The post Russia Reports Record Virus Deaths Second Day in a Row first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The Biden administration announced a goal of July 4th as “a return to normal,” but small business owners in liberal cities such as San Francisco and Los Angeles are now fearing that it may in fact be a return to 2020.

The reason: public health leaders in Democratic-run counties reinstating mask mandates around the country.

The news comes as the delta variant of COVID-19 spreads throughout the U.S., with the heightened fears sending shockwaves across the stock market Monday and Apple reportedly delaying a return to its offices.

It also comes in the wake of the FOX Business report that Wall Street executives are closely monitoring the variant and whether a change of course is necessary with a return to offices looming.

Despite this, experts say the risk for those vaccinated is incredibly low, with an estimated 97% of those currently hospitalized from COVID unvaccinated, and fatalities from breakthrough infections remaining rare.

WALL STREET EYES COVID-19 DELTA AS RETURN TO OFFICE LOOMS

The overwhelming statistics supporting the vaccines’ efficacy coupled with the recent decisions to reinstate or recommend mask mandates from politicians have confused business owners.

“As soon as I heard that mask mandates were coming back, immediately I was concerned that [it] would delay our ability to reopen our restaurants,” said Steven Sarver, owner of fast-casual chain Ladle & Leaf in San Francisco to FOX Business’ Lydia Hu.

“People and business leaders use it as a reason to be concerned. It’s a signal to everyone that we need to slow down again – we can’t really return to normal. Business leaders and workers aren’t going to want to return to work if they have to wear a mask. It just doesn’t make sense,” the California businessman continued.

Other Bay Area business owners concede masks – while not desirable – are better than the alternative: shutting down.

“In general, nobody likes wearing masks – I don’t know anyone that cheers having to wear one – but if the choice is another 15 months of shutdown or wearing a mask inside, then I will be happy to wear a mask,” said Cache Bouren, owner of Haberdasher in San Jose.

“Facing the idea of another six to eight months without any real revenue coming [is] a very scary thing,” admitted Bouren, who is set to open up a new bar called Cash Only soon.

NY BUSINESS OWNER SAYS WORKER SHORTAGE ‘AN EMERGENCY’ SINCE COVID PANDEMIC HIT

However, some experts are skeptical of the need for masks, especially as vaccination numbers continue to increase and the vaccines show effectiveness against the delta variant.

“Did the science suddenly change? No, the politics did. This is about politics, not science. Stop the madness,” said Dr. Jeff Barke to FOX Business when asked about the reinstatement of mask mandates in his home of Los Angeles County.

Barke said Monday in an interview with KUSI San Diego that the mandate “makes no sense scientifically or medically. It only makes sense if you look through the lens of a tyrannical ruler trying to rule through fear.”  The interview was later removed from YouTube for “spreading misinformation.”

When asked by FOX Business how he felt about Los Angeles politicians’ role in the new mandate, he pointed to a quote from one of the nation’s Founding Fathers.

“As Thomas Jefferson said, ‘there is no justification for taking away individuals’ freedom in the guise of public safety,’ This is as true now as it was 245 years ago,” the California physician warned.

While Los Angeles County continues to outpace the national average in vaccinations, public health officials still decided to plow ahead with the mask mandate, going against recent public statements from top White House science adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci and CDC Director Rochelle Walensky.

“If you are vaccinated, you have a high degree of protection. So you need not wear a mask, either indoor or outdoor,” Fauci said.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM FOX BUSINESS

Restaurant owners in Los Angeles believe the messaging is not consistent enough when it comes to vaccines and masks.

“It’s creating anger. It’s creating confusion. And, you know, the funny thing is, is it creates more vaccine hesitancy, in my opinion,” said Angela Marsden, owner of the Pineapple Hill Saloon & Grill in Sherman Oaks, California, to Fox.

“I don’t understand the inconsistency, the confusion and the fear baiting that is basically being used by our leadership… I want them to quit interfering with our businesses and let us make our own decisions,” she said.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva said last week that his department will not be enforcing a mandatory indoor mask requirement as it “is not backed by science and contradicts the U.S. CDC guidelines.”

Source: https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/delta-variant-causes-businesses-in-liberal-cities-to-fear-new-covid-restrictions

The post Delta variant causes California business owners in liberal cities to fear new COVID restrictions first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

More vaccinated people are dying of COVID than unvaccinated people, according to a recent report from Public Health England (PHE). The report shows that 163 of the 257 people (63.4%) who died within 28 days of a positive COVID test between February 1 and June 21, had received at least one dose of the vaccine. At first glance, this may seem alarming, but it is exactly as would be expected.

Here’s a simple thought experiment: imagine everyone is now fully vaccinated with COVID vaccines – which are excellent but can’t save all lives. Some people who get infected with COVID will still die. All of these people will be fully vaccinated – 100%. That doesn’t mean vaccines aren’t effective at reducing death.

The risk of dying from COVID doubles roughly every seven years older a patient is. The 35-year difference between a 35-year-old and a 70-year-old means the risk of death between the two patients has doubled five times – equivalently it has increased by a factor of 32. An unvaccinated 70-year-old might be 32 times more likely to die of COVID than an unvaccinated 35-year-old. This dramatic variation of the risk profile with age means that even excellent vaccines don’t reduce the risk of death for older people to below the risk for some younger demographics.

PHE data suggests that being double vaccinated reduces the risk of being hospitalized with the now-dominant delta variant by around 96%. Even conservatively assuming the vaccines are no more effective at preventing death than hospitalization (actually they are likely to be more effective at preventing death) this means the risk of death for double vaccinated people has been cut to less than one-twentieth of the value for unvaccinated people with the same underlying risk profile.

COVID infections are currently highest in young people.

However, the 20-fold decrease in risk afforded by the vaccine isn’t enough to offset the 32-fold increase in underlying risk of death of a 70-year-old over a 35-year-old. Given the same risk of infection, we would still expect to see more double-vaccinated 70-year-olds die from COVID than unvaccinated 35-year-olds. There are caveats to that simple calculation. The risk of infection is not the same for all age groups. Currently, infections are highest in the youngest and lower in older age groups.

Think of it as ball-bearing rain

One way to imagine the risk is as a rain of differently sized ball bearings falling from the sky, where the ball bearings are the people that get infected with COVID. For simplicity’s sake, let’s assume there are roughly equal numbers of ball bearings in each age group. In each age category, there is also a variation in the size of the balls. The balls representing the older groups are smaller, representing a higher risk of death.

Now imagine there’s a sieve that catches many of the balls. Most people who get COVID will not die (most balls get caught in the sieve). But some of the smaller balls fall through. The older you are, the more likely you are to fall through the holes. The balls that make it through the first sieve are hugely skewed towards older age ranges, represented by the smaller ball bearings. Before COVID vaccines came along, the people that fell through the holes represented the people who would die of COVID. The risk was massively skewed towards older people.

Vaccination provides a second sieve underneath the first, to prevent people from dying. This time, because we haven’t vaccinated everyone, it’s the holes in the sieve that are of different sizes. For older people who’ve had both doses, the holes are smaller, so many ball-bearings are stopped. The vaccines will save many of those who would previously have died.

For younger people the holes in the vaccine sieve are currently bigger as they are less likely to have received both doses and so more likely to fall through the sieve.

If all the filtering were just done by the second sieve (with no skew in risk of death by age, represented by the first sieve), then we might expect younger unvaccinated people to account for a larger proportion of the deaths. But it isn’t. The first sieve is so hugely biased towards older people that even with vaccination, more of them slip through the second sieve than the younger unvaccinated people. Given the UK’s vaccination strategy (vaccinate older, more vulnerable people first), you would expect high proportions of the people who die from COVID to have been vaccinated. And that is exactly what we see in the data.

The fact that more vaccinated people are dying than unvaccinated people does nothing to undermine vaccine safety or effectiveness. In fact, it’s exactly what we’d expect from the excellent vaccines, which have already saved tens of thousands of lives.

Written by Christian Yates, Senior Lecturer in Mathematical Biology, University of Bath.

Originally published on The Conversation.

Source: https://scitechdaily.com/more-vaccinated-people-are-dying-of-covid-in-england-than-unvaccinated-heres-why/

The post More Vaccinated People Are Dying of COVID in England Than Unvaccinated – Here’s Why first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The post German ICUs fill up with younger COVID-19 patients first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The post India’s daily COVID-19 cases pass 400,000 for first time as second wave worsens first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Reuters/Adnan ABIDI

On the evening of April 23, Dhanraj Singh, a 40-year blind man, arrived at the Sikanderpur community health centre in eastern Uttar Pradesh’s Ballia district, complaining of breathlessness. Singh, a resident of the nearby Bansi Bazar village, was running a temperature too. According to the doctor who attended to him, Singh collapsed within “hardly five-seven minutes”. The body was handed over to the family.

In any case, the doctor said he would not have been able to help–the centre has no oxygen supplies, not even for emergencies.

Singh looked like a “suspected COVID case”, but the doctor said he had no way to be sure. The centre has inexplicably stopped testing for a month.

“What can we say, we want to test but we can’t, it is an administrative decision,” said the doctor, who did not want to be identified. “We send people to the block primary health centre where testing is still happening, that is around 5 km-6 km away. It is a tragedy that we are such a big centre and yet we do not test in these times.

The Sikanderpur community health centre caters to almost 200 villages in the area.

Despite the lack of testing, it seems fairly clear that COVID-19 is sweeping through the towns and villages of Ballia, a district bordering Bihar. Even Ballia’s chief medical officer Rajendra Prasad admitted as much. “The spread is a little too much this time,” he said. “The rural areas are not spared.”

Uttar Pradesh started experiencing a surge in the first week of April with the number of cases exploding beginning the second week. On April 8, the state reported 8,490 new cases, crossing the previous peak of 7,016 cases registered in September 2020. However, half of these 8,490 confirmed cases were limited to the four districts of Lucknow, Prayagraj, Kanpur and Varanasi.

But things have grown worse from there. On April 25, the state reported nearly 38,000 cases. As of April 27 morning, the state has over 300,00 active cases. Experts say the true numbers are likely to be much higher given the state’s lackadaisical testing.

More ominously, the virus is no longer restricted to urban centres. The beleaguered health infrastructure of rural Uttar Pradesh, which recently saw migrants return home from city hotspots to vote in the panchayat elections, is already overwhelmed, conversations with people, doctors and administrators in multiple districts suggest.

“Gasping for breath”

“People are dropping dead like flies,” said Imran Ahmed.

A local activist from Ballia’s Sikanderpur, he has been helping people get access to oxygen, but rarely with any success. “All their family members have the same story to share: they develop a fever and then all of a sudden they are gasping for breath, but there is no oxygen anywhere.”

The doctor at the Sikanderpur community health centre confirmed as much. “Our daily patient load is 200-250 patients per day and 90% of the cases come with problems of cough, fever and breathlessness,” he said. “The more severe cases who need oxygen, there are eight-ten every day, we refer to the district hospital.”

But there is no guarantee of oxygen in Uttar Pradesh’s district hospitals either, as Shivakant Pal of Sitapur’s Babupurwa village found out on April 24.

Pal’s mother Ramdevi Pal, 42, had been running a fever since April 20, but that morning she was struggling to breathe.

The family hired an autorickshaw and took her to a nearby private hospital where the doctor asked them to rush to the district hospital located some 30 km away. Ramdevi Pal’s oxygen saturation level had dropped to 35%, the ideal level being above 95%.

There, Shivakant Pal counted 72 beds–and one oxygen cylinder. His mother did not get any oxygen from it. She died gasping for breath at around 6.30 pm. “During the time we were there, at least five people died apart from my mother in the hospital, all of whom had come looking for oxygen. I saw with my own eyes,” said 20-year-old Pal. Officially, Sitapur did not report a single COVID-19 death that day.

That’s because, like Dhanraj Singh of Balia, Ramdevi Pal had never been tested for Covid-19.

Sitapur’s chief medical officer was not available for comment. A person in her office said she was in a meeting and there was “no problem” as such in the district.

Ramdevi Pal died gasping for breath in the Sitapur district hospital. She was never tested for COVID-19. -SCROLL.IN

Desperate for oxygen

Uttar Pradesh’s chief minister Adityanath has repeatedly claimed that there was no shortage of oxygen in the state and even threatened to seize the property of those spreading “rumours” and trying to “spoil the atmosphere.”

Yet, accounts from across the state suggest it is facing a severe oxygen crisis.

For instance, when Sanjay Kushwaha, a resident of a village near the Indo-Nepal border, took his 35-year-old breathless elder brother Manoj Kushwaha to the Kushinagar district hospital on April 18, the doctors administered an injection, but no oxygen. Nor was a COVID-19 test done, Sanjay Kushwaha said, as it was a Sunday. “His condition was not improving so we moved him to a private hospital,” he added.

His brother was immediately put on oxygen at the private hospital, but a COVID-test was not done there either, according to Sanjay Kushwaha.

Manoj Kushwaha stayed on oxygen support for four days at the private hospital—but after that it too ran out of oxygen. “We were told to arrange our own cylinder because the hospital’s stocks had run out,” said Sanjay Kushwaha.

On April 24, the private hospital asked the family to transfer Manoj Kushwaha to the tertiary-care BRD Medical College in Gorakhpur, which according to Sanjay Khushawa refused to admit him. “They told us they are not taking in patients from private [hospitals],” he said.

Manoj Kushwaha was brought back to the Kushinagar district hospital, where died on April 25, bereft of any oxygen support.

Kushinagar’s chief medical officer did not respond to repeated calls seeking comment.

SCROLL.IN

‘Arrange your own cylinder’

It is the same story across districts: hospitals are asking relatives to get their own oxygen cylinders.

In Bahraich, when Akshay Srivastava’s mother’s oxygen levels dropped, the family managed to get a cylinder, but under tragic circumstances. An acquaintance, whom the cylinder was meant for, died the previous night. “Well, I don’t know whether there is an oxygen shortage or not, but I can tell you that we entered the district hospital with our own cylinder,” said Srivastava.

On Sunday evening, the family was struggling to get a refill–the district hospital authorities had told them they could not help since all the oxygen was earmarked for the COVID ward and Srivastava’s mother’s COVID test was still pending.

Srivastava’s mother has since been shifted to a COVID ward where family members said the hospital was administering her oxygen.

Bahracih’s chief medical officer Rajesh Mohan Srivastava said there were ample critical care beds in the district. “Our positivity rate is 1.5%,” he said. “People are getting whatever they want.”

But few other officials and doctors in the state seem to share that optimism. A senior official in the state’s health department based in one of the eastern districts, currently down with COVID-19 along with the rest of his family, said he was thanking his stars no one in the family needed oxygen yet.

“It is all about chance, in all probability I could not have managed too,” he said.

Deaths in the villages

Professor Gopal Nath heads the Virus Research and Diagnostic Lab at the Institute of Medical Sciences, Banaras Hindu University, expressed a grim view of the situation. “The community spread is so bad in the villages that people don’t know what to do or where to go,” he said. “Also, testing such huge numbers is difficult because where is the health staff to collect so many samples. To meet the current demand, we need ten times more staff.”

Nath who hails from a village on the Jaunpur-Varanasi border said he shuddered at the prospect of going there anytime soon. “We have done massive blunders,” he said. “The gram panchayat elections should have been postponed because not only did it see big gatherings, the elections have so much prestige attached to them that people from cities came home to vote carrying the virus with them.”

A four-phase panchayat election that began on April 15 is currently underway in Uttar Pradesh. The Allahabad high court refused to postpone it, despite an unprecedented COVID-19 surge in the state.

Nath’s fears about a surge in the wake of the elections seem to be well-founded. Situated on the outskirts of Varanasi town, Ramna was of late seeing four-five deaths each day, of people showing COVID-like symptoms, said Amit Patel whose wife is the elected head of the village

“Last night three people died in my village,” Patel told Scroll.in on Monday. “None of them were tested.”

The primary health centre at Ramna is neither testing people for the virus nor treating people with symptoms. Currently, it is only administering Covid-19 vaccines.

Varanasi’s chief medical officer was not available for comment. A representative from his office said he was attending the funeral of his father who died late Monday evening. The representative, however, did say that the “situation was extremely bad in the district.” “Probably the worst in the whole of Uttar Pradesh,” he said.

In adjoining Chandauli, the District Combined Hospital at Chakia, which serves a largely rural population, is predictably getting overwhelmed. The hospital has 50 critical care beds reserved for COVID patients. “Last year, at any point of time, a maximum of 13-14 beds were occupied,” said Usha Yadav who till recently headed the facility. “Now my staff tells me there are 100 patients with makeshift beds everywhere. So you can imagine what the situation is.”

The burst of cases in the mofussil districts has meant additional pressure on already overburdened health facilities in urban centres like Lucknow. “It is not like we are dealing with patients just from Lucknow–people from the villages are now flooding our hospital,” said Madhulika Singh, who owns a private hospital and a medical college in the city “From Faizabad, Gonda, Raebareli, Basti, Ambedkar Nagar, everyone is coming to Lucknow. There just aren’t enough hospitals there.”

This article first appeared on Scroll.in. We welcome your comments at ideas.india@qz.com.

Source: https://qz.com/india/2002516/coronavirus-infections-and-deaths-mount-in-rural-india/

The post As COVID-19 reaches rural India, “people are dropping dead like flies” first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — In the wake of a deadly fire in a Baghdad hospital treating COVID-19 patients and more migrant deaths in the Mediterranean Sea, Pope Francis prayed for the victims of the disasters and their families.

After reciting the “Regina Coeli” prayer with visitors in St. Peter’s Square on April 25, the pope urged those gathered there to join him in prayer.

“I confess I am extremely sad over the tragedy that has once again taken place in the Mediterranean,” he said, referring to reports that all of the estimated 130 people on board a rubber dinghy drowned in rough waters.

European Union border protection agents alerted Italian, Maltese, and Libyan government authorities of a vessel in distress on April 21, but it was up to nonprofit rescue groups and three merchant vessels to conduct an active search, ending in finding no survivors April 22.

Pope Francis lamented not just the loss of life, but the lack of immediate rescue by government authorities.

“They are people. They are human beings who begged for help in vain for two whole days—help that never arrived,” he said.

“Brothers and sisters, let us all ask ourselves about this umpteenth tragedy. It is a shameful moment. Let us pray for these brothers and sisters, and for all those who continue to die in these tragic crossings,” he said.

“Brothers and sisters, let us all ask ourselves about this umpteenth tragedy. It is a shameful moment.”

“Let us also pray for those who can help but prefer to look the other way. Let us pray in silence for them,” the pope added.

The pope also expressed his closeness and prayers for victims of a fire in a hospital for COVID-19 patients in Baghdad.

Some 82 people died and more than 110 were injured by the blaze, which erupted late April 24 and was suspected of being caused by improperly stored oxygen canisters.

With Iraq now facing a second wave of infection, the hospital housed patients affected by the coronavirus.

Cardinal Louis Sako, the Baghdad-based Chaldean Catholic patriarch, visited the hospital on April 25 and prayed for those who died or were injured and their families.

“Let us also pray for those who can help but prefer to look the other way. Let us pray in silence for them,” the pope added.

In a note published on the patriarchate’s website and translated by AsiaNews, the cardinal called it a “humanitarian and national disaster” which requires “unity and solidarity” in order to “avert such shameful disasters in the future.”

Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi suspended the minister of health from his duties as an investigation was underway. The leader also announced three days of national mourning and promised financial compensation for the families of each victim.

Cardinal Sako said in his note that the church would continue to support all efforts by government, security, and health officials as well as their fellow citizens “to build together peace, stability, and closeness and to provide services, especially in these turbulent conditions in a region that also experiences many conflicts.”

The cardinal said it was urgent the country find ways to overcome the many recurring crises afflicting the country.

Source: https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2021/04/26/pope-prayers-baghdad-hospital-fire-mediterranean-migrant-deaths-240536

The post Pope Francis prays for 130 refugees drowned in Mediterranean first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

India has been battling the world’s worst COVID-19 outbreak and on Monday recorded another record in new cases with 352,991 in the past 24 hours along with 2,812 deaths.

Reuters reported that the situation in the country is dire, with hospitals in Delhi and other cities being forced to turn away patients due to a lack of medical oxygen and other supplies.

CLICK FOR THE LATEST CORONAVIRUS NEWS 

“Every hospital is running out (of oxygen). We are running out,” Dr. Sudhanshu Bankata, executive director of Batra Hospital, a leading hospital in the capital, told a local channel.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III said in a statement Sunday that the U.S. stands ready to support “our Indian partners in their hour of need.”

He said he has directed the department to “use every resource at our disposal, within our authority” to rapidly provide India’s frontline healthcare workers with the materials they need. He said he instructed the department to provide transportation and logistics assistance and is prepared to “deliver needed supplies” including oxygen-related equipment.

INDIA REPORTS RECORD NUMBER OF NEW CORONAVIRUS CASES

The BBC reported that the U.K. shipped its first consignment aid on Sunday that included 495 oxygen concentrators, which the report said has the capability to extract oxygen from the air if the hospital systems buckle.  A correspondent from the network who covers India posted a video on Twitter that she said showed an oxygen tanker with a police escort.

A Covid-19 coronavirus patient lies on a stretcher outside a hospital in New Delhi on April 24, 2021. (Photo by Sajjad HUSSAIN / AFP) (Photo by SAJJAD HUSSAIN/AFP via Getty Images)

“More precious than gold,” Yogita Limaye posted.

GET THE FOX NEWS APP

India’s infection surge, blamed on a highly contagious variant first detected here, came after Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared victory over the coronavirus in January, telling the virtual gathering of the World Economic Forum that India’s success couldn’t be compared with anywhere else.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/world/india-hits-new-record-with-covid-19-infections-us-vows-aid

The post India hits new record with COVID-19 infections, US vows aid first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Everybody’s supposed to feel a lot better, now that thousands of unaccompanied minors are flooding across the border.  Apparently they’re given money (Bill O’Reilly said eleven hundred dollars) and allowed to travel wherever they see fit in the United States to await a hearing they’ll not attend.  Extended family is waiting somewhere south of the border, expecting that they’ll be able to join the minor as soon as someone in the new administration calls for reuniting families.

At this point you couldn’t be blamed for refusing to be subjected to this weekly update.  Some of us are trying to insulate our minds from the tidal wave of news that makes no sense.  It turns out that President Trump’s speech has been banished from popular platforms (while still available if you know where to look).  He committed the act that infuriates news anchors, and frankly is not allowed to be uttered aloud or in print.  Any suggestion that the last presidential election was in some way not to be trusted is “dangerous misinformation.”  To see their reaction, you’d think somebody had yelled “fire” in a crowded theater.  Not that any theaters are crowded anymore.

It seemed great news that Governor Abbott of Texas is calling off the great COVID scare, as soon as next Wednesday arrives.  Until then, you’ll do as you’ve been told.  Maybe you’ll still run into mask police at the front door of some businesses who’ve decided to keep the charade alive.  But then, they must not be in business to succeed.  Why would any business run off customers on purpose?  It must take a commitment that has nothing to do with “business.”

But Dr. Fauci and certain other public voices are alarmed!  You can’t get back to normal, yet!  It won’t be long ’till the news is reporting record outbreaks again.  It wasn’t true before, and it won’t be true if they try it again.  But Fauci becomes irrelevant the minute the panic subsides, and we can’t let that happen!  Can we?

COVID succeeded in getting Donald Trump to leave the White House, but don’t think they’re about to give up on something that’s been so successful.  For decades they’ve been screaming their heads off about what an “existential crisis” we face with global warming, and how we’ve all got to forget other concerns and focus exclusively on our “carbon footprint.”  It never caught on, even with every news outlet and corporation preaching the gospel ’till they were blue in the face.  But COVID-19?  Nothing has ever caught on with the public like this has, so they’re just not going to let it go, even though the primary goal has already been accomplished.  Expect another barrage of health scares designed to make you wear a mask at your own funeral.  Can’t be too safe, you know.

There is a hint of good news though.  Prime Minister Netanyahu announced that Israel will make sure Iran doesn’t get a nuclear bomb or pose any threat to the world at large, whether the American government revives the “Deal” or not.  Chances are the nations that signed on to the Abraham Peace accords are not going to choose war over peaceful trade, despite the best efforts to return to traditional disputes.  We are well aware of the scenario laid out in Bible prophecy, and we’re not there yet.  If the sovereignty of the United States is relinquished to world bodies controlled from Europe, that may change.  Right now the world watches in amazement as the United States spirals toward self-destruction because former, and shadow President Obama says it’s the right thing to do.

Mark

Source: http://www.intercontinentalcog.org/fridayupdates.php

The post Weekly Update by Mark Armstrong – 5 March 2021 first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

An international group of scientists called for a new investigation into the origins of COVID-19 over fears the current probe is compromised by the Chinese Communist Party.

“We wish to raise public awareness of the fact that half of the joint team convened under that process is made of Chinese citizens whose scientific independence may be limited, that international members of the joint team had to rely on information the Chinese authorities chose to share with them, and that any joint team report must be approved by both the Chinese and international members of the joint team,” the open letter published in The Wall Street Journal reads.

The letter also follows National Pulse reporting exposing American and French World Health Organization (WHO) having potential conflicts of interest with the Chinese government.

“We have therefore reached the conclusion that the joint team did not have the mandate, the independence, or the necessary accesses to carry out a full and unrestricted investigation into all the relevant SARS-CoV-2 origin hypotheses  — whether natural spillover or laboratory/research-related incident,” the letter adds.

OPEN LETTER

Call for a Full and UnrestrictedInternational Forensic Investigation into the origins of COVID-19
March 4, 2021

1. Introduction

Finding the origins of SARS-CoV-2 is critically important to both better addressing the current pandemic and reducing the risks of future ones. Unfortunately, well over a year after the initial outbreak, the origins of the pandemic remain unknown.

As scientists, social scientists, and science communicators who have been independently and collectively looking into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, we believe it essential that all hypotheses about the origins of the pandemic are thoroughly examined and full access to all necessary resources be provided without regard to political or other sensitivities.

Based on our analysis, and as confirmed by the global study convened by the World HealthOrganization (WHO) and Chinese authorities, there is as yet no evidence demonstrating a fully natural origin of this virus. The zoonosis hypothesis, largely based on patterns of previous zoonosis events, is only one of a number of possible SARS-CoV-2 origins, alongside there search-related accident hypothesis.

Although the “collaborative” process of discovery mandated by the World Health Assembly in May 2020 was meant to enable a full examination of the origins of the pandemic, we believe that structural limitations built into this endeavor make it all but impossible for the WHO-convened mission to realize this aspiration.

In particular, we wish to raise public awareness of the fact that half of the joint team convened under that process is made of Chinese citizens whose scientific independence may be limited, that international members of the joint team had to rely on information the Chinese authorities chose to share with them, and that any joint team report must be approved by both the Chinese and international members of the joint team.

We have therefore reached the conclusion that the joint team did not have the mandate, the independence, or the necessary accesses to carry out a full and unrestricted investigation into all the relevant SARS-CoV-2 origin hypotheses – whether natural spillover or laboratory/research-related incident.

We are also concerned that the joint team’s work has been inaccurately reported by the media as an independent investigation whose conclusions reflect those of the WHO. The February 9, 2021 Wuhan joint press conference was a good example of this misunderstanding. Although the findings were those of the joint team, they were widely reported as representing the WHO itself.

As strong supporters of the WHO and its mission, we believe it must be made clear that any findings of the joint committee, while potentially useful to a limited extent, represent neither the official position of the WHO nor the result of an unrestricted, independent investigation. For this reason, we believe it is essential that the contours of a full and unrestricted investigation be outlined to set a standard against which current and future efforts can be evaluated.

2. Limitations of the WHO-convened global study

The following core problems undermine the existing WHO-convened joint study:

• The Terms of Reference, which govern the exact objectives, duties, and responsibilities of the joint-investigation, were negotiated without sufficient transparency (July 2020), and then made public after the considerable delay (November 2020).

• These Terms of Reference were significantly limited, for instance by stipulating that most of the fieldwork had to be conducted by the Chinese side with the results simply communicated to the international members of the joint team for review and discussion, in a format chosen by the Chinese side.

• The intermediate and final reports of the joint study rely on a consensus among the 17Chinese members and 17 international members of the joint team. It is likely, therefore, that reports resulting from this process will ultimately represent a necessary compromise based partly on political and other limitations.

• The selection process of international experts on the team did not adequately screen for conflicts of interest.

• The skills represented in the team are purely focused on public health and zoonosis at the detriment of forensic skills suitable for investigating a laboratory or research-related accident.

• The team did not have the mandate or access to granular lab records, data, and personnel to an extent that would allow them to confidently evaluate the various hypotheses.

• The team operated in the context of abroad Chinese State Council gag order which prevented any spontaneous sharing of any information about the pandemic, and which coordinated the careful release of any such information with the Chinese government. That gag order was put in place a week after the departure of the Feb 2020 WHO joint mission from China.

• The international members of the joint team, by their own admission, have often relied on verbal assurances given to them by their Chinese counterparts rather than independent investigation, particularly regarding the possibility of a lab or research-related accident.

• At least one international team member had expressed a strong conviction towards the pure zoonosis hypothesis before joining the investigation – when hardly any data about the SARS-CoV-2 virus were available – and was dismissive of the lab-related origins. These public statements cast serious doubts as to his scientific objectivity.

3. What a full investigation should look like

Because the joint team investigation falls short of the mark, we believe it essential for the international community to outline how a full and unrestricted investigation could be organized. Such an investigation would need to:

• Be carried out by a truly independent team with no unresolved conflicts of interest and no full or partial control by any specific agenda or country.

• Be multidisciplinary by including epidemiologists, virologists, wildlife experts, public health specialists, forensic investigators, biosafety and biosecurity experts, etc.

• Include several individuals with Chinese-language skills and with an understanding of Chinese culture, who can help to interpret behaviors during the original events and also help decode the dynamic during the investigation itself.

• Start its study by considering all possible scenarios for each pathway. These should include:

o A pure zoonosis event with/without an intermediate host;

o Infection at a sampling site of a lab employee or of some accompanying non-lab personnel;

o Infection during transport of collected animals and/or samples;

o Lab Acquired Infection (LAI) in one of the laboratories in Wuhan;

o Lab-escape without LAI, for instance via waste handling or animals that escaped or were disposed of inappropriately.

• Follow a common forensic investigation approach, based on:

o Traditional rigorous on-the-ground investigation;

o Desk-based analyst work to make sense of the elements collected;

o Open-source intelligence to help gather additional information;

o A review of previous zoonosis events and lab-related accidents, from which technical and institutional insights may be gained.

• Have full or significant access to all sites, records, samples, and personnel of interest, including:

o Key Wuhan markets;

o All laboratories and institutions, Chinese or international, known to have worked on coronaviruses or shared facilities or equipment with groups that worked on coronaviruses;

o Hospital records from fall 2019 of early or suspect patients, including interviews with patients or contacts;

o Important pathogen sampling sites, such as the Mojiang mine;

o Current and past personnel, such as employees of the labs in 2019 and people present on specific sampling sites.

• Have full access to all relevant records of the labs and institutions involved in coronavirus research, including:

o Environmental reports;

o Inspection reports;

o Maintenance logs;

o Lab experiment logs;

o Raw sequence reads;

o Records of shipments of samples;

o Specimen destruction records;

o Personnel logs;

o Incident reports;

o Animal breeding records;

o Sampling trip records, including the 2013 Mojiang sampling trip;

o Key databases of pathogens, samples, and isolates, including those taken offline.

• Have full access to granular data, preferably directly from the source and in its raw form, not summarized data. This data can be anonymized if necessary; there should be no legal reason to limit access.

• Have full access to market samples, environmental samples, hospital samples, and any potential samples such as wastewaters and blood banks with full permission to perform independent sequencing or other testing.

• Have full access to the Chinese CDC case records and related primary hospital and/or clinic records.

• Have full access to other Chinese case databases describing pneumonia cases.

• Be able to conduct confidential interviews, including of early cases and their relatives and past and present personnel associated with the sites or institutions of interest such as markets, hospitals, sampling sites, and laboratories.

• Deploy a secure reporting channel for people to confidentially contribute information, wherever they are based, without fear of punishment or retribution.

4. Conclusion and Next Steps

We recognize that as an international agency that must rely on the collaboration of its member states, the World Health Organization is limited in what it can achieve in this type of investigation. It is not our intention to undermine the WHO, which is working under challenging circumstances at a time of tremendous global need.

Although the joint team investigation was a significant opportunity for the international community to gain some limited and highly curated information, it has unfortunately proven opaque and restrictive, greatly compromising the scientific validity of the investigation. With more than two million deaths, more than a hundred million infected by COVID-19 worldwide,
and a massive global disruption impacting some of the world’s most vulnerable populations, we
cannot afford an investigation into the origins of the pandemic that is anything less than absolutely thorough and credible. If we fail to fully and courageously examine the origins of this pandemic, we risk being unprepared for a potentially worse pandemic in the future.

Because we believe the joint team process and efforts to date do not constitute a thorough, credible, and transparent investigation, we call on the international community to put in place a structure and process that does.

Signatories:
• Colin D Butler, Honorary Professor, National Centre for Epidemiology and population health, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia (ORCID 0000-0002-2942-5294)

• Bruno Canard, DR CNRS, molecular virologist, Aix Marseille University, France, (ORCID
0000-0003-4924-1991)

• Henri Cap, PhD, zoologist, Museum of Natural History, Toulouse, France

• Y. A. Chan, Postdoctoral Fellow, Broad Institute of MIT & Harvard, Cambridge, USA(ORCID 0000-0002-0731-637X).

• Jean-Michel Claverie, Emeritus Professor of Medicine, virologist, Aix-MarseilleUniversity, France, ( ORCID 0000-0003-1424-0315)

• Fabien Colombo, PhD Candidate, Communication and sociology of science, MICA,Université Bordeaux Montaigne, France.

• Virginie Courtier, Evolutionary geneticist, Institut Jacques Monod, CNRS, France (ORCID 0000-0002-9297-9230).

• Francisco A. de Ribera, Industrial Engineer, MBA, MSc(Res), Data scientist, Madrid, Spain (ORCID 0000-0003-4419-636X)

• Etienne Decroly, DR CNRS, molecular virologist, Aix Marseille University, France,(ORCID 0000-0002-6046-024X)

• Rodolphe de Maistre, MSc engineering, MBA, ex auditor IHEDN, France (ORCID 0000-0002-3433-2420)

• Gilles Demaneuf, Engineering (ECP), Data Scientist at BNZ, Auckland, NZ, (ORCID:0000-0001-7277-9533) (Co-Organizer)

• Richard H. Ebright, Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Rutgers University, USA

• André Goffinet, MD, PhD, Emeritus Professor, University of Louvain Med Sch, Belgium

• François Graner, biophysicist, Research Director, CNRS and Université de Paris,France, (ORCID 0000-0002-4766-3579)

• José Halloy, Professor of Physics, Biophysics and Sustainability, Université de Paris, France, (ORCID0000-0003-1555-2484)

• Milton Leitenberg, Senior Research Associate, School of Public Affairs, University of Maryland, USA

• Filippa Lentzos, Senior Lecturer in Science & International Security, King’s College London, United Kingdom (ORCID 0000-0001-6427-4025)

• Rosemary McFarlane, PhD BVSc, Assistant Professor of Public Health, University of Canberra, Australia (ORCID 0000-0001-8859-3776)

• Jamie Metzl, Senior Fellow, Atlantic Council, USA (Co-Organizer)

• Morell, Biologist, DR CNRS and Museum of Natural History, Toulouse, France

• Nikolai Petrovsky, Professor of Medicine, College of Medicine and Public Health, Flinders University, Australia

• Steven Quay, MD, PhD, Formerly Asst. Professor, Department of Pathology, StanfordUniversity School of Medicine, USA (ORCID 0000-0002-0363-7651)

• Monali C. Rahalkar, Scientist ‘D’, Agharkar Research Institute, Pune, India

• Rossana Segreto, PhD, Department of Microbiology, University of Innsbruck, Austria(ORCID 0000-0002-2566-7042)

• Günter Theißen, Dr. rer. nat., Professor of Genetics, Matthias Schleiden Institute,Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany, (ORCID 0000-0003-4854-8692)

• Jacques van Helden, Professor of bioinformatics, Aix-Marseille University, France,(ORCID 0000-0002-8799-8584)

Source: https://thenationalpulse.com/breaking/scientists-demand-new-covid-probe/

The post Scientists Demand New COVID-19 Probe After WHO Investigation Compromised By Chinese Communist Party. first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.