive interview with Brian Tyler Cohen that aired Saturday, the progressive host asked Biden to address frustration that some Democrats might feel that the party’s agenda is not moving forward quickly enough despite Democrats controlling both Congress and the White House.

Biden replied by suggesting that the psychological toll of COVID-19 prevents some Americans from seeing the progress that has been made under his administration.

“I think the biggest impact of the psychology of the country has been COVID,” said Biden, pointing out how more than 1 million Americans have died from the virus.

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Ohio and Texas Issue Warning on Toxic Chemical Found in Mailed At-Home COVID-19 Testing Kit

The at-home rapid COVID-19 tests contained a toxic chemical that can be really harmful and even life-threatening when exposed to a large amount of the chemicals.

Ohio and Texas issued a warning after seeing an increase in reports related to sodium azide poisoning, a chemical found in test kits after Biden promised to give 500 million Covid test kits to Americans.

Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center released a statement regarding an “increase in accidental exposures to a substance in these kits.”

Cincinnati reported:

The substance is sodium azide, and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center’s Drug and Poison Information Center has seen a surge in calls about exposures to the chemical since more people started self-testing for COVID-19 at home.

“We started getting our first exposures to these test kits around early November,” said Sheila Goertemoeller, pharmacist and clinical toxicologist for the center. “It was, really, all ages.” The calls to the local center mirror what’s been happening nationally.

Sodium azide, often used as a preservative, is a liquid reagent in several of the COVID-19 test kits, she said. Ingesting it can cause low blood pressure, which can result in dizziness, headaches or palpitations. Exposure to it can also cause skin, eye or nostril irritation.

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More evidence Covid was tinkered with in a lab? Now scientists find virus contains tiny chunk of DNA that matches sequence patented by Moderna THREE YEARS before pandemic began

Fresh suspicion that Covid may have been tinkered with in a lab emerged today after scientists found genetic material owned by Moderna in the virus’s spike protein.

They identified a tiny snippet of code that is identical to part of a gene patented by the vaccine maker three years before the pandemic.   

It was discovered in SARS-CoV-2’s unique furin cleavage site, the part that makes it so good at infecting people and separates it from other coronaviruses.

The structure has been one of the focal points of debate about the virus’s origin, with some scientists claiming it could not have been acquired naturally.  

The international team of researchers suggest the virus may have mutated to have a furin cleavage site during experiments on human cells in a lab.

They claim there is a one-in-three-trillion chance Moderna’s sequence randomly appeared through natural evolution. 

But there is some debate about whether the match is as rare as the study claims, with other experts describing it as a ‘quirky’ coincidence rather than a ‘smoking gun’. 

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NIH SENT THE INTERCEPT 292 FULLY REDACTED PAGES RELATED TO VIRUS RESEARCH IN WUHAN

WITH THE GLOBAL death toll from Covid-19 approaching 6 million, the need to understand the origins of the pandemic is both pressing and grave. But the National Institutes of Health continues to withhold critical documents that could shed light on this question. This week, in response to ongoing litigation over public records related to coronavirus research funded by the federal agency, the NIH sent The Intercept 292 fully redacted pages rather than substantive material that could help us understand how the virus first came to infect humans.

At this point, no one can say for sure how SARS-CoV-2 set off the pandemic. It may have emerged naturally, jumping from a host animal to people, as many other deadly pathogens have. Or the coronavirus could have first spread to humans as the result of a research mishap — through bat capture and collection, risky experiments, or a host of other more mundane lab activities. U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed both theories as possible. But knowing exactly what led to the worst disease outbreak in recent history requires more information.

The “lab-leak” hypothesis is bolstered by a long history of accidents at facilities that study pathogens and the fact that one such laboratory that specializes in coronaviruses, the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, is located in the very city where the pandemic first began. As many have noted, China has not been forthcoming with information that could help us understand the origins of the pandemic, blocking access to a cave that may hold important clues, taking a database of information about coronaviruses offline, and refusing requests for records from the World Health Organization.

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