#arizona coronavirus

[angelx1992]

[covid-safer-hotties]

Info source: https://www.cdc.gov/nwss/rv/COVID19-statetrend.html?stateval=Arizona

link to post

[versatileer]

What Exactly Does the Word 'Law' Mean? How Government Works – PART V of Freedom For Which the Flag Stands Series '24

What Exactly Does the Word ‘Law’ Mean? As part of a special concerning the “Freedom For Which the Flag Stands“, and just in time for the elections, I am featuring a special treat for my viewers. In the final of a Five part weekly series for 2024, I am featuring the scope of what the word “law” really means. What is the difference? Is what you think law is really a law–or not? Is is a state issue,…

[shadowfromthestarlight]

The Biden administration put out a press release announcing that the $83 million in federal funds for the McCain Library were being drawn from the American Rescue Plan’s Capital Projects Fund. The full name of the fund is actually the Coronavirus Capital Projects Fund. The Coronavirus Capital Projects Fund consisted of $10 billion that was supposed to “directly support recovery from the COVID-19 public health emergency” in response “to the public health emergency”. Now nearly 1% of that original $10 billion is being used to build a non-presidential library that will somehow help us “recover” from the pandemic. The McCain Library is getting nearly as much CCF cash as the total given to tribal governments. It appears to be one of the largest single beneficiaries of the coronavirus emergency fund. There is something appropriate in one career politician honoring another through a massive misappropriation of funds that were only allocated due to a national emergency. A politician’s library is not a response to a public health emergency. The Biden administration’s justification for the massive misappropriation of funds is the claim that the McCain Library will provide a space for health screenings and job fairs. There were far cheaper ways to provide a space for job fairs than an $83 million senatorial library. Arizona could host ten thousand job fairs for that kind of money and provide actual health resources to the people who really need them. The $83 million in misappropriated coronavirus emergency money had nothing to do with a public health emergency and everything to do with an urgent political emergency. Biden is underwater in the polls and the McCain family have become crucial allies against Republicans. The 2024 presidential candidate didn’t travel to Arizona to promote an $83 million space where someone might occasionally hold a job fair, but to use McCain to attack Republicans. In a speech with McCain family members and former Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, who supervised the gubernatorial election that she claimed to have won, in attendance, Biden warned that Republicans represented an urgent threat to democracy. In his ‘democracy’ speech, Biden claimed that, “democracy means rule of the people, not rule of monarchs, not rule of the monied, not rule of the mighty.” If that’s what democracy means, what does it mean when a career politician takes $83 million in public health emergency funding to build an institution honoring another career politician that is backing his unpopular campaign? Biden wasn’t handing out that $83 million and delivering a speech about the importance of democracy to uphold it, but to undermine it. Faced with an unwinnable election, Biden is turning to Arizona as a model for his 2024 election strategy. The plan, there and everywhere, is to stigmatize his political opponents as dangerous extremists, to divide the GOP,  break off influential party interests, and encourage public officials to violate the law in managing the election and counting the votes by insisting that democracy will be destroyed if he loses. This isn’t democracy: it’s an end-run around democracy. The majority of Democrats and Americans don’t want Biden back in office. The polls have been crystal clear about that. But Biden isn’t interested in what the majority of his party and his country think. He’s not betting on democracy, but on a political establishment that bridges party differences. The $83 million in coronavirus recovery funding allocated to the McCain Library shows why Biden, like McCain, feared democracy and chose oligarchy over listening to the people. The real threat to democracy comes from established political interests subverting elections and the multi-trillion budgets they pass and then distribute shows how they subvert America.

[rickeryraymond]

White South African Pfizer psychiatrist in Penticton/Oliver!

Years Ago (Again, Buuut) Nigeria Government Puts Out Arrest Warrants Out For Top Pfizer Officials Fooorrr....What Neurotoxin "Test" That KILLED Some CHILDREN/PEOPLE AND LEFT OTHERS DRUG DAMAGED? 

Like (I DO KNOW!! "BIOLOGICAL EUGENICIST WARFARE" IN OLIVER) THE VERY NATURALLY CURABLE MENINGITIS BREAKOUT IN OLIVER. 

THAT ALSO THE LIL SNOT NOSED NURSE STUDENT HURT SOMEONE (ELSE) WITH IT'S LIL (MAL?) PRACTICE SHOVING THE SYRINGE INTO A GIRLS ARM.

LIKE HAS BEEN DONE TO MANY (UNSUPERVISED) CHILDREN/SENIORS/UNCONSCIOUS PEOPLE/HOMELESS PEOPLE ALONG WITH NO DOUBT PUTTING WTF EVER NEUROTOXINS I TO MANY OF US THROUGH OUT THEIR SOCIOPATHETIC SO CALLED PROFESSIONS. 

Man Dead From Taking Chloroquine Product After Trump Touts Drug For Coronavirus

Nigeria Reports Chloroquine Poisonings as Trump Keeps Pushing Drug Against Coronavirus

A man in Arizona has died and his wife is in critical condition after drinking a small amount of a chloroquine phosphate product in hopes of preventing a coronavirus infection. Instead of the drug form of chloroquine phosphate, the couple ingested a chloroquine phosphate product that’s used to treat parasites in fish. "Fish" as In "HISELL'sFISH'SELLFISHSELLF.F. OWNOWNED.S.M.ed SELLING OFFERING HIS OWNOWNED FISH CHRISTIAN'S cALLing n cuLLing USn Some of "THEM OWNOWNED PARASITE'S 01WASTE'S OF SPACE AND TAX PAYER'S MONEY SACRIFICING'5OUL'S 4HIMn D.S.M.acyntreGabORmaybemaybeNOTzi.ROBOughT GordHOElBrOAFbarTenderTindeRAPIST DuhYeTrumpTRASHvax6x6x6eRoe vs Wade 440Hzzzz 01A.M.isogynistsexcist ReMagistrator Operation F.T.W.arp SpeeDuhnALLd BETAcaROTEEN F.F.ATPhucKARENurse eugenicsarchiveCDCa/uglylaws/ukaranians eugenic-psychiatry CLASSISTYRANNY AGAINST EACHOTHER N OWNOWNED/D.S.M. pHARMakeiAllnALL Pusher's4CustomeRefugee'sex'slaveMAKEr DuHOSPITALLcohALLIBERALL A.D.D.ICKt'SexFREAK D.S.M.cMonogamous Bi-go-DAIRYFAIRyF.ruedianF.raudian'sexFREAK Republik6k6k6on'SKANK F.T.W.EEDesenticitiseDruther ElonMORiON'SUICIDEALLIBERALLçohALLSO TOO INFERIOR4NOrth OF SOuth AfriCANDr Rivercide N OTHER FAMILY'S N OTHER'S MK-ULTRA MontréAllnALL D.S.M.ASSACRE IncestPedofileRapisTorturePorNetwork'SATANIST'sodoMITEvax6x6x6er'Sacrificer'Soul'5./Z., ETFC.?!!";);(

Nigeria Reports Chloroquine Poisonings as Trump Keeps Pushing Drug Against Coronavirus

The overdoses on chloroquine came after Trump sang the praises of two malaria drugs—chlorquine and a less toxic related pill called hydrochloroquine—and pretty much characterized them as possible miracle cures for COVID-19. That led to people rushing out to buy the drugs and there were reports of high demand in Nigeria leading to shortages in pharmacies. Trump doubled down on the dubious medical advice Saturday, writing on Twitter about another unproven combination of drugs, claiming that hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin “taken together” could be “one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine.” Trump went on to express optimism that they will be “put in use IMMEDIATELY” because “PEOPLE ARE DYING.” To make his point, Trump cited a report in a scientific journal that only studied 20 patients and was not a controlled clinical trial.

https:m/026685_Pfizer_children_drug.html

"Biological Warfare" In Oliver, B.C. ....TOO.

Like In Africa With THIS AND AIDS/HIV, etfc.....WORLDWIDE.

White South African Pfizer psychiatrist lives(ed?) In Oliver With (African (?)Mcfriend from The World Bank That Has/Had A House In Naramata and Furniture Store Together in Vancouver  Also?) Where (NATURALLY HEALable/CUREable.) "Meningitis Outbreak" Happened in Oliver, B.C.

Biological Warfare In Oliver, B.C. ....TOO.

Like In Africa With THIS AND AIDS/HIV...WORLDWIDE.

https:/026685_Pfizer_children_drug.html 

Caution Urged in the Use of Tafenoquine Against COVID-19

What Did I Say About Nigeria, White South Africa Pfizer Penticton/Oliver Pseudoscience psychiatrists/"BIO WARFARE"/The Aids/HIV Africa/WORLDWIDE "BIO WARFARE" MAN MADE IN LABS ALONG WITH THIS B.S. MAN MADE "BIO WARFARE" COVID1984 ALONG WITH THEIR AFRICAN MAN MADE "BIO WARFARE" SARS EUGENICS B.S. THAT HAS ALSO BEEN DONE ON ALL OTHER RACES AND RELIGIONS WORLDWIDE. THIS 5G TARGETEDINDIVIDUALSCANADA.COM TARGETEDJUSTICE.COM ETFC.

http://www.soft-tox.org/journal-analytical-toxicology-continuing-education

https://www.whistleblowers.org/?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=71

Alliance of Human Research Protection

https://ahrp.org/how-a-false-hydroxychloroquine-narrative-was-created/

"Take It. It's $afe" IS A Word for CON-t-ROLLing US ALL Over.

A Way Out Of Food Racism And Poverty with Karen Washington i Apple Podcasts

This Is ONE Week Ago October 2020

Brainwashed: The echoes of MK-ULTRA

During the Cold War, the CIA secretly funded mind-control experiments on unwitting Canadians in a program codenamed MK-ULTRA. The experiments laid the groundwork for modern-day torture techniques. And victims and their families are still seeking recognition and justice

The History of Mental Torture in U.S.A.

Human Guinea Pigs

[amaditalks]

In case anyone else wanted specifics, Sinema’s little show here was her no vote against an amendment that would’ve included a minimum wage increase in the massive coronavirus relief bill from 2021.

She also helped to tank the passage of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.

Her seat is up in this cycle. If you’re in Arizona, be ready to vote in the primary in August. The Democratic front runner and almost certain nominee is Ruben Gallego, who currently represents most of the Phoenix metro area in the House of Representatives. The apparent Republican front runner is Kari Lake, the ethically unsourced election denying Trumpist who lost the last gubernatorial election. 

[newstfionline]

Sunday, September 8, 2024

Georgia Tests a Novel Tactic in School Shootings: Putting Parents on Trial (NYT) In a landmark criminal case in Michigan earlier this year, James and Jennifer Crumbley became the first parents convicted in connection with killings carried out by their child in a mass shooting. Now, in the first mass school shooting in the United States since those convictions, Georgia officials appear poised to try the same tactic. On Thursday, prosecutors filed charges, including two counts of second-degree murder, against the father of the suspect, saying he had provided a gun to his son “with knowledge that he was a threat to himself and others.” Such charges were all but unheard of before the Michigan case, and the Georgia prosecution will test the emerging push to hold parents responsible for mass shootings by young people. The prosecutions raise thorny questions about culpability. “These cases are horrible, and I very much understand why a prosecutor would feel like parents like this were egregious in their lack of care,” Professor Yankah said. “But I do think it’s worth pausing to realize that we have blown right by a deeply held principle: that you’re only responsible for your actions, and that when other people act, you’re not responsible for what they do.”

For the second year in a row, most U.S. cities are seeing significant declines in homicides and violent crime (Washington Post) Crime is falling rapidly in many U.S. cities for the second year in a row, a decline attributed in part to the end of the pandemic’s empty streets and shuttered stores. Law enforcement officials also credit a renewed focus on gun crimes—analyzing evidence faster, hitting suspects with federal charges where possible, and quickening the pace of arrests to prevent tit-for-tat violence. Violent crime shot up during the coronavirus pandemic and its immediate aftermath. In 2020, killings jumped nearly 30 percent, the largest one-year increase since the federal government began compiling national figures in the 1960s.

These Americans want out (NYT) Amid an election cycle fueled by existential rhetoric, some Americans are thinking about walking away. Not from politics. From the entire country. This summer, nearly 2,000 readers responded to a New York Times survey asking if they would leave the United States should their favored candidate lose the presidential election in November. Another 3,000 people responded to similar questions asked over social media. Some respondents had already moved. Others were taking the steps—looking for jobs overseas, or seeking ways to qualify for residency. Their reasons were varied, though the candidates at the top of the ballot figured prominently. Many said they feared the country might spiral into authoritarianism should Donald Trump win a second term. Others were deeply concerned about how a Kamala Harris administration would handle the war in Gaza and the economy. There was more general angst—about gun violence, political vitriol, abortion restrictions, rising antisemitism, racism and L.G.B.T.Q. discrimination. Overwhelmingly, respondents were in their prime working years—not students, retirees or wealthy travelers—and straddled the political spectrum. “There is a general sense that the U.S. is in decline and it doesn’t matter who wins this next election,” said Megan A. Carney, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Arizona.

Chinese migrants in Mexico (AP) Despite her well-paying tech job, Li Daijing didn’t hesitate when her cousin asked for help running a restaurant in Mexico City. She packed up and left China for the Mexican capital last year, with dreams of a new adventure. The 30-year-old woman from Chengdu, the Sichuan provincial capital, hopes one day to start an online business importing furniture from her home country. “I want more,” Li said. “I want to be a strong woman. I want independence.” Li is among a new wave of Chinese migrants who are leaving their country in search of opportunities, more freedom or better financial prospects at a time when China’s economy has slowed, youth unemployment rates remain high and its relations with the U.S. and its allies have soured. While the U.S. border patrol arrested tens of thousands of Chinese at the U.S-Mexico border over the past year, thousands are making the Latin American country their final destination. Many have hopes to start businesses of their own, taking advantage of Mexico’s proximity to the U.S.

Argentina’s unusual currency (Foreign Policy) In response to Argentine President Javier Milei’s austerity measures, the poor northeastern province of La Rioja has unveiled its own currency. Milei’s policies have dramatically reduced funding to the opposition-led provincial government, which defaulted on its debt in February. La Rioja’s governor, who created the currency, hopes that it can stimulate the local economy. The currency, the chacho, is named after a local historical hero and can be exchanged for pesos at a fixed rate. The governor has so far distributed more than $3 million worth of chachos to residents. Although the measure is a political affront to Milei, he has signaled that he will not block it. Whether it will help La Rioja’s economy, however, is another question: Analysts told Bloomberg that this type of money-printing is what got Argentina into its financial straits in the first place.

September heat wave in Europe (Washington Post) With the hottest time of year on average in the rear view, Europe is still scorching as summer transitions to fall. In recent days, many parts of Scandinavia have posted their highest temperatures on record so late in the year. Several other European countries have also set notable September heat milestones, including Austria, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy and Slovenia. The September heat wave follows Europe’s hottest summer on record and the hottest summer for the planet.

Distracted and Divided, Russian Security Service Misses Threats (NYT) On the day Ukraine launched its daring incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, the Federal Security Service, the Russian agency most responsible for protecting the border, played down the seriousness of the operation. Calling it “an armed provocation,” the agency said its forces were working to push the Ukrainians back. That was nearly a month ago. Since then, Ukrainian forces have occupied a small but significant patch of Russian territory and killed or captured hundreds of Russian troops, according to officials, analysts and satellite imagery. President Vladimir V. Putin has said an assessment of the failures in Kursk would be made only after the situation in Russia’s border region had stabilized, but intelligence experts say that a large measure of the responsibility rests with the Federal Security Service. Despite its sprawling networks of agents and vast budget, the agency, known as the F.S.B., first failed to anticipate the Ukrainian incursion and is now struggling along with the Russian Army to dislodge a sizable Ukrainian fighting force.

‘Out of a Horror Movie:’ Typhoon Yagi Makes Landfall in Vietnam (NYT) Typhoon Yagi made landfall in Vietnam on Saturday, packing powerful winds and torrential rain that killed at least four people and injured more than 70 people, according to state-run media, and forced tens of thousands to evacuate. Earlier, the storm smashed into southern China, where at least three people died. The typhoon, one of the most powerful to strike northern Vietnam, made landfall at 1:30 p.m. near the city of Haiphong. The storm’s gales sank boats, broke utility poles and uprooted trees in coastal towns near Halong Bay. More than eight million people in the northern provinces were experiencing power failures, according to state-run media. Vessels in the Quang Ninh were swept away, some with crew members onboard, according to news accounts. One sailor was killed and more than a dozen others were missing. “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life,” said Nguyen Viet Anh, 32, a resident of Ha Long City, in a phone interview. “I don’t even recognize my town,” he said, describing the fallen trees and tin roofs ripped off homes. “It’s just like out of a horror movie.”

Prince Hisahito becomes the first royal male in Japan to reach adulthood in 4 decades (AP) In a big milestone for Japan’s royal family, Prince Hisahito turned 18 on Friday, becoming the first male royal family member to reach adulthood in almost four decades. It is a significant development for a family that has ruled for more than a millennium but faces the same existential problems as the rest of the nation—a fast-aging, shrinking population. Hisahito, who is set to become the emperor one day, is the nephew of Japanese Emperor Naruhito. His father, Crown Prince Akishino, was the last male to reach adulthood in the family, in 1985. His status as the last heir apparent poses a major problem for a system that doesn’t allow empresses. The government is debating how to keep succession stable without relying on women. The 1947 Imperial House Law, which largely preserves conservative pre-war family values, only allows a male to succeed to the throne.

Gaza enters its 2nd school year without schooling (AP) This week, when they would normally be going back to school, the Qudeh family’s children stumbled with armfuls of rubble they collected from a destroyed building to sell for use in building graves in the cemetery that is now their home in southern Gaza. “Anyone our age in other countries is studying and learning,” said 14-year-old Ezz el-Din Qudeh, after he and his three siblings—the youngest a 4-year-old—hauled a load of concrete chunks. “We’re not. We’re working at something beyond our capacities. We are forced to in order to get a living.” As Gaza enters its second school year without schooling, most of its children are caught up helping their families in the daily struggle to survive amid Israel’s devastating campaign. Children trod barefoot on the dirt roads to carry water in plastic jerricans from distribution points to their families living in tent cities teeming with Palestinians driven from their homes. Others wait at charity kitchens with containers to bring back food. Humanitarian workers say the extended deprivation of education threatens long-term damage to Gaza’s children.

They Thought It Was Safe to Go Home (NYT) After Boko Haram fighters threatened them, they could not risk staying. Over a decade, the extremist group had killed tens of thousands of people in the cross-border scrubland around them. So the residents of Mafa, a village in northeast Nigeria’s Yobe State, fled in terror. About two weeks after that evacuation in late July, according to a village leader, a local official told them it was safe to go back. It was a catastrophic decision that ended last Sunday in fighters killing dozens of villagers, mostly men and boys, and burning Mafa to the ground. At least 170 people were killed, and more are missing. It came on the heels of another major attack in West Africa—on Barsalogho, a town in Burkina Faso, where members of another terrorist group killed as many as 400 people on Aug. 24, according to victims’ relatives.

Four Thieves Vinegar Collective (404 Media) An anarchist collective called Four Thieves Vinegar makes it its mission to teach people how to make do-it-yourself pharmaceuticals to drastically cut the cost of drugs at the expense of, essentially, bootleg drugs, arguing effectively for a right to repair but for your body. For instance, the hepatitis C drug Sovaldi costs $1,000 per pill, taken once per day for 12 weeks, an $84,000 treatment that works reliably. Initially, the chemists working there thought a DIY version synthesized from available precursors would cost $300 for the entire course, or $3.57 per pill, but they actually got it to $70 for the course, or 83 cents per pill. Mixæl Swan Laufer, the chief spokesperson of Four Thieves, said that the research that goes into making a new drug is hard, but that actually producing some of these medications after they’ve been invented is sometimes easy and inexpensive. Charging astronomical prices to people who are dying is immoral, and Four Thieves seeks to normalize the idea of making some types of medicine yourself. [Note: This is not an endorsement of Four Thieves.]

[angelx1992]

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved in our archive

By Vijay Kumar Malesu

In a recent pre-print study posted to bioRxiv*, a team of researchers investigated the predictive role of gut microbiome composition during acute Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection in the development of Long Coronavirus Disease (Long COVID) (LC) and its association with clinical variables and symptom clusters.

Background LC affects 10–30% of non-hospitalized individuals infected with SARS-CoV-2, leading to significant morbidity, workforce loss, and an economic impact of $3.7 trillion in the United States (U.S.).

Symptoms span cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, cognitive, and neurological issues, resembling myalgic encephalomyelitis and other post-infectious syndromes. Proposed mechanisms include immune dysregulation, neuroinflammation, viral persistence, and coagulation abnormalities, with emerging evidence implicating the gut microbiome in LC pathogenesis.

Current studies focus on hospitalized patients, limiting generalizability to milder cases. Further research is needed to explore microbiome-driven predictors in outpatient populations, enabling targeted diagnostics and therapies for LC’s heterogeneous and complex presentation.

About the study The study was approved by the Mayo Clinic Institutional Review Board and recruited adults aged 18 years or older who underwent SARS-CoV-2 testing at Mayo Clinic locations in Minnesota, Florida, and Arizona from October 2020 to September 2021. Participants were identified through electronic health record (EHR) reviews filtered by SARS-CoV-2 testing schedules.

Eligible individuals were contacted via email, and informed consent was obtained. Of the 1,061 participants initially recruited, 242 were excluded due to incomplete data, failed sequencing, or other issues. The final cohort included 799 participants (380 SARS-CoV-2-positive and 419 SARS-CoV-2-negative), providing 947 stool samples.

Stool samples were collected at two-time points: weeks 0–2 and weeks 3–5 after testing. Samples were shipped in frozen gel packs via overnight courier and stored at −80°C for downstream analyses. Microbial deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) was extracted using Qiagen kits, and metagenomic sequencing was performed targeting 8 million reads per sample.

Taxonomic profiling was conducted using Kraken2, and functional profiling was performed using the Human Microbiome Project Unified Metabolic Analysis Network (HUMAnN3).

Stool calprotectin levels were measured using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), and SARS-CoV-2 ribonucleic acid (RNA) was detected using reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR).

Clinical data, including demographics, comorbidities, medications, and symptom persistence, were extracted from EHRs.

Machine learning models incorporating microbiome and clinical data were utilized to predict LC and to identify symptom clusters, providing valuable insights into the heterogeneity of the condition.

Study results The study analyzed 947 stool samples collected from 799 participants, including 380 SARS-CoV-2-positive individuals and 419 negative controls. Of the SARS-CoV-2-positive group, 80 patients developed LC during a one-year follow-up period.

Participants were categorized into three groups for analysis: LC, non-LC (SARS-CoV-2-positive without LC), and SARS-CoV-2-negative. Baseline characteristics revealed significant differences between these groups. LC participants were predominantly female and had more baseline comorbidities compared to non-LC participants.

The SARS-CoV-2-negative group was older, with higher antibiotic use and vaccination rates. These variables were adjusted for in subsequent analyses.

During acute infection, gut microbiome diversity differed significantly between groups. Alpha diversity was lower in SARS-CoV-2-positive participants (LC and non-LC) than in SARS-CoV-2-negative participants.

Beta diversity analyses revealed distinct microbial compositions among the groups, with LC patients exhibiting unique microbiome profiles during acute infection.

Specific bacterial taxa, including Faecalimonas and Blautia, were enriched in LC patients, while other taxa were predominant in non-LC and negative participants. These findings indicate that gut microbiome composition during acute infection is a potential predictor for LC.

Temporal analysis of gut microbiome changes between the acute and post-acute phases revealed significant individual variability but no cohort-level differences, suggesting that temporal changes do not contribute to LC development.

However, machine learning models demonstrated that microbiome data during acute infection, when combined with clinical variables, predicted LC with high accuracy. Microbial predictors, including species from the Lachnospiraceae family, significantly influenced model performance.

Symptom analysis revealed that LC encompasses heterogeneous clinical presentations. Fatigue was the most prevalent symptom, followed by dyspnea and cough.

Cluster analysis identified four LC subphenotypes based on symptom co-occurrence: gastrointestinal and sensory, musculoskeletal and neuropsychiatric, cardiopulmonary, and fatigue-only.

Each cluster exhibited unique microbial associations, with the gastrointestinal and sensory clusters showing the most pronounced microbial alterations. Notably, taxa such as those from Lachnospiraceae and Erysipelotrichaceae families were significantly enriched in this cluster.

Conclusions To summarize, this study demonstrated that SARS-CoV-2-positive individuals who later developed LC exhibited distinct gut microbiome profiles during acute infection. While prior research has linked the gut microbiome to COVID-19 outcomes, few studies have explored its predictive potential for LC, particularly in outpatient cohorts.

Using machine learning models, including artificial neural networks and logistic regression, this study found that microbiome data alone predicted LC more accurately than clinical variables, such as disease severity, sex, and vaccination status.

Key microbial contributors included species from the Lachnospiraceae family, such as Eubacterium and Agathobacter, and Prevotella spp. These findings highlight the gut microbiome’s potential as a diagnostic tool for identifying LC risk, enabling personalized interventions.

*Important notice: bioRxiv publishes preliminary scientific reports that are not peer-reviewed and, therefore, should not be regarded as conclusive, guide clinical practice/health-related behavior, or treated as established information.

Journal reference: Preliminary scientific report. Isin Y. Comba, Ruben A. T. Mars, Lu Yang, et al. (2024) Gut Microbiome Signatures During Acute Infection Predict Long COVID, bioRxiv. doi:https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.12.10.626852. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.10.626852v1.full

[lenbryant]

(Long Post Atlantic) Rural Republicans Are Fighting to Save Their Public Schools

Many state legislators see voucher programs as a threat to the anchors of their communities.

By Alec MacGillis

This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here.

This article is a collaboration between The Atlantic and ProPublica.

Drive an hour south of Nashville into the rolling countryside of Marshall County, Tennessee—past horse farms, mobile homes, and McMansions—and you will arrive in Chapel Hill, population 1,796. It’s the birthplace of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, who helped found the Ku Klux Klan. And it’s the home of Todd Warner, one of the most unlikely and important defenders of America’s besieged public schools.

Warner is the gregarious 53-year-old owner of PCS of TN, a 30-person company that does site grading for shopping centers and other construction projects. The second-term Republican state representative “absolutely” supports Donald Trump, who won Marshall County by 50 points in 2020. Warner likes to talk of the threats posed by culture-war bogeymen, such as critical race theory; diversity, equity, and inclusion; and Sharia law.

And yet, one May afternoon in his office, under a TV playing Fox News and a mounted buck that he’d bagged in Alabama, he told me about his effort to halt Republican Governor Bill Lee’s push for private-school vouchers in Tennessee. Warner’s objections are rooted in the reality of his district: It contains not a single private school, so to Warner, taxpayer money for the new vouchers would clearly be flowing elsewhere, mostly to well-off families in metro Nashville, Memphis, and other cities whose kids are already enrolled in private schools. Why should his small-town constituents be subsidizing the private education of metropolitan rich kids? “I’m for less government, but it’s government’s role to provide a good public education,” he said. “If you want to send your kid to private school, then you should pay for it.”

The coronavirus pandemic provided a major boost to supporters of school vouchers, who argued that extended public-school closures—and the on-screen glimpses they afforded parents of what was being taught to their kids—underscored the need to give parents greater choice in where to send their children. Eleven states, led by Florida and Arizona, now have universal or near-universal vouchers, meaning that even affluent families can receive thousands of dollars toward their kids’ private-school tuition.

Read: Salvaging education in rural America

The beneficiaries in these states are mostly families whose kids were already enrolled in private schools, not families using the vouchers to escape struggling public schools. In larger states, the annual taxpayer tab for the vouchers is close to $1 billion, leaving less money for public schools at a time when they already face the loss of federal pandemic aid.

Voucher advocates, backed by a handful of billionaire funders, are on the march to bring more red and purple states into the fold for “school choice,” their preferred terminology for vouchers. And again and again, they are running up against rural Republicans like Warner, who are joining forces with Democratic lawmakers in a rare bipartisan alliance. That is, it’s the reddest regions of these red and purple states that are putting up some of the strongest resistance to the conservative assault on public schools.

Conservative orthodoxy at the national level holds that parents must be given an out from a failing public-education system that force-feeds children progressive fads. But many rural Republican lawmakers have trouble reconciling this with the reality in their districts, where many public schools are not only the sole educational option, but also the largest employer and the hub of the community—where everyone goes for holiday concerts, Friday-night football, and basketball. Unlike schools in blue metro areas, rural schools mostly reopened for in-person instruction in the fall of 2020, and they are far less likely to be courting controversy on issues involving race and gender.

Demonizing public education in the abstract is one thing. But it’s quite another when the target is the school where you went, where your kids went. For Todd Warner, that was Forrest High School, in Chapel Hill. “My three kids graduated from public schools, and they turned out just fine,” he said. “Ninety-five percent of our students, our future business owners, our future leaders, are going to the public schools. They’re not going to private. Why take it away from them?”

The response from voucher proponents to the resistance from fellow Republicans has taken several forms, all of which implicitly grant the critics’ case that voucher programs currently offer little benefit to rural areas. In some states, funding for vouchers is being paired with more money for public schools, to offer support for rural districts. In Ohio, voucher advocates are proposing to fund the construction of new private schools in rural areas where none exist, giving families places to use vouchers.

But the overriding Republican response to rural skeptics has been a political threat: Get with the program on vouchers, or else.

That’s what played out this year in Ohio’s Eighty-Third District, in the state’s rural northwest. Last summer, Ohio adopted universal private-school vouchers, with middle- and working-class families eligible for up to $8,407 per high-school student and even the very wealthiest families eligible for almost $1,000 per child. Private-school leaders urged already enrolled families to seek the money, and more than 140,000 families applied for vouchers. The cost has exceeded estimates, approaching $1 billion, with most of it going to the parochial schools that dominate the state’s private-school landscape. Voucher advocates are now pushing to create educational savings accounts to cover tuition at unchartered private schools that are not eligible for the vouchers.

Read: Do private school vouchers promote segregation?

School leaders in Hardin County—with its cornfields, solar-panel installations, and what was once one of the largest dairy farms east of the Mississippi—are deeply worried that vouchers stand to hurt county residents. Only a single small private school is within reach, one county to the south, which means that virtually no local taxpayers would see any of that voucher money themselves—it would be going to private-school families in Columbus, Cincinnati, and other large population centers. (And under Ohio law, the very public schools that are losing students must pay to transport any students who attend private institutions within a half-hour drive of the public school.)

Craig Hurley, the superintendent for Hardin’s Upper Scioto Valley District, is a solidly built 52-year-old who calls himself a staunch conservative. He attended the district’s schools and has worked in them for 30 years. He knows that they provide meals to 400 students, nearly two-thirds of whom qualify for free and reduced lunch. Even though the high school can muster only 20 players for football—basketball fares better—the fans come out to cheer. “Our district is our community,” he told me. “The more you separate that, the less of a community we’re going to be.”

Hurley has calculated that local schools are receiving less state funding per student than what private schools now receive for the maximum possible voucher amount. Yet private schools face almost none of the accountability that public schools do regarding how the money is spent and what outcomes it achieves. “We have fiscal responsibility on all of it, on every dime, every penny we spend,” he said. “There’s no audit for them.” Not to mention, he added, “a private school doesn’t have to accept all students, right? They pick who they want.”

Thirteen miles east, Chad Thrush, the school superintendent in Kenton, the county seat, noted that his school system is the second-largest employer in town, after Graphic Packaging, which makes plastic cups for vending machines. He worries that the rising cost of the voucher program will erode state funding for public schools, and he worries about what would happen to his district if a new private school opened in town. Thrush understands the appeal of vouchers for parents who want a leg up for their kid. But, he told me, “we need to be looking at how we’re preparing all students to be successful, not just my student.”

As it happens, the two superintendents have a crucial ally in Columbus: their state representative, Jon Cross. Like Warner in Tennessee, Cross is an ardent pro-Trump conservative, and deeply opposed to private-school vouchers. At a legislative hearing last year, he cut loose at a lobbyist for Americans for Prosperity—the conservative advocacy group founded by the industrialist Koch brothers—who was testifying for vouchers, one of the organization’s long-standing causes. “Wouldn’t we be better off taking some money in our budget to fix the schools?” Cross said. “I tell you what, I really like my public schools. I’m really proud that Carson and Connor, my sons, go to Kenton City Schools and get an education from there just like I did.”

The schools in Hardin and Marshall Counties are majority white. But some rural Republican legislators in other states have been willing to buck their party leaders on vouchers even in more racially diverse districts. In Georgia, of the 15 Republican state representatives who blocked a voucher proposal last year, more than half came from rural areas with substantial Black populations. One of them was Gerald Greene, who spent more than three decades as a high-school social-studies teacher and has managed to survive as a Republican in his majority-Black district in the state’s southwestern corner after switching parties in 2010.

Greene believes vouchers will harm his district. It has a couple of small private schools in it or just outside it—with student bodies that are starkly more white than the district’s public schools—but the majority of his constituents rely on the public schools, and he worries that vouchers will leave less money for them. “I just felt like we were abandoning our public schools,” he told me. “I’m not against private schools at all, but I just did not see how these vouchers would help southwestern Georgia.”

After failing to pass a voucher program last year, the state’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, and proponents in the legislature tried again this year, and this time they succeeded, albeit with vouchers more constrained than elsewhere: They can be used only by students in school districts that are ranked in the bottom quartile and whose families make less than 400 percent of the poverty level ($120,000 for a family of four), and their total cost can’t exceed 1 percent of the state’s total education budget, which caps them now at $140 million.

Partisan pressures simply became too strong for some skeptical Republicans, including Greene’s counterpart in the Senate, Sam Watson. Seminole County Superintendent Mark Earnest told me about the conversation in which Watson let him know that he was going to have to support the limited vouchers. “They have turned this into a caucus priority. It’s getting very political,” Watson said. “Thanks for letting me know,” Earnest replied, “but all vouchers are bad for public education.” Watson’s response: “I know, but I couldn’t go with the Democrats. Sorry.” (Watson did not respond to a request for comment.)

The highest-profile rural Republican resistance to vouchers has come in Texas, the land of Friday Night Lights and far-flung oil-country settlements where the public schools anchor communities. Late last year, the Texas House voted 84–63 to strip vouchers out of a broad education bill. In response, Governor Greg Abbott launched a purge of anti-voucher Republicans in this year’s primaries, backed by millions of dollars from the Pennsylvania mega-donor Jeff Yass, a finance billionaire.

Among those targeted was Drew Darby, who represents a sprawling 10-county district in West Texas, and who frames the issue in starkly regional terms: The state’s metro areas depend on his constituents to provide “food, fiber, and hide,” to “tend the oil wells and wind turbines to provide electricity to people who want to be just a little cooler in the cities.” But without good public schools, these rural areas will wither. “Robert Lee, Winters, Sterling, Blackwell,” he said, listing some hamlets—“these communities exist because they have strong public schools. They would literally not exist without a good public-school system.”

Darby, a fiscal conservative, is also opposed to a new entitlement for private-school families that is projected to soon cost $2 billion a year. “In rural Texas, there’s not a whole lot of private-school options, and we want our schools to get every dollar they can. This doesn’t add $1, and it’s not good for rural Texas.”

Darby managed to stave off his primary challenge, but 11 of the 15 voucher resisters targeted by Abbott lost, several in races so close that they went to a runoff. Abbott is unapologetic: “Congratulations to all of tonight’s winners,” he said after the runoff. “Together, we will ensure the best future for our children.”

Also succumbing to his primary challenger was Jon Cross, in western Ohio. His opponent, Ty Mathews, managed to make the campaign about more than just vouchers, taking sides in a bitter leadership split within the GOP caucus. And for all the concerns that local school leaders have about the effect of vouchers, the threat remained abstract to many voters. “I’m not worried about it, because we don’t have the revenue here anyways in this town for anything to be taken from us to be given to a bigger town,” one 60-year-old woman told me after casting her vote for Mathews. A younger woman asked simply: “What exactly are the vouchers?”

But in Tennessee, Todd Warner and his allies staved off the threat again this year. To overcome rural resistance, voucher proponents in the Tennessee House felt the need to constrain them and pair them with hundreds of millions of dollars in additional funding for public schools, but this was at odds with the state Senate’s more straightforward voucher legislation. The two chambers were unable to come to an agreement before the session’s end in April, by which point the House bill had not even made it to the floor for a vote.

For Democratic voucher opponents in the state, the alliance with Warner and other rural Republicans was as helpful as it was unusual. “It was strange,” Representative Sam McKenzie, a Black Democrat from Knoxville, told me. McKenzie compared it to Twins, a movie in which Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito played unlikely fraternal twins: “Representative Warner and I were in lockstep opposition to this voucher scam.”

Watch: Why school choice fails

One voucher supporter, Representative Scott Cepicky, told me he was confident that his side would eventually prevail. “We’ll work on this again next year,” he said. “The governor is committed that we’re going to run on school choice again.” And Americans for Prosperity has made clear that it’s coming after voucher opponents. Its Tennessee state director, Tori Venable, told Warnerduring the legislative session that “I can’t protect you if you ain’t on the right side of this.”

Another conservative group, the American Federation for Children, sent out a text message in March attacking Warner for his opposition to “parental rights,” without using the term vouchers. And a retired teacher in Marshall County, Gwen Warren, told me she and her husband recently got a visit from an Americans for Prosperity canvasser citing Warner’s opposition to vouchers. “She said, ‘We’re going around the neighborhood trying to talk to people about vouchers. We feel like Tennesseans really want the voucher system.’” To which, Warren said, her husband replied, “You’re very much mistaken, lady. We don’t want vouchers in this county, and you need to go away.”

Warner remains unfazed by all this. He is pretty sure that his voucher opposition in fact helped him win his seat in 2020, after the incumbent Republican voted for a pilot voucher system limited to Nashville and Memphis. And he notes that no one has registered to challenge him in the state’s August 1 primary. “They tried to find a primary opponent but couldn’t,” he said with a chuckle. “I was born and raised here all my life. My family’s been here since the 18th century. I won’t say I can’t be beat, but bring your big-boy pants and come on, let’s go.”

This article is a collaboration between The Atlantic and ProPublica.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 4.4 (after 1950)

1958 – The CND peace symbol is displayed in public for the first time in London. 1960 – France agrees to grant independence to the Mali Federation, a union of Senegal and French Sudan. 1963 – Bye Bye Birdie, a musical romantic comedy film directed by George Sidney, was released. 1964 – The Beatles occupy the top five positions on the Billboard Hot 100 pop chart. 1967 – Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence" speech in New York City's Riverside Church. 1968 – Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated by James Earl Ray at a motel in Memphis, Tennessee. 1968 – Apollo program: NASA launches Apollo 6. 1969 – Dr. Denton Cooley implants the first temporary artificial heart. 1973 – The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City are officially dedicated. 1973 – A Lockheed C-141 Starlifter, dubbed the Hanoi Taxi, makes the last flight of Operation Homecoming. 1975 – Microsoft is founded as a partnership between Bill Gates and Paul Allen in Albuquerque, New Mexico. 1975 – Vietnam War: A United States Air Force Lockheed C-5A Galaxy transporting orphans, crashes near Saigon, South Vietnam shortly after takeoff, killing 172 people. 1977 – Southern Airways Flight 242 crashes in New Hope, Paulding County, Georgia, killing 72. 1979 – Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto of Pakistan is executed. 1981 – Iran–Iraq War: The Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force mounts an attack on H-3 Airbase and destroys about 50 Iraqi aircraft. 1983 – Space Shuttle program: Space Shuttle Challenger makes its maiden voyage into space on STS-6. 1984 – President Ronald Reagan calls for an international ban on chemical weapons. 1987 – Garuda Indonesia Flight 032 crashes at Medan Airport, killing 23. 1988 – Governor Evan Mecham of Arizona is convicted in his impeachment trial and removed from office. 1990 – The current flag of Hong Kong is adopted for post-colonial Hong Kong during the Third Session of the Seventh National People's Congress. 1991 – Senator John Heinz of Pennsylvania and six others are killed when a helicopter collides with their airplane over an elementary school in Merion, Pennsylvania. 1991 – Forty-one people are taken hostage inside a Good Guys! Electronics store in Sacramento, California. Three of the hostage takers and three hostages are killed. 1994 – Three people are killed when KLM Cityhopper Flight 433 crashes at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. 1996 – Comet Hyakutake is imaged by the USA Asteroid Orbiter Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous. 1997 – Space Shuttle program: Space Shuttle Colombia is launched on STS-83. However, the mission is later cut short due to a fuel cell problem. 2002 – The MPLA government of Angola and UNITA rebels sign a peace treaty ending the Angolan Civil War. 2009 – France announces its return to full participation of its military forces within NATO. 2010 – A magnitude 7.2 earthquake hits south of the Mexico-USA border, killing two and damaging buildings across the two countries. 2011 – Georgian Airways Flight 834 crashes at N'djili Airport in Kinshasa, killing 32. 2013 – More than 70 people are killed in a building collapse in Thane, India. 2017 – Syria conducts an air strike on Khan Shaykhun using chemical weapons, killing 89 civilians. 2020 – China holds a national day of mourning for martyrs who died in the fight against the novel coronavirus disease outbreak. 2023 – Finland becomes a member of NATO after Turkey accepts its membership request.

[thedreadpiratejames]

Are you better off than you were four years ago?

March 19: Trump declares drug a 'game changer'

As parts of the country start shutting down in an effort to curb virus spread, Trump announces the FDA will fast-track approval of unproven coronavirus treatments, including chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine.

"The nice part is, it's been around for a long time, so we know that if it -- if things don't go as planned, it's not going to kill anybody," Trump says at a task force briefing.

March 20: Trump banks on 'a feeling' as Fauci calls evidence 'anecdotal'

Director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci says, "the answer is no" when asked at a task force briefing if hydroxychloroquine is an effective coronavirus treatment, explaining signs of the drug's promise were purely "anecdotal evidence."

"But I'm a big fan, and we'll see what happens," Trump steps forward to add. "I feel good about it. That's all it is, just a feeling, you know."

March 21: Trump cites success of small French study, publisher later says data 'did not meet its standards'

Trump tweets to his roughly 84 million followers that hydroxychloroquine taken with the antibiotic azithromycin could be "one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine" and should "be put in use immediately."

March 24: Arizona man dies after ingesting non-medication chloroquine

A man in Arizona dies after ingesting a form of chloroquine used to clean fish tanks in an apparent attempt to self-medicate for the coronavirus, according to hospital system Banner Health.

The man's wife, who says they learned of chloroquine's connection to coronavirus during one of Trump's press conferences, tells NBC News they took it because they "were afraid of getting sick."

March 28: CDC distributes a Health Alert Network warning against using chloroquine phosphate

CDC distributes a Health Alert Network (HAN) warning against using chloroquine phosphate without the recommendation of a doctor or pharmacy after one person is made seriously ill and a second dies from ingesting non-pharmaceutical chloroquine phosphate (a chemical aquariums use that is commercially available for purchase at stores or online) to prevent or treat COVID-19.

April 5: Trump on hydroxychloroquine: 'What really do we have to lose?'

"If it works, that would be great," he adds. "But it doesn't kill people."

April 9: NIH begins clinical trials of hydroxychloroquine

April 13: Study in Brazil linking hydroxychloroquine to fatal heart problems makes headlines

April 22: Vaccine chief ousted

The head of the federal agency charged with overseeing the rapid production of a coronavirus vaccine says he's removed from his post after trying to push back on problems he saw infecting the federal response, including being handed "misguided directives" to push the drugs chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine.

[thxnews]

Maryland Man Jailed in COVID-19 Fraud

A Collaborative Effort Against Economic Crime

In a remarkable display of investigative collaboration, the HSI Baltimore field office, alongside several other law enforcement agencies, successfully brought to justice a Maryland man for his role in a substantial COVID-19 fraud scheme. Dementrous Von Smith, a 36-year-old from Waldorf, Maryland, faced a hefty sentence of 53 months in federal prison following his involvement in an elaborate conspiracy that exploited the CARES Act unemployment insurance program, resulting in losses of over $1.5 million.   The CARES Act: A Beacon of Hope Exploited The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, passed in March 2020, was a federal initiative designed to provide critical financial support to Americans impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic's economic fallout. Unfortunately, this well-intentioned program became a target for fraudsters like Smith, who saw an opportunity for personal gain amidst a global crisis.  

The Scheme: A Web of Deceit

From March 2020 to October 2021, Smith and his associates engaged in a sophisticated fraud operation. They impersonated victims to file fraudulent unemployment insurance claims across Maryland, California, and Arizona. Utilizing electronic communication, they traded the personal information of unsuspecting victims, crafting false email addresses and phone numbers to bolster their fraudulent applications.   Cashing In: The Unlawful Gain The group skillfully converted the fraudulent benefits into cash, using debit cards for withdrawals and various financial transactions. One notable incident involved Smith withdrawing $4,000 using a victim's UI profile. Further investigation revealed numerous instances where Smith personally manipulated victim profiles for monetary gain.   The Raid: A Turning Point On July 7, 2022, a critical operation led to the search and subsequent seizure of evidence from Smith's residence and vehicle. This operation not only unearthed a significant amount of cash but also revealed an alarming cache of firearms and ammunition, highlighting the severity of Smith's criminal endeavors.   A Co-Conspirator's Fate Michael Akame Ngwese Ay Makoge, a co-defendant in the scheme, also faces severe legal consequences. Pleading guilty, Makoge is set to receive his sentence in early 2024, which could amount to a substantial period in federal prison.  

The Bigger Picture: A United Front Against Pandemic Fraud

This case is part of a broader effort by the District of Maryland Strike Force to combat pandemic-related fraud. These strike forces, established across the United States, play a pivotal role in addressing large-scale, multi-state frauds, particularly those involving pandemic relief funds. Their success in this case underscores the importance and effectiveness of interagency cooperation in tackling complex financial crimes.   HSI's Role in Upholding Justice HSI, the principal investigative arm of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, was instrumental in this operation. With a vast network of agents and international presence, HSI continues to be a key player in combating transnational crime and threats, exemplifying the power of collaboration in upholding justice.   Sources: THX News & US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Read the full article

[shahananasrin-blog]

[ad_1] A new book reveals why Donald Trump almost never wore a mask during the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, even prior to the development of effective vaccines and treatments for the infection.He was worried about his makeup, according to Cassidy Hutchinson, who was an aide to Mark Meadows when he served as Trump’s White House chief of staff.The Guardian reports that her book, “Enough,” describes Trump’s visit to an Arizona Honeywell facility in May 2020 where he went maskless despite the fact that the facility itself was making them.Hutchinson wrote that he tried a white mask before the event, then asked staffers for their opinions.“I slowly shook my head. The president pulled the mask off and asked why I thought he should not wear it,” she wrote. “I pointed at the straps of the N95 I was holding. When he looked at the straps of his mask, he saw they were covered in bronzer.”He wasn’t happy about that.“Why did no one else tell me that,” he said. “I’m not wearing this thing.”Trump was almost never seen wearing one after that, with only a handful of exceptions.“The press would criticize him for not wearing a mask, not knowing that the depth of his vanity had caused him to reject masks – and then millions of his fans followed suit,” she wrote, according to The Guardian.Trump has claimed he had a different reason for refusing to wear a mask.Washington Post journalists Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker said in 2021 he told them it was about “the importance in his mind of looking strong, looking healthy, looking impenetrable.”“Enough” will be released on Sept. 26, but is already making headlines for Hutchinson’s account of being groped by Rudy Giuliani backstage at Trump’s Jan. 6 2021 rally that preceded the assault on Congress.Giuliani has denied the incident. [ad_2]