Tag: pandemic

Rashida Tlaib spotted partying maskless with crowd in COVID ‘orange’ zone after ranting against Rand Paul

‘Squad’ member Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) was videoed Sunday hypocritically dancing maskless with over a hundred people at a crowded indoor wedding in a COVID “orange” zone partying the night away.

The event took place in Wayne County, Michigan where COVID-19 cases are very high, Fox News reported. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended wearing masks and social distancing indoors in areas with this level of transmission.

Tlaib was caught maskless the same day she railed against Republican Senator Rand Paul for urging Americans to resist mask mandates and other draconian COVID protocols from the CDC. “It’s time for us to resist. They can’t arrest all of us… We don’t have to accept the mandates, lockdowns, and harmful policies of the petty tyrants and bureaucrats. We can simply say no, not again. No one should follow the CDC,” Paul proclaimed in a video.

Tlaib shared the video on her timeline and tweeted, “The KY Senator is throwing a tantrum as his state is being swallowed whole by this virus, again. People are getting sick and dying. 98 counties in Kentucky have a high incidence rate of COVID-19. He needs to put politics aside, and put people first. Start resisting the virus.”

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Healthcare professionals app Doximity promises crackdown after doctors are accused of sharing “misinformation”

Doctors who take to social media to discuss their opposition to various COVID measures are facing calls for censorship from media outlets.

CNBC says it discovered plenty of vaccine skeptic statements on Doximity, a doctor-to-doctor networking site. While the reports shared on the app are from well-known news organizations and scientific journals, the comments, CNBC says, appear to be full of “misinformation” about vaccination safety, mask use, and natural immunity, among other things.

Dr Paul Malarik, a retired psychiatrist, spends up to 50 hours a month in pop-up clinics near his home in San Luis Obispo, California, helping to deliver COVID-19 vaccines. According to him, when he logs onto Doximity and sees vaccine skeptic remarks, he’s particularly disturbed.

Doximity is only open to healthcare professionals in the United States, and members must be verified before they can join. No one may post anonymously on the site.

It has long been branded as “LinkedIn for doctors,” had its stock market debut in June and quickly rose to a market valuation of $10 billion. According to the company’s IPO prospectus, it has 1.8 million members, including 80% of doctors. They utilize the site to remain in touch with one another, discuss research, keep up with industry news, and securely interact with patients.

Doximity likewise doesn’t let users publish their articles or stories; instead, it curates content from medical and scientific journals as well as mainstream news. Each user receives a personalized feed of aggregated material depending on their choices, such as their field of medical practice.

Members of Doximity may comment on articles, which is where the alleged “misinformation” and “conspiracy theories” appear to thrive, according to CNBC.

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NYC’s New COVID Vaccine Passport Simply A ‘Glorified Photo Storage App,’ Critics Say

Pictures of cats, Mickey Mouse, even a takeout menu from a BBQ restaurant: Users of New York City’s COVID SAFE app have discovered they can upload just about any photo into the new vaccine verification software.

Though the app only debuted this week, its vulnerabilities have come under scrutiny as the city announced a new policy to require proof of at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine for entry to indoor dining, gyms and entertainment performances.

“The New York City app is nothing more than a glorified photo storage app,” said Brian Linder of cybersecurity research company Check Point. He added, “When someone shows a picture of a card in this app, it’s believed that it’s real, but there’s absolutely no verification of it whatsoever.”

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Yelp Removes Reviews Critical of Vaccine Mandates

Yelp is removing negative reviews of businesses that support vaccine mandates and passports.

In a press release, Yelp said it was monitoring business that are “requiring vaccinations for employees and/or customers” and are removing reviews critical of that policy.

“For businesses that activate ‘Proof of vaccination required’ and ‘All staff fully vaccinated’ on their Yelp page, we are putting protective measures in place to proactively safeguard them from reviews that primarily criticize the COVID health and safety measures they enforce,” Yelp stated.

Interestingly, in the very next sentence, Yelp equated its policy to fighting racism.

“We put a similar system in place when we launched our Black-owned attribute in June 2020, and followed the same process for our other identity attributes, such as Latinx-owned, Asian-owned, and LGBTQ-owned,” Yelp continued. “By proactively monitoring business pages that activated these identity attributes for any hateful, racist or other harmful content that violates our Content Guidelines, we thwarted and removed nearly 400 reviews for containing harmful content.”

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Moderna Wants to Transform the Body Into a Vaccine-Making Machine

Almost every antiviral vaccine ever sold works in a similar way: A dead or weakened virus, or a piece of one, is introduced into a healthy person. The weakened virus stimulates the immune system to generate antibodies, protecting the person when the real pathogen threatens to infect them.

Over the decades, this tried-and-true approach has vanquished polio, eradicated smallpox, and reined in chicken pox, measles, and mumps. But vaccine production has never been simple or fast. Many flu vaccines are still grown in chicken eggs. Newer approaches draw on genetic engineering to eliminate the need for whole viruses, but their viral proteins are still grown inside live cells.

The coronavirus vaccines from Moderna Inc., in Cambridge, Mass., and its German rival BioNTech SE propose to immunize people in a radically different way: by harnessing human cells to become miniature vaccine factories in their own right. Instead of virus proteins, the vaccines contain genetic instructions that prompt the body to produce them. Those instructions are carried via messenger RNA, or mRNA.

Moderna’s mRNA-1273 consists of a strand of mRNA that tells the body to produce the spike protein the coronavirus uses to latch onto human cells. The strand is like one side of a zipper; the “teeth” are a sequence of chemical letters that cells read to produce the 1,273 amino acids that make up the spike protein. If the vaccine works as intended, the body will start producing the proteins soon after injection, prompting the immune system to react and build up protective antibodies against them.

The great advantages of mRNA vaccines are speed and flexibility. No finicky live cells or hard-to-handle viruses are needed, and the basic chemistry is straightforward. Moderna’s vaccine reached Phase I human trials on March 16, only 63 days after the company began developing it. And at 6:43 a.m. on July 27, the first volunteer in Moderna’s 30,000-person, final-stage efficacy trial in the U.S. received an injection. Less than 12 hours later, BioNTech and its partner, Pfizer Inc., said they, too, were beginning a late-stage trial, a study that will be conducted in the U.S., Brazil, and several other countries. They took advantage of mRNA’s rapid-response capability to create four slightly different vaccines, which they compared in initial trials before selecting the best one for large-scale testing.

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Guests forced to delete photos and videos of maskless Obama at boozy birthday party

Despite COVID-19 cases soaring in recent weeks, due much in part to the highly contagious delta variant that has the U.S. averaging over 100,000 new cases per day, former President Barack Obama went forward with his celebrity-laden birthday party in Massachusetts on Saturday. A few photos and videos were leaked out to the public from the swanky soirée, which show a maskless Obama dancing with his guests, who also did not wear face coverings.

Obama’s birthday bash was held in massive tents on his spacious estate in Martha’s Vineyard in Dukes County, which was designated as a “high transmission” area for COVID-19 by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. High transmission communities fall under the CDC’s updated guidance recommending that masks be worn indoors, even by people who are fully vaccinated.

Singer Erykah Badu was performing at the former president’s 60th birthday party, but managed to record a video of maskless Obama dancing with a woman and other attendees who were not wearing face coverings. Badu uploaded the video to Instagram, but then quickly deleted it. But she didn’t manage to delete it quick enough and the footage was shared online.

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Obama’s ‘Superspreader’ Party STILL Hasn’t Ended

Despite claims that the event would be ‘scaled back’, Barack Obama’s massive party has continued for three days straight, prompting more accusations of hypocrisy and ‘one rule for thee and another for me’ from everyday Americans who are not allowed to hold gatherings with their own friends and families.

As noted at the weekend, Obama was seen partying with hundreds of people, the vast majority ignoring any kind of restrictions as the Secret Service set up a no-fly zone over his mansion.

Photos and videos leaked from the event, despite a ban on them.

The Daily Mail reports that the party at Martha’s Vineyard with hundreds of guests and scores of servants continued throughout the weekend, and wasn’t just restricted to one night.

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Fact check: Hospitals get paid more if patients listed as COVID-19, on ventilators

Sen. Scott Jensen, R-Minn., a physician in Minnesota, was interviewed by “The Ingraham Angle” host Laura Ingraham on April 8 on Fox News and claimed hospitals get paid more if Medicare patients are listed as having COVID-19 and get three times as much money if they need a ventilator.

The claim was published April 9 by The Spectator, a conservative publication. WorldNetDaily shared it April 10 and, according to Snopes, a related meme was shared on social media in mid-April.

Jensen took it to his own Facebook page April 15, saying, in part:

“How can anyone not believe that increasing the number of COVID-19 deaths may create an avenue for states to receive a larger portion of federal dollars. Already some states are complaining that they are not getting enough of the CARES Act dollars because they are having significantly more proportional COVID-19 deaths.”

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