COVID-19

[WeToddDid2]

https://www.businessinsider.com/ana...-percent-us-deaths-avoidable-2021-2?r=US&IR=T
View attachment 260366

LOL.

I actually clicked on the link to find the paper expecting an actual objective analysis.

The intro to the paper doesn't sound bias at all. It looks like an objective analysis. LOL

The Lancet has lost all credibility. This toilet paper is nothing buy political biased propaganda disguised as a scientific paper for sheeple.

This report by the Lancet Commission on Public Policy and Health in the Trump Era assesses the repercussions of President Donald Trump's health-related policies and examines the failures and social schisms that enabled his election. Trump exploited low and middle-income white people's anger over their deteriorating life prospects to mobilise racial animus and xenophobia and enlist their support for policies that benefit high-income people and corporations and threaten health. His signature legislative achievement, a trillion-dollar tax cut for corporations and high-income individuals, opened a budget hole that he used to justify cutting food subsidies and health care. His appeals to racism, nativism, and religious bigotry have emboldened white nationalists and vigilantes, and encouraged police violence and, at the end of his term in office, insurrection. He chose judges for US courts who are dismissive of affirmative action and reproductive, labour, civil, and voting rights; ordered the mass detention of immigrants in hazardous conditions; and promulgated regulations that reduce access to abortion and contraception in the USA and globally.

 

[Cuddles]

How dare she make him look like a fool

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/poli...tified-critical-medical-shortages/ar-BB13uLtH
Trump Moves to Replace Watchdog Who Identified Critical Medical Shortages

WASHINGTON — President Trump moved on Friday night to replace a top official at the Department of Health and Human Services who angered him with a report last month highlighting supply shortages and testing delays at hospitals during the coronavirus pandemic.

The White House waited until after business hours to announce the nomination of a new inspector general for the department who, if confirmed, would take over for Christi A. Grimm, the principal deputy inspector general who was publicly assailed by the president at a news briefing three weeks ago.

The nomination was the latest effort by Mr. Trump against watchdog offices around his administration that have defied him. In recent weeks, he fired an inspector general involved in the inquiry that led to the president’s impeachment, nominated a White House aide to another key inspector general post overseeing virus relief spending and moved to block still another inspector general from taking over as chairman of a pandemic spending oversight panel.

Mr. Trump has sought to assert more authority over his administration and clear out officials deemed insufficiently loyal in the three months since his Senate impeachment trial on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress ended in acquittal largely along party lines. While inspectors general are appointed by the president, they are meant to be semiautonomous watchdogs ferreting out waste, fraud and corruption in executive agencies.

The purge has continued unabated even during the coronavirus pandemic that has claimed about 65,000 lives in the United States. Ms. Grimm’s case in effect merged the conflict over Mr. Trump’s response to the outbreak with his determination to sweep out those he perceives to be speaking out against him.

Her report, released last month and based on extensive interviews with hospitals around the country, identified critical shortages of supplies, revealing that hundreds of medical centers were struggling to obtain test kits, protective gear for staff members and ventilators. Mr. Trump was embarrassed by the report at a time he was already under fire for playing down the threat of the virus and not acting quickly enough to ramp up testing and provide equipment to doctors and nurses.

“It’s just wrong,” the president said when asked about the report on April 6. “Did I hear the word ‘inspector general’? Really? It’s wrong. And they’ll talk to you about it. It’s wrong.” He then sought to find out who wrote the report. “Where did he come from, the inspector general? What’s his name? No, what’s his name? What’s his name?”

When the reporter did not know, Mr. Trump insisted. “Well, find me his name,” the president said. “Let me know.” He expressed no interest in the report’s findings except to categorically reject them sight unseen.

After learning that Ms. Grimm had worked during President Barack Obama’s administration, Mr. Trump asserted that the report was politically biased. In fact, Ms. Grimm is not a political appointee but a career official who began working in the inspector general office late in President Bill Clinton’s administration and served under President George W. Bush as well as Mr. Obama. She took over the office in an acting capacity when the previous inspector general stepped down.

Mr. Trump was undaunted and attacked her on Twitter. “Why didn’t the I.G., who spent 8 years with the Obama Administration (Did she Report on the failed H1N1 Swine Flu debacle where 17,000 people died?), want to talk to the Admirals, Generals, V.P. & others in charge, before doing her report,” he wrote, mischaracterizing the government’s generally praised response the 2009 epidemic that actually killed about 12,000 in the United States. “Another Fake Dossier!”

To take over as inspector general, Mr. Trump on Friday night named Jason C. Weida, an assistant United States attorney in Boston. The White House said in its announcement that he had “overseen numerous complex investigations in health care and other sectors.” He must be confirmed by the Senate before assuming the position.

Ms. Grimm declined to comment but her office issued a statement recommitting itself to its mission of accountability. “Our professionals have risen to a variety of challenges, including our groundbreaking work fighting the opioid epidemic and health care fraud, as well as oversight of the planning, response, and funding for Covid-19,” the statement said. “We will continue to serve the American people by ensuring that their health and welfare are protected.”

Among several other nominations announced on Friday was the president’s choice for a new ambassador to Ukraine, filling a position last occupied by Marie L. Yovanovitch.

Ms. Yovanovitch was ousted a year ago because she was seen as an obstacle by the president’s advisers as they tried to pressure the government in Kyiv to incriminate Mr. Trump’s Democratic rivals. That effort to solicit political benefit from Ukraine, while withholding security aid, led to Mr. Trump’s impeachment largely along party lines in December.

Mr. Trump selected Lt. Gen. Keith W. Dayton, a retired 40-year Army officer now serving as the director of the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Germany. Mr. Dayton speaks Russian and served as defense attaché in Moscow. More recently, he served as a senior United States defense adviser in Ukraine appointed by Jim Mattis, Mr. Trump’s first defense secretary.

 

[TreeFrogTrader]

View attachment 261228

Biden moving to cover Fauci's arse in regard to the American role in the Wuhan virus.

Lemme guess: "The inspector general has looked at all of that."

 

[Cuddles]

 

[gwb-trading]

Another reason to get vaccinated...

COVID-19 virus can infect the testicles, study reveals
https://www.studyfinds.org/covid-19-can-infect-testicles/

New research out of Texas reports SARS-CoV-2, the virus causing COVID-19, can indeed infect the testicles. Scientists at the University of Texas say their work may help explain why some COVID-infected men complain of testicular pain or display lower-than-normal testosterone levels during their illness.

These findings are sure to make men the world over cross their legs in concern. Beyond that, however, study authors believe getting a better sense of how COVID-19 impacts the testicles holds major implications for men’s health moving forward. For instance, some autopsies performed on deceased COVID-19 patients reveal significant testicular disruption at the cellular level and traces of immune cells.

“Given the magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is critical to investigate how this disease can impact the testes, and the potential consequences for disease severity, reproductive health, and sexual transmission,” says lead study author Dr. Rafael Kroon Campos, a postdoctoral fellow at UTMB, in a university release.

SARS-CoV-2 is not the first virus to attack the testicles
Dr. Shannan Rossi’s lab at UTMB is no stranger to the subject of viruses and testicles. Researchers there had already spent years studying the ability of the mosquito-borne Zika virus to infect testicles. Once COVID-19 emerged, they set out to see if SARS-CoV-2 could do the same. Hamsters have been used throughout the pandemic to model COVID-19 in humans because they usually develop similar symptoms.

Researchers detected SARS-CoV-2 in the testicles of all studied hamsters during the first week of infection before slowly tapering off. The Texas team theorizes this is a likely representation of what may happen among human males experiencing mild-to-moderate COVID-19 symptoms.

“These findings are the first step in understanding how COVID-19 impacts the male genital tract and potentially men’s reproductive health,” explains Dr. Rossi, an associate professor in the Departments of Pathology and Microbiology & Immunology. “We have much more to do before we have the full picture. Moving forward, we will investigate ways to blunt this impact, including using antivirals, antibody therapies and vaccines.”

Study authors conclude that future studies focusing on COVID-19 and testicles should consider factors like pre-existing health conditions (obesity, diabetes) and SARS-CoV-2 variants.

The study appears in the journal Microorganisms.

 

[gwb-trading]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1404847230205505550

 

[Cuddles]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/heal...-paletta-book-nightmare-scenario-trump-covid/
New book offers fresh details about chaos, conflicts inside Trump’s pandemic response
At one point, the president mused about transferring infected American citizens in Asia to Guantánamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba

In the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, as White House officials debated whether to bring infected Americans home for care, President Donald Trump suggested his own plan for where to send them, eager to suppress the numbers on U.S. soil.

“Don’t we have an island that we own?” the president reportedly asked those assembled in the Situation Room in February 2020, before the U.S. outbreak would explode. “What about Guantánamo?”

“We import goods,” Trump specified, lecturing his staff. “We are not going to import a virus.”

Aides were stunned, and when Trump brought it up a second time, they quickly scuttled the idea, worried about a backlash over quarantining American tourists on the same Caribbean base where the United States holds terrorism suspects.

Such insider conversations are among the revelations in “Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration’s Response to the Pandemic That Changed History,” a new book by Washington Post journalists Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta that captures the dysfunctional response to the unfolding pandemic.

The book — which draws on interviews with more than 180 people, including multiple White House senior staff members and government health leaders — offers new insights into last year’s chaotic and often-bungled response, portraying the power struggles over the leadership of the White House coronavirus task force, the unrelenting feuds that hampered cooperation and the enormous efforts made to prevent Trump from acting on his worst instincts. The Post obtained a copy of the book ahead of its June 29 publication.

Since the start of the coronavirus outbreak, President Trump has repeatedly said that the virus will disappear. (JM Rieger/The Washington Post)
The book offers new insights about Trump as the president careened between embracing miracle coronavirus cures in his quest for good news, grappling with his own illness — which was far more serious than officials acknowledged — and fretting about the outbreak’s implications for his reelection bid.

“Testing is killing me!” Trump reportedly exclaimed in a phone call to then-Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar on March 18, yelling so loudly that Azar’s aides overheard every word. “I’m going to lose the election because of testing! What idiot had the federal government do testing?”

“Uh, do you mean Jared?” Azar responded, citing the president’s senior adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Just five days earlier, Kushner had vowed to take charge of a national testing strategy with the help of the private sector, Abutaleb and Paletta write.

Trump countered that the U.S. government never should have become involved in testing, arguing with his health secretary over why the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was seeking to track infections at all. “This was gross incompetence to let CDC develop a test,” Trump reportedly said as he berated Azar.

Public health experts contend it was inadequate testing that allowed the novel coronavirus to spread largely undetected across the United States in early 2020, making contact tracing and isolation all but impossible in the early days of the outbreak and fueling the first staggering wave of infections, hospitalizations and deaths.

Trump’s rages frequently distracted senior officials and slowed the national response, the authors found, with the president touting his hunches and eventually turning to handpicked advisers including the radiologist Scott Atlas, who had no infectious-disease or public health experience. But the book also depicts the president as ineffectual and out of touch while his health and national security officials tried to manage the worsening outbreak.

Despite his famous reality TV catchphrase “You’re fired,” Trump proved markedly ineffective at removing staffers during the pandemic, Abutaleb and Paletta write, boxed in by deputies who worried about political fallout and the implications of undermining public health.

For instance, Trump repeatedly told his aides in February to fire a senior State Department official who allowed 14 coronavirus-infected Americans on the Diamond Princess cruise ship to return home. The decision “doubles my numbers overnight,” the president complained to Azar, as the number of official U.S. coronavirus cases rose to 28.

But senior officials balked at firing the diplomat, and Trump and then-acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney eventually “gave up,” Abutaleb and Paletta write, adding that the official’s decision to bring the sick Americans back to the United States may have saved their lives, given there were no later flights they could take.

Trump also would call for firing Robert Kadlec, the HHS emergency preparedness chief who signed off on the Diamond Princess evacuation. Later, he would push to replace Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn when the agency chief refused to expedite vaccine approvals before the election and deferred to career FDA officials instead.

Both men would stay on for the duration of Trump’s presidency, along with Anthony S. Fauci — the longtime infectious-disease expert who became a top target of Trump and his allies but whose public popularity helped insulate him. Rather than fire Fauci, White House officials increasingly tuned out the advice from him and other top health officials, the book says, with Trump instead leaning on Kushner, an array of economic advisers and other trusted allies who lacked infectious-disease expertise.

Trump’s top deputies adopted a similar strategy of issuing threats or isolating their rivals, undermining efforts to manage the outbreak, Abutaleb and Paletta write.

Kadlec, who had overseen the purchase of 600 million masks, took the plan in late March to Kushner — who exploded in anger, throwing his pen against the wall in frustration when he learned the masks would not arrive until June.

“You f---ing moron,” Kushner reportedly said. “We’ll all be dead by June.”

Mark Meadows, whom Trump abruptly installed as White House chief of staff with little warning to Mulvaney, also berated Kadlec as the federal government struggled to distribute a new antiviral treatment called remdesivir, whose use the FDA had just authorized.

“I’m going to fire your a-- if you can’t fix this!” Meadows reportedly yelled at Kadlec in a surprise phone call as the remdesivir rollout sputtered when scarce supplies were wrongly delivered to hospitals without eligible patients or appropriate refrigeration and the White House’s hopes for positive headlines slipped away.

“That was what the response had turned into: a toxic environment in which no matter where you turned, someone was ready to rip your head off or threatening to fire you,” Abutaleb and Paletta write.

“Nightmare Scenario” also captures the tensions as then-Vice President Mike Pence was installed as the new head of the coronavirus task force at the end of February 2020, replacing Azar. In subsequent days, Pence and his chief of staff, Marc Short, focused on the political and economic implications of the coronavirus response and approached many public health decisions by considering how they would be perceived.

For instance, Short complained that Trump was overreacting by listening to public health experts and opting to extend an economic pause through Easter 2020, characterizing the move as a gift to Democratic governors, the authors write. Short also pushed back against an HHS effort to send free masks to every American household in the response’s early days, a step that some public health experts think would have depoliticized mask-wearing but which Short believed would unnecessarily alarm people. Several senior officials also compared masks to “underwear on your face,” with one remarking that they looked like a “training bra.”

The book details smaller episodes that reveal the personalities at the heart of the Trump administration’s response that would play out in sometimes dysfunctional ways, including in the White House’s February 2020 announcement that “Ambassador Debbie Birx [would] serve as the White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator.” But Birx, a longtime infectious-disease expert, actually goes by “Debbi” — a point that Birx, a former military officer who was “ever respectful of the chain of command,” never sought to correct, even as the mistake was repeated. Birx would subsequently be pilloried for failing to correct Trump’s frequent misstatements, including an episode where she sat by as Trump riffed about injecting bleach to fight the virus — a comment that was tied to a subsequent reported spike in calls to emergency poison lines.

As Fauci’s popularity rose and public trust in other administration doctors plummeted, allies of Birx and CDC Director Robert Redfield chafed that Fauci was not being punished by the public for his own missteps, including advising Americans early in the outbreak that they did not need to wear masks before reversing course several weeks later.

The authors also look back for lessons that could inform the government’s response to future crises.

“One of the biggest flaws in the Trump administration’s response is that no one was in charge of the response,” Abutaleb and Paletta write. “Was it Birx, the task force coordinator? Was it Pence, head of the task force? Was it Trump, the boss? Was it Kushner, running the shadow task force until he wasn’t? Was it Marc Short or Mark Meadows, often at odds, rarely in sync?”

“Ultimately, there was no accountability, and the response was rudderless,” they conclude.

 

[gwb-trading]

WHO warns that the Delta coronavirus variant is the 'fittest' strain yet and will 'pick off' the most vulnerable people
https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-fittest-coronavirus-variant-who-warns-vulnerable-2021-6

• The Delta coronavirus variant is on track to become the dominant strain in many nations.
• WHO officials on Monday said the variant was "faster" and "fitter" than previously identified ones.
• "It will pick off the more vulnerable more efficiently than previous variants," Dr. Mike Ryan said.

(More at above url)

 

[Cuddles]

 

[gaussian]

WHO warns that the Delta coronavirus variant is the 'fittest' strain yet and will 'pick off' the most vulnerable people
https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-fittest-coronavirus-variant-who-warns-vulnerable-2021-6

• The Delta coronavirus variant is on track to become the dominant strain in many nations.
• WHO officials on Monday said the variant was "faster" and "fitter" than previously identified ones.
• "It will pick off the more vulnerable more efficiently than previous variants," Dr. Mike Ryan said.

(More at above url)

Gotta ramp the fear porn up so people get their unapproved vaccines.

The WHO says a lot of things including "Taiwan is not a country" and "masks won't do anything". I'm going to treat the WHO like I treat Cramer and short whatever it says.

20% of the new infections are delta, 100% of all infections are caused by Fauci's shadow slush fund giving money to chicom researchers to develop the china virus.

You should be more critical of Vice Chancellor Fauci. Your boy Obama tried to stop him from spending money on developing super viruses. Maybe if they could surgically remove Biden's foot from his mouth he could fire Fauci and get someone who isn't an ignoramus responsible for millions of deaths to run the show.

New book offers fresh details about chaos, conflicts inside Trump’s pandemic response

Wow another book about Trump. I bet this one is full of facts and logic as well. Or is it just another stasi spin piece? I'm guessing the latter.