Tag: coronavirus

Philadelphia mayor seen dining indoors while city’s restaurants can only serve outside

Philadelphia’s mayor is facing criticism after a photo has emerged of him dining indoors in Maryland while his city’s restaurants are only permitted to serve customers outside.

The image of Jim Kenney – posted on Instagram by restaurateur Marc Vetri – was taken Sunday in the Chesapeake Bay region of Maryland, his office told the Philadelphia Inquirer.

“Glad you’re enjoying indoor dining with no social distancing or mask wearing in Maryland tonight while restaurants here in Philly close, suffer and fight for every nickel just to survive,” Vetri wrote next to the photo. “I guess all your press briefings and your narrative of unsafe indoor dining don’t apply to you. Thank you for clearing it all up for us tonight.”

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ROBOCOP IS HERE – NEW POLICE HELMET SCANS FOR SIGNS OF COVID-19 AND USES FACIAL RECOGNITION

It took 33 years but Robocop is now here. Well, not exactly, but the rise of the police state fueled by advancements in technology has given birth to a heads-up display equipped helmet sure to please the most anxious of peace officers. It’s called a “Smart Helmet” and it can screen airport passengers for symptoms the COVID-19 virus as well as provide the scanning officer with other vital records.

Public officials in Flint, Michigan cannot provide clean drinking water to their residents but travelers to Bishop International Airport can get a glimpse of the new robotic cop helmets where they’re currently deployed.

Under the guise of screening passengers for COVID-19, the Smart Helmet, produced by KeyBiz based in Italy, can scan travelers’ body temperatures from over 20 feet away.

But the Smart Helmet is not limited to temperature body scans which any laser guided thermometer can do, not in the slightest. Facial recognition software is installed which can provide the police officer with information related to outstanding warrants, if an individual is identified on a terror watch list or a no-fly list, and can read license plates for outstanding warrants, stolen vehicle information, criminal histories, etc. Even if you are completely innocent, you will be subject to these scans.

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500 GERMAN DOCTORS AND SCIENTISTS QUESTION OFFICIAL COVID-19 STORY – ‘IT IS HIGH TIME THAT WE TOOK THIS INTO OUR OWN HANDS’

More than 500 German doctors and scientists have officially formed an organization to investigate the global response to Covid-19 called the “Corona Extra-Parliamentary Inquiry Committee”, or Außerparlamentarischer Corona Untersuchungsausschuss (ACU) in Germany, and came to the conclusion that the freedom-limiting measures we are seeing taken across the globe are wildly excessive when compared with the infection rate of the pandemic.

“It is high time that we took this into our own hands” says one member of the ACU regarding a lack of scientific debate about the virus. “We will invite and hear experts here in the Corona speaker group. These are experts from all areas of life: Medicine, social affairs, law, economics and many more.

“As the Corona-Extra-Parliamentary Inquiry Committee, we will investigate why these restrictive measures were imposed upon us in our country as part of COVID-19, why people are suffering now and whether there is proportionality of the measures to this disease caused by the SARS-COV-2 virus. We have serious doubts that these measures are proportionate.” [Source]

One member of the ACU reportedly confessed that, “we have a lot of evidence that it’s a fake story all over the world,” implying not that the virus itself is fake but that the danger it poses has been fiercely overestimated. However, the video was removed by YouTube for violating the rule that no information which dissents from the World Health Organization (WHO)’s stance on the coronavirus may exist on the platform.

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USC researchers think THC in marijuana may be able to treat deadly COVID complication

Top University of South Carolina researchers think the chemical in marijuana that induces a “high” may be effective in treating a potentially lethal coronavirus complication, according to three newly released studies

The studies, co-published by Prakash Nagarkatti, found THC, the most potent mind-altering chemical in cannabis, can — in mice — prevent a harmful immune response that causes Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) and cause a significant increase in healthy lung bacteria.

The studies, published in Frontiers in Pharmacology, the British Journal of Pharmacology and the International Journal of Molecular Sciences, were conducted by giving mice a toxin that triggered the harmful immune reaction that causes ARDS and then injecting mice with THC, according to the studies’ abstracts.

“The underlying mechanism is your immune system goes haywire and starts destroying your lungs and all your other organs,” Nagarkatti said of ARDS.

“Its’ like a car where you’re putting on a lot of accelerator, but the brakes aren’t working,” Nagarkatti said. “Basically what’s going to happen is your car is going to crash because you can’t stop it. And that’s basically what’s happening with ARDS.”

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CDC: 94% of Covid-19 deaths had underlying medical conditions

The Centers for Disease Control released information showing how many people who died from COVID-19 had underlying medical conditions that attributed to their death.

Click here to read the entire report from the CDC.

The CDC said:

Table 3 shows the types of health conditions and contributing causes mentioned in conjunction with deaths involving coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death.

The following are the top underlying medical conditions linked with COVID-19 deaths.

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Researchers fast-track coronavirus vaccine by skipping key animal testing first

A clinical trial for an experimental coronavirus vaccine has begun recruiting participants in Seattle, but researchers did not first show that the vaccine triggered an immune response in animals, as is normally required. 

Now, biomedical ethicists are calling the shortcut into question, according to Stat News.

“Outbreaks and national emergencies often create pressure to suspend rights, standards and/or normal rules of ethical conduct,” Jonathan Kimmelman, director of McGill University’s biomedical ethics unit, wrote in an email to Stat News. “Often our decision to do so seems unwise in retrospect.”

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Delaying herd immunity is costing lives

Because of its virulence, wide spread and the many asymptomatic cases it causes, Covid-19 cannot be contained in the long run, and so all countries will eventually reach herd immunity. To think otherwise is naive and dangerous. General lockdown strategies can reduce transmission and death counts in the short term. But this strategy cannot be considered successful until lockdowns are removed without the disease resurging.

The choice we face is stark. One option is to maintain a general lockdown for an unknown amount of time until herd immunity is reached through a future vaccine or until there is a safe and effective treatment. This must be weighed against the detrimental effects that lockdowns have on other health outcomes. The second option is to minimise the number of deaths until herd immunity is achieved through natural infection. Most places are neither preparing for the former nor considering the latter.

The question is not whether to aim for herd immunity as a strategy, because we will all eventually get there. The question is how to minimise casualties until we get there. Since Covid-19 mortality varies greatly by age, this can only be accomplished through age-specific countermeasures. We need to shield older people and other high-risk groups until they are protected by herd immunity.

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