Dr Anthony Fauci warns United States Congress of ‘real risk’ of outbreak if states reopen too soon – ABC News

Source: Dr Anthony Fauci warns United States Congress of ‘real risk’ of outbreak if states reopen too soon – ABC News

Anti-Vaxxers Have a Dangerous Theory Called “Natural Immunity.” Now It’s Going Mainstream

All the hateful and dangerous ideas pushed are being pushed people who hope/expect to profit from selling false ideas and expect that no one, including themselves or anyone they love, will have pay any consequences by dying from their advice.

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On April 26, two California physicians posted a video on YouTube about what they said was a potentially deadly side effect of social distancing: Our immune systems will get weaker because of lack of exposure to germs. They weren’t the only ones to make this argument. In a May 4 video, a controversial and outspoken Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai—an engineer who claims to have invented email—also embraces this idea. In a May 3 YouTube video, he announced, “Viruses do not harm or kill us.” Instead, he argues, “Your body is an amazing being—it knows how to take care of itself, and that’s how we get immune health. But these politicians, the CDC and the NIH—they’re not talking about any of this. Shame on them, it’s criminal.” An article from the Minnesota-based conservative think tank the Charlemagne Institute titled “COVID-19 Lockdowns May Destroy Our Immune Systems” is currently making the rounds, too.

“In order for our immune systems to be harmed by social distancing, we would have to live in sterile settings for a long time in which no bacteria or germs could affect us.”

It’s not hard to see why this content took off. The idea—or the basic contours of it, at least—has some elements of truth. Immunologists have shown that, in general, we strengthen our immune systems by exposing them to pathogens. In the last few decades, researchers have amassed evidence to suggest that some chronic conditions that are common in the developed world but rare in poorer countries—including asthma, allergies, and autoimmune illnesses like Crohn’s disease—could be the result of an environment that doesn’t have enough germs, causing the immune system to go haywire.

But the coronavirus is not a chronic immune condition; it’s a novel virus that attacks the body’s systems in ways not yet completely understood. Experts roundly reject the idea that social distancing will dangerously weaken the immune system. “A broad-based immunity weakening because of social distancing? Definitely not,” said Saad Omer, a Yale University epidemiologist and infectious disease specialist. Jennifer Reich, a sociologist who studies the spread of misinformation about health, agreed. “In order for our immune systems to be harmed by social distancing, we would have to live in sterile settings for a long time in which no bacteria or germs could affect us,” she wrote to me in an email.

But the experts I talked to weren’t at all surprised to see these discredited ideas making the rounds; they’ve seen them before in the anti-vaccination and extreme holistic medicine communities. This is the coronavirus edition of their pervasive belief in “natural immunity.” Rupali Limaye, a Johns Hopkins epidemiologist who has studied the movement against mandatory vaccines, told me, “We have heard from those that are concerned about vaccines the argument that they prefer to allow their immune system to be naturally exposed to a specific pathogen to gain immunity,” she wrote to me in an email. “It’s a spinoff of previous theories we’ve seen,” concurred Omer, who has written extensively about anti-vaccination groups. “This is all the usual stuff.”

Indeed, anti-vaccination groups on Facebook have referenced the idea constantly in recent posts. One widely shared meme lists, “Things that suppress our immune systems: Masks, gloves, no sun, fear, vaccines, washing hands with synthetic soaps.” In response to an article about the decline in childhood vaccination rates as a result of coronavirus, one member of the group Michigan for Vaccine Choice commented, “God, I would love for my kids to catch chicken pox, my body could use a little exposure to keep the shingles away lol plus you know them developing actual immunity would be nice.” In recent weeks, in response to calls for social distancing, several of the groups posted a 2016 New York Post article titled, “We Need to Stop Sanitizing Everything and Let Bacteria Back Into Our Lives.”

Meanwhile, alternative medicine groups promote the idea that eating the right foods or taking certain vitamins and supplements will strengthen the immune system so that it can successfully fight off coronavirus. “Like any virus, coronavirus is no match for someone with a strong immune system,” writes Sally Fallon Morell on a blog affiliated with the holistic nutrition group the Weston A. Price Foundation. Coconut oil, bone broth, and raw milk are among the foods she recommends to bolster the immune system against coronavirus. Just to be clear: This idea is patently false; humanity has never seen the virus before, therefore our immune systems have no natural defenses against it.

“This is not a debate society—there are actual consequences here. People are dying in hospitals alone.”

Given the holistic community and anti-vaccination groups’ fixations on “natural immunity,” it’s not surprising that the belief that we can end the pandemic through “herd immunity”—deliberately exposing everyone to the virus until we develop enough immunity that it dies out on its own—has gained traction. “The sooner well, able-bodied people get back to work, the sooner natural immunity will occur and we will have a fighting chance against the virus,” reads one post on Indiana Coalition for Vaccine Choice. An April 22 post on VaxChoiceNH says, “We know from decades of medical science that infection itself allows people to generate an immune response—antibodies—so that the infection is controlled throughout the population by ‘herd immunity.’”

Infectious disease experts all agree that the “herd immunity” approach would be catastrophic—millions of Americans would die in the process. It would be one thing if it were just fringe groups promoting this dangerous idea. But there are signs that this dangerous and flawed line of thinking is making its way into the mainstream. Over the past few months, Omer has watched in horror as the musings from armchair epidemiologists have gone viral on social media. He pointed to several influential op-eds—some of them by physicians in fields having nothing to do with infectious disease or epidemiology—promoting the herd immunity approach. In a sprawling March 20 New York Times op-ed, David Katz, a Yale preventive medicine specialist who focuses on diet, wrote that this approach could allow us to “return to life as usual and perhaps prevent vast segments of the economy from collapsing. Healthy children could return to school and healthy adults go back to their jobs.” When Omer read the piece, he was appalled. “These people are putting forth these theories without checking with people whose job this is, who specialize in it,” he told me. “This is not a debate society—there are actual consequences here. People are dying in hospitals alone.”

Omer isn’t the only expert concerned that misguided ideas about the immune system will flow from the fringe into the popular imagination. Devin Burghart, vice president of the anti-white-nationalism think tank the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, has been studying the nascent co-mingling between the anti-vaccination community and groups that stage coronavirus shutdown protests. He has noticed that the protest groups have begun to repeat the “natural immunity” talking points, and that both groups have embraced the herd immunity approach. “These people are really gaining a lot of traction, and that is worrisome,” he says. “We worry about these ideas making it into the mainstream.” 

Omer cautions that if these ideas take hold, they could persist even after the coronavirus pandemic dies down, noting, “Those of us in this field will be cleaning up these messes for years to come.”

S. 3672: A bill to provide States and Indian Tribes with flexibility in administering the temporary assistance for needy families program due to the public health emergency with respect to the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19), to make emergency grants to S

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Introduced: Sponsor: Sen. Ron Wyden [D-OR]

This bill was referred to the Senate Committee on Finance which will consider it before sending it to the Senate floor for consideration.

Sen. Ron Wyden [D-OR] is the ranking member of the committee.

Europe must prepare for US exit from vital Russia treaty, former Nato generals warn | World news | The Guardian

if the US does leave the treaty, the statement argues its Nato allies should stay in the agreement, noting that European states perform 55% of the flights and are the subject of nearly 59% of Russian overflights. European states do not have the satellite-surveillance capacity of the US, so are particularly reliant on Open Skies flights, which can be carried out under cloud cover.

It calls for the remaining parties to the treaty to meet within two months of a US withdrawal to discuss how the agreement would function without Washington. That would involve limits on what information Nato members could share with the US.

“It’s important for western European governments, to be prepared for this,” said Andreas Persbo, ELN research director. “For them this treaty has some value, and it would be in their interest to continue flying over Russia, and Russia would like to continue to overfly western Europe. The question is can that be maintained without Russia exacting too heavy a price from western governments.”

Source: Europe must prepare for US exit from vital Russia treaty, former Nato generals warn | World news | The Guardian

A New Economic Solution — In Saner Thought

During this time of the pandemic and the loss of jobs the American people are suffering and the economic solutions of Donald the Orange have helped NO one but the already rich….. Has anyone asked why this pandemic is harder on the economy than the 1918 pandemic which was far deadlier? “Congress [has] a responsibility […]

via A New Economic Solution — In Saner Thought

Indonesia’s ‘rice ATMs’ provide staple amid coronavirus crunch

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DEPOK, INDONESIA (REUTERS) – The coronavirus pandemic has left millions of Indonesians struggling to make ends meet. Now the authorities are rolling out “rice ATMs” in a bid to ensure greater access for those in need to the essential Asian staple.

This month, Ms Linda Syafri, a 28-year-old expectant mother was among the many who lined up in masks at a military base in Depok, on the outskirts of the capital Jakarta, for their 1.5kg rice ration.

“I was laid off by my company last week and my husband was laid off too without severance pay,” said Ms Syafri. “Although it (the rice subsidy) is not that much, it is very helpful in this situation.”

The rice dispensary, one of 10 in and around Jakarta, is part of a government initiative to assist those worst affected by the coronavirus outbreak, which has caused millions to lose their jobs in Southeast Asia’s largest economy.

Stacked with kilos of good-quality rice and operated by magnetic cards, the tall automated teller machines look much like normal cashpoints, only that they pump out grain instead of banknotes.

“Each day we prepare 1.5 tonnes (of rice) for around 1,000 residents,” said Mr Ibrahim, an army official supervising distribution who uses one name like many Indonesians. “We will continue doing it every day, without rest, even on weekends, we will distribute non-stop.”

Indonesia announced a US$25 billion (S$35.5 billion) stimulus package in March in response to the Covid-19 outbreak, pledging to provide social welfare for up to 10 million households, including food assistance and electricity tariff discounts.

In the sprawling developing nation where millions work in the informal sector, Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati told parliament last week the coronavirus had set efforts to eradicate poverty back a decade.

Residents eligible for the rice ration include daily wage earners, the unemployed, those who do not own a house and people who live below the poverty line.

More than 14,000 Indonesians have contracted the coronavirus since early March, with 991 killed by the disease, the highest death toll in East Asia outside China.

Despite a lack of evidence the government has flattened the Covid-19 curve, or slowed the rate of new infections, the administration of President Joko Widodo is eager to resume economic activity and ease social restrictions – a move critics have described as premature.

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Humans and Neanderthals ‘co-existed in Europe for far longer than thought’

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Cave objects suggest modern humans and Neanderthals shared continent for several thousand years

Modern humans were present in Europe at least 46,000 years ago, according to new research on objects found in Bulgaria, meaning they overlapped with Neanderthals for far longer than previously thought.

Researchers say remains and tools found at a cave called Bacho Kiro reveal that modern humans and Neanderthals were present at the same time in Europe for several thousand years, giving them ample time for biological and cultural interaction.

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