Walking for 150 minutes per week associated with improved wellbeing in over-50 Trinity College Dublin, January 17, 2022 New research using data from The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA) at Trinity College Dublin shows that being physically active, for example by walking for at least 150 minutes per week, is associated with more social participation and better mental health and wellbeing. (NEXT) Study finds hydroxychloroquine delays disability for least treatable form of multiple sclerosis University of Calgary (Canada), January 17, 2022 A University of Calgary study has found promising results for the generic drug hydroxychloroquine when used to treat the evolution of disability of primary progressive multiple sclerosis (MS), the least treatable form of the autoimmune disease. Cumming School of Medicine research teams found hydroxychloroquine helped to slow the worsening of disability during the 18-month study involving participants at the MS clinic in Calgary. The research was published in Annals of Neurology. (NEXT) Tree nut consumption is associated with better diet Louisiana State University, January 16, 2022 A new study, published this week in the open access journal Nutrients, compares the nutrient adequacy and diet quality of those who consume tree nuts (almonds, Brazil nuts, cashews, hazelnuts, macadamias, pecans, pine nuts, pistachios and walnuts), and non-tree nut consumers in a nationally representative population. Tree nut consumption was associated with better nutrient adequacy for most nutrients that are lacking in the diets of many Americans, and with better diet quality. (NEXT) Protein isolated from baker's yeast shows potential against leukemia cells University of Sao Paulo (Brazil), January 16, 2022 An enzyme identified in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, commonly known as brewer's or baker's yeast, has passed in vitro trials, demonstrating its capacity to kill acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) cells. "In this study, we characterize the enzyme L-asparaginase from S. cerevisiae. The results show this protein can efficiently annihilate leukemia cells with low cytotoxicity to healthy cells," said Gisele Monteiro, a professor at FCF-USP and the principal investigator for the published study. (NEXT) Pakistan says trial of Chinese traditional medicine for Covid-19 successful International Center for Chemical and Biological Science (Pakistan), January 17, 2022 Local health authorities on Monday announced the completion of a successful clinical trial of Chinese traditional herbal medicine for treating Covid-19, as Pakistan enters a fifth wave of the pandemic driven by the Omicron variant. The Chinese medicine, Jinhua Qinggan Granules (JHQG) manufactured by Juxiechang (Beijing) Pharmaceutical Co Ltd, is already being used in the treatment of Covid-19 patients in China. (OTHER NEWS) The Age of Intolerance: Cancel Culture's War on Free Speech John and Nisha Whitehead, January 11, 2022 Cancel culture—political correctness amped up on steroids, the self-righteousness of a narcissistic age, and a mass-marketed pseudo-morality that is little more than fascism disguised as tolerance—has shifted us into an Age of Intolerance, policed by techno-censors, social media bullies, and government watchdogs. Everything is now fair game for censorship if it can be construed as hateful, hurtful, bigoted or offensive provided that it runs counter to the established viewpoint. In this way, the most controversial issues of our day—race, religion, sex, sexuality, politics, science, health, government corruption, police brutality, etc.—have become battlegrounds for those who claim to believe in freedom of speech but only when it favors the views and positions they support. This tendency to censor, silence, delete, label as “hateful,” and demonize viewpoints that run counter to the cultural elite is being embraced with a near-fanatical zealotry by a cult-like establishment that values conformity and group-think over individuality. This authoritarian intolerance masquerading as tolerance, civility and love (what comedian George Carlin referred to as “fascism pretending to be manners”) is the end result of a politically correct culture that has become radicalized, institutionalized and tyrannical. J.K. Rowling, author of the popular Harry Potter series, has found herself denounced as transphobic and widely shunned for daring to criticize efforts by transgender activists to erode the legal definition of sex and replace it with gender. Rowling’s essay explaining her views is a powerful, articulate, well-researched piece that not only stresses the importance of free speech and women’s rights while denouncing efforts by trans activists to demonize those who subscribe to “wrongthink,” but also recognizes that while the struggle over gender dysmorphia is real, concerns about safeguarding natal women and girls from abuse are also legitimate. Ironically enough, Rowling’s shunning included literal book burning. Yet as Ray Bradbury once warned, “There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.” Indeed, the First Amendment is going up in flames before our eyes, but those first sparks were lit long ago and have been fed by intolerance all along the political spectrum. Consider some of the kinds of speech being targeted for censorship or outright elimination. Offensive, politically incorrect and “unsafe” speech: Bullying, intimidating speech: Dangerous, anti-government speech: The problem as I see it is that we’ve allowed ourselves to be persuaded that we need someone else to think and speak for us. And we’ve bought into the idea that we need the government and its corporate partners to shield us from that which is ugly or upsetting or mean. The result is a society in which we’ve stopped debating among ourselves, stopped thinking for ourselves, and stopped believing that we can fix our own problems and resolve our own differences. In short, we have reduced ourselves to a largely silent, passive, polarized populace incapable of working through our own problems and reliant on the government to protect us from our fears. We have allowed our fears—fear for our safety, fear of each other, fear of being labeled racist or hateful or prejudiced, etc.—to trump our freedom of speech and muzzle us far more effectively than any government edict could. Ultimately the war on free speech—and that’s exactly what it is: a war being waged by Americans against other Americans—is a war that is driven by fear. By muzzling free speech, we are contributing to a growing underclass of Americans who are being told that they can’t take part in American public life unless they “fit in.” Be warned: whatever we tolerate now—whatever we turn a blind eye to—whatever we rationalize when it is inflicted on others will eventually come back to imprison us, one and all. (NEXT) Time to Boycott - Companies Discriminating Against Their Unvaccinated Employees The Naked Emperor, January 17, 2022 Suddenly, employment and discrimination laws don’t exist. Here is an ever-growing list of companies that are discriminating against their employees. They need boycotting until they change their policies. Finance Citigroup - Employees to lose their jobs by the end of the month if unvaccinated; Goldman Sachs - Told employees they will require a booster to work in the office from 1 February; JPMorgan Chase - Won’t pay unvaccinated employees because they aren’t allowed to go to the office; OneAmerica - Requiring vaccines for all employees; Healthcare National Health Service - Staff with direct contact with patients must have had a 1st dose by 3 February or risk losing their job at the end of March; Mayo Clinic - Has fired 700 unvaccinated employees; Retail Columbia Sportswear - Will begin firing unvaccinated employees from 1 Feb; Ikea - Has cut sick pay for unvaccinated staff forced to self-isolate; Kroger - Eliminated paid leave for unvaccinated employees who get COVID-19 and require them to pay monthly health insurance surcharges; Next - Sick pay cut for unvaccinated staff forced to self-isolate; Nike - If employees remain unvaccinated by 15 January they will be fired; Morrisons - Cut sick pay for unvaccinated staff in October 2021; Ocado - Unvaccinated isolating staff to have sick pay cut; Tyson Foods - Require COVID-19 vaccinations for its U.S workforce and providing $200 to full vaccinated frontline team members; Vans, Supreme, Timberland & The North Face (Parent company = VF Corporation) - will start firing unvaccinated employees by 31 January without severance; Services Wessex Water - To cut sick pay for unvaccinated staff who need to self-isolate; Tech- Apple - Starting 24 January, employees will need proof of booster. Unvaccinated will need negative tests to go to work; Google - Tells unvaccinated employees they’ll lose pay and will eventually be fired; Intel - Employees to go on unpaid leave if unvaccinated by 4 January; (NEXT) Spain police officers in Valencia: "We are with the people, not with corrupt politicians. We are in contact with Portugal, Italy, France, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands to unite all the police in Europe. Down with the health passport." (NEXT) There Is Currently No COVID Medical Emergency Only Psychological Engineering Says Senior Israeli Immunologist GREAT GAME INDIA, January 16, 2022 The attempts of governments across the globe at “psychological engineering” the population on Covid related matters has now been fully exposed after several years. A well respected immunologist in Israel heavily criticized the approach of every administration globally. In a scathing letter addressed to the Israeli Ministry of Health, a renowned immunologist denounced mass vaccination against COVID-19 and chastised officials who’ve already “branded” the unvaccinated “as spreaders of the disease.” The letter, penned by Professor Ehud Qimron, who is the head of Tel Aviv University’s Department of Microbiology and Immunology, rips off vaccine-focused COVID tactics endorsed by authorities across the globe, which Qimron labels “doomed to fail.” “Two years late, you finally realize that a respiratory virus cannot be defeated and that any such attempt is doomed to fail,” he wrote to the Israeli health ministry. “You do not admit it, because you have admitted almost no mistake in the last two years, but in retrospect it is clear that you have failed miserably in almost all of your actions, and even the media is already having a hard time covering your shame.” Qimron reprimanded Israeli authorities for failing to recognize that COVID-19 vaccines will neither eliminate the virus or provide herd immunity, as the government’s immunization campaign “failed” to do. “You refused to admit that the infection comes in waves that fade by themselves, despite years of observations and scientific knowledge,” he said. “You refused to admit that recovery is more protective than a vaccine, despite previous knowledge and observations showing that non-recovered vaccinated people are more likely to be infected than recovered people.” “You refused to admit that the vaccinated are contagious despite the observations. Based on this, you hoped to achieve herd immunity by vaccination — and you failed in that as well.” According to research, immunizations essentially inflict more harm than that of the virus on its own in younger demographics. According to a study released last month by British researchers, the jabs dramatically raise the chance of potentially life-threatening heart inflammation in males under 40 years old compared to COVID-19 and may lead in more lethal types of the heart ailment. “You have ignored many reports of changes in menstrual intensity and menstrual cycle times,” Qimron noted in his letter to the health ministry. “You hid data that allows for objective and proper research. Instead, you chose to publish non-objective articles together with senior Pfizer executives on the effectiveness and safety of vaccines.” “The truth is that you have brought the public’s trust in you to an unprecedented low, and you have eroded your status as a source of authority,” he alleged, citing increased incidences of mental illness and misbehavior among Israeli pupils amid COVID regulations. “You have destroyed the education of our children and their future,” said Qimron. “You made children feel guilty, scared, smoke, drink, get addicted, drop out, and quarrel, as school principals around the country attest. You have harmed livelihoods, the economy, human rights, mental health and physical health.” You slandered colleagues who did not surrender to you, you turned the people against each other, divided society and polarized the discourse. You branded, without any scientific basis, people who chose not to get vaccinated as enemies of the public and as spreaders of disease. You promote, in an unprecedented way, a draconian policy of discrimination, denial of rights and selection of people, including children, for their medical choice. A selection that lacks any epidemiological justification. “There is currently no medical emergency,” the immunologist continued. “The only emergency now is that you still set policies and hold huge budgets for propaganda and psychological engineering instead of directing them to strengthen the health care system.” “This emergency must stop!” (NEXT) Serious Health Risks of Covid-19 Vaccines: Open Letter to Cornell University Board of Trustees and President Martha Pollack Cornell University Community, January 12, 2022 Dear President Pollack and Cornell Board of Trustees, We are students, parents, alumni, faculty, and staff of Cornell University. We are grateful for Cornell’s efforts at keeping students and the Ithaca community safe during this pandemic. As concerned members of the global Big Red family, we write this open letter to express our strong opposition to Cornell’s Covid-19 booster mandate. In light of new data available about both the vaccine and the virus, we urge you to change the “mandate” to a “recommendation” based on the factors outlined below. We appreciate that the booster mandate and new procedures for the spring term stem from the good intention to prevent severe illness. But as with any public health policy, many factors — scientific, ethical, and legal — must be considered and weighed. We are concerned that Cornell, in issuing this booster mandate, has overlooked recent and evolving scientific data regarding the vaccine and the virus that makes a booster mandate inappropriate and unnecessary, raising serious ethical and legal questions. In December 2021, Cornell identified over 1,600 Covid-19 positive cases with “every case of the Omicron variant to date [being] found in fully vaccinated students, a portion of whom had also received a booster shot.” Cornell’s own data highlights that vaccination, even with the booster, has very limited capability in stopping virus transmission. A similar conclusion has been reached by CDC’s research: vaccinated people seem to transmit Covid-19 similarly to unvaccinated people. The virus will continue to be transmitted among our highly vaccinated campuses. In a recent campus-wide email, Cornell explicitly acknowledged the impossibility of containing or eliminating Omicron, the flu, or other respiratory illnesses, which is why it will “shift from counting positive cases.” As so many students test positive, they are, in essence, receiving a natural booster based on the very latest variants of the virus. And yet, Cornell is ignoring the natural immunity in these students and mandating a booster injection based on older variants, which Cornell knows is ineffective at stopping the spread of Covid-19 in the Cornell community. This decision is counter to science and seems like it was made less to promote students’ health and more to achieve some other unstated goal of the administration. Otherwise, why require a booster injection that is ineffective, and potentially dangerous, for students who are naturally contracting and fighting off a virus that many scientists believe is becoming more endemic than pandemic? Mounting evidence points to serious risks from exposure to the Covid-19 vaccines. The latest scientific research shows that Covid-19 vaccine side effects such as myocarditis, thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome, and pericarditis are more common in young people than we think (see references 1-5 listed below). Recently, an Oxford-conducted study of men under the age of 40 demonstrated that the risk of myocarditis after one dose mRNA exceeds the risk of myocarditis from an actual Covid-19 infection. Even more alarmingly, the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) indicates that there were over 15,000 Covid-19 vaccine related death cases in 2021, compared with the previous average of 158 vaccine related deaths per year (Pre-Covid-19), in the context of a yearly total of 280 million injections and 70 different vaccines. This data shows that, compared to other vaccines, Covid-19 injections carry around 100 times the risk of death. Considering new data on the virus and the vaccine, the university may very well cause disability or death by imposing further vaccine requirements, and it will have to bear the responsibility. Please do the right thing, and end this unnecessary and unethical mandate. (NEXT) EU Regulators, WHO Call for End to COVID Boosters, Citing Evidence Strategy Is Failing EU drug regulators, World Health Organization experts and the former chairman of the UK’s COVID task force all cited mounting evidence mRNA COVID boosters aren’t working and the strategy should be dropped. Childrens Health Defense, January 12, 2022 European Union drug regulators warned frequent COVID boosters could adversely affect the immune system and said there are currently no data to support repeated doses. According to the European Medicines Agency (EMA), continued booster doses every four months could pose a risk of overloading people’s immune systems and lead to fatigue. Instead, the agency recommended countries space out the intervals between boosters and coordinate their programs with the onset of the cold season in each hemisphere — following blueprints of influenza vaccination strategies. Boosters “can be done once, or maybe twice, but it’s not something that we can think should be repeated constantly,” Cavaleri said. “We need to think about how we can transition from the current pandemic setting to a more endemic setting.” The World Health Organization’s (WHO) Technical Advisory Group on COVID-19 Vaccine Composition (TAG-CO-VAC) on Jan. 11 warned, “a vaccination strategy based on repeated booster doses of the original vaccine composition is unlikely to be appropriate or sustainable.” The expert group, created by the WHO to assess the performance of COVID vaccines, said providing fresh doses of already existing vaccines as new strains of the virus emerge is not the best way to fight a pandemic. “It’s over, people,” Alex Berenson, former New York Times reporter and best-selling author, wrote. “Aside from a few unlucky Israelis, no one is going to receive a fourth dose of the original vaccine.” Berenson wrote: “Everyone with eyes can see it doesn’t work against Omicron — and if you haven’t gotten a third dose, at this point, why would you? You are getting at most weeks of marginally improved protection for potentially severe side effects. “Instead the WHO is now promising/demanding vaccines based on whatever the dominant Sars-Cov-2 strain is at the moment. That promise is as empty as all the others the health bureaucrats and vaccine companies have made.” (NEXT) 60% Of Omicron Hospitalization Numbers Were Incorrect Admits Canada’s Chief Medical Officer GREAT GAME INDIA. January 17, 2022 Shocking statistics regarding Canada’s Omicron hospitalizations being incorrect has come to light recently. The Premier of Alberta has claimed a staggering 60% disparity between the actual figures. Alberta Premier Jason Kenney and Alberta Chief Medical Officer Deena Hinshaw both confirmed that public figures for ICU capacity and COVID admissions were up to 60% incorrect. “Of the 163 omicron patients in hospital, 66 have a primary COVID diagnosis … and of the 14 omicron patients in ICU, 11 have a primary COVID diagnosis,” he stated. As per Kenney, this indicates that 60% of individuals labelled as staying in the hospital for an omicron ailment weren’t there because they arrived sick with COVID, and also that the ICU statistics reflect the same rationale, with more than 20% of recorded stays being unintentional. This is consistent with developments found throughout Canada, as provincial medical authorities have shifted their focus and begun to release increasingly specific data on hospitalizations. (NEXT) Unvaccinated people over 60 in Greece now face monthly fines Associated Press, January 17, 2022 ATHENS, Greece — Greece imposed a vaccination mandate Monday for people 60 and older, as the country’s vaccination rate remains below the European Union average and a spike in infections has put sustained pressure on Greek hospitals. Older people failing to get vaccinated will face penalties, starting at a 50-euro ($57) fine in January and followed by a monthly fine of 100 euros ($114) after that. About two-thirds of Greece’s 10.7 million people are fully vaccinated, while the EU average is just over 70%. But COVID-19 deaths and daily hospitalizations have increased following the arrival of the highly contagious omicron variant, though pressure on ICU capacity has eased slightly. Health Minister Thanos Plevris said the fines would be collected through the tax office with the money going to help fund state hospitals.
