True freedom loving Merkins who see wearing masks during a pandemic as a horrendous violation of their rights should patronize this place where all the precious freedoms of everyone are respected.
Mano Singham
Just another Freethought Blogs site
True freedom loving Merkins who see wearing masks during a pandemic as a horrendous violation of their rights should patronize this place where all the precious freedoms of everyone are respected.
The US is temporarily halting giving this vaccine, pending further study, because of the potential danger of blood clots. Six women developed a rare form of blood clots after receiving this vaccine and one died.
The acting FDA chief, Janet Woodcock, said: “We’re recommending this pause while we work together to full understand these events.” The decision was taken in coordination with the CDC.
US health agencies have recommended states pause the administration of the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine, after reports of rare and severe blood clots emerged in six women. More than 6.8m doses have been administered nationally.
The concerns mirror those of drugs agencies in Europe and Australia over the AstraZeneca vaccine, which has not been authorized in the US. There have been no significant safety concerns raised about the two other vaccines that make up the majority of US supply, from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.
Woodcock said: “Right now, I’d like to stress these events appear to be extremely rare. However, Covid-19 vaccine safety is a top priority for the federal government. We take all reports of adverse events related to the vaccine very seriously.”
The FDA and CDC said in a joint statement: “People who have received the J&J vaccine who develop severe headache, abdominal pain, leg pain, or shortness of breath within three weeks after vaccination should contact their healthcare provider.”
He uses the George Floyd trial and the shooting this week of Daunte Wright to make some very sharp points about how police behavior will never change as long as they keep getting away with things like this. The resignations of the police officer who shot Wright and her police chief and the firing of one of the police officers who pepper sprayed and threatened Caron Nazario is perhaps a sign that the wall of immunity is showing at least some cracks.
Yesterday April 12th 1961 was the 60th anniversary of when Yuri Gagarin became the first person to orbit the Earth.
Over the course of 108 minutes, Vostok 1 traveled around the Earth once, reaching a maximum height of 203 miles (327 kilometers). The spacecraft carried 10 days’ worth of provisions in case the engines failed and Gagarin was required to wait for the orbit to naturally decay. But the supplies were unnecessary. Gagarin re-entered Earth’s atmosphere, managing to maintain consciousness as he experienced forces up to eight times the pull of gravity during his descent.
Vostok 1 had no engines to slow its re-entry and no way to land safely. About 4 miles (7 km) up, Gagarin ejected from the spacecraft and parachuted to Earth. In order for the mission to be counted as an official spaceflight, the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), the governing body for aerospace records, had determined that the pilot must land with the spacecraft. Soviet leaders indicated that Gagarin had touched down with the Vostok 1, and they did not reveal that he had ejected until 1971.
In the US, it is reported that we are almost at the point where there is going to be a surplus of vaccines. Now that vaccine programs are underway all over the world, the issue of inequality of access has started to loom large, with accusations that wealthy countries are hogging most of the supplies.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has criticised what it describes as a “shocking imbalance” in the distribution of coronavirus vaccines between rich and poor countries.
The group’s chief said a target of seeing vaccination programmes under way in every country by Saturday would be missed.
The WHO has long called for fairer distribution of Covid-19 vaccines.
It is leading the Covax scheme which is designed to get jabs to poorer nations.
So far, more than 38 million doses have been delivered to around 100 countries under the scheme.
Covax hopes to deliver more than two billion doses to people in 190 countries in less than a year. In particular, it wants to ensure that 92 poorer countries will receive access to vaccines at the same time as wealthier countries.
“There remains a shocking imbalance in the global distribution of vaccines,” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a news conference on Friday.
“On average in high-income countries, almost one in four people have received a Covid-19 vaccine. In low-income countries, it’s one in more than 500,” he said.
…High-income countries currently hold a confirmed 4.6 billion doses, while low-middle income nations hold 670 million, according to research by the Duke Global Health Innovation Center.
The trial of the police officer accused of murdering George Floyd seems to have brought many people together in condemning his actions. But as this sketch from Saturday Night Live shows, there are differences in the way that Black and white people view the trial even as they both agree that the killing was murder.
Once again we have a case of police using unnecessary force on a driver of color. He is now suing the police department.
Army Lt. Caron Nazario filed suit against police officers Joe Gutierrez and Daniel Crocker last month, and video from the officers’ body cameras and Nazario’s cellphone has gone viral in recent days.
Nazario seeks $1 million plus punitive damages from the officers, saying they violated his constitutional rights.
Carl Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law, said the videos raise the question of whether the officers overreacted and used more force than necessary.
The videos “make it seem that Lt. Nazario has a persuasive case,” Tobias told USA TODAY.
The officers said in the police report that they stopped Nazario’s Chevrolet Tahoe because it didn’t have a rear license plate, although the report acknowledges the officers later noticed a temporary plate displayed in the back window.
The fact the Nazario was released at the scene and not charged and that the two police officers “threatened to destroy the lieutenant’s military career with “baseless” criminal charges if he reported them for misconduct” show that the police realized that they had gone too far.
You can see for yourself.
I am amazed the Nazario was able to speak so calmly while being threatened and humiliated by people pointing guns at his face.
I keep posting these because I feel that these cases must be widely publicized to build the case that the police in the US need serious reform and curtailment of their powers. We simply should not let these things pass and become seen as normal.
Debra Jo Hunter, a woman in Florida (of course) who deliberately went up to someone and coughed in her face during the early days of the pandemic, was sentenced last week to 29 days in jail. The woman she coughed on had recently had brain tumor surgery.
Duval County Court Judge James Ruth first heard testimony from Hunter’s husband, friends and family who said she has a “really huge heart” and is “broken-hearted” over how she coughed on cancer patient Heather Sprague. But after they spoke on behalf of Hunter, Sprague told the judge about the confrontation that happened only months after she underwent brain tumor surgery.
Sprague said she watched Hunter, 53, give at least 15 minutes of what she called “escalating bullying,” swearing and threats to Pier 1 staff about a broken item with Sprague’s children nearby. It was only when Sprague said she started shooting video in the final minute of the tirade that she was yelled at, then coughed on.
Here’s video of the incident.
I really doubt her family’s claim that she has a “really huge heart”. People like that do not berate shop assistants, give the double finger to strangers, and call them names. Also, deliberately coughing on someone is something that everyone would agree on is disgusting, similar to spitting on them.
There is something about the pandemic that has unhinged some people to the extent that they react so angrily. Hunter was with her two children. Doesn’t she care what kind of role model she is for them?
It appears that British TV, especially the BBC, decided to go to wall-to-wall coverage of Prince Philip’s death and viewers were not pleased, flooding them with complaints about it all being a bit much.
Viewers switched off their TVs in droves after broadcasters aired blanket coverage of Prince Philip’s death, audience figures revealed on Saturday, and the BBC received so many complaints it opened a dedicated complaints form on its website.
BBC One and BBC Two cleared their schedules of Friday night staples including EastEnders, Gardeners’ World and the final of MasterChef to simulcast pre-recorded tributes from the Duke of Edinburgh’s children.
TV viewers were not pleased. BBC One, which is traditionally the channel that Britons turn on at moments of national significance, was down 6% on the previous week, according to analysis of viewing figures by Deadline. For BBC Two the decision was disastrous – it lost two-thirds of its audience, with only an average of 340,000 people tuning in at any time between 7pm to 11pm. ITV suffered a similar drop after it ditched its Friday night schedule to broadcast tributes to the duke.
The death of a 99-year old man is hardly shocking news. This whole business of ‘official mourning’, where the media pretends that the entire nation is highly upset over the death of someone and is collectively mourning has always been a fiction, to be used as cudgel to beat one’s political opponents with. In reality, apart from close members of the dead person’s family, most people may feel some momentary pangs of sadness but then go on with their lives. They dislike being pressured to be feel something they do not feel.