Global monkeypox outbreak hits 10,000 cases | CIDRAP

Quest Diagnostics announce today it will become the third major commercial lab in the United States to test for monkeypox virus. The company announced that healthcare providers across the country should have access to the test in the first half of August.

With Quest, Labcorp, and Mayo Clinic all offering tests—as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)—the country should have the capacity to perform 60,000 tests weekly by the end of this month. Half of those tests will be performed by Quest.

“We commend the [Department of Health and Human Services] and CDC for spearheading public-private collaboration to mobilize response to the current monkeypox outbreak,” said Jay G. Wohlgemuth, MD, senior vice president, R&D, medical and chief medical officer, Quest Diagnostics in a press release. “Quest’s expertise in infectious disease testing, national scale and relationships with half the country’s physicians and health systems is a vital complement to the efforts of the CDC and other public health labs to combat the monkeypox outbreak in the United States.”

In related developments, Siga Technologies says it has received $28 million in orders for its antiviral for monkeypox. The drug, Tpoxx, is approved in Europe and the United Kingdom to fight monkeypox infections, and in the United States to fight smallpox.

Outbreak may be fueled by new clade

A phylogenomic analysis of available monkeypox virus genomes from the current outbreak reveals that a novel clade appears to have emerged in Europe in early March. That clade, coupled with dwindling previous immunity from smallpox vaccines, likely help the virus spread, the authors say.

In a new epidemiologic report on the outbreak in Spain, 85.8% of the case-patients who had available information said their likely route of transmission was intimate and prolonged contact during sex. Most patients also experienced an anogenital rash and swollen lymph nodes, and 61.1% of patients live in Madrid.

A total of 1,242 initial cases were in men, with 14 in women. The median age of case-patients was 37 years, and all but 1 of the case-patients were adults, the authors said.

Source: Global monkeypox outbreak hits 10,000 cases | CIDRAP

Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak: Tory leadership hopefuls accused of ‘hiding facts’ | openDemocracy

The full logs would reveal ministers’ calls, meetings and visits, and could give a crucial insight into who was lobbying Boris Johnson’s government while its members shaped the country’s response to COVID. More than 200,000 Brits have died after contracting the disease, meaning the UK has the seventh-worst death rate in the world.

Labour’s Emily Thornberry MP said of the refusals: “There is a culture of cover-up and deceit across the whole of this government that will not be ended simply by replacing Boris Johnson, and the attempts to hide basic facts about the meetings that ministers have held shows how deeply that culture is ingrained.

“Any leadership candidate promising a new approach to government needs to start by coming clean about their finances, their use of official resources, and the external organisations influencing their policies. Providing details of their ministerial meetings is the bare minimum we should expect.”

Source: Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak: Tory leadership hopefuls accused of ‘hiding facts’ | openDemocracy

Moara cu noroc

Spain… so beautiful

ore de drum

Cuenca, 2017

Poposesc în Spania profundă, în provincia Castilla La Mancha, ținutul bătătorit de rătăcirile deșarte ale lui don Quijote printre morile de vânt ale iluziilor. Printre ele ar trebui să fie și a mea.

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Mă las furată de frumusețea peisajelor, sălbatică și tulburătoare.

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Nu întâmplător desemnat capitala artei contemporane spaniole, cetatea numără zeci de spații metamorfozate în galerii de artă abstractă.

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Mă străduiesc să intru în cât mai multe, atât pentru opere, cât și pentru meștesugitele amenajări interioare.

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Unele au fost pe vremuri așezăminte monastice sau biserici.

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Acest destin l-a avut și o discretă mănăstire a Carmelitelor din secolul 17, azi muzeul de artă abstractă al fundației Antonio Perez.

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Mă socotesc pregătită să încep confruntarea cu o singură moară de vânt, cea a artei conceptuale.

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Am constatat de multe ori că operele de artă nonfigurativă au această capacitate neașteptată și nelimitată de a surprinde la nivel subliminal privitorul deja…

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Abortion Pills Will Soon Be Available On California Campuses | LAist

So far, none of the Cal State campuses offer medication abortions, and access within the UC system varies from campus to campus. Both university systems, however, say they are on track to implement a law passed in 2019 requiring their student health centers to provide access to the pills.

As many as 6,228 students could seek medication abortions on UC and Cal State campuses each year, once they are available, according to Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health, a research program at the University of California San Francisco.

Making medication abortions available on college campuses would likely free up appointments at clinics throughout the state that could then be sought by people living in areas of California where abortion access is limited or in other states where it is now illegal, multiple reproductive health experts and advocates told CalMatters.

Source: Abortion Pills Will Soon Be Available On California Campuses | LAist

In His Own Words … — Filosofa’s Word

In yesterday’s January 6th committee hearing Jamie Raskin noted … Sergeant Aquilino Gonell is an Army veteran who spent a year on active combat duty in the Iraq war and then 16 years on the Capitol force. Nothing he ever saw in combat in Iraq, he has said, prepared him for the insurrection where he […]

In His Own Words … — Filosofa’s Word

New Page on Grandma Marie and Grandpa Johnson

Context, Thought, and Learning: ShiraDest Offers Project Do Better

   If you’ve noticed a new page on the menu, it is because I have just created one to explain my background image, since I keep losing the post where I explained it, and also since I got a message over Ancestry from a professor at Howard University about my Grandpa Johnson being a war hero (pls see the page linked just above)!  I mention him and my great Grandma Marie often, so it seems fair to have a page about them.  May their memories always be for a blessing,

Destinie

    Because of their memory, I know that We human beings really can Do Better.

 

Action Prompts:

1.)  Share your thoughts on how we Human Beings might start to build a more fully inclusive society for all of us, and how the memory of a loved one can help that process.

2.)…

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Ein Sonnenuntergang am Meer

Sunsets at sea or in the desert are special.

Senioren um die Welt

Eine befreundete Künstlerin sagte mir einmal, dass sie Sonnenuntergänge kitschig findet. Für mich haben Sonnenuntergänge dagegen immer etwas Faszinierendes, kein Sonnenuntergang gleicht dem anderen, es verändert sich ständig etwas, die Farben, das Licht oder die Wolkenbildung. Einen Sonnenuntergang am Meer finde ich besonders faszinierend, wenn das Sonnenlicht das Wasser mit vielen Glanzpunkten und bunten Farben überzieht und es immer auf andere Art schimmern lässt.


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