COVID-19 Pandemic (Coronavirus)

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FlyBoy718

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saturn7 said:
First fully vaccinated flight.

Will Health Passports be the nu wave?

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That "immunocapital "at work.:wow:Funny story. I randomly came across a new job opportunity. At first I was geeked:blessed:But then I read part of the pre-employment screening involved a drug test. Totally unprepared, I ran into the closest GNC and told breh "while I don't expect any miracles, what cleanse would you recommend?":birdman:He said the best-selling cleanse was a bottle called Eliminex so I dropped damn near $100 only to get back to the crib and find out the test was gonna be a hair follicle test:lupe:Due to the fact the test was in six days, I resigned myself to the fact that I didn't stand a chance at passing considering I'd been puffing bud on the regular for months now. However, I decided to still go through with the drug test. A week later, I receive an email congratulating me on passing the background and drug screening along with my job offer.:mjgrin:This begs the question: any brehs come across any information related to Covid vaccines influencing drug tests? I've been fully vaccinated for two months now. I can't think of any other reason I passed this test. Shiiiittt it might be time to re-up:smoker::smoker::myman:
 
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Yahoo is now a part of Verizon Media

The dramatic rise in UK cases of a variant first discovered in India could undermine the country’s roadmap for reopening, scientists are cautioning.

The variant, called B.1.617.2, is one of three closely related variants that were initially detected in India. Public Health England designated it a “variant of concern” on Friday, acknowledging it appears to be at least as transmissible as the dominant so-called Kent variant in the UK. It is unclear if and to what extent B.1.617.2 can reduce vaccine effectiveness.

Prof Christina Pagel, director of the clinical operational research unit at University College London and a member of the Independent Sage group of experts, speaking in a personal capacity said the rise in B.1.617.2 cases was concerning enough to delay the next stage of the roadmap scheduled for Monday, when a range of restrictions are to be lifted.

Watch: WHO classifies India variant as being of global concern


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According to the Covid-19 genomics UK consortium database – which may include duplicates and does not record whether sequences of the variants are linked to travel – for sequences up to 7 May, there have so far been 1,393 instances of B.1.617.2, making it the second most common variant in the UK.

Meanwhile, Wellcome Sanger Institute’s Covid-19 genomic surveillance data – which excludes recent travellers and surge testing specimens – suggests that about 6.1% of Covid genomes in England sequenced in the four weeks to 24 April can be attributed to B.1.617.2.

While the Kent variant is decreasing or stabilising, B.1.617.2 is flourishing. In some parts of the country, such as Bolton and Blackburn the variant accounts for over 50% of cases. Andy Burnham, the mayor for Greater Manchester, has said the Joint Committee for Vaccines and Immunisations is considering a request to vaccinate all over-16s in Bolton in response to the rising infection rate.

Pagel pointed out that, while B.1.617.2 numbers are not currently that big, they are doubling every week – and this is all within the space of three weeks.

“We’ve done this so many times – waited until things got really bad before we realised we should have acted several weeks ago,” she said. “So why don’t we actually act several weeks ago – which is now!”

On Thursday, leaked Public Health England documents seen by the Guardian showed that 48 clusters of B.1.617.2 had been identified, including those linked to secondary schools, care homes and religious gatherings.

Recent meeting minutes from the UK government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) showed the scientists expected that a variant that substantially escapes immunity or is highly transmissible (more so than the Kent variant) could lead to a wave of infections potentially larger than that seen in January 2021 in the absence of interventions.

“Given that so much of our plans for unlocking rely on the protection afforded by vaccination my main concern is that we do not yet know the extent to which many variants escape either naturally acquired or vaccine-induced immunity,” said Andrew Hayward, Sage member and director of the UCL Institute of Epidemiology and Health Care.

“We know that the vaccine is very effective against the B.1.1.7 [Kent] strain … but we also know that the vaccine is less effective at protecting against the variant originating in South Africa. For the variants arising in India … we have no real-world data and relatively little laboratory data to assess whether it is likely to evade immunity.”

Early data suggested there might be a slight decrease in the effectiveness of vaccines against B.1.617.2 – but not as much as against the variant discovered in South Africa, said Deborah Dunn-Walters, professor of immunology at the University of Surrey and chair of the British Society for Immunology’s Covid-19 and immunology taskforce, adding that she was feeling very cautious.

Martin McKee, a professor of European public health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said he and his colleagues are very worried.

“There are still many people, especially the young, those in disadvantaged areas, and those from ethnic minorities that are still unvaccinated. I am less concerned about meetings out of doors, as the risks there are low, but I will personally continue to avoid indoor meetings, such as restaurants, even though I am fully vaccinated.”
 
Stir Fry

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For Some Anti-Vaccine Advocates, Misinformation Is Part Of A Business


Sayer Ji is a 48-year-old proponent of what he calls natural medicine.

"My parents didn't know about natural medicine, so it really wasn't until I was 17 that I learned some basic principles of nutrition and self care," he told attendees at a recent virtual conference. "I was liberated from needing pharmaceutical medicines."

Ji was also there promoting his website, full of natural remedies and reams of anti-vaccine misinformation. He sells subscriptions for anywhere from $75 to $850 a year.

He is one of many anti-vaccine advocates with a business on the side. They promote false claims about the dangers vaccines pose, while selling treatments, supplementals or other services. Their potential market is the roughly 20% of Americans say they do not want to get vaccinated against the coronavirus, according to recent polling.

Health experts worry that the misinformation being spread is doing real damage. Without sufficient vaccination, communities could see a resurgence of the virus, particularly in the coming fall and winter months.

Ji has spent years pushing scientifically disproven views about vaccines and other conventional medical treatments, but the coronavirus pandemic gave him and others in the anti-vaccine community a new set of talking points. "This is the new medical apartheid, this is the new biosegregation that they want to roll out across the world," he warned of the vaccination campaigns during a lengthy Facebook video posted earlier this year.

is believed to bring in millions each year through his companies, which sell an array of branded natural supplements, beauty products and even pet supplies. In a written statement to NPR Mercola's company said he "rejects your biased accusation of promoting misinformation."


Separately, in an interview with NPR, Sayer Ji denied that his website was a major source of income.

"I mean I'm a published author, so I encourage people listening to buy my book if they're interested. How about that. So there it is, I've just promoted something, I'm a shill for the anti-vax industry," he said.

"Ultimately, my point though is that I work for a living, and I always have very hard."

He says his primary motive is to provide information to anyone interested in reading it.

Promoting products is not always a cynical move, says Kolina Koltai, a researcher who studies the anti-vaccine movement at the University of Washington. She believes that many are sincere in their beliefs about vaccines.

"If you really want to make that your life's mission, you need to make income somehow," she says. "We live in this capitalist society."

Regardless of motivation, she believes that money is a major part of a feedback loop that continues to drive vaccine misinformation on social media. The extended public health crisis has created a marketing opportunity that "just gives you more and more followers and more and more money."

Ahmed adds that while the anti-vaccine community's self-made personalities resemble others who have proliferated in the age of social media influencers, the potential damage they can cause is real. "Someone who's promoting lipstick isn't going to lead to us not being able to contain a pandemic that's already taken half-a-million lives," he says.

But the crisis is also bringing more scrutiny to anti-vaccine promoters. Sayer Ji's Instagram account was suspended in April after he repeatedly posted misleading and false information. Other anti-vaccine advocates have toned down their rhetoric on large platforms like Facebook. Koltai says losing these accounts could pose a threat to their livelihoods.

"When they get kicked off of their social media platforms I do think they take a major hit to their business models," she says.

On May 4, Joseph Mercola announced that he would remove all information on COVID-19 from his website. In a lengthy post, he cited threats against him as the reason, rather than business or legal considerations. As of May 10, many posts about COVID-19 still appeared on the site.

For his part, Ji says the biggest hit to his web traffic actually came before the pandemic, in 2019, when Google changed its search algorithms to hide anti-vaccine sites like his.

And he says he doesn't worry much about the financial implications of getting kicked off social media sites either.

"Social media deplatforming? Give me a break," he says. "We have hundreds of thousands and millions of followers out there. In part because we do a really good job of providing information that people want."

His company's Facebook account continues to promote vaccine misinformation to half-a-million followers. And lately he has added a big red stamp to it that reads "censored."
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