Tag: pandemic

Swiss Patient Dies Shortly After Receiving Pfizer COVID Vaccine

After an Israeli man reportedly died just 2 hours after receiving his first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, authorities in the Swiss Canton of Lucerne said on Wednesday that one of the first people in the country to receive the vaccine has died, though whether his death had anything to do with the inoculation hasn’t yet been determined.

The canton has yet to release any additional details about the exact amount of time that passed between the inoculation and the man’s death.

Lucerne was the site of the first vaccinations in Switzerland beginning last week, with a shot from Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech given primarily to elderly people. Switzerland has received 107K vaccine doses, so far, and expects to get 250K per month starting next year.

“We are aware of the case,” a spokesperson said, before adding that the death had been referred to Swiss drugs regulator Swissmedic. Swissmedic didn’t comment further.

Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine is the only vaccine approved, so far, in Switzerland. The EU has just started approving the jabs on an emergency-use basis, with the first injections starting earlier this week.

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Minnesota lawmakers say coronavirus deaths could be inflated by 40% after reviewing death certificates

Two Minnesota state lawmakers are calling for an audit of death certificates that were attributed to the coronavirus, saying COVID-19 deaths could have been inflated by 40%.

State Rep. Mary Franson and state Sen. Scott Jensen released a video last week revealing that after reviewing thousands of death certificates in the state, 40% did not have COVID-19 as the underlying cause of death.

“I have other examples where COVID isn’t the underlying cause of death, where we have a fall. Another example is we have a freshwater drowning. We have dementia. We have a stroke and multiorgan failure,” Franson said in the video.

She added that in one case, a person who was ejected from a car was “counted as a COVID death” because the virus was in his system.

Franson said she and a team reviewed 2,800 “death certificate data points” and found that about 800 of them did not have the virus as the underlying cause of death.

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‘Only a one in 17 billion chance hydroxychloroquine doesn’t work’: medical professor

Hydroxychloroquine really works says Professor of Medicine Dr Peter McCullough, describing the treatment as “the most widely used therapeutic” to treat COVID-19 in the world. “The chances that it doesn’t work are calculated to be one in 17 billion,” he told Sky News. “There’s no controversy over whether or not hydroxychloroquine works. The controversy is on the public health approach to COVID-19.” Mr McCullough said “the virus invades inside cells, so we have to use drugs that go inside the cell and work to reduce viral replication”. “The drugs that work within the cell and actually reduce viral replication are hydroxychloroquine, Ivermectin, doxycycline and azithromycin”. “Sadly, in the United States and I know in Australia this happens all the time, patients get no treatment whatsoever. They literally are told to stay at home until they are sick enough to go to the hospital”

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Biden COVID Advisor Urges More “Genomic Surveillance” Necessary To Stop Mutant COVID Strains

With December on track to be the deadliest month for the virus since the outbreak began (more than 63K people have died in the US so far this month), Dr. Fauci and others have been in the press constantly warning that the situation is on track to worsen in January and February.

And on Monday, he was joined by Dr. Celine Gounder, a clinical assistant professor of medicine and infectious diseases at NYU’s Grossman School of Medicine and member of Biden’s COVID task force, who reiterated Dr. Fauci’s warnings about already-overwhelmed hospitals being poorly equipped to handle the next wave of patients.

But while the MSM focused on remarks about President Biden likely invoking the Defense Production Act to try to ensure the US catches up to its lofty vaccination targets (we’re already about 18MM behind the OWS target of 20MM doses by year’s-end), Dr. Gounder added an off-hand line about the need for using “genomic surveillance” to track mutations like the B.1.1.7 mutated “variant” that has been making headlines for the past week or so.

“We’re also going to see an increase in genomic surveillance which is where you track the changes in…virus genetic materials…we can do that…we have the technology…we just chose not to spend the money on public health surveillance…”

Offering up some math to demonstrate why the US needs to dramatically ramp up the pace of vaccinations if it wants to reach whatever the new herd immunity threshold is, Dr. Gounder insisted there is “no question” about another surge due to the number of people traveling during the holiday.

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Disabled child removed by police from AMC theater for failing to wear a mask

A video recorded in Jacksonville, N.C. appears to show the manager of an AMC movie theater refusing to allow a reportedly disabled child from entering the theater without a mask, and calling the police to escort her distraught family from the scene.

The child, who was in a stroller at the time of the incident, is reportedly non-verbal and has a condition that precludes her use of a mask or face shield. The child’s family members were all wearing masks.

Police officers were ultimately asked to escort the upset family from the theater. 

The Jacksonville, N.C. Police Department and the AMC Theatres chain did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Public health policy surrounding the use of masks on toddlers and children has become a subject of controversy over the last several months. Throughout the pandemic, there have been countless stories of families being thrown off flights or having flights canceled altogether because a baby was failing to don the required facial covering.

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More than 1.5 billion masks believed to have entered oceans in 2020

For months, we’ve seen face masks in places they shouldn’t be: storm drains, streets, beaches, and parks.

Now, we’re learning just how many could be flooding our oceans.

“Once plastic enters the marine environment, it’s very difficult to move,” said Dr. Teale Phelps Bondaroff, director of research for OceansAsia.

The marine conservation group has been tracking the number of face masks washing up on a remote island south of Hong Kong since the pandemic started.

“About six weeks after COVID hit Hong Kong, so late February, we began finding masks, and lots of masks,” said Bondaroff. “What’s remarkable is we weren’t finding face masks before COVID.”

Masks are made with polypropylene, which Bondaroff describes as thin fibers of plastic.

“The fact that we are starting to find masks that are breaking up indicates that this is a real problem, that microplastics are being produced by masks,” he said.

These tiny pieces of plastic can remain in the ocean for hundreds of years, threatening fish and even polluting the air.

“The question that we couldn’t answer was how many are entering our oceans? We just didn’t know,” said Dr. Bondaroff.

OceansAsia launched a study to find the answer and recently shared its findings.

Of the estimated 52 billion masks manufactured globally in 2020, it’s believed 1.56 billion will enter our oceans this year, resulting in an additional 4,680 to 6,240 metric tonnes of marine plastic pollution

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Spain Plans A “Registry” For Those Who Refuse COVID Vaccine

As Europe begins vaccinating the first wave of high-priority patients, a “glitch” has already emerged: many health-care workers and others have refused to take the vaccine, as skepticism and suspicion remain elevated.

A similar phenomenon has played out in the US, but to a less intense degree. But the situation, which we discussed last night, is now one of a variety of reasons, from a shortage of supplies and raw materials, to an uncooperative populace, that public-health officials are growing worried about hitting lofty vaccination targets.

And so, in Spain at least, government bureaucrats are fighting back, as Health Minister Salvador Illa warned the country would set up a “registry” for everybody who refuses the vaccine.

“What will be done is a registry, which will be shared with our European partners… of those people who have been offered it and have simply rejected it,” he said.

“It is not a document which will be made public and it will be done with the utmost respect for data protection.”

He added that the registry would not be made public, or delivered to employers, which begs the question: why else would the government keep a database of that information?

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