#health minister 2021

[neechees]

ATTENTION ALBERTANS!! Want to protect our mountains from greed and pollution? You can help!

In 2021 Albertans and over 50 groups worked hard to protect Alberta's watershed and mountains from mining that would pollute the environment and cause health problems for both animals and humans. However, now the Alberta government is trying to get rid of the mining ban that was put in place to protect the environment for their own greed.

Theyre planning on mining the entirety of the Eastern Slopes of Rockies in Alberta from Crowsnest Pass to Rocky Mountain House. It is inevitable that Selenium, which is toxic, will leech into the water and soil from the mining that would occur, and this has happened in B.C, (and nobody knows how to stop it), which ruined its economy there. The damage that would result in the mining would cause cancer in miners and nearby residents, poison the soil and any agriculture from that area (of which there are many), and make the water toxic. Furthermore, 90% of Alberta's water demand comes from the southern half of the province, which is where the mining is taking place. The effects of these protections would be incredibly DEVASTATING on not just Albertans, but the land, the animals, and others, including our economy, which is the same thing that happened with Elk Valley, B.C.

So how can you help?

Sign the petition below to Restore Alberta's Coal mining ban to ensure a better, safer, more clean future for Albertans and the environment!!!

Furthermore, if you've got time today, below are some numbers you can call to tell the gov how you disapprove of the mining project.

(780-427-3740) for Brian Jean, the Minister of Energy and Minerals

(780-427-2391) for Rebecca Shultz, Minister of Environment and Protected Areas

Also call your MLA!! Here's where you can locate yours

[intuitive-revelations]

The near future in the Doctor Who universe sure gets dire doesn't it? Especially if Mad Jack / Roger ap Gwilliam is still part of history.

I thought I'd have a bit of fun listing things out, combining as many sources as possible. Turns out he fits in shockingly well with what we know. There's a lot missing here or cut out, and for obvious reasons it's very UK / Europe focused, but nonetheless:

[ID: Scene from The Christmas Invasion showing Harriet Jones on BBC News. The news ticker reads "PM HEALTH SCARE", "Unfit for duty?", and references a "SECRET GOVERNMENT MOLE" and a quote: "BLOOD ON [HER HANDS]".]

2006-2021 (obviously the past now, but still noting for the resulting temporal and political butterfly effect) - In the original timeline, Harriet Jones remains Prime Minister for 3 consecutive terms, presumably 15 years assuming no snap election was called, referred to as a 'golden age' [World War Three]. The Tenth Doctor deliberately changes history to cause her deposal [The Christmas Invasion], leading to numerous disastrous terms in the meantime, including those of Harold Saxon [The Sound of Drums et al.], Brian Green (who tried to appease the 456) [Children of Earth], Boris Johnson (an auton host of the Nestene Consciousness) [Rose (novelisation)], and Jo Patterson (responsible for deploying cloned Dalek defence drones in the UK's streets) [Revolution of the Daleks].

[ID: Scene from Revolution of the Daleks. A 'defence drone' Dalek is used to support anti-riot police in a test, dispersing protestors with mock tear gas.]

2010s-2030s - The European Union gradually integrates further, eventually becoming the European Zone / Eurozone, a global superpower which competes with the USA through the 21st century. The UK eventually forms part of the bloc [Trading Futures].

It's likely that Harriet Jones's deposal led to this and related events being delayed or erased, with Brexit (driven by, among others, one of Jones's successors in the new timeline) reducing european unity. Most notably, Ramón Salamander's rise to power occurs now not in the 2010s [The Enemy of the World], but in the 2030s [Doctor Who and the Enemy of the World]. There are other events that are seemingly delayed by ~20 years by changes to the timeline, including future events like the dictatorship of Mariah Learman [The Time of the Daleks, Trading Futures], and yet also possibly past events like the death of Queen Elizabeth II [Battlefield, The Longest Night et al.], which may suggest something else (eg. the Time War) may be responsible.

~2030 - During a time of rising global tensions [73 Yards], Ramón Salamander convinces a group of scientists in an underground shelter endurance experiment that nuclear war has broken out on the surface. They are convinced to generate artificial "natural" disasters to fight back against the enemy. Between this and ongoing climate change, several global food sources collapse as a result, including Canada and Ukraine's corn and flour production [The Enemy of the World].

2031 - Tensions culminate in the "Great Russian War". Despite posturing, not a single nuclear weapon is fired, at least by NATO [73 Yards]. This may be later considered World War III [Trading Futures].

~2032-2035 - Following the war, tensions rise again, now between the Eurozone and the USA [Trading Futures], possibly in reaction to actions (or lack thereof?) taken by NATO during the war [73 Yards]. Both send separate peacekeeping forces to conflict in North Africa. Meanwhile, Italy is engaged in civil war [Trading Futures].

[ID: Scene from The Enemy of the World, showing Ramón Salamander.]

Over the decade, Ramón Salamander rises in power in the World Zone Authority, using his patented "Sun Store" satellite technology to aid the growth of crops by controlling sunlight over agricultural regions. In the background, he murders and blackmails officials to place loyalists into powerful positions, with the goal of ruling over the World Zone Authority as a dictator. Salamander's treachery is later discovered and he disappears [The Enemy of the World].

2037 - 2042 - Several militia declare wars of Independence from the USA. Notably, Phoenix, Arizona is destroyed in a terrorist attack. While the country largely persists after the conflicts, some territories seem to successfully secede - with, for example, a Montana Republic seemingly being in existence in 2054 [Alien Bodies].

2038 - The World Zones Accord is signed. This is later considered to have reduced the United Nations to a 'joke' compared with the World Zone Authority [Alien Bodies]. Given the extensive power it gives to the WZA, this was likely originally part of Salamander's plan, but due to his disappearance he is not around to reap the rewards [The Enemy of the World].

2039 - A group of Mexican astronauts studying minerals on the Moon go missing [Kill the Moon].

~2030s - 2040s - The Earth begins to experience major climate change effects, including "appalling storm conditions" which harm agriculture [The Waters of Mars]. The ice caps melt and flood much of the Earth [K9] with nations like the Netherlands ending up entirely flooded [St Anthony's Fire]. Some regions experience corrosive acid rain [Cat's Cradle: War Head, Strange Loops]. One summer sees Britain experience a 22 week drought. At this time, the Eurozone closes its borders to millions of North African and Baltic Sea refugees [Hothouse]. This time period may be known as the "Oil Apocalypse" [The Waters of Mars].

[ID: Scene from K9 Episode 13: Aeolian. Big Ben stands in the middle of a colossal storm of wind and rain.]

With Earth's ecosystems collapsing [Davros], humanity begin to realise it's facing extinction [The Waters of Mars]. An artificial cooling agent is spread in the atmosphere to semi-successfully combat the effects, but leads to dramatic side-effects, including freezing some areas of the globe. This is known as the "Great Cataclysm" [K9].

2041 - A three-human team, including Adelaide Brooke, lands on Mars for the first time [The Waters of Mars]. However, with this accomplishment, and increasing turbulence on Earth, Humanity gradually loses interest in space exploration [Kill the Moon].

Before 2045 - Around this time, the UK falls into a dictatorship ruled by the "Director", head of a military council that has allegedly (secretly?) controlled the government since 2028 [Britain Protests]. It is possible that this Director was previously the "Minister of War" for previous governments [Before the Flood].

2045 - The World Zones Authority evolves into a World Government, with Nikita Bandranaik being elected President. The UK is not part of the organisation [This is 2065].

2046-2050s - The Director is overthrown [Down with the Director] and the rest of the government "collapses in shame" [73 Yards]. Some of the revolutionaries celebrate now being "masters of [their] own country" [Down with the Director]. Despite the hopes of the World Government for international integration, this nationalistic streak continues.

[ID: Scene from 73 Yards. Roger ap Gwilliam, with an Albion Party ribbon on his chest declares victory on BBC News, live from Kennington High in London. Headline reads "LANDSLIDE VICTORY FOR ALBION PARTY: Majority of 92 predicted. Roger ap Gwilliam declared Prime Minister."]

Roger ap Gwilliam is elected Prime Minister, with the far-right nationalistic Albion Party gaining a majority of 92 MPs [73 Yards]. While his government does take the step to officially join the World Government senate [Down with the Director], he seeks greater independence from other nations. One of his first actions is to expand the UK's nuclear arsenal, purchasing missiles from Pakistan and withdrawing from NATO. In his term, the world is brought to the brink of nuclear war [73 Yards], likely in the pre-2050s "Euro Wars" [The Time of the Daleks].

In this time, the "Department", a (private?) multinational security organisation is born, based primarily in the UK. They gain broad powers, which they use to control populations with propaganda and use of "CCPC"s: robotic law enforcement notorious for their surveillance and brutality. Despite its recent revolution, the country is rendered practically a police state [K9].

[ID: Scene from K9 Episode 1: Regeneration. CCPCs, hulking police robots, march down a dark alley.]

2049 - The Moon starts to dramatically gain mass, causing massive tides on the Earth, flooding entire cities. In a last ditch at survival, humanity plans to try and destroy the Moon using an array of nuclear bombs. Despite the people of Earth being offered the vote on what to do by turning off their lights, it appears the decision is made on a national level, with lights going off grid-by-grid. Nonetheless, the Moon is allowed to hatch, leaving behind a new less massive egg "moon" with minimal further destruction [Kill the Moon].

[ID: Scene from Kill the Moon. The Moon hatches in the background, as the TARDIS stands by the sea.]

Humanity's interest in space exploration returns [Kill the Moon], starting a new space race. Among these projects, Australia begins constucting a space elevator, Spain a project called "SpaceLink", while Germany and Russia each begin a series of new Moon missions. The Philippines are rumoured to be planning their own landing on Mars [The Waters of Mars].

~2050 - The UK Government (ap Gwilliam's?) is couped once more, by General Mariah Learman. With the King's permission, elections are suspended for at least a couple years, with her ruling over a "benevolent dictatorship". She is later abducted and forcibly mutated by the Daleks [The Time of the Daleks]. Despite the previous description, her promotion of Shakespeare in schools is remembered as the only good thing about her rule [Trading Futures]. (Note: As mentioned prior, it's likely that Learman's rule may have been delayed as Salamander's was. This is suggested by the mention of her in Trading Futures, set seemingly ~2030s or earlier, despite The Time of the Daleks taking place around the 2050s.)

~2050s - The Gravitron is built on the new Moon. This is used to artificially control the tides and weather [The Moonbase]. It likely also is intended to study and monitor the new Moon for future changes [Kill the Moon].

[ID: Scene from The Moonbase, giving an external shot of the base.]

2058 - 2059 - Bowie Base One is established: humanity's first colony on another planet and an international collaboration between the UK, USA, Russia, Germany, Turkey, South Korea, Lithuania, Australia, and Pakistan. One year later, it is mysteriously destroyed in a deliberately triggered nuclear explosion. In the original timeline, there were no survivors. However, after the interference of the Time Lord Victorious, the true story is eventually told on Earth. Regardless "a veil of darkness" sweeps over the planet over the next few years. [The Waters of Mars], as international tensions heat up once more... [Total Eclipse of the Heart].

[ID: Scene from The Waters of Mars, showing an internet news website. Various articles appear focused on the Bowie Base One incident, including "SURVIVORS STORY - BROOKE SAVED EARTH", "THE MYTHICAL DOCTOR", "BROOKE'S HEROIC ACTIONS SAVE EARTH", and "HOW THE COUPLE ESCAPED MARS". The feature image shows the two survivors: Yuri Kerenski and Mia Bennett.]

2060s - The "Great War" breaks out on Earth, involving every country on Earth. This is likely World War IV. Details are vague, but it ultimately ends in a ceasefire, when it's realised the conflict is risking Earth's habitability [Total Eclipse of the Heart].

[waitmyturtles]

(Source)

The Lower House (House of Representatives) will be hearing Thailand’s marriage equality bill at 9:30 am Bangkok time (10:30 pm Eastern for those of us in the States). The bill, if passed, would still have to be approved in Thailand’s Senate.

(Source and source)

Below the fold is Bloomberg.com's report on the happenings (source):

Bill to Legalize Same-Sex Marriage in Thailand Heads to Parliament

Bill is supported by most major parties, needs king approval

Thailand would be first in region to codify marriage equality

By Patpicha Tanakasempipat, March 26, 2024 at 2:00 PM PDT

A bill to legalize same-sex marriage could face a vote in Thailand’s parliament as early as Wednesday. If it passes, the country will be the first in Southeast Asia to establish marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples.

The House of Representatives will take up the legislation, technically an amendment to the Civil and Commercial Code, for second and third readings when it meets at 9 a.m. Lawmakers may vote later in the day.

The bill would legalize marriage for same-sex partners aged 18 and above, along with rights to inheritance, tax allowances and child adoption, among others. Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin’s administration has made it a signature issue, and advocates say it would also burnish Thailand’s reputation as an LGBTQ-friendly tourist destination.

Taiwan and Nepal are the only places in Asia that currently recognize same-sex marriage, and recent efforts elsewhere in the region have had mixed results. Hong Kong has yet to comply with a 2023 court order to establish laws recognizing same-sex partnerships, and India’s Supreme Court refused to legalize same-sex marriage, saying it’s an issue for parliament to consider.

The Thai bill would change the composition of a marriage from “a man and a woman” to “two individuals,” and change the official legal status from “husband and wife” to “married couple.”

Thai laws have protected LGBTQ people from most kinds of discrimination since 2015, but attempts to formalize marriage rights have stalled. In 2021, the Constitutional Court upheld the law recognizing marriage as exclusively between a man and a woman. Last year, a bill to recognize same-sex civil partnerships failed to clear parliament ahead of elections.

Rights advocates have higher hopes for the bill pending now, noting that it has broad support from most of the major parties. If it passes, it will need to be approved by the Senate and endorsed by the King. Then it would be published in the Royal Gazette and take effect 120 days later.

Srettha’s government has also promised to work on a bill to recognize gender identity, and the health ministry has also proposed legalizing commercial surrogacy to allow LGBTQ couples to adopt children. Thailand is seeking to host the WorldPride events in Bangkok in 2028.

Legalizing same-sex marriage could have positive effects on tourism, which contributes about 12% to the nation’s $500 billion economy. In 2019, before the pandemic froze international tourism, LGBTQ travel and tourism to Thailand generated about $6.5 billion, or 1.2% of gross domestic product, according to industry consultant LGBT Capital.

Formal recognition could boost the reputation of a place already considered one of Asia’s best for LGBTQ visitors, said Wittaya Luangsasipong, managing director of Siam Pride, an LGBTQ-friendly travel agency in Bangkok.

“It will become a selling point for Thailand and raise our strength in the global stage,” Wittaya said. “It will create a relaxed and safe atmosphere for tourism and help attract more and more LGBTQ visitors. We could also see more weddings by LGBTQ couples, which could generate income across industries and local communities.”

[probablyasocialecologist]

While the Cass Review has been presented by the U.K. media, politicians and some prominent doctors as a triumph of objective inquiry, its most controversial recommendations are based on prejudice rather than evidence. Instead of helping young people, the review has caused enormous harm to children and their families, to democratic discourse and to wider principles of scientific endeavour. There is an urgent need to critically examine the actual context and findings of the report. Since its 2020 inception, the Cass Review’s anti-trans credentials have been clear. It explicitly excluded trans people from key roles in research, analysis and oversight of the project, while sidelining most practitioners with experience in trans health care. The project centered and sympathized with anti-trans voices, including professionals who deny the very existence of trans children. Former U.K. minister for women and equalities Kemi Badenoch, who has a history of hostility toward trans people even though her role was to promote equality within the government, boasted that the Cass Review was only possible because of her active involvement. The methodology underpinning the Cass Review has been extensively criticized by medical experts and academics from a range of disciplines. Criticism has focused especially on the effect of bias on the Cass approach, double standards in the interpretation of data, substandard scientific rigor, methodological flaws and a failure to properly substantiate claims. For example, although the existing literature reports a wide range of important benefits of social transition and no credible evidence of harm, the Cass Review cautions against it. The review also dismisses substantial documented benefits of adolescent medical transition as underevidenced while highlighting risks based on evidence of significantly worse quality. A warning about impaired brain maturation, for instance, cites a single, very short speculative paper that in turn rests on one experimental study with female mice. Meanwhile extensive qualitative data and clinical consensus are almost entirely ignored. These issues help explain why the Cass recommendations differ from previous academic reviews and expert guidance from major medical organisations such as the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) and the American Academy of Pediatrics. WPATH’s experts themselves highlight the Cass report’s “selective and inconsistent use of evidence,” with recommendations that “often do not follow from the data presented in the systematic reviews.” Leading specialists in transgender medical care from the U.S. and Australia emphasize that “the Review obscures key findings, misrepresents its own data, and is rife with misapplications of the scientific method.” For instance, the Cass report warns that an “exponential change in referrals” to England’s child and adolescent gender clinic during the 2010s is “very much faster than would be expected.” But this increase has not been exponential, and the maximum 5,000 referrals it notes in 2021 represents a very small proportion of the 44,000 trans adolescents in the U.K. estimated from 2021 census data.

7 August 2024

[afeelgoodblog]

The Best News of Last Week - April 3, 2023

Kentucky Legalizes Medical Marijuana in Bipartisan Vote After Decade of Failed Attempts

The state of Kentucky has legalized the use of medical marijuana. The bill received final passage on Thursday. Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear signed it into law Friday morning after a decade of failed attempts in the state legislature.

The news makes Kentucky at least the 38th state in the U.S. to legalize medical marijuana.

Now Indiana is surrounded by weed states. The encirclement is complete 😂

2. The Maryland House of Delegates voted Saturday to approve the Trans Health Equity Act

The Maryland House of Delegates voted Saturday to approve the Trans Health Equity Act — a bill that just a year ago disappeared from the chamber’s agenda ahead of a floor vote.

The bill would require Maryland Medicaid, beginning on Jan. 1, 2024, to provide coverage for additional gender-affirming treatments, which are currently disallowed in the state’s plan but commonly covered by private insurance. The expanded treatments include hormone therapy, hair alteration, voice therapy, physical alterations to the body, and fertility preservation.

3. FDA approves over-the-counter Narcan. Here's what it means

The approved nasal spray is the best-known form of naloxone. It can reverse overdoses of opioids, including street drugs such as heroin and fentanyl and prescription versions including oxycodone.

Making naloxone available more widely is seen as a key strategy to control the nationwide overdose crisis. Effects begin within two minutes when given intravenously, and within five minutes when injected into a muscle. The medicine can also be administered by spraying it into a person's nose.

4. Boston expands tuition-free community college program to all residents

Boston has expanded its tuition-free community college program to include all city residents regardless of age, income or immigration status.

Starting this fall, any city resident will be eligible to pursue an associate’s degree or certificate at one of six partnering local institutions without paying to attend. The program also includes a $250 stipend for incidental expenses each semester for up to three years, and up to $2,500 of debt relief for students whose account balances are keeping them from re-enrolling.

5. First cheetah cubs born in India since extinction 70 years ago

India has welcomed the birth of four cheetah cubs - more than 70 years after the animals were declared officially extinct there.India's environment minister announced the good news, calling it a "momentous event".

The country has been trying to reintroduce the big cats for decades, and last year brought eight cheetahs over from Namibia as part of the plan. Another 12 cheetahs were brought to India from South Africa last month.

6. BBC education show in Afghanistan helps children banned from school

The BBC has launched a new education programme for children in Afghanistan who are banned from school.It is aimed at children aged 11 to 16, including girls whose secondary education has been stopped by the ruling Taliban.

The weekly programme is called Dars, which means lesson in Dari and Pashto, Afghanistan's official languages. It is hosted by BBC Afghan female journalists who were evacuated from Kabul during the 2021 Taliban takeover.

Each new weekly half-hour episode of Dars will air four times a day, Saturday to Friday, on the newly launched BBC News Afghanistan channel.

7. A Trans Creator Has Raised Over 1.5 Million for Trans Healthcare on TikTok Live

Transgender TikTokers are celebrating Trans Day of Visibility by raising over $1.5 million for gender-affirming care around the world.

Mercury Stardust — a DIY TikToker and trans advocate who calls herself the “Trans Handy Ma’am” — raised $120,000 last year in a livestream for the mutual aid nonprofit Point of Pride, which maintains funds for surgeries, hormone therapy, and free binders and gaffs. This year, Stardust and cohost Jory, a.k.a. AlluringSkull, set themselves a goal of raising $1 million in a planned 30-hour live stream…and then smashed that milestone less than six hours after starting the stream Thursday evening.

----

I have started a Youtube channel with wholesome videos I can find on the internet. Check it out :)

That's it for this week :)

This newsletter will always be free. If you liked this post you can support me with a small kofi donation:

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Also don’t forget to reblog

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved in our archive

By Tom Peters

Late last month the New Zealand government released a 700-page report from the first phase of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into COVID-19, examining the country’s response to the pandemic from 2020 to 2023.

The commission was chaired by Tony Blakely, a University of Melbourne epidemiologist, assisted by John Whitehead, a former New Zealand treasury secretary, and Hekia Parata, a former National Party government minister of education.

These appointees were intended to produce a predetermined conclusion: that any public health measures to stop the spread of COVID and save lives must be “balanced” against the need to protect “the economy.” This is the dominant theme throughout the commission’s report, which is designed to ensure that in any future pandemic the response is subordinated entirely to the profit interests of the corporate and financial elite.

Blakely initially supported stringent lockdowns and border quarantine measures in Australia and New Zealand. Later, after the emergence of the highly-infectious Omicron variant of COVID-19, he minimised the severity of the virus. He advocated a “let it rip” policy, telling Radio NZ in February 2022 that the government was being “too cautious,” and should work faster at dismantling public health measures in order to “let Omicron wash through in a timely manner.”

The commissioners’ report seeks to justify the overall response of the former Labour Party-led government—above all, the decision announced by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in October 2021 to end the elimination strategy, which had kept the country almost entirely free from COVID-19 during the first two years of the pandemic.

This was followed by the progressive removal of all restrictions on the spread of the coronavirus and the adoption of a criminal policy of mass infection, which had already killed millions of people worldwide.

In 2022, lockdowns and border quarantine measures were overturned; schools and workplaces fully reopened without social distancing; mask and vaccine mandates were ended, and COVID testing was discouraged in order to keep sick people at work.

In August 2023, the last remaining requirements for people to self-isolate if they had COVID, and to wear masks in healthcare facilities, were scrapped by the Labour government.

These steps—all of which are tacitly or explicitly supported in the Royal Commission’s report—produced a public health disaster. Total deaths from COVID-19 sky-rocketed from around 30 in late 2021, to over 4,500 to date, with more people dying every week. More than 44,200 people have been hospitalised for COVID-19, placing an enormous burden on the healthcare system.

The Royal Commission noted the “clear and consistent pattern of higher hospitalisation rates for people living in higher deprivation areas” and greater fatalities among Māori and Pacific people, who are largely among the poorest. Hospitals in working class areas were frequently overwhelmed with COVID cases, a crisis exacerbated by the running down of public healthcare under successive governments.

Despite this, the report complacently states that the surge in deaths in 2022 was “not the best scenario we might have hoped for [but it] was a pretty good one,” because the initial elimination strategy and vaccination meant that there was “a much lesser cumulative mortality burden than we would have experienced had we allowed the virus in during 2020.”

In fact, while vaccination reduced the risk of severe illness it did not stop mass infection, illness and large numbers of deaths from the highly-infectious Omicron and subsequent variants of COVID-19. During July 2022, as the WSWS reported, New Zealand’s weekly rate of deaths from COVID was among the highest in the world. COVID remains the country’s deadliest infectious disease.

The Royal Commission highlighted the initial success of the elimination strategy, noting that from 2020 to early 2023, New Zealand “experienced ‘negative’ excess mortality, meaning there were fewer deaths in that time period than what would have been expected during a ‘normal’ year.”

The border quarantine measures and the closure of schools and businesses in March-April 2020 succeeded in stopping circulation of the virus, allowing daily life to proceed in a relatively normal way. As well as stamping out COVID-19, these measures eliminated influenza and RSV for approximately two years, a significant achievement that contributed to a fall in the country’s mortality rate.

The commissioners then justify the ending of the “zero COVID” policy by arguing that the lockdowns were no longer working. The report echoes the Labour government’s position that the “social licence” for such measures, especially support among business leaders, was eroding. In deciding to ease and then completely end a lockdown in Auckland in late 2021, while the Delta variant of the virus was still spreading, the report says, “Cabinet had to balance many different outcomes and impacts—health, social and economic—as well as equity considerations.”

The commissioners describe the decision as a “judgement call” and even suggest that the lockdown could have been ended sooner—as was done with the lifting of similar restrictions in the Australian states of Victoria and New South Wales. They also make the unsubstantiated claim that the Omicron variant that became dominant in 2022 was “probably impossible to manage with an elimination strategy.” In fact, China was able to suppress Omicron outbreaks, including in Shanghai.

Ardern’s announcement on October 4, 2021, that the government would move away from an elimination strategy was the outcome of a concerted pressure campaign by big business, both in New Zealand and internationally. It was immediately applauded by the New York Times and other mouthpieces for the financial elite, which insisted that the world had to “learn to live with” mass COVID infection.

The decision was made without consulting the government’s own public health experts, who warned against ending the Auckland lockdown and called for it to be strengthened to stamp out the virus.

The current Labour Party leader, Chris Hipkins, who served as COVID-19 response minister during the transition to the “let it rip” policy, responded to the Royal Commission’s report by stating: “I think we lost the room in Auckland… people stopped following some of the lockdown restrictions.” The lockdown lasted from August to early December 2021 but it was undermined, not by public non-compliance, but by the government’s decisions to ease restrictions.

Hipkins blamed Labour’s crushing election defeat in October 2023 on the supposed unpopularity of lockdowns. In fact, a New Zealand Herald poll published on September 2, 2021 found that 85 percent of respondents supported the elimination strategy, including 87 percent of people in Auckland. Only 13 percent said the country should “live with” COVID-19.

Labour won the 2020 election, with more than 50 percent of the votes, largely because of public support for the elimination strategy. Its support dropped precipitously in 2022, as thousands of people became sick and died from COVID-19, and amid escalating social inequality, poverty and homelessness.

Hipkins also told the media he accepted the Royal Commission’s finding that border restrictions should have been lifted sooner and that vaccine mandates, in Hipkins’ words, “went too far.” He pointed to anti-vaccination and anti-lockdown protests—including the occupation of parliament’s lawn in early 2022—as evidence that such measures became unpopular. In fact, the protests were supported by a small minority and organised by far-right groups such as Voices For Freedom and Destiny Church.

Members of the current National Party-led coalition government have attacked the Royal Commission report for failing to openly repudiate public health principles. The far-right NZ First and ACT Parties, which play a major role in the government, repeatedly minimised COVID and attacked lockdowns and vaccine mandates during last year’s election campaign.

NZ First leader Winston Peters, the deputy prime minister, who courted anti-vaccination groups during the election, said in June that the Royal Commission was “nothing more than a Labour Party political tool.” On NZ First’s insistence, a second phase of the inquiry will be held next year to investigate “vaccine efficacy and safety” and “the imposition and maintenance of lockdowns” especially in 2021. The aim is to further undermine and discredit these life-saving measures.

Meanwhile, the government is systematically attacking the public health system, including through the destruction of thousands of jobs, even as COVID-19 continues to spread and scientists are warning that bird flu threatens to become another pandemic.

This is part of an international process: the ruling class throughout the world is attacking science and dismantling public healthcare, which is seen as an unacceptable drain on the wealth of the billionaires who run society. Hundreds of billions of dollars must also be slashed from healthcare and other social programs to pay for imperialist wars against Russia, Iran and China.

Most notably, US president-elect Donald Trump has named anti-vaccination conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Junior to run the Department of Health and Human Services, and proponent of mass COVID infection Jay Bhattacharya as director of the National Institutes of Health. This is the equivalent of putting arsonists in charge of the fire department.

The scientific knowledge and resources exist that could eliminate COVID-19 and other preventable diseases, which are now resurging throughout the world. If the elimination strategy initially adopted in New Zealand and China had been implemented on a global scale, the COVID pandemic could have been ended within a matter of months.

Such an undertaking, however, is incompatible with the capitalist system, in which all of society’s resources are subordinated to the dictates of the financial elite and its insatiable drive for profits. The only way to put an end to the pandemic and prevent an even more catastrophic outbreak in future, is through the mobilisation of the international working class in the fight for the socialist reorganisation of society.

[grits-galraisedinthesouth]

Reading Between the LIES

A Double-Minded¹ man is UNSTABLE in ALL he does:

wavering in character & feelings

restless & confused in thoughts, actions & behavior

like a drunken man who is unable to walk in a straight line

"I'm fiercely pro-vaccine." RFK Jr

...unless I'm hiking which is when I tell strangers "...better not get (that baby) vaccinated..."

or when I intend to use 6 month old babies as non-consenting VOLUNTEERS aka "human pin cushions" to TEST (study) vaccine safety & efficacy

"Reading between the LIES" by Peggy Hall

¹James 1:6-8

The operative name in Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is “Kennedy.” -Isaac Schorr

At his confirmation hearing on Wednesday, President Trump’s nominee to run the Department of Health and Human Services fielded countless questions about the countless views he’s articulated and actions he’s taken that make him uniquely unsuited for this position.

And, as you might expect of any Kennedy, his answers were full of obfuscations, half-truths, and outright lies.

In his opening statement, Kennedy tried to sidestep the single biggest cloud hanging over his nomination.

“I believe that vaccines play a critical role in health care,” he proclaimed.

“All of my kids are vaccinated, I’ve written many books on vaccines, my first book in 2014, the first line of it is ‘I am not anti-vaccine’ and the last line is ‘I am not anti-vaccine.’”If only saying it made it so.

Kennedy has a decades-long record that reveals him to be exactly what he says he’s not.

While he touted his kids’ vaccination status at his hearing, he has previously said he would “do anything” and “pay anything” to go back in time and change that fact.

In 2021, he said that “I see somebody on a hiking trail carrying a little baby and I say to him, ‘Better not get them vaccinated.’”And that’s to say nothing of him being the founder and former chairman of an anti-vaccine group going by the Orwellian name “Children’s Health Defense,” which is currently promoting a film called “Vaxxed III: Authorized to Kill.”

In another notable moment, Kennedy was quizzed about his role in exacerbating a measles outbreak in Samoa that claimed the lives of more than 80 people – most of them young children – in 2019.

Kennedy traveled to the island nation in June of that year at the invitation of another anti-vaccine activist following the deaths of two babies improperly administered vaccines.

On Wednesday, Kennedy insisted his visit had “nothing to do with vaccines” and that he “never gave any public statement about vaccines.”

The Samoan Ministry of Health sees it differently.

“It is well documented that RFK Jr.’s visit to Samoa in 2019 coincided with increased anti-vaccine sentiment, particularly among certain groups,” it said in a statement.

Moreover, in the aftermath of the outbreak, Kennedy sought to exploit the tragedy to push the Samoan Government toward anti-vaccine policies.“It is critical that the Samoan Health Ministry determine, scientifically, if the outbreak was caused by inadequate vaccine coverage or alternatively, by a defective vaccine,” wrote Kennedy in a letter to the prime minister.

There he was again, just asking questions.

Kennedy’s attempts to explain away his own words – nay, his life’s work – fell short in numerous other instances.Asked about his suggestion that Covid-19 may have been genetically engineered to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people, Kennedy insisted that he was only quoting an NIH study.

The truth? That he said that the virus “is targeted to attack caucasians and black people,” while Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese “are most immune.”

As to whether it had been engineered to do so, well, Kennedy thought that was an open question.

“We don’t know whether it was deliberately targeted or not,” he added.

Asked about a series of overwrought, irresponsible comparisons he’s drawn while promoting his dangerous lies, he denied having ever made them.

Roll the tape, however, and you’ll find that he’s said that the CDC’s decision not to deem autism an epidemic was “like Nazi death camps,” and analogized the agency’s priorities to those of fascist regimes and the Catholic Church’s “pedophile scandal.”

And then there’s his cynical abortion flip-flop, which was addressed by senators of both parties on Wednesday.

“I agree with him [President Trump] that we cannot be a moral nation if we have 1.2 million abortions a year,” declared Kennedy at his hearing.

If that’s the case, why did he express support for full-term elective abortions on the campaign trail less than a year ago?

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is many things that his famous family resents: A kook, an embarrassment, and, worst of all, in league with the Republican Party.

But his most ignoble trait – the one on full display on Wednesday – is one that he shares with the rest of his clan: He’s a power hungry charlatan willing to say anything to take the next step up the ladder.

[mariacallous]

During his first term as the U.S. president, Donald Trump occasionally floated the idea of buying Greenland, but few took it seriously. Now Trump is repeating the calls, backed with threats against Denmark, and nobody is chuckling anymore.

The Nordic nation is facing the prospect of a close ally taking Danish territory by force. But despite only having a small army and navy, Denmark has no shortage of economic leverage with which it can try to reason with—or, if necessary, pressure—the U.S. president.

Indeed, there are several Danish multinational companies without whose products and services Americans would feel immediate pain.

Over the weekend, the Financial Times disclosed details about a Jan. 15 call between Trump and Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen.

According to the Financial Times, it was a fiery 45-minute conversation in which Trump—who hadn’t yet been inaugurated—was “aggressive and confrontational.” The crux was Fredriksen’s refusal to sell the Arctic island of Greenland to the United States.

Denmark is a committed and well-liked member of NATO, but it can’t change the fact that it’s a small country with a population just shy of 6 million and armed forces of some 20,000 active personnel.

If Trump is serious about acquiring Greenland, Denmark would not be able to mount much of a fight against its NATO ally even if it wanted to—though Washington’s meager aging fleet of icebreakers would make any naval operations in the polar north a challenge. (The will of the Greenlanders appears to be a secondary consideration in Washington.)

But Denmark is not powerless in the matter. On the contrary, it has several trump cards—so to speak—up its sleeve. For starters, the Scandinavian country is home to Maersk, the world’s second-largest container-shipping company by cargo capacity. Most of the world’s nonliquid cargo is transported in containers, and in 2023, the Danish shipping line transported some 24 million worth of them on its 672 ships. Maersk is so large that the firm’s ships account for an estimated 14.3 percent of the global container ship fleet.

In the United States, Maersk delivers goods to and from Baltimore, Charleston, Houston, Jacksonville, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Miami, Mobile, New Orleans, New York, Newark, Norfolk, North Charleston, Oakland, Philadelphia, Port Everglades, Port Hueneme, Savannah, Seattle, Tacoma, Tampa, and Wilmington.

On Jan. 1, for example, the MSC Tomoko arrived in Houston, then traveled to New Orleans and from there to Freeport in the Bahamas. The following day, the MSC Ensenada arrived in Houston, traveling on from there with cargo bound for Colombia and Brazil, according to Maersk’s website, where anyone can track its ships’ calls.

And right now, shipping lines are at—or near—full capacity. If any shipping line were to suddenly stop shipping to or from the United States, other carriers would only be able to fill a tiny share of that gap. If the Danish government banned Maersk from sailing to U.S. ports, then American businesses and consumers would instantaneously feel the pain.

And speaking of pain, millions of Americans would feel it in their waistlines if Frederiksen banned health care company Novo Nordisk from exporting to the United States.

The Danish pharma giant is, after all, the maker of semaglutide—the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy, the weight-loss drugs that have revolutionized anti-obesity and diabetes treatment in the United States. The company produces semaglutide in Denmark and, despite many attempts by copycats and others, genuine Ozempic can’t yet be created from scratch in the United States.

Between 2021 and 2023, the number of Ozempic prescriptions in the United States jumped by nearly 400 percent, an academic study shows. The total number of prescriptions for drugs containing semaglutide reached 2.6 million by December 2023. In May 2023, a survey by Barclays Research estimated that more than half a million Americans were taking Wegovy.

So stratospheric has Ozempic’s rise been in the United States that in 2023, Germany warned that German supplies of the drug intended for patients with diabetes—the disease that the drug was initially developed to treat—were being shipped to weight-loss customers in the United States.

Like Maersk, Novo Nordisk makes large sums of money in America. The company’s shares surged by more than 7 percent last week on news of positive trials for its new obesity drug amycretin. The demand for Ozempic is so strong that Novo Nordisk has invested $4.1 billion in a facility in North Carolina that will make the drug’s key ingredient.

But if the Danish government were to conclude that the country’s security is imperiled by Trump’s threats, it could order Novo Nordisk to cease doing business in the United States. Many Americans would immediately notice the company’s absence.

If Denmark decided to hit back, U.S. consumers might suddenly also notice the absence of luxury Danish furniture and their kids might mourn the loss of the latest Legos. Today, Lego sets are made in Mexico (and Denmark, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and China), though the Danish toy company is building a plant in Virginia that will manufacture for the U.S. market. It is expected to employ more than 1,700 people.

Lego’s U.S. facility is, in fact, a form of friendshoring of the very kind Trump has been calling for. (“Come make your product in America, and we will give you among the lowest taxes of any nation on Earth,” he told global leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week.) But he won’t be able to count on Danish investment if friends are treated like enemies.

A Danish blockade would be a dramatic step, and it’s one that Frederiksen would be reluctant to take. But she should remember that Trump’s trademark is issuing threats and speak back to him in a language that he understands.

Denmark’s prime minister should remind her American counterpart that her country has options that could damage the U.S. economy—and doing so might just level the playing field and lower the temperature, setting the stage for a more serious negotiation around U.S. interests in Greenland.

That’s what Chrystia Freeland—until recently Canada’s deputy prime minister, now running to succeed outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau—did after several Trump overtures suggesting a U.S. takeover of her own country.

“The threats won’t work. We will not escalate, but we will not back down. If you hit us, we will hit back—and our blows will be precisely targeted,” she wrote in a Washington Post op-ed the day before Trump’s inauguration. “We are smaller than you, to be sure, but the stakes for us are immeasurably higher. Do not doubt our resolve.”

Ordinary Americans may not care much about Denmark, but the Scandinavian nation has given them much to enjoy in life. They would certainly hate to lose it.

[queermarzipan]

OKAY WHAT THE FUCK

[append 12ft.io/ at the start all urls if you don't have a telegraph account]

Sex is biological fact, NHS declares in landmark shift against gender ideology

Campaigners welcome change to constitution, which will ban trans women from female-only wards, as ‘return to common sense’

Laura Donnelly, Health Editor

30 April 2024 • 12:01am

The NHS is to declare that sex is a matter of biology in a landmark shift against gender ideology.

Changes to the health service’s written constitution proposed by ministers will for the first time ban trans women from women-only wards, and give women the right to request a female doctor for intimate care.

The NHS constitution, a document that aims to set out the principles and values of the health service and legal rights for patients and staff, was last updated in 2015. It has to be updated at least every 10 years by the Secretary of State. 

Campaigners for women’s rights welcomed the significant shift, which comes after years of wrangling and follows accusations that the health service had been captured by “gender ideology”.

In 2021, NHS guidance said trans patients could be placed in single-sex wards based on the gender with which they identified.

The new constitution will state: “We are defining sex as biological sex.”

The clarification means that the right to a single-sex ward means patients would “not have to share sleeping accommodation with patients of the opposite biological sex”.

Until now, no commitment was made to biological sex, meaning some female patients complained that they were forced to share sleeping space with trans women – those who are born male but identify as female.

Women’s rights campaigners said the move was a “return to common sense and an overdue recognition that women’s wellbeing and safety matter.”

However, NHS leaders raised concerns that the health service was being “dragged into a pre-election culture wars debate”.

The changes to the constitution are a further indication of a change in attitudes after the Cass review into the NHS’s gender identity services found evidence that allowing children to change gender was built on weak foundations.

Dr Hilary Cass, a paediatrician, said allowing “social transitioning” for young people – when they are treated as the opposite gender – could “change their trajectory” and lead to them pursuing a potentially damaging medical pathway in later life.

The updates to the constitution will also include the introduction of a duty to help patients get back to work and embed “Martha’s Rule” into the framework of the health service.

This follows pledges by Victoria Atkins, the Health Secretary, to give families the right to access a rapid review from an outside team if a patient is deteriorating. It is named after 13-year-old Martha Mills, who died in 2021 after medics missed signs of sepsis and failed to heed warnings from her parents that their daughter’s condition was getting worse.

Women will also be given the right to request that intimate care is provided, where reasonably possible, by someone of the same biological sex.

It follows warnings that some female patients have been pressured into accepting such care from trans-identifying staff who were born male.

The proposed changes will also see discrimination requirements updated, with the word gender replaced with sex.

Gender reassignment remains a protected characteristic, meaning that a transgender patient could be given their own room in a hospital to protect their right to a single-sex service.

The document also places a duty on health providers to use “clear terms” to communicate and take account of biological differences. It follows pledges from ministers to stop NHS trusts using terms like “chestfeeding” and “people who give birth”.

In February, Ms Atkins highlighted her concerns, telling The Telegraph: “We need to be making this robust case to refuse to wipe women out of the conversation.”

On Tuesday, she said: “We want to make it abundantly clear that if a patient wants same-sex care they should have access to it wherever reasonably possible.

“We have always been clear that sex matters and our services should respect that.

“By putting this in the NHS constitution we’re highlighting the importance of balancing the rights and needs of all patients to make a healthcare system that is faster, simpler and fairer for all.”

Maya Forstater, chief executive of gender critical group Sex Matters, said: “It is excellent news that the NHS constitution is being revised to put ‘sex’ in its rightful place – at the heart of principle 1, which sets out that the NHS must treat everyone with equality and respect for their human rights.

“The confusion between ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ in official policies like the NHS constitution is what has enabled women’s rights to be trampled over in the name of transgender identities.

“Sex, of course, is a matter of biology, not identity, and it is welcome that the NHS is now spelling this out in relation to single-sex accommodation and intimate care.”

Ms Forstater said too many female patients seeking that intimate care be given by a woman had been pressured into accepting a trans-identifying male instead.

“Healthcare providers have become confused and frightened by the idea that a gender recognition certificate, or even just a personal identity claim, overrides other people’s rights when it comes to same-sex care from healthcare professionals.”

She said the shift was “simply a return to common sense and an overdue recognition that women’s wellbeing and safety matter.”

Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, which represents healthcare leaders, said its members would review the proposals in detail.

However, he added: “What is absolutely clear at this stage is that a focus on high-quality care for all is maintained and that the NHS is not dragged into a pre-election culture wars debate. This is not where energies should be focused.”

Mr Taylor said staff worked hard to show fairness and compassion towards all patients.

“In particular, groups of people, including trans and non-binary patients, continue to receive some of the worst health outcomes of any group in our society and NHS leaders and staff will want to do all they can to support these patients, as well as their trans and non-binary staff to reduce inequalities.

“Whatever changes are eventually introduced following the consultation need to be clear and workable for NHS staff, who should not expect to have to interpret ambiguous guidance at a local level.”

The eight-week consultation will be the first stage of a review of the constitution.

The Government will consider responses from everyone, including the public, clinicians and medical professionals, patients, carers and organisations representing patients and staff and health stakeholders, before publishing the consultation response and the new NHS constitution.

Louise Ansari, chief executive of Healthwatch England said: “The NHS constitution plays a crucial role in shaping the culture of our NHS and helping the public to know their rights.

“Since the NHS constitution launched, it has helped to shift the balance of power from services towards patients and their families. But, with only a third of people knowing their rights, there is still a long way to go.

“Given the challenges our NHS faces, a conversation to reaffirm and raise awareness of the most important rights to the public has never been more timely.

“We urge everyone to take part in the consultation and have their say. This is your opportunity to send a clear message about the rights you hold most dear.”

[feminismisstillahatemovement]

When Ritchie Herron woke after gender reassignment surgery, he had a feeling he had made a terrible mistake.

Five years later, his scars still sometimes weep and he cannot walk long distances or ride a bike. “I’ve awakened from what was a mental health crisis, to a body that will be for ever changed and damaged,” he said. He no longer identifies as transgender and is living as a gay man “as best I can, given what has happened”.

Now, the Newcastle-based civil servant, 36, has launched legal action against NHS England, alongside the “heartbroken” father of a 21-year-old who has been booked in for imminent genital-removal surgery at an adult gender clinic. The two men are demanding a judicial review which includes an independent inquiry into the safety of NHS treatments being offered to young people under the age of 25 who are experiencing gender dysphoria.

Steve Barclay, secretary of state for health, and Kemi Badenoch, minister for equalities, as well as Dr Hilary Cass, who carried out a recent review of the Tavistock Gender Identity Development Service (Gids) are also being served with legal papers. The father is hoping to stop the surgery from going ahead.

In a crowdfunding appeal to raise funds for their legal case, launched today, Herron and the father, who wishes to remain anonymous, say that the model of care for gender dysphoria in the NHS adult service is “profoundly unsafe” and “routinely places young people on a pathway towards irreversible lifelong treatment”.

Both Herron and the father’s 21-year-old child have been diagnosed as autistic. According to lawyers representing the two men, the NHS may be discriminating against autistic people, who are disproportionately more likely to be treated in the gender clinics, which is why Badenoch, as minister for equalities, is included in the legal action.

The case comes as a large number of 17-year-olds who have been on the 8,000-strong waiting list of the Tavistock clinic in north London, England’s only NHS gender identity clinic for children, are being referred to the adult service.

At the seven NHS adult gender clinics in England and Wales, surgery and cross-sex hormones are offered after the age of 18. Patients have at least two assessment appointments with a specialist medical practitioner before hormone treatment is recommended, and those who are considering surgical treatment have two further meetings with separate clinical professionals before they are referred.

There has been a sharp rise in the past decade in young people wanting to change gender. From 2011-12 to 2021-22, the number of under-18s in England referred to the Tavistock soared from 210 to 3,585, according to its own figures.

Herron was 25 when he decided he was a woman living in a man’s body. He had been bullied at school and struggled to cope with his parents’ divorce, and was diagnosed in his early 20s with depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

He decided he was transgender and “all my struggles were due to gender dysphoria” — an idea he says was encouraged by older activists in internet forums. He fixated on the idea that “my body was being poisoned by testosterone”, he says.

In 2013, he was referred by his GP to an NHS adult gender clinic, and says he was asked early on by an NHS clinician if he had considered gender reassignment surgery. He attended a private clinic as there was a long NHS waiting list, where he was diagnosed as transgender.

When he was seen by the NHS clinic in 2014, they prescribed testosterone blocker and later oestrogen. He also started therapy with an NHS psychosexual counsellor, which lasted for 100 sessions over five years, after which he was told he would be discharged and that the only other treatment open to him was surgery. He had delayed and cancelled the irreversible operation, which involves removing the penis and testicles and modelling the area to resemble female genitalia, several times over the previous two years, fearing the consequences.

In 2017, he was given another referral for surgery, to be performed at a private hospital but paid for by the NHS.

Finally, in 2018, “two days before my 31st birthday, I underwent a surgery that removed my genitals, inverting them in a procedure that has been marked as refined, but is no more civilised than an amputation” he said.

“Today, despite multiple follow-up surgeries, my scar lines still weep, occasionally becoming inflamed and causing crippling pain. In the flesh cavity that was created to mimic a vagina, I feel mostly nothing, aside from the occasional stabs of pain. I can’t use the toilet properly . . . and no matter how hard I push or strain, a dribble emerges, which may continue for hours after I have left the seat.”

The father who, with Herron, is seeking a judicial review of the adult services, says he is terrified of the possible outcome for his child, who was born a boy and who is due to undergo genital surgery shortly. The young person “is on the autistic spectrum, suffers from anxiety and has very poor mental health”, according to the father. The father believes that, like Herron, they think “becoming a woman will solve so many of his problems”.

“I am one of the many parents who is heartbroken over the journey my son has taken,” said the father, who is paying towards the legal fees for the case. “I know he has been let down by the system and fear for his future.”

Aged 13, the boy, who had struggled at school, “out of the blue” told an NHS child mental health adviser that he believed he was a girl. “He was referred to an NHS clinic and was prescribed puberty blocking drugs to halt his development as soon as he turned 16. I was shocked that such an experimental treatment would be given, despite my objections. His anxiety and his autism were not explored.

“I decided to try to prevent him attending the NHS clinic but was threatened with the possibility of him being taken into care if I stood in his way.

“As a parent, I am deeply concerned to protect my son. I am shut out,” he said. “A system with such limited safeguards, providing a radical experimental treatment with life-long consequences is structurally unfair to people like my son, whose autism makes him more likely to seek the answer to his problems in this radical treatment. He needs more protection, not less.”

The men are being represented by the legal team that helped another de-transitioner, Keira Bell, win a High Court case against Gids to stop children with gender dysphoria being prescribed puberty-blocking drugs. Bell was given the drugs to stop her development aged 16, before later, at an adult clinic, being referred for a double mastectomy. The case was later overturned at the Court of Appeal but led to a critical review of Gids by Dr Hilary Cass. Gids has since been earmarked for closure, although this has been delayed until March 2024, about a year later than first planned.

Herron was not diagnosed with autism until this year, but says he raised the condition with the NHS gender clinic. He adds that if he had received a comprehensive psychological assessment and treatment for conditions such as autism and OCD at the outset, he would never have undergone genital surgery. “I can deal with my own regret, and my own stupidity, but I can’t deal with the fact that I’m not alone in this. That there are not just dozens, or hundreds, but thousands of others like me, and more to come.

“We deserve a safety net, we deserve to be challenged in our beliefs before we make irreversible decisions that have huge lifelong consequences, we deserve to be caught and cared for. We do not deserve to be punished for asking for help, by being castrated and gaslighted into a way of thinking that isn’t our own.

“It is a matter of urgency that the treatment offered by adult services is reviewed and that safeguards are put in place.”

[beardedmrbean]

Three imprisoned Americans have been released after years of detention in China, the White House said Wednesday. 

Mark Swidan, Kai Li, and John Leung have been released, a spokesperson for the National Security Council said, and they will soon "return and be reunited with their families for the first time in many years." 

The Biden administration has repeatedly raised the issue of wrongfully detained Americans with Chinese officials. President Biden spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping about the issue on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Lima, Peru earlier in November.  

Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan spoke to foreign minister Wang Yi about the release of wrongfully detained Americans during multiple meetings in recent months. 

"Thanks to this Administration's efforts and diplomacy with the PRC, all of the wrongfully detained Americans in the PRC are home," the National Security Council spokesperson said. 

Swidan, a 48-year-old Texas businessman, was on death row in China. He had been behind bars since 2012 after being charged with narcotics trafficking. Swidan has denied the charges, which the U.S. says are trumped-up. The State Department categorized him as wrongly detained, and has previously raised concerns about his health. His family said earlier this year they feared Swidan might take his own life while detained. 

Li, 60, has been held in a Chinese prison since September 2016. He had a stroke in prison, according to John Kamm, executive director of Dui Hua Foundation, a human rights group that pushes for the release of those detained in China.

Leung, 78, was arrested in 2021 and sentenced to life in prison for espionage in May 2023. Few details have been shared about the case. 

In a statement addressing Li's release, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer credited Mr. Biden's "personal engagement with President Xi" with securing the release of the three men. 

"For the families of those Americans newly freed by the Chinese government, this Thanksgiving there is so much to be thankful for," Schumer said. 

David Lin, a 68-year-old American pastor imprisoned on fraud charges for 18 years, was released by China in September.

[girlactionfigure]

🟦 Latest Updates from Israel  

✡️ Tonight is SUKKOT.. Sukkot celebrates the gathering of the harvest and commemorates the miraculous protection G‑d provided for the children of Israel when they left Egypt. We celebrate Sukkot by dwelling in a foliage-covered booth (known as a sukkah) and by taking the “Four Kinds” (arba minim), four special species of vegetation.   https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/4784/jewish/What-Is-Sukkot.htm

⚠️HOME FRONT COMMAND NOTICE.. Staying in the Sukkah during the holiday? The sukkah is not a protected space (from rockets)! If a warning is received, you should leave the sukkah and enter a protected space or a shelter in a nearby building. 

.. It is important to leave the access to the protected space LIT and clear of obstacles, so that it can reached it in a calm and safe manner. 

♦️INTERROGATION of captured Hezbollah Rawan invasion force terrorist, English subtitles:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yrj0bjqw_PqTpZm1EOnCRvcULcR9hqAx/view?usp=sharing

“Everyone fled, the commander of the area and his deputy, from the beginning, they already fled.  Lack of faith, people without religion, came to receive money and that’s it, they were afraid [of Israel]... they wanted to respond to an attack, advance into the Galilee, but after the assassination of Hassan (Nasrallah, Hezbollah leader), no one has seen any of them.”

♦️BEIRUT.. The IDF confirms: after six days, an attack was carried out in Dahiya, Hezbollah’s Beirut neighborhood, on an underground weapons warehouse.  The IDF is calling on the residents to evacuate the Da'ahia.

♦️ASSASSIN!  Iranian assassin caught.. thwarting of Iran's attempts to recruit Israelis continues: the Shin Bet and Yahbal Lahav 433 arrested a resident of Petah Tikva, who agreed to carry out an assassination in Israel for $100,000 and had already acquired a gun and ammunition.

♦️IDF ATTACKS.. A wave of attacks by the IDF in Beirut this morning.

♦️IDF CAPTURES.. its 5th Hezbollah Radwan invasion force terrorist.  From a soldier in the field: most of the Hezbollah terrorists fled and did not fight against our soldiers - and some also surrendered.

.. And Israeli flag spotted flying over Meiss El Jabal, south Lebanon.

♦️COUNTER-TERROR.. (Enemy report) Significant IDF forces moved from Kiryat Arba into Hebron overnight.

.. IDF security forces foiled two terrorist attacks, entering Jenin to kill a terrorist who was planning to carry out an attack in the immediate time frame, and the IDF captured a terrorist armed with weapons near the border fence seam-line area.

⭕HEZBOLLAH ROCKET HIT civilian home in SAFED overnight, 2 lightly injured - damage to the house.

🔹THE INTL POLITICS.. Iran informed the UN Secretary General last night of its intention to respond firmly if Israel attacks it.

🔹SYRIAN REBELS ON THE MOVE.. Intense gun fire reported on Aleppo front line between Syrian Army forces and Syrian Rebels.

🔸GAZA HOSTAGE DEAL NEWS.. The American administration: Hamas leader Sinwar shows zero interest in continuing the talks, so there is no negotiation taking place.  The Qatari’s however blame Israel: The Prime Minister of Qatar, on the deal for the release of the kidnapped-  "An agreement cannot be reached when one of the parties is not interested in it," he added, “especially in recent times, the side that failed was the Israeli.”

▪️HEALTH.. In the last decade and a half, decrease in the incidence of prostate cancer in Israel with survival rate increase.  Based on age and per 100,000 people, the incidence rate of invasive prostate cancer is 45.  From 2006-2021, a decrease of 7.5%.  

The main incidence of prostate cancer is at the age of 50 and over, with the majority age 70-74.

[tanadrin]

In Subcontractors of Guilt: Holocaust Memory and Muslim Belonging in Postwar Germany, Esra Özyürek describes the way that German politicians, officials and journalists, now that the far right is in the ascendant, have been cranking up the old mechanism of sanitising Germany by demonising Muslims. In December 2022, German police foiled a coup attempt by Reichsbürger, an extremist group with more than twenty thousand members, which was planning an assault on the Bundestag. Alternative für Deutschland, which has neo-Nazi affiliations, has become the country’s second most popular party, partly in response to economic mismanagement by the coalition led by Olaf Scholz. Yet despite the undisguised antisemitism of even mainstream politicians such as Hubert Aiwanger, the deputy minister-president of Bavaria, ‘white Christian-background Germans’ see themselves ‘as having reached their destination of redemption and re-democratisation’, according to Özyürek. The ‘general German social problem of antisemitism’ is projected onto a minority of Arab immigrants, who are then further stigmatised as ‘the most unrepentant antisemites’ in need of ‘additional education and disciplining’. ...

Netanyahu, too, has learned from Germany’s postwar efforts at whitewashing. In 2015 he claimed that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem had persuaded Hitler to murder rather than simply expel the Jews. Three years later, after initially criticising a move by the Law and Justice Party in Poland to criminalise references to Polish collaboration, he endorsed the law making such references punishable by a fine. He has since legitimised Shoah revisionism in Lithuania and Hungary, commending both countries for their valiant struggle against antisemitism. (Efraim Zuroff, a historian who has helped bring many former Nazis to trial, compared this to ‘praising the Ku Klux Klan for improving racial relations in the South’.) More recently, Netanyahu accompanied Elon Musk to one of the kibbutzim targeted by Hamas, just days after Musk tweeted in support of an antisemitic conspiracy theory. Since 7 October, he has seemed to be reading from the Eichmann trial script. He regularly announces that he is fighting the ‘new Nazis’ in Gaza in order to save ‘Western civilisation’, while others in his cohort of Jewish supremacists keep up a supporting chorus. The people of Gaza are ‘subhuman’, ‘animals’, ‘Nazis’. ...

In a more unnerving illustration of the postwar German-Israeli symbiosis, the German health minister, Karl Lauterbach, approvingly retweeted a video in which Douglas Murray, a mouthpiece of the English far right, claims that the Nazis were more decent than Hamas. ‘Watch and listen,’ retweeted Karin Prien, deputy chair of the Christian Democratic Union and education minister for Schleswig-Holstein. ‘This is great,’ Jan Fleischhauer, a former contributing editor at Der Spiegel, wrote. ‘Really great,’ echoed Veronika Grimm, a member of the German Council of Economic Experts. The Süddeutsche Zeitung, which in 2021 ‘outed’ five Lebanese and Palestinian journalists at Deutsche Welle as antisemites, with equally flimsy evidence exposed the Indian poet and art historian Ranjit Hoskote as a calumniator of Jews for comparing Zionism with Hindu nationalism. Die Zeit alerted German readers to another moral outrage: ‘Greta Thunberg openly sympathises with the Palestinians.’ An open letter from Adam Tooze, Samuel Moyn and other academics criticising Jürgen Habermas’s statement in support of Israel’s actions provoked an editor at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung to claim that Jews have an ‘enemy’ at universities in the form of postcolonial studies. Der Spiegel ran a cover picture of Scholz alongside his claim that ‘we need to deport on a grand scale again.’ ... Susan Neiman, who wrote admiringly of Vergangenheitsbewältigung in Learning from the Germans (2020), now says she has changed her mind. ‘German historical reckoning has gone haywire,’ she wrote in October. ‘This philosemitic fury ... has been used to attack Jews in Germany.’ In Never Again: Germans and Genocide after the Holocaust, which examines the German response to mass killings in Cambodia, Rwanda and the Balkans, Andrew Port suggests that their ‘otherwise admirable reckoning with the Holocaust may have unwittingly desensitised Germans. The conviction that they had left the rabid racism of their forebears far behind them may have paradoxically allowed for the unabashed expression of different forms of racism.’

(source)

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Bernard Lane

Published: Dec 5, 2023

On the up

A study of young people who on average spent almost five years identifying as transgender has found they experienced better wellbeing and less gender dysphoria after they detransitioned from medical treatment or desisted in their opposite-sex identity.

“Detransition and desistance [giving up a trans identity before any medical treatment] were associated with marked improvements in psychological functioning,” says a new article published by the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior and authored by public health researcher Dr Lisa Littman, psychotherapist Stella O’Malley, detransitioner Helena Kerschner and sexologist Professor J Michael Bailey.

“On several relevant measures—gender dysphoria, flourishing, and self-harm—participants indicated great improvement after they stopped identifying as transgender,” the paper says.

[ Chart: Flourishing, or general wellbeing, rated by detransitioners, with the vertical access showing the number of participants for a given flourishing score, 10 being the highest wellbeing ]

Settling back into birth sex

Among the study group of 71 American females and seven males, aged 18-33, the overwhelming majority said they felt most “authentic” after they detransitioned or desisted.

External pressures—such as anti-trans discrimination, family resistance or religion—were rated as the least important drivers of detransition and desistance.

“The factors most important to relinquishing a transgender identification were internal factors, such as participants’ own thought processes, changes in participants’ personal definitions of male and female, and becoming more comfortable identifying as their natal sex,” the paper says.

Another reported impetus was the feeling that the causes of their gender dysphoria were more complex than they had believed. Looking back, the young people said a key influence in becoming trans was mistaking mental health problems or trauma as gender dysphoria.

“Against official advice I met [in 2021] a young lady called Keira Bell. She was a lesbian who told me the horrific experience that she had at the Tavistock [gender] clinic. It was an eye-opening experience [for me]. I know that [another MP] talked about ‘transing away the gay’ in his speech… We are seeing, I would say, almost an epidemic of young gay children being told that they are trans and being put on the medical pathway for irreversible decisions and they are regretting it… I am making sure that [in future] young people do not find themselves sterilised because they are being exploited by people who do not understand what these issues are…”—speech in the UK parliament, Equalities Minister Kemi Badenoch, 7 December 2023

Suddenly syndrome

Analysis of survey responses suggested that at most, 17 per cent of the group would have met the diagnostic requirements for the classic form of gender dysphoria with onset in early childhood.

Just over half the group (41/78) said they recognised themselves in the new, much more common form known as rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD) with its onset during or after puberty.

Although a hypothesis rather than a formal diagnosis, ROGD seems to describe the post-2010 international explosion in socially influenced clusters of teenagers, chiefly girls, suddenly embracing trans or non-binary identities.

The study by Littman et al found that young people in the group who reported less gender dysphoria in childhood were more likely to say that the term ROGD did apply to their experience.

“The purpose of this research is to learn about the experiences of desisters and detransitioners—specifically, to explore: 1) factors that may or may not be related to the development of and desistance from transgender identification; 2) whether or not individuals experienced changes in their sexual orientation during and after transgender identification; and 3) what kinds of counseling and informed consent were received by those who sought medical care to transition.”—flyer used to recruit participants for the Littman et al study

Inconvenient for gender experts

The authors say their findings are “necessarily tentative” and acknowledge several limitations in the research, which involved a convenience sample of young people being asked to recall their experience before, during and after gender transition.

The study cannot show how common detransition is, nor establish whether these particular young people happened to be bad risks for transition, nor elucidate whether better psychological health is a cause or an outcome of detransition.

Detransition and desistance are understudied and contentious topics. ROGD has awkward implications for the “gender-affirming” treatment approach with its dogma of young people as “experts in their gender identity”.

Activists highlight the paucity of research on ROGD—first described in 2018 by Dr Littman—while seeking to sabotage any more studies and pressuring journals to retract papers exploring this phenomenon.

The Littman et al study just published had to adopt videoconference screening to check that would-be participants were genuine; activists had boasted on social media about taking the online survey and giving fake responses.

“When little is known [about detransition and desistance], imperfect research is often better than no research,” Dr Littman and her colleagues say in their paper. “It can provide provisional answers, better-informed hypotheses, and ideas for future research.”

“Despite the absence of any questions about this topic in the survey, nearly a quarter (23 per cent) of the participants expressed the ‘internalized homophobia and difficulty accepting oneself as lesbian, gay, or bisexual’ narrative by spontaneously describing that these experiences were instrumental to their gender dysphoria, their desire to transition, and their detransition.”—A survey of 100 detransitioners, Dr Lisa Littman, September 2021. (Dr Littman believes there would be little if any overlap in participants between this 2021 group and those surveyed in the current 2023 study.)

[ Video: Corinna Cohn, who transitioned three decades ago when safeguards were stronger, testifies in support of a bill restricting paediatric transition in the American state of Ohio ]

Yes, they were trans

In the 2023 Littman et al study, all the males and most of the females had taken cross-sex hormones, almost a third of the females had undergone mastectomy and a small number had their uterus or ovaries removed. (Only two participants had taken puberty blockers, which Dr Littman attributes to the average age of trans identification being too old at 17 years.)

“Our participants invested a great deal of their lives in their gender transitions—in terms of time, disruption, and serious social and medical steps. Thus, we do not believe that a principled case can be made that participants detransitioned because they were never gender dysphoric,” the Littman et al paper says.

The researchers say that follow-up studies of gender dysphoric youth are “urgently needed”, and that gender clinics have “a particular obligation” to keep track of past patients—“Unfortunately, in North America at least, we see little evidence that this presently occurs.”

“Detransition has become much more visible in recent years. However, it was only recently that the rates of detransition began to be quantified. According to recent UK and US data, 10–30 per cent of recently transitioned individuals detransition a few years after they initiated transition.”—Current concerns about gender-affirming therapy in adolescents, Professor Stephen B Levine and E Abbruzzese, April 2023

Some other key points of the 2023 Littman et al paper—

Only 27 per cent of the young people had told their former gender clinicians they had detransitioned. Most of those who took cross-sex hormones obtained them through the fast-track “informed consent” model. Two-thirds of the group felt they had not been adequately informed about the risks of medical transition. Fewer than one in ten had been told about the lack of long-term outcome studies for females with adolescent-onset dysphoria. Important influences for females becoming trans men included wanting to avoid mistreatment and sexualisation as women. Almost half the females indicated they were exclusively attracted to women. ROGD may be chiefly a female condition, with the possibility that some males taken to be ROGD may actually be manifesting hitherto-suppressed autogynephilia (sexual arousal among males who cross-dress and/or imagine themselves as women). More than a third of the group said most of their offline and online friends became trans-identified and it was common to mock people who were not trans. Among counter-intuitive results, acknowledgment of the ROGD label by participants was not significantly related to the age at which they took on a trans identity. Psychiatric diagnoses before transition were common, including depression (63 per cent); anxiety (60 per cent); attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (24 per cent); eating disorder (23 per cent); obsessive compulsive disorder (18 per cent) post-traumatic stress disorder (15 per cent); bipolar disorder (12 per cent); hair pulling (10 per cent); and autism spectrum disorder (9 per cent). Young people in the study showed relatively high scores on a trauma measure of “adverse childhood experiences” such as abuse inflicted within the family. The participants had generally liberal politics and a clear majority supported gay marriage (67/78) and trans rights 71/78).

==

Coming to terms with the nature of your body, rather than chasing a fantasy and delusion, leads to better mental health. Imagine that.

[eaglesnick]

The NHS will last as long as there are folk left to fight for it” – Aneurin Bevan

I’m no fan of Keir Starmer or Rishi Sunak. Sunak is completely out of touch with ordinary people and Starmer will promise just about anything to get himself into power and then break those promise when it suits him.  However when it comes to the future of the NHS I feel it will be safer under a Labour government than one run by free market, neo-liberal Tories.

From a purely selfish perspective  - something the Conservative Party excels at - the NHS saves all of us a small fortune. When your child needs medical care it is free at the point of use; when your parents need medical care it is free at the point of use; and when YOU need medical care it is free at the point of use.

Of course we pay for this through taxes and national insurance contributions but the clue is in the phrase “national insurance”. Medical treatment in Britain, is, at the moment, paid for through collective funding. It is a system based on community, social responsibility, and the old fashioned concept of caring for your neighbour. . Aneurin  Bevan, the "Father of the NHS” said:

“No society can legitimately call itself civilized if a sick person is denied medical aid because of lack of means."

It is a sad fact that Conservative Party members, many of them rich individuals who can afford private medical treatment, have been undermining the NHS because of their unwavering adherence to the ideological belief that all things run by private enterprise are good while all public sector institutions are bad. . The Tory’s will, of course deny this, claiming the NHS is save in their hands and that they have no plans to privatise it.

 Lets look at the facts.

Despite Prime Minister David Cameron promising there would be no cuts to the NHS this was the headline in the Daily Mirror when the Conservatives took over from Labour in 2012.

“David Cameron cuts NHS spending by £500million.” (06/11/12)

Two years later and we have this headline from the Guardian:

“David Cameron accused of hypocrisy over £1.4bn ‘raid’ on NHS funding." (06/07/2012)

By 2014 NHS staff were on strike because of the Tory government refused to give them a 1% pay rise. Rows over poor pay and under-funding continue to this day.

While Jeremy Hunt was Health Secretary patient experience and staff moral took a dramatic turn for the worse. Despite presenting himself as a “champion of patient safety”, targets were missed, waiting times increased, and the very fabric of some hospitals began to crumble, leading to Hunt being labelled “the man who ruined the NHS”. (Open Democracy: 08/07/22)

In 2016 The Independent ran this headline:

“Jeremy Hunt co-authored book calling for NHS to be replaced with private insurance.” (10/02/2016)

Is it any wonder the NHS has been seriously under-funded and run down when the man in charge was an advocate of private medical health insurance? Millionaires like Cameron (£40m) Hunt (£15m) and Sunak (£651m) can afford to pay for expensive medical care but the rest of us are not so fortunate.

This brings me back to the purely selfish reason we should vote for the party most likely to protect the NHS. Below are some AVERAGE costs for private medical procedures and treatments in the USA provided by Statistica 2021

Heart valve replacement…….$170,000     £133,390

Heart bypass………………….......$123,000     £96,518

Cornea (per eye) ……………......$17,000       £13,339

IVF treatments ………………......$15,400      £12,084

Hysterectomy ………………….....$5200          £4,080

In addition, Americans have to pay for their stay in hospital. This fee is on top of medical treatment costs. According to Debt.org (30/11/23) the price for the average stay in hospital of 4.6 days is $13,262. (£10,406)

Whatever your political leanings, the protection and restoration of the NHS should take precedent over all other electoral considerations because we will ALL need medical treatment at some stage in our lives be that as a child or as an adult.

We know the Tory mantra "private sector good public sector bad” just doesn’t live up to reality: we only have to look at our polluted waterways to realise this. Whether Keir Starmer would be any better at protecting the NHS from profit motivated private companies is a moot point.

With headlines like:

“Can Wes Streeting’s private sector plans save the NHS?” (Guardian: 14/04/24)

and

“Labour’s Wes Streeting just used the SUN to talk up NHS privatisation” (Canary: 08/04/24)

we cannot rely on the Labour Party leadership to protect the NHS from the profiteering private sector, not least because Wes Streeting has been paid £175,000 from donors linked to private health firms. (National: 14/04/24) There is no such thing as a free lunch so one doesn’t have to wonder to hard what these “donors” might want in return for their money!

Even so, I feel there are those within the Labour Party who would work very hard to stop the leadership of the party from running down the NHS to the point of collapse, as is the Tory plan, so with great reservation I will be voting Labour in the coming elections.

Save Our NHS

[covid-safer-hotties]

Tess Finch-Lees: It hasn’t gone away you know, Paris Olympics proved ignoring Covid is not a winner - Published Aug 20, 2024

‘Olympic dreams shattered”, “Covid causing havoc”, “Everyone’s dropping like flies”: just some of the headlines from the Paris “post-Covid Olympics”. But when it comes to fighting Covid, there’s nothing.

At the outset, the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned of a SARS-Cov-2 surge globally, with a 20pc positivity rate in Europe (not seasonal, not normal) and at least 40 outbreaks in the Olympic village.

Many athletes were unable to compete due to post-acute Covid illnesses. Volunteers wrote to organisers saying “Covid pandemic threat denial” won’t protect against infection, demanding the implementation of scientifically proven mitigations. Organisers replied they were monitoring the situation and since there’s no testing, there’s no data and technically, no Covid. However, sanitiser is available.

The WHO also warned in recent weeks that the SARS2 pandemic is far from over and such high levels of uncontrolled transmission could lead to more severe variants emerging. A travel warning was issued for countries where transmission doubled in a week. Ireland was among them. Unsurprising, given our SARS2 wastewater levels last month were the highest since 2021. I guess Covid didn’t get Luke O’Neill’s “the pandemic’s over” memo.

It’s our Government’s job to communicate WHO health information to the public. No announcement ensued. Radio silence also from our Government-appointed interim chief medical officer, Professor Mary Horgan.

Public health officials and the media have a duty to expose the huge body of buried evidence of harms associated with repeated, forced SARS2 infections. The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation reported 9,755 patients waiting for beds last month – the worst month for overcrowding since records began in 2006.

Yet, responding to Limerick Hospital’s suspension of services due to emergency department overcrowding, Health Minister Stephen Donnelly claimed the number of people waiting on trolleys overall was falling.

Last month, I documented the rising SARS2 surge resulting in hospital outbreaks, harming patients and staff with a predicted knock-on effect on all services. Had Mr Donnelly reinstated universal masking then, this deterioration might have been mitigated. A study in the Journal of Hospital Infection last month found that preventative measures in healthcare, including staff N95/FFP2/3 masking and patient admission screening saved lives and money through reduced in-patient days and staff sickness.

SARS2 deaths data has not been published since May. My repeated requests for this data have thus far yielded nothing. But, we know that deaths increase globally after every wave, as do those suffering with long-Covid.

A review of long-Covid published in Nature Medicine last week, estimated that up to the end of last year, 400 million people of all ages, regardless of health status, have long-Covid, leading to an annual global economic toll of $1trn, or 1pc of the global GDP. Author Dr Ziyad Al-Aly warns that long-Covid affects nearly every organ system, including cardiovascular, endocrine, immune, reproductive, gastrointestinal and nervous system, describing it as, “the defining health crisis of our time”.

The review authors concluded that, effective policies should focus on prevention, support for patients, access to quality care, a co-ordinated global response, professional education and public health communication.

Five years into this pandemic, the evidence of harm is now irrefutable. Yet most people are unaware, for example, of the Lancet study published in June indicating brain abnormalities in survivors of Covid two years later and that “people recovering continue to experience cognitive, psychiatric, neurological symptoms and brain functional alterations”. Numerous studies have found that even “mild” SARS2 infections can cause or accelerate neurological degeneration. This has wide-ranging implications.

In May, pathologist Dr Margot Bolster reported that Covid-induced brain fog was likely a significant factor in a multi-car crash in Cork killing two in 2022. The driver, who veered onto the wrong side of the road, tested positive for Covid in the morgue. “There were all sorts of brain symptoms with it… it affected all organs of the body,” Dr Bolster said.

Last week, the WHO issued yet another warning: “Your health is precious. Protect yourself and loved ones from Covid: stay at home if sick. Test, get boosted, ventilate, mask around others.”

Again, this information was not shared. Instead, our governments are pathologising those of us using proven tools to protect ourselves and our loved ones. As though being scientifically literate is an act of disobedience, punishable by state-sponsored stigma and ostracisation.

The Paris Olympics proved that pretending the pandemic is over only serves to prolong it, that everyone, including elite athletes, are vulnerable and that we can’t hand-wash our way out of an airborne pandemic.

We urgently need clean indoor air and sterilising vaccines. Until then, FFP3 masks are the most effective tool we’ve got to protect our precious health.