#Children RSV Cases

[thejewishlink]

California sees increase in RSV, respiratory illness that can be dangerous for babies

California sees increase in RSV, respiratory illness that can be dangerous for babies

BY RONG-GONG LIN II,  LUKE MONEY OCT. 25, 2022 Some California children’s hospitals are straining under a surge of RSV, a respiratory illness that can cause babies to struggle to breathe. At least three major children’s hospitals say they have experienced either a strain or a stretching of resources because of RSV. The illness normally peaks in winter, and doctors say it’s unusual for there to…

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved on our archive (Archive.is link on this page if you can't access the original source)

By Iris Gorfinkel

The lack of masking in health care facilities will needlessly spread disease. As in past autumns, cooler weather will bring a spike in flu and cold viruses while kids in Ontario have settled back into crowded classrooms and COVID-19 threatens to reach a 3-year peak, writes Iris Gorfinkle.

Imagine you — or a vulnerable loved one — needs urgent medical care. If you’re lucky enough to have a family doctor, you head to their clinic. Like most, yours is housed in a building with low ceilings and little air filtration. You enter the waiting room where several patients sit shoulder-to-shoulder waiting.

You have no choice but to sit alongside people sneezing, coughing and blowing their noses. Few if any, patients and health care workers are wearing a mask. While grateful for the hand sanitizer on offer, you begin to wonder if that will be enough to prevent your picking up an infection you hadn’t anticipated.

It’s an all-too-familiar scenario.

The most common reason people see a GP is to assess an upper respiratory infection. They most frequently start after inhaling infected droplets or aerosols or from having touched an infected surface.

An N95 or KN95 mask helps block transmission, whether it’s SARS CoV-2, influenza or a common cold virus like RSV. They’re not perfect, but they reduce viral transmission by 30 per cent. Yet in spite of their benefits, most health-care workers and patients no longer routinely mask, even during assessments requiring close contact with an increased risk of disease spread.

Many of my most vulnerable patients are keenly aware of the potential health risks this presents. Yet most say nothing and would never dream of asking their clinician to wear a mask.

There are sound reasons for this.

The first has to do with long wait times. A visit to the specialist is a precious commodity that cannot be risked. Several months pass before patients are seen, raising the urgency for care.

This is only the first of many factors to come that can silence even the most assertive of patients.

Many don’t want to appear disrespectful by asking their health-care workers to mask. They fear being labelled “difficult” or “demanding” and become distressed at the prospect of questioning their clinician’s judgment, even if it should put them in harm’s way.

Patients become more passive when burdened with the anxiety, dread and fatigue that accompanies illness. Deep-seated fears are ignited that further increase the dependency on health-care workers and squelch any remaining likelihood of their requesting that their clinicians mask.

Masking policies in health-care facilities don’t have to be all-or-none edicts. Patients who are hard of hearing often benefit when they’re able to read lips. Both patients and health care workers sometimes struggle because of anxiety. Young children may not co-operate, and there are people who simply cannot — or will not — tolerate them.

These are special cases though, not the rule. Smart policies in health care facilities need to have latitude for such exceptions. But tightening the policy on masking also recognizes that SARS CoV-2 is a stealthy virus.

One-in-three people infected have no symptoms yet can still transmit COVID-19. It can result in serious physical and mental harms that last 3 years and possibly longer following the initial infection. Since the start of the pandemic to the end of 2023, long COVID has affected 6 per cent of adults and 1 per cent of children.

Vaccines don’t lower viral transmission. Where they shine is at lowering the severity of cases and keeping Ontario’s hospitals from being overwhelmed, but they’re poor at reducing mild cases. It’s short-sighted to gamble on the hope that future vaccines will prove any different.

What’s more certain is that the lack of masking in health care facilities will needlessly spread disease. As in past autumns, cooler weather will bring a spike in flu and cold viruses while kids in Ontario have settled back into crowded classrooms and COVID-19 threatens to reach a 3-year peak.

The duty of care doesn’t land on patients. It’s the clinicians’ job to ensure patients don’t pick up an unintended infection. Patients have a right to safety in health care facilities. In the meantime, I can only advise my concerned patients to wear an N95 or KN-95 when in health care facilities and suggest they not be shy when asking clinicians to do the same.

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Increasing number of Covid-19 cases reported in Brazil

A health report issued Thursday by the Rio de Janeiro-based Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz) noted that the number of Covid-19 infections in South America's largest country was on the rise, Agencia Brasil reported.

 Fiocruz's InfoGripe Bulletin regarding Epidemiological Week from Aug. 25 to 31 showed an increase in cases of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), particularly due to the rhinovirus among children and adolescents up to the age of 14. In the other age groups, Covid-19 is predominant. At the same time, cases of Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) and influenza A continue to fall in most parts of the country.

According to Fiocruz, the states that stand out most at the moment due to the increase in Covid-19 are Goiás and São Paulo. The greatest concern is with the latter, due to the large movement of people passing through the state and then moving on to other regions. The researchers warn of the possibility of the state driving the spread and growth of the disease across the country.

Continue reading.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Maggie Campbell and her husband are raising three children who are all prone to illness, but any medical attention the family from New Annan, P.E.I., gets has to come through an emergency department.  She and her husband had the same doctor in Summerside for their whole lives, until he retired. They've been on P.E.I.'s Patient Registry waiting for a primary care physician or nurse practitioner for around two years now.  During that time, their youngest son has come down with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) four times, the first case when he was just seven weeks old.

Continue Reading

Tagging @politicsofcanada

[liminalweirdo]

#1 – Denial – Pretending a problem does not exist to provide artificial relief from anxiety. Examples:

“During COVID” or “During the pandemic” (past tense)

“The pandemic is over”

“Covid is mild”

“It’s gotten milder”

“Covid is now like a cold or the flu”

“Masks don’t work anyway”

“Covid is NOT airborne”

“Pandemic of the unvaccinated”

“Schools are safe”

“Children don’t transmit COVID”

“Covid is mild in young people”

“Summer flu”

“I’m sick but it’s not Covid”

Taking a rapid test only once

Using self-reported case estimates (25x underestimate) rather than wastewater-derived case estimation

Using hospitalization capacity estimates to enact public health precautions (lagging indicator)

Citing mortality estimates rather than excess mortality estimates. Citing excess mortality without adjusting for survivorship bias.

#2 – Projection – When someone takes what they are feeling and attempts to put it on someone else to artificially reduce their own anxiety. Examples:

“Stop living in fear.” (the attacker is living in fear)

“You can take your mask off.” (they are insecure about being unmasked themselves)

“When are you going to stop masking?”

“You can’t live in fear forever.”

#3 – Displacement – When someone takes their pandemic anxiety and redirects their discomfort toward someone or something else. Examples:

Angry, seemingly inexplicable outbursts by co-workers, strangers, or family

White affluent people caring less about the pandemic after learning that it disproportionately affects lower-socioeconomic status people of color

Scapegoating based on vaccination status, masking behavior, etc.

“Pandemic of the unvaccinated”

Vax and relax

“How many of them were vaccinated?” (troll comment on Covid deaths or long Covid)

Redirecting anxiety about mitigating a highly-contagious airborne virus by encouraging people to do simple ineffective mitigation like handwashing

“You do you” (complainers are the problem, not Covid)

Telling people to get vaccinated or take other precautions against the flu or RSV but not mentioning Covid

Parents artificially reducing their own anxiety by placing children in poorly mitigated environments

Clinicians artificially reducing their own anxiety by placing patients in poorly mitigated environments

Housework to distract from stress

Peer pressure not to mask

#4 – Compartmentalization – Holding two conflicting ideas or behaviors, such as caution and incaution, rather than dealing with the anxiety evoked by considering the incautious behaviors more deeply (hypocrisy)

Examples:

Hospitals and clinicians claim to value health/safety but then don’t require universal precautions

Public health officials claim to value evidence but then give non-evidence based advice (handwashing over masking), obscure or use low-value data over high-quality data (self-reported case counts over wastewater), etc.

Getting a flu vaccine but not a Covid vaccine

Interviewing long Covid experts who recommend masking in indoor public spaces but then going to Applebee’s

Masking in one potentially risky setting (grocery store) but not masking in another similar or more-risky setting (classroom)

Infectious disease conference where people are unmasked

Long Covid and other patient-advocacy meetings where only half the people mask

In-person only EDI events

Not testing because it’s just family

Mask breaks

#5 – Reaction formation – expressing artificial positive feelings when actually experiencing anxiety

Examples:

“It’s good I got my infection out of the way before the holidays”

“I had Covid but it was mild”

Anything quoted in Dr. Jonathan Howard’s book, “We Want Them Infected: How the Failed Quest for Herd Immunity Led Doctors to Embrace Anti-Vaccine Movement”

Herd immunity (infections help)

Hybrid immunity (infections help)

“It’s okay because I was recently vaccinated”

“Omicron is milder”

“Textbook virus”

“Building immunity”

#6 – Rationalization – Artificially reducing Covid anxiety through a weak justification. Examples:

“I didn’t mask but I used nasal spray”

“I don’t need to mask because I was recently vaccinated”

“It finally got me.”

“You’re going to get Covid again and again and again over your life.”

“It’s not Covid because I don’t have a sore throat.”

“It’s not Covid because I took a rapid test 3 days ago.”

“It’s not Covid because I’m vaccinated.”

“Airplanes have excellent ventilation.”

“I’ve had Covid three times. It’s mild.”

“Verily was cheaper.”

“Nobody else is masking.”

“Nobody else is testing.”

“My roommates don’t take any precautions, so there’s no point in me either.”

“I have a large family, so there’s no point in taking precautions.”

Surgical masks (they are actual “procedure masks,” by the way)

Various pseudo-scientific treatments used by the left and right

Handwashing as the primary Covid public health recommendation

Droplet transmission as a thing

Public health guidance that begins with “data shows” (sic)

Risk maps that never turn deep red

5 expired rapid tests

“Masks recommended” instead of universal precautions

“Seasonal”

#7 – Intellectualization – using extensive cognitive arguments to artificially circumvent Covid anxiety Examples:

Unending threads to justify indoor dining

Data-rich public health dashboards that use low-quality metrics and/or don’t change public health recommendations as risk increases

The entire justification for “off-ramps”

Oster, Wen, Prasad

Schools denying air cleaners because it “could make children anxious”

Schools not rapid testing this surge because it “could make children anxious”

The mental gymnastics underlying the rationales for who can get vaccinated, how frequently, or with what brand

Service workers told not to mask because it could make clients uncomfortable

“What comorbidities did they have?”

“The vulnerable will fall by the wayside”

Musicians and others holding large indoor events

5-day isolation periods

Here's a link to the full book, a newer edition than what I own. The information on defense mechanisms begins on textbook page 100. Please let me know if there's a more accessible alt-text solution that you would prefer so I can do better next time."

- Mike Hoerger, PhD MSCR M

source

If you actually got to the end of this and don't remember what you're reading because the cognitive dissonance surrounding covid being "over" is so extreme, it's a list of the ways people downplay covid without any science-backed evidence. How many things on this list do you say, do, or believe?

[darkmaga-retard]

Does the ‘danger’ of the disease justify applying untested technologies on the most vulnerable: pregnant mothers, newborns, and the elderly ?

World Council for Health

Sep 27, 2024

Countless concerned parents have asked the WCH about the new RSV vaccines. In this post, we look at what they are, as well as the virus itself, with the aim of helping readers make their own informed decisions. The post is in two parts: first, a summary of the most salient points. Then, a more academic paper into the context and science for health professionals and others looking to gain a deeper perspective.

Part 1: The ‘TLDR’ summary

RSV symptoms are mild and mimic the common cold. Most babies have been infected with RSV by their second birthday. In the EU, more than 90% of hospitalized adult RSV patients are over 65 years old.

It is easily treated with nebulizer therapy. Urgent care and hospitalization can occur for serious cases and if treated early, infant mortality should not be a concern. Among the 22.4 million children under 5 years old in the US, the annual risk of RSV hospitalization is well under 1%.

RSV ‘vaccines’ only reduce the risk of hospitalization from RSV by 1%.

So-called RSV ‘vaccines’ fall into three categories: monoclonal antibodies, a protein-based ‘vaccine’, and mRNA technology.

The monoclonal antibody treatment is called nirsevimab and is given in a single dose. There are serious safety concerns around nirsevimab. The clinical trials had limitations and there is little to no long-term safety data. Ambiguity around its classification also complicates safety monitoring and accountability.

Some reports link nirsevimab to infant deaths. Many treated infants still end up in hospital, and resistant strains of the virus are emerging. Antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) is also a concern.

Recent vaccines developed by GSK and Pfizer for pregnant women have shown a 2% increase in premature births and higher rates of neonatal deaths in trials.

Moderna’s mResvia mRNA vaccine is recommended by the European Medicines Agency for the over sixties, yet with no data showing it’s either safe or effective. The same safety concerns exist for mResvia as for any other mRNA vaccine, namely myocarditis, auto-immunity, genomic integration and cancer.

There are alternatives. Studies show a clear inverse relationship of severity of RSV symptoms and Vitamin D levels. Better vitamin D levels may lower the incidence of RSV-associated bronchiolitis in infants, and vitamin D helps enhance immune response, reduce inflammation and helps stop RSV getting into cells. Quercetin and zinc are also worth consideration as part of a treatment protocol.

[macgyvermedical]

Hi all, because of the recent uptick in pediatric flu/covid/rsv cases in the US some pharmacies are reporting having limited supplies of children’s pain killers and fever reducers.

So if all you have access to is adult acetaminophen or ibuprofen, here’s how to use it safely for kids:

Note: the following assumes that one tablet of regular strength acetaminophen is 325mg, one tablet of extra strength acetaminophen is 500mg, and one tablet of ibuprofen is 200mg. If you have different strengths than this or extended release versions the following will not work and may be dangerous. Because of this, this information is intended as educational.

Acetaminophen (Tylenol)- if your child is...

15kg (33lb), give 1/2 reg strength tab every 4 hours

20kg (44lb), give 1/2 extra strength tab every 4 hours

30kg (66lb), give 1 reg strength tab every 4 hours

40kg (88lb), give 1 extra strength tab every 4 hours

50kg+ (110lb+), give 2 reg strength tabs every 4 hours

Ibuprofen (Motrin, Advil)- if the child is...

15kg (33lb), give 1/2 tab every 6 hours

20kg (44lb), give 1/2-1 tab every 6 hours

30kg (66lb), give 3/4-1.5 tab every 6 hours

40kg (88lb), give 1-2 tab every 6 hours

50kg (110lb), give 2 tab every 6 hours

12 and older can have 2 tab every 4 hours

[mariacallous]

Toward the end of last year, US health authorities got a tip-off about an upcoming wave of respiratory syncytial virus, a seasonal virus that kills 160,000 people globally every year. Before hospitals reported an uptick in patients, they could see that RSV was more acute in the northeast of the country, with concentrations of the virus ultimately reaching levels more than five times greater than in the western United States. Their early warning system? Wastewater.

By regularly testing virus levels in public wastewater, health institutions are able to target treatments and interventions to the worst-affected areas before doctors on the ground realize something’s going on. “If you can get the information to hospitals or clinics weeks earlier, that gives the opportunity to start thinking about what treatments they might need,” says Marisa Donnelly, senior principal epidemiologist at Biobot Analytics, which helped develop a wastewater surveillance system for the US Centers for Disease Control.

RSV is very common: Every year, 64 million people worldwide get an RSV infection, according to the US National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases—but it’s particularly problematic for the very old and very young. Preventative measures are available, including vaccines and monoclonal antibodies. But often, by the time a community recognizes it has an RSV outbreak, it’s too late to mount the most effective response. Getting hold of enough drugs can also be tricky. “Wastewater analysis gives you better situational awareness of what’s going on and how much it’s fluctuating over time, because we have [historically] very much underdetected RSV cases,” says Bill Hanage, associate director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

The concept of tracking a virus through wastewater came to prominence in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, says Tyson Graber, associate scientist at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute, who worked on wastewater analysis as part of Ontario’s Covid response. Initially, researchers weren’t too hopeful. “Nobody thought that you could actually detect bits and pieces of material from a respiratory virus,” says Graber. Yet it proved possible: The scientists were able to detect the presence of SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind Covid-19.

This near-real-time analysis of the virus’s spread helped improve responses to the pandemic not just in Ontario, but worldwide. In the US, the CDC launched its National Wastewater Surveillance System in September 2020.

While each pathogen has its own “predilections and eccentricities,” says Graber, it was possible to adapt the process to look for RSV. Regular RSV testing in wastewater now takes place in the US, Canada, Finland, and Switzerland.

A study of the Ontario experiment in RSV wastewater tracking found that it gives more than a month’s notice in identifying when RSV season begins, and nearly two weeks’ warning of a surge, compared to waiting for people to turn up sick. “We definitely see increases in [RSV in] wastewater starting before we see those same increases in clinical data like hospitalizations,” says Donnelly.

Jasmine Reed, a CDC spokesperson, says that wastewater analysis complements other surveillance systems. “It can capture asymptomatic cases and other cases independent from medical systems, and provides a broader population-level perspective on disease spread,” she says.

The CDC’s program is set up so that, if RSV levels are high in a particular community, local health departments can prioritize interventions, including testing, infection control, and vaccination efforts.

Donnelly envisions wastewater surveillance becoming like a public health “weather app” where communities can check virus activity in their area and make informed decisions on behaviors like masking or vaccination​. “We want this system to be expanded across the United States so that everybody has access to wastewater information and add additional tools to keep themselves healthy,” she says. Hanage foresees wastewater analysis being used to track other communicable viruses, like mpox.

While there’s plenty of excitement about the technique, others are more cautious. “It’s one of those sciences that has got a lot of people really excited,” says Paul Hunter, a virologist and professor in medicine at the University of East Anglia. “You either think it’s brilliant or you think it’s pointless, and there’s very little in between.”

Hunter recognizes that wastewater analysis can pick up the spread of disease—and points to evidence that it did so in the Covid-19 pandemic—but questions whether the extra cost is worth the extra insights it provides. “Certainly in Covid, we didn’t think it was [necessary] in the UK, and I think that was the correct judgment,” he says.

But proponents say it’s worth it for RSV—especially given some of the challenges around drug shortages. Last year’s RSV season proved particularly vexing to the US health system, as shortages of nirsevimab, an antibody injection given to infants, were reported across the country.

There’s hope that things will be different when RSV season begins again in the coming weeks. “If you can get the information to hospitals or clinics weeks earlier, that gives the opportunity to start thinking about what treatments they might need,” says Donnelly.

[david-ojcius]

A ‘Tripledemic’ in the US? Other Infections Return as COVID19 Cases Rise.

Cases of flu have begun to tick up earlier than usual. Children infected with RSV, rhinoviruses & enteroviruses are already straining pediatric hospitals in several states.

[metalheadsforblacklivesmatter]

When I had COVID it was pretty bad. But I'm lucky it wasn't worse. Because emergency rooms are literally at capacity and turning people away.

I don't understand what yall aren't getting to out in public without a mask, to willingly be with people that have COVID, to still utilize the open food and food sharing format at gatherings (I'm looking at you, Thanksgiving planners), to demand schools be in person.

But people are dying because emergency rooms don't have enough space to care for people coming in because COVID IS STILL BAD.

"Well. So-and-so got it and they literally had no symptoms. Only the sniffles." Yeah. My dad got it and had no symptoms. But I got it and had a 102 fever that I couldn't keep down (I can't imagine how bad it would've been if I hadn't started taking something for the fever when it hit 102). And my mom ended up in the emergency room on IV fluids and low O2 levels (we're both fine now).

There's different strains of COVID. Some of them aren't bad. Some of them are very serious. Don't let the anecdotal evidence of one person guide your decisions.

"But, fae. I'm vaccinated. I'll be fine." I'm vaccinated too with Pfizer and one booster. My mom had Moderna and 2 boosters. They'll limit how bad you get it, but that doesn't mean it can't still be very serious, even with the vaccine. There's strains out there that have mutated to be resistant to the vaccines.

-fae

[your-krazy-uncle-bob]

By now everybody has heard the horror stories about learning loss suffered during the pandemic.

Shutting down schools for months or more, it turns out, wasn’t such a hot idea. Who could have guessed? Politicians are scrambling to escape blame, parents are getting madder by the minute, and editorialists are doing their chin-stroking think pieces about how unfortunate this all is–as if they weren’t at least as blameworthy for the crisis as anyone.

Yet the pediatric education crisis is only the most obvious of the many horrible consequences of the COVID fascist policies. Doctors on the front lines of pediatric medicine are being taught a real-time lesson in reality: immune systems work by fighting off bugs, developing defenses through exposure to bacteria and viruses. Because of this fact, the 2+ years of making children into “bubble boys” protected from every disease has made many children defenseless against the everyday bugs that plague everybody.

Katherine Wu at The Atlantic tells the tale:

At the height of the coronavirus pandemic, as lines of ambulances roared down the streets and freezer vans packed into parking lots, the pediatric emergency department at Our Lady of the Lake Children’s Hospital, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, was quiet. It was an eerie juxtaposition, says Chris Woodward, a pediatric-emergency-medicine specialist at the hospital, given what was happening just a few doors down. While adult emergency departments were being inundated, his team was so low on work that he worried positions might be cut. A small proportion of kids were getting very sick with COVID-19—some still are—but most weren’t. And due to school closures and scrupulous hygiene, they weren’t really catching other infections—flu, RSV, and the like—that might have sent them to the hospital in pre-pandemic years. Woodward and his colleagues couldn’t help but wonder if the brunt of the crisis had skipped them by. “It was, like, the least patients I saw in my career,” he told me. That is no longer the case.

Across the country, children have for weeks been slammed with a massive, early wave of viral infections—driven largely by RSV, but also flu, rhinovirus, enterovirus, and SARS-CoV-2. Many emergency departments and intensive-care units are now at or past capacity, and resorting to extreme measures.

At Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, in Maryland, staff has pitched a tent outside the emergency department to accommodate overflow; Connecticut Children’s Hospital mulled calling in the National Guard. It’s already the largest surge of infectious illnesses that some pediatricians have seen in their decades-long careers, and many worry that the worst is yet to come. “It is a crisis,” Sapna Kudchadkar, a pediatric-intensive-care specialist and anesthesiologist at Johns Hopkins, told me. “It’s bananas; it’s been full to the gills since September,” says Melissa J. Sacco, a pediatric-intensive-care specialist at UVA Health. “Every night I turn away a patient, or tell the emergency department they have to have a PICU-level kid there for the foreseeable future.”

Of all the viruses out there to worry about, COVID-19 should have been near the bottom of the list of concern when it comes to children. Rather than using intelligence and reason, policymakers and some parents who got freaked out by the COVIDiots shoved every child they could into a germ free bubble to protect them from a disease that wasn’t terribly dangerous for them.

Many doctors knew that this was insanely stupid, but few had the courage to speak up. And those who did were vilified mercilessly. Some had their license to practice medicine threatened–including Minnesota’s current candidate for governor Scott Jensen.

For a while it seemed a miracle happened: kids weren’t quite so snot-nosed as usual. See! Protection works!

The long-term result? Kids are more vulnerable to diseases to which they should have developed immunity by now. And they are getting worse cases, more frequently, and winding up in understaffed pediatric ICU units. Pediatric ICU units that had often cut staff and beds because demand during the pandemic was abnormally low.

One of the great lies of public policy is that there needn’t be any trade-offs. Everything can be a win-win. Yet usually that is not the case. In the real world you balance risks vs rewards, costs vs benefits, and find messy solutions for even messier problems. People get sick, have accidents, deal with tragedies. You do what you can, but life inevitably happens. You can mitigate risks, but not eliminate them. And often you have to balance competing risks.

Yet with COVID, policy makers took the exact opposite approach, treating the virus as the ultimate evil and everything else was worth sacrificing to reduce COVID infections. This was always insane.

From the beginning of the pandemic it was obvious who was at most risk–very old and very sick people–and we should have focused our energies on protecting the people at most risk. Everybody else needed to get on with our lives.

We did the opposite. Politicians put COVID patients into nursing homes, killing off thousands of people prematurely. And at the same time they demanded children be isolated–shut up in homes planted in front of a computer to get their now revealed-to-be-worthless “education.” Not only was COVID not particularly dangerous to these kids, but lack of exposure to the unavoidable illnesses of childhood has left the kids more vulnerable to severe illness and death from common viruses.

Early on in the pandemic I got involved in the anti-lockdown movement, and I was struck by how taboo it became to refer to the immune system as a defense against illness. It was not uncommon to be accused of the most vile motives for suggesting that natural immunity can be a good and necessary thing. Vaccines depend upon stimulating the immune system, not some magic hocus pocus.

Our masters in politics and the media decided to bet on the magic, and everybody else is paying the price.

As I wrote yesterday, some are now calling for a COVID amnesty–a mass forgiveness for all the harm done by the COVID policy madness. My answer is no, not because making mistakes is unforgivable. All of us make mistakes and we all deserve more than a bit of grace when we do.

My answer is “hell no” because the COVID fascists at the top knew that what they were doing was wrong–how could they not after it became obvious?–and did it anyway. For money. For power. To transform society to their liking. That is unforgivable.

If the powers-that-be want amnesty then we need a “truth and reconciliation commission,” as they did in South Africa after Apartheid fell. Lay it all out on the table. The good. The bad. The ugly. The people who did this need to be exposed and to beg forgiveness.

Short of that, my solution is to politically destroy every COVID fascist politician and grind their careers into the dust.

What really is unforgivable about all this is that progressive adults were willing to inflict this horror on children for their own false sense of security.

[leonbloder]

The Prosperity Gospel Isn't Good News

The prosperity gospel crowd (who claim that if you give to their church, you will get more back from God than you give) often misuses a verse from Matthew's Gospel to make their case.  

Here, it is from the New International Version (NIV) of the Bible: 

Matthew 6:24 “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.

A lot of biblical translations employ similar language for the last line of the verse, translating the last word as "money," "wealth," or "riches." 

However, one version leaves intact in its original form the word used by the author of Matthew's Gospel, the Revised Standard Version (RSV).  The word many other versions translate as "money" is mammon in the RSV.  

Adherents and leaders within the prosperity gospel movement love this verse because it gives them an on-ramp to an argument that people should give more to their ministries.  

Aside from being a gross and self-serving interpretation of the text, those who focus solely on translating mammon to money miss the whole point of the statement itself. 

There's so much more here than a simple indictment of loving money more than God, so much more.  

The word mammon refers to an entire system Fr. Richard Rohr describes as "disorder."  Money may be a part of it, but the more expansive interpretation of mammon shows us that it includes power, inequality, oppression, and privilege. 

Many scholars have further expanded the word mammon to be a slang reference to a Canaanite and Mesopotamian god who demanded sacrifices from his adherents, including the sacrifice of their children, in order to grant them their wishes.  

In short, Jesus appears to be describing a system that acts like a false god or an idol that constantly demands more and more of us without offering anything in return other than emptiness and misery. 

Those who short-change this interpretation by focusing solely on money unwittingly buy into what they say they are trying to avoid.  

Jesus is saying here that you can't live in two worlds.  You can't have one foot in the kingdom of God and another in the kingdom of mammon.  There's no middle ground with this.  

Fr. Richard Rohr puts it like this: 

The love of God can’t be doled out by any process whatsoever. We can’t earn it. We can’t lose it. As long as we stay in this world of accumulation, of earning and losing, we’ll live in perpetual resentment, envy, or climbing. 

This also needs to be said: 

If you have ever been poor, you know what it's like to live in scarcity, to be uncertain whether to feed your family or keep the lights on because sometimes you must make that choice. 

For some cynical preacher to take a verse like Matthew 6:24 and use it to prey primarily on people who don't have any wealth at all is unconscionable.  

These preachers are either unwittingly or uncritically serving mammon when they do this.  Their business model is grounded in accumulation and earning.  The "gospel" they preach is a self-serving black hole that takes and takes but rarely gives.  

God's love is not contingent upon how much or little we give to our church.  God's love is unconditional.  When we live with both feet firmly planted in God's kingdom, we become ambassadors of God's shalom.  

We live out of the abundance of God's love rather than the scarcity of mammon. 

When we live this way, our generosity is not coerced or an obligation. Our entire lives are an offering of gratitude for what God has done, is doing, and will do in our lives.  

May we learn to live more fully out of this abundance.  May we plant our feet firmly in God's kingdom of shalom. And may the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with us now and always.  Amen.  

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved on our archive

By Jessica Rendall

Pfizer's and Moderna's formulas have been the go-to on pharmacy shelves, but Novavax remains an important option.

We're on the cusp of the fall season, which means respiratory viruses like flu, RSV and COVID are expected to keep spreading as weather cools and more people gather indoors.

Luckily, we've got vaccines in stock to help prevent respiratory viruses from turning into severe illnesses. In addition to flu vaccines for the general public and RSV vaccines for older adults and pregnant people, new COVID vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Novavax are available this season to reduce the risk of hospitalization.

This means adults have a choice in which COVID vaccine they receive: an mRNA vaccine by Moderna or Pfizer, or Novavax, a protein-based vaccine that targets the virus in a more "traditional" way. All three have been authorized by the US Food and Drug Administration. While Moderna and Pfizer have been widely used over the last few years, the Novavax vaccine is building up a bit of a following.

Novavax, a protein-based vaccine, is an option for those who don't want or can't take an mRNA vaccine. Novavax may also be appealing to those wanting to experiment with the "mix-and-match" approach to COVID boosters as a way to potentially strengthen the immune response.

"Even though mRNA vaccines dominate the market for COVID vaccines, it remains important to have multiple different types of technologies against various pathogens because each may have specific use cases," Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease expert and senior scholar with Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said in an email.

Here's everything we know about Novavax this year.

How is Novavax different from Pfizer and Moderna? Novavax is a protein-based vaccine, which people have associated with a "traditional" approach to vaccination. This is compared with mRNA technology, which does not use dead or weakened virus as an ingredient in the vaccine but instead uses genetic code to instruct the recipient's immune system to respond.

However, Adalja said that calling Novavax traditional may be a "misnomer" because it brings its own innovation to the table. Novavax uses an insect virus that has been genetically engineered to express spike proteins, Adalja explained, which are then incorporated into the vaccine.

"The vaccine itself is coupled with an immune system booster, called an adjuvant, which increases its immunity," he said, referencing a component existing vaccines have also incorporated.

This year, there are also slight differences between Novavax and Pfizer and Moderna's updated vaccines. Both mRNA vaccines have been tweaked to target the KP.2 strain of COVID-19, which is a slightly more recent version of the virus than what Novavax targets, which is KP.2's "parent" JN.1. While the FDA ultimately decided KP.2 was preferred in vaccines, all of them are expected to help protect against severe disease and death.

Who should get Novavax? Does Novavax have different side effects? Novavax was authorized by the FDA for use in adults and children 12 and older, so younger kids can't get this vaccine. But for most adults, which COVID vaccine you should choose depends on your preference and what your neighborhood pharmacy has in stock.

People may opt for Novavax for different reasons, though. For people who do not want to take an mRNA vaccine, having a protein-based vaccine like Novavax available means they can still be vaccinated for the fall and winter season.

Other people may be interested in Novavax for its use in the "mix-and-match" approach to boosting, which in the past has been associated with a strong immune response.

There is some early research that suggests Novavax may have fewer short-term side effects, such as muscle fatigue and nausea, but "we can't say this for sure," Joshua Murdock, a pharmacist and pharmacy editor of GoodRx, said in an email.

"This isn't proven, and side effects do vary by person," Murdock said. He added the CDC doesn't recommend one vaccine over the other, even in people who are immunocompromised.

In general, mRNA vaccines have been found to be fairly "reactogenic" compared to other vaccines, Adalja said, noting that it also depends on the individual. But if someone had a bad experience with the mRNA vaccine, Adalja said, they "may fare better with the Novavax vaccine."

Some flu-like side effects can be expected post-vaccine, no matter which one you choose. This includes symptoms like headache, tiredness, a sore arm and even chills. Not experiencing symptoms doesn't mean your immune system isn't kicking in, but experiencing some side effects may signal that your immune system is responding to the jolt, so to speak.

In rare cases, myocarditis or heart inflammation problems have been associated with COVID vaccination, particularly in younger men and adolescents within the two weeks following vaccination. Research so far shows that Novavax, like mRNA vaccines, may also carry this rare side effect though.

Following high levels of COVID this summer in the US, more information will be needed to see how all vaccines and their freshly targeted formulas fare against the virus that's expected to continue to spread this fall and winter.

"There's no strong evidence that one vaccine is preferable to another in specific individuals, but that will be an important avenue to study for more precision-guided vaccine recommendations," Adalja said.

How to find a Novavax vaccine Novavax announced on Sept. 13 that doses of its vaccine will be available at the following pharmacies:

CVS Rite Aid Walgreens Costco Publix Sam's Club Kroger Meijer Other independent pharmacies or grocers

Novavax also has a vaccine finder on its website. To use it, type in your ZIP code in the small search box, and pharmacies nearby with the vaccine in stock will be displayed.

[strongermonster]

feels like every kid in canada under 16 has goddamn rsv or whatever right now, there's no hospital space for anyone at all, but specifically pediatric units. no pediatric surgeries available here. half my coworkers have to stay home to deal with sick kids, the other half are prepping for YET ANOTHER teachers strike, library just cancelled 90% of it's after school programming to help stop the spread of things because parents are bitching and moaning that little sally and john shouldn't have to wear a mask for some reason, so now NOBODY gets desperately needed free after school care, so where is that "think of the children" crowd now, huh?

where are those annoying right wing christians who were pearl-clutching about drag shows just a couple months agp? the ones who get all up in arms about "oh no, there might be weed, cocaine, fentanyl, etc in halloween candy!!", the "we have to ban some books in case our kids get a hold of them" crowd?? the convoy supporters who thought wearing a mask for a couple hours was worse than any other injustice on earth? where are they now? why aren't they outside the premiers home with pitchforks and torches demanding action from him now? hm?

couldn't possibly be because they're waste-of-space loudmouth low iq hypocrites could it??? nahhh, it's everybody else who's the problem still i guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 🙄

it was always "think of the children!!" as a fallback argument, and now we're saying "okay, let's think of the children. here's what to do." and it's all crickets from them now.

[hope-for-olicity]

Reasons to Wear a Mask

- TO PROTECT CHILDREN and vulnerable  from not just COVID but also flu and RSV

- To protect yourself and others 

- The COVID pandemic is not over 

- Repeated infections increase your risk of getting Long COVID

- Unexplained cardiac events being experienced by even those who had a mild case of COVID

- Unknown longterm effects of COVD

Sticking your head in the sand and ignoring that we are living during a pandemic just makes it last longer and endangers yourself and others. 

Yes, I’m also sick of COVID, masks and worrying but I realize it’s not just about me. 

Masks work. Suck it up buttercup.