#uk covid cases

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The Pizzaburger Presidency

For the rest of May, my bestselling solarpunk utopian novel THE LOST CAUSE (2023) is available as a $2.99, DRM-free ebook!

The corporate wing of the Democrats has objectively terrible political instincts, because the corporate wing of the Dems wants things that are very unpopular with the electorate (this is a trait they share with the Republican establishment).

Remember Hillary Clinton's unimaginably terrible campaign slogan, "America is already great?" In other words, "Vote for me if you believe that nothing needs to change":

https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton/status/758501814945869824

Biden picked up the "This is fine" messaging where Clinton left off, promising that "nothing would fundamentally change" if he became president:

https://www.salon.com/2019/06/19/joe-biden-to-rich-donors-nothing-would-fundamentally-change-if-hes-elected/

Biden didn't so much win that election as Trump lost it, by doing extremely unpopular things, including badly bungling the American covid response and killing about a million people.

Biden's 2020 election victory was a squeaker, and it was absolutely dependent on compromising with the party's left wing, embodied by the Warren and Sanders campaigns. The Unity Task Force promised – and delivered – key appointments and policies that represented serious and powerful change for the better:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/10/thanks-obama/#triangulation

Despite these excellent appointments and policies, the Biden administration has remained unpopular and is heading into the 2024 election with worryingly poor numbers. There is a lot of debate about why this might be. It's undeniable that every leader who has presided over a period of inflation, irrespective of political tendency, is facing extreme defenstration, from Rishi Sunak, the far-right prime minister of the UK, to the relentlessly centrist Justin Trudeau in Canada:

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-05-29-three-barriers-biden-reelection/

It's also true that Biden has presided over a genocide, which he has been proudly and significantly complicit in. That Trump would have done the same or worse is beside the point. A political leader who does things that the voters deplore can't expect to become more popular, though perhaps they can pull off less unpopular:

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/the-left-is-not-joe-bidens-problem

Biden may be attracting unfair blame for inflation, and totally fair blame for genocide, but in addition to those problems, there's this: Biden hasn't gotten credit for the actual good things he's done:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoflHnGrCpM

Writing in his newsletter, Matt Stoller offers an explanation for this lack of credit: the Biden White House almost never talks about any of these triumphs, even the bold, generational ones that will significantly alter the political landscape no matter who wins the next election:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/why-does-the-biden-white-house-hate

Biden's antitrust enforcers have gone after price-fixing in oil, food and rent – the three largest sources of voter cost-of-living concern. They've done more on these three kinds of crime than all of their predecessors over the past forty years, combined. And yet, Stoller finds example after example of White House press secretaries being lobbed softballs by the press and refusing to even try to swing at them. When asked about any of this stuff, the White House demurs, refusing to comment.

The reasons they give for this is that they don't want to mess up an active case while it's before the courts. But that's not how this works. Yes, misstatements about active cases can do serious damage, but not talking about cases extinguishes the political will needed to carry them out. That's why a competent press secretary excellent briefings and training, because they must talk about these cases.

Think for a moment about the fact that the US government is – at this very moment – trying to break up Google, the largest tech company in the history of the world, and there has been virtually no press about it. This is a gigantic story. It's literally the biggest business story ever. It's practically a secret.

Why doesn't the Biden admin want to talk about this very small number of very good things it's doing? To understand that, you have to understand the hollowness of "centrist" politics as practiced in the Democratic Party.

The Democrats, like all political parties, are a coalition. Now, there are lots of ways to keep a coalition together. Parties who detest one another can stay in coalition provided that each partner is getting something they want out of it – even if one partner is bitterly unhappy about everything else happening in the coalition. That's the present-day Democratic approach: arrest students, bomb Gaza, but promise to do something about abortion and a few other issues while gesturing with real and justified alarm at Trump's open fascism, and hope that the party's left turns out at the polls this fall.

Leaders who play this game can't announce that they are deliberately making a vital coalition partner miserable and furious. Instead, they insist that they are "compromising" and point to the fact that "everyone is equally unhappy" with the way things are going.

This school of politics – "Everyone is angry at me, therefore I am doing something right" – has a name, courtesy of Anat Shenker-Osorio: "Pizzaburger politics." Say half your family wants burgers for dinner and the other half wants pizza: make a pizzaburger and disappoint all of them, and declare yourself to be a politics genius:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/17/pizzaburgers/

But Biden's Pizzaburger Presidency doesn't disappoint everyone equally. Sure, Biden appointed some brilliant antitrust enforcers to begin the long project of smashing the corporate juggernauts built through forty years of Reaganomics (including the Reganomics of Bill Clinton and Obama). But his lifetime federal judicial appointments are drawn heavily from the corporate wing of the party's darlings, and those judges will spend the rest of their lives ruling against the kinds of enforcers Biden put in charge of the FTC and DoJ antitrust division:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/judge-rules-for-microsoft-mergers

So that's one reason that Biden's comms team won't talk about his most successful and popular policies. But there's another reason: schismogenesis.

"Schismogenesis" is a anthropological concept describing how groups define themselves in opposition to their opponents (if they're for it, we're against it). Think of the liberals who became cheerleaders for the "intelligence community" (you know the CIA spies who organized murderous coups against a dozen Latin American democracies, and the FBI agents who tried to get MLK to kill himself) as soon as Trump and his allies began to rail against them:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/18/schizmogenesis/

Part of Trump's takeover of conservativism is a revival of "the paranoid style" of the American right – the conspiratorial, unhinged apocalyptic rhetoric that the movement's leaders are no longer capable of keeping a lid on:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/16/that-boy-aint-right/#dinos-rinos-and-dunnos

This stuff – the lizard-people/Bilderberg/blood libel/antisemitic/Great Replacement/race realist/gender critical whackadoodlery – was always in conservative rhetoric, but it was reserved for internal communications, a way to talk to low-information voters in private forums. It wasn't supposed to make it into your campaign ads:

https://www.statesman.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/05/27/texas-republicans-adopts-conservative-wish-list-for-the-2024-platform/73858798007/

Today's conservative vibe is all about saying the quiet part aloud. Historian Rick Perlstein calls this the "authoritarian ratchet": conservativism promises a return to a "prelapsarian" state, before the country lost its way:

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-05-29-my-political-depression-problem/

This is presented as imperative: unless we restore that mythical order, the country is doomed. We might just be the last generation of free Americans!

But that state never existed, and can never be recovered, but it doesn't matter. When conservatives lose a fight they declare to be existential (say, trans bathroom bans), they just pretend they never cared about it and move on to the next panic.

It's actually worse for them when they win. When the GOP repeals Roe, or takes the Presidency, the Senate and Congress, and still fails to restore that lost glory, then they have to find someone or something to blame. They turn on themselves, purging their ranks, promise ever-more-unhinged policies that will finally restore the state that never existed.

This is where schismogenesis comes in. If the GOP is making big, bold promises, then a shismogenesis-poisoned liberal will insist that the Dems must be "the party of normal." If the GOP's radical wing is taking the upper hand, then the Dems must be the party whose radical wing is marginalized (see also: UK Labour).

This is the trap of schismogenesis. It's possible for the things your opponents do to be wrong, but tactically sound (like promising the big changes that voters want). The difference you should seek to establish between yourself and your enemies isn't in promising to maintaining the status quo – it's in promising to make better, big muscular changes, and keeping those promises.

It's possible to acknowledge that an odious institution to do something good – like the CIA and FBI trying to wrongfoot Trump's most unhinged policies – without becoming a stan for that institution, and without abandoning your stance that the institution should either be root-and-branch reformed or abolished altogether.

The mere fact that your enemy uses a sound tactic to do something bad doesn't make that tactic invalid. As Naomi Klein writes in her magnificent Doppelganger, the right's genius is in co-opting progressive rhetoric and making it mean the opposite: think of their ownership of "fake news" or the equivalence of transphobia with feminism, of opposition to genocide with antisemitism:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/05/not-that-naomi/#if-the-naomi-be-klein-youre-doing-just-fine

Promising bold policies and then talking about them in plain language at every opportunity is something demagogues do, but having bold policies and talking about them doesn't make you a demagogue.

The reason demagogues talk that way is that it works. It captures the interest of potential followers, and keeps existing followers excited about the project.

Choosing not to do these things is political suicide. Good politics aren't boring. They're exciting. The fact that Republicans use eschatological rhetoric to motivate crazed insurrectionists who think they're the last hope for a good future doesn't change the fact that we are at a critical juncture for a survivable future.

If the GOP wins this coming election – or when Pierre Poilievre's petro-tories win the next Canadian election – they will do everything they can to set the planet on fire and render it permanently uninhabitable by humans and other animals. We are running out of time.

We can't afford to cede this ground to the right. Remember the clickbait wars? Low-quality websites and Facebook accounts got really good at ginning up misleading, compelling headlines that attracted a lot of monetizable clicks.

For a certain kind of online scolding centrist, the lesson from this era was that headlines should a) be boring and b) not leave out any salient fact. This is very bad headline-writing advice. While it claims to be in service to thoughtfulness and nuance, it misses out on the most important nuance of all: there's a difference between a misleading headline and a headline that calls out the most salient element of the story and then fleshes that out with more detail in the body of the article. If a headline completely summarizes the article, it's not a headline, it's an abstract.

Biden's comms team isn't bragging about the administration's accomplishments, because the senior partners in this coalition oppose those accomplishments. They don't want to win an election based on the promise to prosecute and anti-corporate revolution, because they are counter-revolutionaries.

The Democratic coalition has some irredeemably terrible elements. It also has elements that I would march into the sun for. The party itself is a very weak institution that's bad at resolving the tension between both groups:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/30/weak-institutions/

Pizzaburgers don't make anyone happy and they're not supposed to. They're a convenient cover for the winners of intraparty struggles to keep the losers from staying home on election day. I don't know how Biden can win this coming election, but I know how he can lose it: keep on reminding us that all the good things about his administration were undertaken reluctantly and could be jettisoned in a second Biden administration.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/29/sub-bushel-comms-strategy/#nothing-would-fundamentally-change

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved in our archive

"No big deal." "Just a cold." "Back to normal."

The proportion of babies born with a congenital heart abnormality increased by 16 per cent after the first year of the pandemic, according to research at City St George's, University of London and published today in Ultrasound in Obstetrics and Gynecology.

Heart defects are the most common type of anomaly that develop before a baby is born, with around 13 babies diagnosed with a congenital heart condition every day in the UK and impacting one in 110 births globally . These include defects to the baby's heart valves, the major blood vessels in and around the heart, and the development of holes in the heart.

In over 18 million births, researchers analysed data from US birth certificates from the Centre of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) between December 2016 and November 2022 to evaluate the effect of the pandemic on the number of babies born with a congenital heart defect.

They compared the number of babies born with a congenital heart condition every month before the Covid-19 pandemic (1st December 2016 to 30th November 2019) with those during the pandemic (1st December 2020 to 30th November 2022).

This data was then compared to the number of babies born with Down's Syndrome - a genetic condition not affected by the virus. This was to help ascertain if any differences observed might have been due to Covid-19, or if they were a result of other factors including limited access to antenatal services during the pandemic.

A total of 11,010,764 births before and 7,060,626 births during the pandemic were analysed. Data was adjusted to account for mother's BMI, diabetes and blood pressure before pregnancy, age, number of times they had given birth and the season in which prenatal care started.

The number of births with a congenital heart condition increased by 16% after the first year of the pandemic, with 65.4 cases per 100,000 live births compared to 56.5 per 100,000 births in the period studied before the pandemic.

The number of babies born with Down Syndrome did not change for the duration of the study, suggesting that the increase in fetal heart defects were not due to a disruption of health services.

Studying this large US dataset has revealed an unexpected picture for how the pandemic has affected the hearts of unborn babies, but we need to untangle the reasons for this link. We need to determine if the SARS-CoV-2 virus directly causes the development of fetal heart problems during pregnancy, and if so, how the virus makes these changes in the heart.

We don't have this type of data set available in the UK, but it's important to see if this pattern is seen in other parts of the world.

Covid-19 is still circulating and is easier to catch in the winter months. These results act as an important reminder for pregnant women to get their Covid-19 vaccinations to help protect themselves and their baby."

Professor Asma Khalil, lead author and Professor of Obstetrics and Maternal Fetal Medicine at City St George's, University of London

Source: City St George's, University of London

Journal reference: Khalil, A., et al. (2024). Congenital heart defects during COVID‐19 pandemic. Ultrasound in Obstetrics & Gynecology. doi.org/10.1002/uog.29126. obgyn.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/uog.29126

[baeddel]

on the racist riots in Belfast

i made a post in 2021 titled "dispatch on the unrest in Belfast" (click) trying to provide some local-knowledge context for the sectarian riots in town. i have no such special knowledge to offer this time. it has been, to be honest, shocking to me how many people came to them and how well organized they were. we have seen an increasing prevalence of anti-immigrant racism in the north in recent years; graffiti saying "locals only" (simple meaning: "whites only") on council houses going to market has been reported on since 2014 (click, 2018 click, 2023 click), for example. and in 2022 the PSNI released a report stating that hate crimes of every kind, including racist hate crimes, had reached the highest of any year since they began counting in 2004/5 (click). according to the BBC as of 2014 "on average a racially motivated offence takes place at least once a day" in Belfast (click) and it has only risen since that. but it was obviously not organized at this scale before. my girlfriend remarked that this was the first time Northern Ireland has had a race riot and i think, assuming we treat sectarian riots as something else, that may be true? (the UK-wide 1919 race riots did not seem to affect Ireland from what i could find and anyway were a bit before partition; otherwise they are quite similar to what is happening today).

perhaps no further context is really possible to give; they are race riots and they are happening because of racism. nevertheless i will try and write down some things i've thought about it.

in the 2021 post i talked about the nature of the disorder, where if you looked at the footage mostly people stood on the pavement and watched while the professionals—loyalist paramilitaries—handled the direct action (hijacking and burning busses and such). that is because these demonstrations were organized by the paramilitaries and everyone must obey them. that is not the case here; the crowds attack people of colour and immigrants, their homes or businesses owned by them, wherever they can find them. if they were kicked out of one area they went somewhere else and did it there; or else they did it where they lived as on Sandy Row. so it seems to be genuinely spontaneous and not directed from above.

the paramilitaries claim they did not organize it (the Belfast Telegraph quote what they call a 'senior loyalist' saying "[w]e didn’t start this, we aren’t behind it" click—what a demonstrative article, by the way, the police asking the paramilitaries for help with population control!). they say that about everything, but i think i believe them this time for that reason. it doesn't look paramilitary. i suppose whoever organized it must be taking orders from England. however, we are aware of at least some involvement by paramilitaries. the rightists who travelled up from Ireland were identified by PSNI and Gardaí to be fraternizing with UDA men (click). blueshirts associating with loyalists is not really surprising but i am not sure it has happened before. PSNI also claim there is a "paramilitary element" within the racist riots but are reluctant to say they're behind them (click).

i have talked before about how loyalism has felt a bit of a transition from an armed struggle into something that looks like a popular movement, with demonstrations and direct action becoming the main source of spectacle. it's possible there is a gradual transition towards this point, where paramilitary hierarchy becomes secondary to a spontaneously organized reactionary movement.

it also fits into a pattern that i have talked about before (click, also here), which is that democracy in the north has undergone dramatic changes recently. whereas in the past the national conversation dominated politics, today ordinary issues of civil society are decisive. the DUP lost their monopoly on unionist voters because of how they handled COVID, the border, the cost of living and so forth—problems a normal political party is expected to solve, not a party holding down a sovereignty under siege as they were supposed to be��and that's why SF got the majority. immigration is one such 'normal' political issue, and racist violence breaks out in Belfast in a way that doesn't differ substantially to how it breaks out at the same time in a normal country like England.

speaking of the fracturing of the DUP, i felt that it was significant that we could name, as a precipitating event, the fracturing of the right wing parties in general. in the north of Ireland the DUP lost much of its support, but no single party could replace it; several unionist parties now leech its vote, while moderate unionists vote for Alliance. and in the recent election the Tories lost to Labour, but they also lost many seats to Reform. between SF and Labour we are in an era where for the first time in a long time the UK is governed by center left parties, meanwhile it is unclear what opposition has the mandate of the right-wing voter. this means that for a right wing person electoral party politics looks like an ambiguous, distant and unrewarding terrain of struggle. perhaps that is a background condition as to why racist propagandists have been able to mobilize so many people into joining these events.

something else that struck me as possibly a precipitating event is that for the better part of a year we've had extremely active and persistent organizing around Palestine in the UK, in terms of demonstrations, direct action and even in electoral politics (with several independent candidates who care about Gaza taking seats from Labour in the last election). thus, right-wing racists have seen news about pro-Palestine organizing almost every day for a long time. we know that here in the north when Palestinian flags are flown it isn't long before Israel flags are flown in response. i think it's possible to see the specifically anti-Islamic character of the riots as a kind of counter-revolution or reaction to Palestine.

those were the thoughts i had to share. on Friday 9th (today as i write this) there is a racist demonstration planned, as well as a counter-protest. the counter-protest is backed by NIPSA (a big NI union) as well as the Belfast City Council (! click), so perhaps it will be big. it starts at 4:30pm. stay safe.

[acebytaemin]

DOSLOVNO BUKVALNO when our vision aligns perfectly it feels like a joint magical girl transformation and it’s always the most out of pocket shit that’s how you know it’s real 😌

no but i love it when ana and I are rebloging the same thing always on the same wavelength you just know the tags are about to be so insane but so on point so true two yappers with vision i am giggling it’s like when you’re hanging with your friends and you keep saying EXACTLYYYY BUKVALNOO DOSLOVNO!!!

[yesornopolls]

FYI

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Andrew Perez at Rolling Stone:

It happened, again: Democrats lost a winnable election to a racist, orange-makeup-wearing carnival barker, despite his odiousness, immorality, and unbridled corruption. This time, Donald Trump campaigned on an even darker agenda — the mass deportation of migrants, calls for more violent policing, and demands of retribution against his enemies — and he didn’t have to try to steal the election in the courts or via a violent coup. In the battleground states, he appears to have run the table, and he will likely win the popular vote outright, something a Republican hasn’t done in two decades.  There are plenty of factors that could help explain why Vice President Kamala Harris lost — and why the race ultimately was not that close: Joe Biden’s crushing unpopularity; pervasive sexism, racism, and xenophobia; an American culture that stupidly valorizes the ultra-wealthy and licks their boots. There was the Harris campaign’s decision to run a safe, staid campaign, from Democrats’ favorite failed playbook, Be Like Republicans. There was her refusal to break from Biden over his support for Israel’s war in Gaza — carnage that plays out on our screens daily, and has particularly affected young people.    The most likely explanation, however, for why Harris lost is the most basic one: Americans are deeply dissatisfied with a brutal economy. 

After Washington put an end to Covid-era pandemic aid programs, Americans suffered two years of sky-high inflation, impacting the price of nearly everything, alongside higher interest rates — which drove up credit card rates, mortgage rates, the costs of car loans, and more. Amid a punishing cost-of-living crisis, voters have now punished Democrats.  Exit polls and other survey results coming out of the 2024 election are incredibly clear that this contest was, as is often the case, about the economy, stupid. Edison Research exit polls show that two thirds of voters believe the state of America’s economy is poor or not so good; 69 percent of them voted for Trump. Asked what the most important issue in their vote was, 31 percent of voters said the economy, and 79 percent of those voters supported Trump.

The world is in a punish all incumbents mood, as we saw in the UK earlier this year, and sadly, the USA wasn’t immune, as de facto incumbent Kamala Harris (D) lost to the 34x convicted felon, insurrection-inciter, adjudicated rapist, and vile bigot Donald Trump (R).

Swapping out Joe Biden for Harris may have helped save us in Minnesota, New Hampshire, Virginia, New Mexico, and New Jersey. Had Biden been the nominee, the Dems would have lost most, if not all, of these.

[transmutationisms]

i feel so insane every time i look up another one of these covid sci comms twitter thread posters and find them doing versions of the same narrative whereby the us and uk's state policies of covering their ears and going Lalala until covid magically goes away are somehow being caused by an insufficient degree of fear amongst the population. and you could ofc have bad unserious politics and still be producing useful data or studies (many such cases actually) but this genre of poster is often not even actually producing this knowledge they've just styled themselves as interpreters of other people's research or state statistics---meaning that actually their moral commitment to fear as a tool of public health has a huge effect on how useful their posting is because it's the guiding principle of their entire analysis. i don't think it's a coincidence that two of the big names in these circles are a psychologist (mike hoerger) and a journalist who was previously covering climate denialist pr (nate bear)---it's that framing of public health as a battle of ideas (despite occasionally paying lip service to a vague anti-capitalist line) where alarm becomes morally imperative and appeal to Raise Awareness in individual hearts and minds is the only field of action. and then these people continue to get elevated and their shit passed around regardless of this glaring degree of liberalism and how tenuous their data interpretation actually is, because at least they're still saying to take covid seriously and the alternative is like some leana wen lie or peter hotez patting himself on the back abojt vaccines. fucking bleak

[chronicallyuniconic]

"6 out of 10 people who died from Covid between March and July 2020 were disabled"

As part of the UK covid inquiry, evidence has now been brought to light which shows that "Do Not Attempt Resuscitation" notices, were put on the files of patients with Down's Syndrome, Autism & other learning disabilities.

These people were healthy, before contracting Covid19.

The NHS watchdog we know as NICE, (the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence), issued guidance for trusts and hospitals advising them to apply a “clinical frailty scale” to decide whether patients should be admitted to intensive care.

Older and more frail patients were viewed as being less likely to survive even with critical care treatment.

The original NICE guidance also suggested that those who could not do everyday tasks like cooking, managing money and personal care independently, would be considered frail & not receive intensive care treatment.

This original guidance has since been removed....

Which leads us to the Do not attempt Resuscitation notices...

The DNAR notices were often placed on the files of the patients without their consent, or with limited understanding of its meaning.

Patients with learning disabilities were classed as 'clinically frail'

NHS England have of course denied this, yet the evidence shows they let them die, as to not overwhelm the NHS in the early days of a pandemic.

Yet many specialist nurses have come forward to say that they were constantly put in place for people with learning disabilities and often "inappropriately."

_____

I feel utterly sick. I remember at the start of the pandemic, talking about how disabled people will become a target, that we will be killed off, and people looked at me like I was purple.

4 years later we're here. In case you need to read it again, 6 in 10 people with covid that died during March to June 2020, were disabled. 6 in 10. I can't stop repeating that number.

Read more here:

https://archive.ph/4BQ3s

[tomorrowusa]

I'm not sure if there is a cure for Trumpnesia, but there are treatments.

This is what Trump was saying at CNBC the day after the first case of COVID-19 appeared in the US.

Trump dawdled while the virus spread throughout the US. He continued to claim it wasn't a big deal.

The spectacle of the Dow Jones plummeting on March 12th could jar a memory or two. It signaled the start of the Trump recession.

On the following day, Friday the 13th, Trump belatedly declared a state of emergency.

In April he held daily media events where he gave out bad medical advice. If he had been a doctor, that would have gotten him charged with malpractice. He first told viewers to take malaria medicine for COVID. [Malaria is a parasitic disease while COVID is a virus.] He then suggested that people stick UV lights up their butts. And he famously told people to drink bleach. This t-shirt was a reaction to that...

All that year he downplayed COVID-19 as the US death toll and infection rate skyrocketed.

Timeline: How Trump Has Downplayed The Coronavirus Pandemic

It's true that the virus spread everywhere. But the United States had the highest death rate per million of any G7 country. Only Boris "Partygate" Johnson's UK came close.

Reminders of Trump's disastrous last year in office can temporarily keep Trumpnesia at bay. But frequent boosters are a necessity.

[ur-mag]

Cristiano Ronaldo ‘to take legal action against Juventus over £17m unpaid wages from Covid’ as team-mate withdraws case | In Trend Today

Cristiano Ronaldo ‘to take legal action against Juventus over £17m unpaid wages from Covid’ as team-mate withdraws case Read Full Text or Full Article on MAG NEWS

[vague-humanoid]

Healthcare workers (HCWs) with COVID-19 had more severe symptoms that lasted longer than those with other respiratory diseases, and a higher proportion met the World Health Organization (WHO) or UK National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) definitions of long COVID, according to a report published in Viruses and Viral Diseases.

A team led by Murdoch Children's Research Institute investigators in Parkville, Australia, also identified older age, chronic respiratory disease, and pre-existing symptoms as risk factors for long COVID, also known as post-acute COVID-19 syndrome (PACS).

Data from phase 3 clinical trial

The researchers analyzed data on long-COVID symptoms, duration, and pre-existing symptoms from the multinational randomized controlled trial (RCT) BRACE trial on HCWs diagnosed as having COVID-19 or another respiratory illness for 1 year after diagnosis.

Participants were tested for COVID-19 infection if they reported symptoms, gave blood samples every 3 months for evaluation for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, and completed quarterly surveys. A subsample of 184 COVID-19 and 184 non-COVID controls were also chosen for a case-control analysis of daily symptom data with an extended pre- and post-infection follow-up period.

BRACE is a phase 3 RCT assessing the effect of bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) tuberculosis vaccination on COVID-19 infection in HCWs in Australia, Brazil, the Netherlands, Spain, and the United Kingdom from March 2020 to April 2021.

More extensive systemic effects

The 593 COVID-infected HCWs had significantly more severe disease than 1,112 participants with other respiratory illnesses (odds ratio [OR], 7.4). The persistence of symptoms met both the NICE and WHO long-COVID definitions in a higher proportion of COVID-19 survivors than those with other respiratory diseases (2.5% vs 0.5%, respectively; odds ratio [OR], 6.6 for NICE and 8.8% vs 3.7%; OR, 2.5 for WHO).

@startorrent02

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved on our archive

Not covid specific, but good to remember: Masking and other airborne disease prevention keeps you from getting other diseases like the flu too. Covid's not the only threat to your long-term health out there.

By Felicity Nelson

A study of around 500,000 medical records suggested that severe viral infections like encephalitis and pneumonia increase the risk of neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.

Researchers found 22 connections between viral infections and neurodegenerative conditions in the study of around 450,000 people.

People treated for a type of inflammation of the brain called viral encephalitis were 31 times more likely to develop Alzheimer's disease. (For every 406 viral encephalitis cases, 24 went on to develop Alzheimer's disease – around 6 percent.)

Those who were hospitalized with pneumonia after catching the flu seemed to be more susceptible to Alzheimer's disease, dementia, Parkinson's disease, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

Intestinal infections and meningitis (both often caused by a virus), as well as the varicella-zoster virus, which causes shingles, were also implicated in the development of several neurodegenerative diseases.

The impact of viral infections on the brain persisted for up to 15 years in some cases. And there were no instances where exposure to viruses was protective.

Around 80 percent of the viruses implicated in brain diseases were considered 'neurotrophic', which means they could cross the blood-brain barrier.

"Strikingly, vaccines are currently available for some of these viruses, including influenza, shingles (varicella-zoster), and pneumonia," the researchers wrote in their paper published last year.

"Although vaccines do not prevent all cases of illness, they are known to dramatically reduce hospitalization rates. This evidence suggests that vaccination may mitigate some risk of developing neurodegenerative disease."

In 2022, a study of more than 10 million people linked the Epstein-Barr virus with a 32-fold increased risk of multiple sclerosis.

"After reading [this] study, we realized that for years scientists had been searching – one-by-one – for links between an individual neurodegenerative disorder and a specific virus," said senior author Michael Nalls, a neurogeneticist at the National Institute on Aging in the US.

"That's when we decided to try a different, more data science-based approach," he said. "By using medical records, we were able to systematically search for all possible links in one shot."

First, the researchers analyzed the medical records of around 35,000 Finns with six different types of neurodegenerative diseases and compared this against a group of 310,000 controls who did not have a brain disease.

This analysis yielded 45 links between viral exposure and neurodegenerative diseases, and this was narrowed down to 22 links in a subsequent analysis of 100,000 medical records from the UK Biobank.

While this retrospective observational study cannot demonstrate a causal link, it adds to the pile of research hinting at the role of viruses in Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease.

"Neurodegenerative disorders are a collection of diseases for which there are very few effective treatments and many risk factors," said co-author Andrew Singleton, a neurogeneticist and Alzheimer's researcher and the director of the Center for Alzheimer's and Related Dementias.

"Our results support the idea that viral infections and related inflammation in the nervous system may be common – and possibly avoidable – risk factors for these types of disorders."

This study was published in Neuron.

Study link: www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(22)01147-3?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0896627322011473%3Fshowall%3Dtrue

[drtanner]

Genuinely wish I had the energy to talk more about UK politics here given that Tumblr is so US-centric and desperately needs the added perspective, but there's genuinely fuck all happening here that hasn't been par for the course for the last ~14 years. Tories gonna Tory.

A brief rundown for interested parties:

After a long and arduous battle to convince everyone that it should be legal to do so, our government has commenced with its plan to shove asylum seekers who attempt an extremely dangerous Channel crossing on small boats to find safety here onto planes and ship them off to Rwanda, a country with significant human rights issues. There does not seem to be any desire to do anything about the "criminal gangs" who are supposedly trafficking these asylum seekers and sending them here, or to ask any questions about what might make people so desperate that they'd risk crossing the Channel in a tiny boat in the first place.

Having sent everyone back to the office despite COVID still very much being a thing so that we can oil the wheels of the UK economy with our blood and to prevent their portfolios from losing value, the same ghouls are now proposing that disabled people "do their duty" by being forced to work from home, or else lose their benefits. They're also proposing mandatory work placements for people who fail to find work within 18 months.

Transphobia remains the culture war du jour, despite all evidence showing that it is a vote loser. Our government continues to be obsessed with policing the genitals of children and ensuring that trans people receive abuse from every possible direction, having recently released "guidance" for schools that essentially instructs them to deny trans kids any kind of shelter or agency whatsoever and to refuse their requests for basic dignity whenever the opportunity to do so arises, whilst simultaneously attempting to introduce the term "gender ideology" into mainstream parlance.

The Online Safety Bill, which proposes that social media sites should require ID in order to sign up, is also a porn ban.

We (and the US) are still bombing people in another country, without it having been approved by vote beforehand, in order to prevent Israel from suffering any economic hardship while it continues to commit a genocide using weapons that we (and the US) provide. Our government assures us that this will continue for as long as Israel wants it to, and is still talking about "humanitarian pauses" instead of any kind of actual, real ceasefire.

Labour (the supposed "opposition" party) has wholeheartedly supported every part of this and in some cases seems to think that the current government doesn't go far enough.

We're still in the middle of a cost of living crisis, by the way. Also the climate crisis, with more and more people losing their homes and livelihoods to flooding with every passing year. No one's talking about any of that, though. There might be a transgender child receiving lifesaving healthcare somewhere, or maybe an immigrant being treated with respect, which is obviously much worse.

So that's where we are right now. We've been promised an election this year but given that Labour haven't opposed any part of the cruelty this government has been visiting upon everyone but the white, cishet, ablebodied rich, it's unclear whether getting the Tories out will actually materially improve anything. If you've got the Greens or Lib Dems as candidates in your constituency, I guess it's time to make peace with voting for them instead of Labour, maybe.

So, yeah. v( ._.)v

[rubberduckearrings]

i never post anything serious on here but the results of the election have genuinely thrown me for a loop!

as someone living in the uk i cant even begin to imagine how scary this is for all the women, lgbtq, poc, disabled, and so many other people that trump's policies target. if you are living in the usa or are just scared, please talk to someone because you are not alone.

HOWEVER!!

if you are reading this and you did vote for trump or support his policies, here is the type of person you've elected to be your president:

said he wanted to "restore germany to its former glory"

said he would be dating ivanka trump if she wasnt his daughter

was walking behind a TEN YEAR OLD GIRL on an escalator and said "i'm gonna be dating her in ten years"

had sex with a porn star and paid her $130 million in hush money while his wife was pregnant

has been found guilty of falsifying business records, conspiracy to defraud the usa, and conspiracy AGAINST the rights of citizens

been accused of sexual misconduct in at least 26 cases, including minors, and has been found liable in court for sexual abuse

is the only president to have been impeached twice (abuse of power and obstruction of Congress in 2019, incitement of insurrection in 2021)

reversed majority of obama's action taken to fight climate change

after george floyd's murder, he ordered the police to clear a crowd of blm protestors with tear gas and stun grenades so he could take a photo in lafayette square

held an INDOOR rally just months after the country shut down due to covid

if that doesn't say enough about him as a person, please take a good look at the project 2025 manifesto, or if you can't be bothered to do that then have a look at some articles like this one:

i mentioned earlier that i live in the uk and at first i thought about how i probably have no reason to be worried. his policies dont affect me. but then i thought a little more about the domino effect this could have. trump's reelection sets a precedent for other countries to follow suit, and this will only get stronger once he starts making the changes he's promised. im scared for my own future, i cant even imagine how the minorities living in america feel right now.

if you wanna help, share the articles, donate to the charities, sign the petitions, attend the protests, just be loud!!! be as persistent as possible about it and people will be forced to listen.

i would also like to add that if you support donald trump please get the fuck off my page i dont want you here. okay bye :3

[evidence-based-activism]

Is it true more trans teens attempted suicide after ‘anti trans’ laws passed?

Hello! I am guessing this is in reference to this recent study [1], which made this exact claim. In short, this study has substantial issues that weaken its conclusion severely. These flaws, paired with stronger contradictory evidence, suggests that no, these laws are not connected to increased suicide among transgender teens.

First, the contradicting evidence:

While not in reference to these specific laws, other studies have attempted to determine if there is an increase in suicide following laws aimed at restricting transgender healthcare.

This independent report for the UK NHS [2] found "the data do not support the claim that there has been a large rise in suicide in young gender dysphoria patients" and "the claims that have been placed in the public domain do not meet basic standards for statistical evidence". (They – correctly – also criticize the way "this issue has been discussed on social media", which we will get into later.)

The Cass review [2] was an extensive literature review that found evidence did not support the belief that "hormone treatment reduces the elevated risk of death by suicide in [the transgender youth] population".

This Finnish study on adolescents and young adults [4] took a slightly different approach, attempting to determine if access to "gender reassignment" reduced suicide rates. First, they found "clinical gender dysphoria does not appear to be predictive of all-cause nor suicide mortality when psychiatric treatment history is accounted for." They also found "medical gender reassignment does not have an impact on suicide risk".

This similar Swedish study on adults [5] found that "sex reassignment, although alleviating gender dysphoria, may not suffice as treatment for transsexualism" as higher "mortality, suicidal behaviour, and psychiatric morbidity" persists after "sex reassignment".

This Dutch study on adults [6] also found that "the suicide risk in transgender people ... seems to occur during every stage of transitioning".

Importantly, these studies are all reasonably strong and well-designed. The centralized nature of these country's health data allowed for large-scale, representative studies to be performed. The English study [2] reviewed data directly from the NHS, the Cass review [3] was an extensive and through literature review (common myths about the report are debunked here [7]), and the final three studies [4-6] were all long-term (multiple decade), nation-wide cohort studies.

This evidence provides a strong indication that medical gender transition treatment do not reduce suicide risk in transgender populations.

---

So, what are the issues with the US study?

First, this study [1] was not representative. The participants were recruited from "non-probability cross-sectional online survey" via "targeted advertisements on social media" between "2018 and 2022".

Already there are substantial issues:

This study is explicitly noted to be non-representative, drawing conclusions about transgender youth based solely on this study is irresponsible.

The participants were recruited via social media, which past research [8] has shown to be correlated with suicide attempts. Notably, the causality of this relationship is irrelevant in this case, because it is still evidence of a significant confounding variable. (Confounding variables are the primary reason why you cannot determine causality from correlational relationships like the one presented in [1].)

This study overlaps with the COVID-19 pandemic. They claim to have "considered the potential impact of the ... pandemic" and found "minimal evidence" of any impact. This conclusion contradicts substantial amounts of past research including a systematic review and meta-analysis of youth suicide during the pandemic [9], a systematic review and meta-analysis of youth depression and anxiety [10], and an analysis of national suicide data for US youth [11].

Their analysis of the impact of the pandemic used "population-adjusted ... death counts by year as a proxy for the overall impact ... in a given state for a given time period". It's likely this was on of the only data sources they had to evaluate the impact of the pandemic, but that doesn't change the fact that this proxy neglects to consider the isolation, financial stress, and social media use among youth and their families that likely drove their decline in mental health. (See studies [12-15] for some introductory evidence of this.)

Other issues:

They considered only self-report of suicide attempts and serious suicidal thoughts, not actual measurements of suicides or suicide attempts. This adds an additional possibility of response bias. (Notably, this was not a concern for the studies I discussed above, which show no relationship between similar laws and suicide, as they evaluate actual medical report data.)

They found a statistically significant effect for suicide attempts but not for "seriously considering suicide". This is a strange finding, as, if we assume the results are accurate, it suggests that suicide attempts increased following the laws without any corresponding increase in suicidal thoughts. (This will be relevant later, so keep it in mind.)

The don't appear to report an actual incidence rate, which is a significant oversight considering the topic.

The substantial reduction in effect size when considering the total number of reported suicide attempts versus the number of people who reported at least one suicide attempt suggests that the attempts are clustered within a small group of participants.

They found no evidence of the introduction or enactment of additional "anti-transgender laws" had any impact of transgender youth suicide. Again, this is inconsistent with their overall conclusions; if it is the legal restrictions that cause an increase in suicide attempts then you would expect an increase in restrictions to also increase attempts. (Although not necessarily in a linear fashion.)

All in all, this study makes claims that are much stronger than the evidence they provide to support them. Other, stronger studies, contradict the assertion that these sorts of laws increase suicide among transgender youth. (Which is, I should stress, a good thing for the transgender community.)

(And I should also note here that my personal opinion on the morality of these laws is specific to each law/law category. I'm purely presenting the empirical research concerning the relationship between these laws and suicide in this post.)

---

The major confounding factor: social contagion of suicide.

It is, at this point, all but settled evidence that "suicidal behavior is 'contagious' in that it can be transmitted, directly or indirectly, from one person to another" [16]. This is extraordinarily important because it impacts the way we (i.e., society) should talk about and depict suicide. For an unrelated example, this review [17] concludes "portrayals of suicide in entertainment media may increase suicides and attempted suicide in the population". A specific example of this was the increase in suicide rates and admissions among youth, following the release of the "13 Reasons Why" television show [18-19].

And this is well-known by LGBT organizations. In 2017, the Movement Advancement Project (a pro-LGBT think tank), the Johnson Family Foundation (a pro-LGBT organization), and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention co-authored the second edition of the report "Talking About Suicide & LGBT Populations" [20], which was also endorsed by GLSEN, GLAAD, The Trevor Project, the Transgender Law Center, and the Human Rights Campaign (among others).

Recommendations in this report include [emphasis mine]:

DO encourage discussion about suicide prevention strategies.

DO emphasize the vital importance of resilience

DON’T attribute a suicide death to a single factor (such as bullying or discrimination) or say that a specific anti-LGBT law or policy will “cause” suicide.

DON’T risk spreading false information by repeating unsubstantiated rumors or speculation about suicide deaths or why they occurred.

DON’T talk about suicide “epidemics” or suicide rates for LGBT people. (Remember that sexual orientation and gender identity are not recorded at the time of death, so we do not have data on suicide rates or deaths among LGBT people. In addition, presenting suicide as a trend or a widespread occurrence (for example, tallying suicide deaths that occur in proximity to an external event) can encourage vulnerable individuals to see themselves as part of a larger story, which may elevate their suicide risk.)

DON’T use social media or e-blasts to announce news of suicide deaths, speculate about reasons fora suicide death, focus on personal details about the person who died, or describe the means of death.

DON’T idealize those who have died by suicide or create an aura of celebrity around them.

(They also note that suicide rates cannot be determined by looking at suicide attempts, which is relevant to the above study.)

Please take a moment to consider the extent to which public officials, organizations, and figures are completely disregarding these recommendations in reference to the transgender community. Beyond the anecdotal evidence people involved with or aware of the community are exposed to, this English study [21], this Indian study [22], and this American study [23] all find "poor adherence to responsible reporting guidelines" for the transgender (or "LGBTQ+") community.

Further, as I indicated earlier, the English study [2] directly addresses this sort of irresponsible rhetoric. Failure to comply with responsible reporting guidelines is causing direct harm to the transgender community.

And how does this apply to the first study [1]? It adds in an additional confounding factor: the rhetoric surrounding these laws and their impact on suicide in the transgender community. It suggests that at least some of the observed suicide attempts were precipitated by the social contagion of suicide.

This theory would also explain some of the inconsistencies in the study. That is, it is possible that there was already a subsection of suicidal transgender youth, who, once exposed to increasingly this irresponsible social-contagion-inducing rhetoric, reported (more frequent) suicide attempts. This would account for:

The lack of increase in suicidal thoughts (i.e., those effected were already suicidal).

Why the effect size for the "at least one attempt" is so much lower than the "total attempts" effect size (i.e., the reported increase is concentrated within a small group of people)

Why there is no dose-response relationship between the number of laws and suicide attempts (i.e., it is not the laws so much as the rhetoric surrounding them that is having such a negative impact)

---

Conclusion

Ultimately, there is strong evidence from other countries indicating that similar "anti-trans" laws are not associated with suicide rates. The new American study suggesting otherwise is remarkably weak, and may actually be providing evidence for the social contagion theory of suicide.

Most importantly, the current rhetoric surrounding suicide in the trans community is incredibly dangerous and does a great disservice to all transgender people.

(And again, my personal opinion on the morality of these laws is specific to each law/law category. I'm purely presenting the empirical research concerning the relationship between these laws and suicide in this post.)

I hope this helps, Anon!

References under the cut:

Lee, W. Y., Hobbs, J. N., Hobaica, S., DeChants, J. P., Price, M. N., & Nath, R. (2024). State-level anti-transgender laws increase past-year suicide attempts among transgender and non-binary young people in the USA. Nature Human Behaviour, 1-11.

Appleby, Louis. “Review of Suicides and Gender Dysphoria at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust: Independent Report.” Department of Health & Social Care, 19 July 2024, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/review-of-suicides-and-gender-dysphoria-at-the-tavistock-and-portman-nhs-foundation-trust/review-of-suicides-and-gender-dysphoria-at-the-tavistock-and-portman-nhs-foundation-trust-independent-report.

Cass, H. (2024). Independent review of gender identity services for children and young people.

Ruuska, S. M., Tuisku, K., Holttinen, T., & Kaltiala, R. (2024). All-cause and suicide mortalities among adolescents and young adults who contacted specialised gender identity services in Finland in 1996–2019: a register study. BMJ Ment Health, 27(1).

Dhejne, C., Lichtenstein, P., Boman, M., Johansson, A. L., Långström, N., & Landén, M. (2011). Long-term follow-up of transsexual persons undergoing sex reassignment surgery: cohort study in Sweden. PloS one, 6(2), e16885.

Wiepjes, C. M., den Heijer, M., Bremmer, M. A., Nota, N. M., de Blok, C. J., Coumou, B. J., & Steensma, T. D. (2020). Trends in suicide death risk in transgender people: results from the Amsterdam Cohort of Gender Dysphoria study (1972–2017). Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 141(6), 486-491.

Final report – FAQs. (n.d.). The Cass Review. https://cass.independent-review.uk/home/publications/final-report/final-report-faqs/

Sedgwick, R., Epstein, S., Dutta, R., & Ougrin, D. (2019). Social media, internet use and suicide attempts in adolescents. Current opinion in psychiatry, 32(6), 534-541.

Madigan, S., Korczak, D. J., Vaillancourt, T., Racine, N., Hopkins, W. G., Pador, P., ... & Neville, R. D. (2023). Comparison of paediatric emergency department visits for attempted suicide, self-harm, and suicidal ideation before and during the COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic review and meta-analysis. The Lancet Psychiatry, 10(5), 342-351.

Madigan, S., Racine, N., Vaillancourt, T., Korczak, D. J., Hewitt, J. M., Pador, P., ... & Neville, R. D. (2023). Changes in depression and anxiety among children and adolescents from before to during the COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic review and meta-analysis. JAMA pediatrics.

Bridge, J. A., Ruch, D. A., Sheftall, A. H., Hahm, H. C., O’Keefe, V. M., Fontanella, C. A., ... & Horowitz, L. M. (2023). Youth suicide during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Pediatrics, 151(3).

Felfe, C., Saurer, J., Schneider, P., Vornberger, J., Erhart, M., Kaman, A., & Ravens-Sieberer, U. (2023). The youth mental health crisis: Quasi-experimental evidence on the role of school closures. Science Advances, 9(33), eadh4030.

Jones SE, Ethier KA, Hertz M, et al. Mental Health, Suicidality, and Connectedness Among High School Students During the COVID-19 Pandemic — Adolescent Behaviors and Experiences Survey, United States, January–June 2021. MMWR Suppl 2022;71(Suppl-3):16–21. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.su7103a3.

Kalenkoski, C. M., & Pabilonia, S. W. (2024). Teen social interactions and well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic. Review of Economics of the Household, 1-48.

Adegboye, D., Williams, F., Collishaw, S., Shelton, K., Langley, K., Hobson, C., ... & van Goozen, S. (2021). Understanding why the COVID‐19 pandemic‐related lockdown increases mental health difficulties in vulnerable young children. JCPP advances, 1(1), e12005.

Forum on Global Violence Prevention; Board on Global Health; Institute of Medicine; National Research Council. Contagion of Violence: Workshop Summary. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 2013 Feb 6. II.4, THE CONTAGION OF SUICIDAL BEHAVIOR. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK207262/

Niederkrotenthaler, T., Kirchner, S., Till, B., Sinyor, M., Tran, U. S., Pirkis, J., & Spittal, M. J. (2021). Systematic review and meta-analyses of suicidal outcomes following fictional portrayals of suicide and suicide attempt in entertainment media. EClinicalMedicine, 36.

Cooper Jr, M. T., Bard, D., Wallace, R., Gillaspy, S., & Deleon, S. (2018). Suicide attempt admissions from a single children's hospital before and after the introduction of Netflix series 13 Reasons Why. Journal of Adolescent Health, 63(6), 688-693.

Bridge, J. A., Greenhouse, J. B., Ruch, D., Stevens, J., Ackerman, J., Sheftall, A. H., ... & Campo, J. V. (2020). Association between the release of Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why and suicide rates in the United States: An interrupted time series analysis. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 59(2), 236-243.

Movement Advancement Project, Johnson Family Foundation, and American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. August 2017. "Talking About Suicide & LGBT Populations." 2nd edition. MAP's Talking About LGBT Issues Series. https://www.lgbtmap.org/talking-about-suicide-and-lgbt-populations

Bolzern, J. E., Mnyama, N. L., & McMillan, D. (2019). Responsible journalism, imitative suicide, and transgender populations: A systematic review of UK newspapers. Journal of gay & lesbian mental health, 23(3), 276-288.

Kar, S. K., Menon, V., Mukherjee, S., Bascarane, S., Sharma, G., Pattnaik, J. I., ... & Agarwal, V. (2023). Suicide reporting of LGBTQI+ population in India: An analysis of online media reports of the past decade. Journal of Public Health, 45(1), e95-e103.

Kirchner, S., Till, B., Laido, Z., & Niederkrotenthaler, T. (2024). Suicide-related media reporting with a focus on sexual and gender minority identities: A content analysis of the quality of reporting. Crisis: The Journal of Crisis Intervention and Suicide Prevention, 45(5), 339–347. https://doi.org/10.1027/0227-5910/a000956

[darkmaga-returns]

10 shocking stories the media buried today.

The Vigilant Fox

Dec 09, 2024

#10 - A new study demonstrates, “Something is being shed from the COVID-19 vaccinated population to the unvaccinated population.”

The “conspiracy theorists” were right again.

The study revealed shocking findings: women who were around vaccinated people daily (within 6 feet) had a 34% higher risk of heavy menstrual bleeding, a 28% higher chance of their period starting over a week early, and a 26% higher chance of menstrual bleeding lasting more than seven days, compared to those with little close contact.

One of the authors of the study wrote: “After more than a year of censorship from the medical journals, our landmark study and manuscript has been published demonstrating significant circumstantial evidence that something is being shed from the COVID-19 vaccinated population to the unvaccinated population. It is far beyond time for these toxic injections to be withdrawn from the market.”

Reacting to the study’s alarming findings, esteemed physician Dr. Pierre Kory wrote on X: “The most puzzling thing we’ve seen with the vaccine is its ability to ‘shed’ and harm those who never got it. A peer-reviewed study just validated the thousands of shedding reports sent to us.”

(See Sources and 9 More Revealing Stories Below)

Source 1 - New Study Finds Concerning Evidence of COVID-19 'Vaccine' Shedding

Courageous Discourse™ with Dr. Peter McCullough & John Leake

New Study Finds Concerning Evidence of COVID-19 'Vaccine' Shedding

by Nicolas Hulscher, MPH…

Read more

17 hours ago · 148 likes · 39 comments · Nicolas Hulscher, MPH

Source 2 - Newly Published Study Shows Shedding Of Covid mRNA Vaccine Products

Pierre Kory’s Medical Musings

Newly Published Study Shows Shedding Of Covid mRNA Vaccine Products

As many of my readers know, about a year ago I spent months researching and writing on the topic of “shedding” of gene therapy medicinal products (GTMP), a class of therapies which the Covid vaccines are categorized under. That effort was first inspired by patients reporting to me and my partner…

Read more

13 hours ago · 104 likes · 31 comments · Pierre Kory, MD, MPA

#9 - Elon Musk Considering Giving Reform UK $100 Million To Help Farage Become Prime Minister: Report

The Telegraph and others are reporting that X owner Elon Musk is mulling heavily investing in Reform UK, the political party headed by Nigel Farage in order to help him compete with the two establishment parties in Britain.

“Elon Musk is reportedly considering giving Reform up to $100 million, or around £79 million, after cementing a friendship with Farage at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida,” the outlet notes.

Read More: https://modernity.news/2024/12/09/elon-considering-giving-reform-uk-100-million-to-help-farage-become-prime-minister-report/

#8 - Speaker Mike Johnson Says He Supports Defunding Planned Parenthood

“Planned Parenthood and PBS are in congressional control. Are you planning to axe both of those?” Fox News host Martha MacCallum asked Johnson.

“I would like to. That’s for sure,” Johnson replied.

Read More: https://www.infowars.com/posts/speaker-mike-johnson-says-he-supports-defunding-planned-parenthood-i-would-like-to/

#7 - UN Deploys Investigators as Mysterious "Disease X" Continues to Spread

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, international health officials have been deployed to help stave the spread of a mysterious respiratory disease.

Dubbed “Disease X,” DRC health authorities have already recorded 406 total cases and 31 deaths, and the disease is disproportionately affecting young children.

Read More: https://futurism.com/neoscope/un-team-disease-x-congo

#6 - NYPD Identifies 'Strong Person Of Interest' In United Healthcare CEO Murder Case

While you’re here, don’t forget to subscribe to this page for more daily news roundups.Subscribe

#5 - US Military Begins Launching Strikes as Assad Flees Syria

#4 - Joe Biden Voted as Worst President in Modern History

#3 - Rand Paul Warns Musk & Ramaswamy About The Swamp’s Upcoming DOGE Dodge

#2 - Ex-Secret Service Agent Warns of Major Attack on Trump Before Inauguration

#1 - Judicial Bombshell: Federal Judge Forces FDA to Release Over a Million Pages of Pfizer’s COVID-19 Trial Documents They Wanted to Keep Hidden for 75 Years

BONUS #1 - Stephen A. Smith Delivers Unexpected Knockout Blow to Joe Biden

BONUS #2 - Alarming Levels of DNA Contamination Found in COVID Vaccines

BONUS #3 - How to Get Ivermectin, Z-Pak and More

BONUS #4 - Fed-Up Liberal ERUPTS on Democratic Party in Epic Rant

BONUS #5 - The Shocking Truth About Skin Cancer: What You’re Not Being Told About the Sun