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Finding COVID’s Origins Is a Moral Imperative — WHO’s Tedros
Discovering the origins of COVID-19 is a moral imperative and all hypotheses must be explored, the head of the World Health Organization said, in the clearest indication yet that the U.N. body remains committed to finding how the virus arose.
A U.S. agency was reported by the Wall Street Journal to have assessed the pandemic had likely been caused by an unintended Chinese laboratory leak, raising pressure on the WHO to come up with answers. Beijing denies the assessment which could soon become public after the U.S. House of Representatives voted this week to declassify it.
In 2021, a WHO-led team spent weeks in and around Wuhan, China where the first human cases were reported and said in a joint report that the virus had probably been transmitted from bats to humans through another animal, but further research was needed. China has said no more visits are needed.
Since then, the WHO has set up a scientific advisory group on dangerous pathogens but it has not yet reached any conclusions on how the pandemic began, saying key pieces of data are missing.
Japan Reports First Death Directly Linked to COVID Vaccine
A health ministry panel said Friday that a causal link between the November death of a 42-year-old woman and the COVID-19 vaccine shot preceding it “cannot be denied” — the first acknowledgment of such a link among nearly 2,000 reports so far of deaths following COVID-19 vaccinations in Japan.
The woman received a Pfizer shot targeting the Omicron variant on Nov. 5 at a mass vaccination center. She felt sick seven minutes later, and her breathing stopped after about 15 minutes. Initially suspected to be having an anaphylactic shock, a doctor at the center performed CPR and tried to administer an adrenaline shot, but could not because IV access could not be obtained, according to a report submitted to the vaccine side effects committee under the ministry’s Health Sciences Council.
The woman was taken to a hospital but died of acute heart failure an hour and 40 minutes after receiving the COVID-19 shot. A postmortem CT scan showed that she had experienced acute pulmonary edema, a sudden buildup of fluid in the lungs, the report said.
Rand Paul: U.S. Government as ‘Obstructionist’ as China Over COVID Lab Leak
“We complain that the Chinese government is opaque and obstructionist — and that’s true,” Sen. Rand Paul told The Post. “But we’re getting the same sort of difficulties from our government.”
Since COVID-19 emerged in early 2020, Paul has spearheaded a battle to hold America’s public health apparatus to account. He’s also clashed repeatedly and passionately with recently-retired National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Dr. Anthony Fauci.
A few questions have been central to their standoff: Did COVID-19 leak from a lab in Wuhan? And did Fauci and the American medical establishment help fund dangerous gain-of-function research that caused the pandemic?
Paul said too much crucial information still remains under lock and key, leaving the American people in the dark about COVID-19’s origins. “The over-classification problem is stymying the investigation,” he added. “Our government has reams of classified material that all point towards the COVID virus originating in the lab in Wuhan.”
CDC, FDA Warn Florida Surgeon General Over His COVID Vaccine Guidance
Two of the United States’ top health agencies have sent a letter to the surgeon general of Florida, accusing him of misleading the public on COVID-19 vaccine side effects. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published the joint letter to Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo on Friday.
In March 2022, Ladapo recommended that certain segments of the population forgo the COVID-19 vaccine due to possible side effects that he believed could outweigh the health benefits.
Analysis conducted by the Department of Health in Florida showed an “84% increase in the relative incidence of cardiac-related death among males, 18 to 39 years old within 28 days following the mRNA vaccination.”
In their Friday letter, the CDC and FDA rejected this assertion.
COVID Could Stem From Risky Experiments at Chinese Lab: Fauci
COVID-19 could have been the result of risky experiments at a laboratory in China, Dr. Anthony Fauci acknowledged in an interview over the weekend.
“A lab leak could be that someone was out in the wild maybe looking for different types of viruses in bats, got infected, went into a lab, and was being studied in a lab, and then came out of the lab,” said Fauci, the former director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). “The other possibility is someone takes a virus from the environment that doesn’t actually spread very well in humans, and manipulates it a bit, and accidentally it escapes or accidentally infects someone and then you get an outbreak.”
The first COVID-19 cases were detected in 2019 in Wuhan, China, where a high-level laboratory is located. Scientists at the lab were funded in part by the NIAID.
‘Profiteering’ of COVID Pandemic Must Never Be Repeated, World Figures Warn
The Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, the former first lady of South Africa and Mozambique Graça Machel and former UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon are among nearly 200 signatories to a letter calling on governments to “never again” allow “profiteering and nationalism” to come before the needs of humanity, in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
In a scathing open letter, published on March 11, current and former presidents and ministers, Nobel laureates, faith leaders, heads of civil society organizations and health experts say COVID-19 vaccines and treatments had been developed with public funding but that pharmaceutical companies had exploited them to “fuel extraordinary profits.”
Instead of distributing vaccines, tests and treatments based on need, companies sold doses to the “richest countries with the deepest pockets,” the letter says.
What People With ‘Super Immunity’ Can Teach Us About COVID and Other Viruses
Three years into the pandemic, a select group of people have achieved something some once thought impossible: They have never tested positive for COVID. Scientists around the world are searching for the genetic reasons these people have dodged COVID — despite repeated exposure to the virus.
Were they born with a form of super immunity? What’s behind their Houdini-like success at escaping infection? “Mostly luck,” said Adam Zimmerman, 40, of Rockville, Maryland, laughing. Neither Zimmerman nor his wife and children have tested positive for COVID.
Even though millions of people have been vaccinated and followed precautions similar to the Zimmermans, they still got sick from COVID, either because of breakthrough infections or waning immunity.
Yet scientists believe it is possible that some people have never been infected because they entered the pandemic equipped with a kind of biological armor against the virus that causes COVID. Now they want to unravel the mysteries hidden in the immune systems of true “COVID dodgers.”
The Next Stage of COVID Is Starting Now
The Atlantic via MSN reported:
To be a newborn in the year 2023 — and, almost certainly, every year that follows — means emerging into a world where the coronavirus is ubiquitous. Babies might not meet the virus in the first week or month of life, but soon enough, SARS-CoV-2 will find them.
Three years into the coronavirus pandemic, these babies are on the leading edge of a generational turnover that will define the rest of our relationship with SARS-CoV-2. They and their slightly older peers are slated to be the first humans who may still be alive when COVID-19 truly hits a new turning point: when almost everyone on Earth has acquired a degree of immunity to the virus as a very young child.
Today’s status quo may be more of a layover than a final destination in our journey toward COVID’s final form. Against SARS-CoV-2, most little kids have fared reasonably well. And as more babies have been born into a SARS-CoV-2-ridden world, the average age of first exposure to this coronavirus has been steadily dropping — a trend that could continue to massage COVID-19 into a milder disease. Eventually, the expectation is that the illness will reach a stable nadir, at which point it may truly be “another common cold,” says Rustom Antia, an infectious-disease modeler at Emory.
For Some Long COVID Patients, Acupuncture and Other Eastern Remedies Bring Relief That Western Medicines Have Not
Frustrated by a lack of results from Western medicine, some long COVID patients have turned to Eastern alternatives. Many say acupuncture, in particular, has provided relief.
Lauren Nichols, a Massachusetts resident who got COVID in March 2020, estimated that over two years she had tried around 30 different pharmaceuticals to ease her migraines, brain fog, fatigue, seizures, diarrhea and other lasting symptoms.
Eventually her physical limitations — and a lack of answers — became so overwhelming that she developed suicidal thoughts. But about three months after she started acupuncture in May 2022, Nichols said, “I could see the clouds starting to part.
Now, Nichols said, the migraines and most other symptoms have resolved themselves, thanks to a combination of alternative therapies.
