A Concerned Scientist @BE@qoto.org

🇪🇸 Spain: A new wave of COVID-19 infections is beginning to be noticed in hospitals in Spain.

"According to data from the Acute Respiratory Infection Surveillance System released by the Carlos III Health Institute, hospitalizations due to covid-19 have quadrupled in two weeks, mainly affecting people between 65 and 79 years old."

"In communities like Madrid, infections have skyrocketed in patients aged 60 or over, increasing by 60%."

#COVID19 #Spain #COVIDisNotOver @auscovid19

Source: https://bilbaohiria.com/en/bizkaia/el-repunte-covid-es-la-variante-omicron/

May 20, 2024- "A large body of work now supports that months or years after acute SARS-CoV-2 infection, evidence of persistent viral antigens -- spike and nucleocapsid -- and viral RNA are detected in various tissues in people, based on autopsy and biopsy studies," observed Akiko Iwasaki, PhD, of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.” - https://www.medpagetoday.com/neurology/longcovid/110225

When Trump openly and repeatedly exclaims that migrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” or shares a video calling for a “unified Reich,” he is literally echoing the language of Hitler.

Trump is not a “populist.” He’s not a “strongman.” He is a fascist.

Use the word.

In a place with a history of hate, an unlikely fight against GOP extremism

COEUR D’ALENE, Idaho
— Locals prefer not to talk about the hate that took root here a generation ago, when the Aryan Nations and other militants built a white supremacist paradise among the tall pines and crystal lakes of North Idaho.


Community activists, backed by national civil rights groups, bankrupted the neo-Nazis in court and eventually forced them to move,

a hard-fought triumph memorialized in scenes from 2001 of a backhoe smashing through a giant swastika at the former Aryan compound just outside of Coeur d’Alene, the biggest city in this part of the state.


For much of the two decades since, civic leaders have focused on moving beyond the image of North Idaho as a white-power fiefdom.

They steered attention instead to emerald golf courses and gleaming lakeside resorts where celebrities such as Kim Kardashian sip huckleberry cocktails.


Now, however, North Idaho residents are confronting that history head-on as a new movement builds against far-right extremism.


This time, activists say, the threat is no longer on the fringes of society, dressed in Nazi garb at a hideout in the woods.

Instead, they see it in the leadership of the local Republican Party, which has mirrored the lurch to the right of the national conservative movement during the Trump era on matters of race, religion and sexuality.

The bigotry of the past, they say, now has mainstream political cover.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/05/20/idaho-extremism-republicans-primary/

Evil has only ever had to make good people slow. All theft is conducted in the time it takes the righteous to act. The crime is the response time.

The fastest media the world has ever known, constructed to to make the soul of humanity late to the party.

fucking hell, the PIP assessment (disability benefit) is actually as demeaning as I was led to believe.

If you really think that it's important to have to describe, in the details, the step-by-step process of going to the toilet, in order to see if you qualify, then you've never been in a position where you've had to describe, in the details, the step-by-step process of going to the toilet to a young lady 20 or more years your junior.

For International Tea Day, my Green Tea Chemistry print. This linocut illustrates green tea and its chemistry. There's a tea pot, two cups of tea and a tea plant (Camellia sinensis) on a tray, and in the steam, you can see some of the organic chemicals found in green tea. Up to 27% of the composition of green tea can be a member of the flavonoids called catechins like the molecule illustrated on the right. 🧵1/n
⁠
#tea #greenTea #chemistry #linocut #sciart #printmaking #InternationalTeaDay

Scientists have managed to generate a full genetic sequence of #H5N1 #birdflu from store-bought milk, suggesting commercial milk products could be a way to monitor the outbreak in cows, given the lack of cooperation from dairy farmers. https://www.statnews.com/2024/05/21/bird-flu-virus-spread-scientists-monitor-h5n1-in-store-bought-milk/

When people tell me they read one of my books and found it “quite good”, I like to assume they’re from the US where “quite” apparently means “very” 😊

As opposed to the UK/Aus, where “quite good” is just damning with faint praise.

Unless you say it was “really quite good”. *That’s* when you mean “very good”.

If you say “quite good, really”, that means you’re surprised it was any good.

And if you say “Oh, I say, that is quite, *quite* remarkable”, you’re an 18th-century Earl confronted by a tempestuous highland beauty who is tossing her raven-black locks and flashing her sapphire-blue eyes at you because you’re enclosing her commons 😉

#WritingCommunity #linguistics #quite

You block off the infection from those that never need have it, and reduce the frequency of infection in those that might potentially become immune if not overawed by huge numbers of virions and multiple infections, and you slow the viral mutations rate in the process, and you allow satellite populations to exist without infection if at all possible.

You always do that, there's never an excuse to do otherwise, that never changes.

Being laggy achieves none of this.

Re: the last boost

Is someone working on a global low/no-covid specific dating app?

Because if god willin, there is ever a world where it's safe for me to leave the house again, I would really like to meet people who are:

- systems thinkers
- in solidarity with those who have less economic power
- fighting eugenics and ableism
- able to resist peer pressure
- resolved in their convictions
- thinking for the long term

Truly, I can think of nothing sexier and I mean that with my whole heart.

Caitlin Rivers is an epidemiologist who specializes in outbreak science. She advocated for the creation of a National Center for Epidemic Forecasting, and I have followed her for some time for her insights into Public Health.

She is about to release a book to show the influence of Public Health and tout some of its unsung heroes. I highly recommend getting the book either hardcover or ebook:

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/704843/crisis-averted-by-caitlin-rivers-phd/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

or follow her on Substack:
https://caitlinrivers.substack.com

#PublicHealth

People who made their own efforts to be wise about pandemic disease.

Just like to say, I admire your character and instincts. You are fine specimens of humanity. Even those of us who are quite broken.

You are dudes and dudettes who chose to do the right thing, often without expertise or training. You are, in a crazy world, standalone examples of excellence, awareness, conscience. I appreciate you.

Laypeople doing the right thing when corporations, govts and "peers" will not.

I salute you.

Here we go again. Singapore CoViD19 cases almost double leading hospitals to cancel most elective procedures to free up bed capacity:

The #SARSCoV2🦠 pandemic is not even close to being over.

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/singapore-covid-19-cases-nearly-double-hospital-capacity-vaccination-4345961?cid=internal_sharetool_ipad_18052024_cna

“As a physician I am deeply concerned about North Carolina’s potential total ban on mask-wearing. It’s disturbing to think immunocompromised and cancer patients could be deemed criminals for following medical advice aimed at safeguarding their health,” [Jerome] Adams said in one post.

https://www.northcarolinahealthnews.org/2024/05/20/doctors-call-public-mask-ban-unconscionable-political-point-making/

#PublicHealth #covid #masks #NorthCarolina #Gaza

Today is a nonstop torrent of abusive acts by Big Tech.

In this one, it looks like Google effectively paid off the feds to avoid a jury trial in the antitrust case. https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/google-cuts-mystery-check-us-bid-sidestep-jury-trial-2024-05-20/

Revenue from so-called millionaires tax tops state projections | Boston Globe
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/05/20/metro/millionaires-tax-massachusetts-generated-18-billion/

My in-laws still talk about "being distanced from others" at indoor events as if it was protecting them. Aerosols don't care about distance. When I point that out I get push back. PH is such a failure. 🤬

Not a single, solitary soul on:

Reddit
Xitter
Vancouver Canucks Subreddit
Canucks Discord

...connecting Brock Boeser's clots to a potential instigation by #COVID19.

Several posts are by alleged doctors and describe the age old canard / test answer that a long transatlantic flight can be associated with it, & they discuss guidelines, Well's Criteria, etc.

How many of the doctors posting this information are in this SAME camp that are unaware of COVID's association with coagulopathy?

My expectation: all of them are either unaware or have heard about this but quietly erase it by not broaching the subject, cuz, then they'd have to face how ableist the medical establishment is.

As someone who randomly did have clots before 2020, if there isn't a genetic cause, and rheumatologic causes are ruled out, it's incredibly rare for a professional athlete to develop a clotting disorder.

Or, it was, before the year 2020.

https://zeroes.ca/@hannu_ikonen/112470668178581314

#Coagulopathy #COVID19 #Disability #hockey #hnom #Canucks #ableism

Oh just fabulous. 🙄 AI-generated personality tests in job applications have arrived. Just helped a library guest apply for a job and the test was incomprehensible from beginning to end. Of course the local outfit had outsourced the application process to a third party company, who had outsourced the personalty/morality tests to yet ANOTHER company. This ordeal was for a job as a JANITOR.
#library #librarian #AI @librarians