Source: Trump loses appeal to withhold records from Jan 6 attack – The Jerusalem Post
All posts by nedhamson
Avian Flu Diary: Denmark SSI: COVID Infections & Hospitalizations Increased In Epi Week 48
Denmark, because of its relatively low population, national healthcare system, and superior testing and genetic sequencing of COVID, serves as a bit of a bellwether for us in this pandemic.
Trends that are first picked up in Denmark have a way of showing up elsewhere around the world a few months later.
Yesterday, as we’ve seen this week in the UK and Norway – Denmark announced new, tightened COVID restrictions – including the early closing of schools (by 1 week) for the Christmas holidays, new face mask requirements, the closure of bars, restaurants and nightclubs at midnight, and a reduced validity period (7 months down from 12) for COVID vaccine passports.
Today Denmark’s SSI reports a nearly 10% jump in hospital admissions this week, over last, along with a rapidly increasing number of Omicron variant detections. Once again, children ages 6-11 are seeing the highest rate of infection.
Source: Avian Flu Diary: Denmark SSI: COVID Infections & Hospitalizations Increased In Epi Week 48
FDA green-lights Pfizer COVID-19 boosters for 16- and 17-year-olds | CIDRAP
Today the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the use of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 booster vaccine in adolescents ages 16 and 17.
The group will be eligible through an emergency use authorization (EUA) for a third dose of the mRNA vaccine 6 months after their initial vaccination series. Acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock, MD, said the announcement will come in time to protect families during the holidays.
Source: FDA green-lights Pfizer COVID-19 boosters for 16- and 17-year-olds | CIDRAP
Congress Members Push Google to Share Medical Disinformation
As the Supreme Court prepares to rule on the future of abortion rights, anti-abortion Congress members are doing everything they can to obstruct abortion access — as of this week, by pressuring Google to push medical disinformation on abortion pills.
Two dozen Republican members of Congress — including the notably very sane Reps. Madison Cawthorn and Lauren Boebert, and Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio — have reportedly hand-delivered a letter addressed to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, telling Pichai to reverse the search engine’s recent ban on advertisements with “life-saving information on abortion pill reversal.”
“Google’s decision to censor Live Action’s abortion pill reversal ads is denying life-saving information to thousands of women who want to save their unborn children’s lives from a tragic decision they regret,” the letter states. It adds that the search engine shouldn’t allow ads for abortion pills, because they don’t meet “Google’s harmful health claims policies,” even though medication abortion has been approved by the FDA since 2000.
“Abortion pill reversal,” of course, is a scientifically unsupported and possibly dangerous treatment to “reverse” a medication abortion that’s underway. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has called it “unproven and unethical,” noting that the one study of the treatment wasn’t supervised by an institutional review board and possibly put its human research subjects at risk.
Source: Congress Members Push Google to Share Medical Disinformation
Pipelines and soil destruction
Fossil fuel pipelines have been a target of water protectors for many years.
Presidential approval for the Keystone XL pipeline gave rise to the Keystone Pledge of Resistance which was probably the reason the Obama administration eventually denied the permit. (See: https://landbackfriends.com/?s=keystone)
In a textbook example of racial injustice, the route of the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL) was changed from crossing the Missouri River upstream of Bismarck, North Dakota, to instead cross the water at Standing Rock.
Now the fossil fuel industry is applying significant pressure for the approval of pipelines to move liquified carbon emissions from sites of high CO2 production to underground storage in rock formations.
These carbon capture pipelines have the same problems as the Keystone XL, DAPL and other pipelines, including disrupting Indigenous sacred sites and lands, abuse of eminent domain, missing and murdered Indigenous relatives because of the “man camps” at the construction sites.
Another…
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Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown!
Wow, I’m getting old.
I can’t believe it was, as another blogger reminded me this morning, 56 years ago today that the Christmas TV special, A Charlie Brown Christmas, premiered on CBS.
I was six years old, already a diehard fan of the Peanuts comic strip, brainchild of cartoonist Charles Schulz. Good ol’ Charlie Brown, Linus and Lucy, Schroeder, Snoopy, Pig-Pen and all the rest made me laugh a lot.
So, when it was time for an animated Peanuts TV special, I was all in.
And 56 years later, I still am. There have been several more TV specials, movies and musical productions through the years, but A Charlie Brown Christmas remains the gold standard for me.
I think one big reason for that is the music. Whoever decided the Vince Guaraldi Trio was the appropriate background music for this show was absolutely brilliant. From the sentimental Christmas Time…
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DIRGE
Just a quick update, because I can’t bear to do much more. As a chaplain at a hospital in a small city in Northeast Wisconsin, I find more daily heartbreak now than even in the previous months of the pandemic, even during our peak months of November 2020-March 2021. The numbers are at least as high on our ICU and our general COVID unit. The difference is in the ages of the people who are dying, and of those who are closest to them. Last month, we saw many people in their 40’s dying. Young adults in their late teens and 20’s were their children, and seeing them try to figure out how to mourn was heart-wrenching. We saw every reaction one could imagine, from denial to self-blame to signs of deep depression.
This new month seems to be bringing us the deaths of patients in their 30’s. …
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Apple and Japanese Yam Potato Pastry
Thoughtful Thursdays, Stayed on Freedom’s Call page 41, “For Thee We Sing”
Context, Thought, and Learning: ShiraDest Offers Project Do Better
What songs do you think we can sing to make our history more inclusive of all of our stories?
I started my own walking singing tour company in the belief that song was a powerful way to help make this happen. Some of what I learned is in my book Stayed on Freedom’s Call (last week was page 40…):
” … sounds like an English song coming from the building. So maybe not all Jewish services are held entirely in Hebrew after all. The sounds of a lovely organ float out as the door again opens, while you remember overhearing a Jewish friend describing the upper level of Meridian Hill Park.
You wistfully ponder the uppermost fountain
level, which you never sat in, although you could have passed for White. You feel glad for your Jewish friend who was able to enjoy it…
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