Category Archives: News to use

Useful news for all to advance knowledge of the world and how it works

Bahrain offers Pfizer booster for some who got Chinese shots – The Washington Post

Bahrain has begun offering a booster shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine for some people, six months after they received two shots of China’s Sinopharm vaccine.

The mixing of vaccines comes as the Mideast island nation struggles through its worst wave of the virus despite being one of the top countries in the world in per-capita inoculations.

The government’s BeAware mobile phone app allows those living in Bahrain to register for booster shots of either the Pfizer or the Sinopharm jabs. However, the government now recommends that people over 50, the obese and people with weakened immune systems receive the Pfizer shot regardless of whether they first received Sinopharm.

Source: Bahrain offers Pfizer booster for some who got Chinese shots – The Washington Post

Download 1,000+ Beautiful Woodblock Prints by Hiroshige, the Last Great Master of the Woodblock Print Tradition | Open Culture

For 200 years, beginning in the 1630s, Japan closed itself off from the world. In its capital of Edo the country boasted the largest city in existence, and among its population of more than a million not a single one was foreign-born. “Practically the only Europeans to have visited it were a handful of Dutchmen,” writes professor of Japanese history Jordan Sand in a new London Review of Books piece, “and so it would remain until the mid-19th century. No foreigners were permitted to live or trade on Japanese soil except the Dutch and Chinese, who were confined to enclaves in the port of Nagasaki, 750 miles from Edo. No Japanese were permitted to leave: those who disobeyed did so on pain of death.”

Source: Download 1,000+ Beautiful Woodblock Prints by Hiroshige, the Last Great Master of the Woodblock Print Tradition | Open Culture

When a Surgeon Became a Covid-19 Patient: ‘I Had Never Faced the Reality of Death’ – The New York Times

At 56, Dr. Kato was healthy and exceptionally fit. He had run the New York City Marathon seven times, and he specialized in operations that were also marathons, lasting 12 or 16 or 20 hours. He was renowned for surgical innovations, deft hands and sheer stamina. At NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center, where he was the surgical director of adult and pediatric liver and intestinal transplantation, his boss has called him “our Michael Jordan.”

Dr. Kato became ill with Covid-19 in March 2020.

“I was in a denial situation,” he said. “I thought I was going to be fine.”

But he soon became one of the sickest patients in his own hospital, dependent on a ventilator and other machines to pump oxygen into his bloodstream and do the work of his failing kidneys. He came close to death “many, many times,” according to Dr. Marcus R. Pereira, who oversaw Dr. Kato’s care and is the medical director of the center’s infectious disease program for transplant recipients.

Colleagues feared at first that he would not survive and then, when the worst had passed, that he might never be able to perform surgery again. But after two months in the hospital, Dr. Kato emerged with a determination to get back to work and a new sense of urgency about the need to teach other surgeons the innovative operations he had developed. His own illness also enabled him to connect with patients in ways that had not been possible before.

“I really never understood well enough how patients feel,” he said. “Even though I’m convincing patients to take a feeding tube, and encouraging them, saying, ‘Even though it looks like hell now, it will get better and you’ll get through it,’ I really never understood what that hell means.”

 

Colleges Say Students Must Get a Covid Vaccine. But No, Not That One. – The New York Times

Since March, more than 400 colleges and universities in the United States have announced vaccine mandates, requiring students to be immunized against the coronavirus. But the rules have been designed primarily with domestic students in mind, leaving international students scrambling — particularly those in India and Russia.

The Old Dog|سگ پیر

A Voice from Iran

Once upon a time,

A king had an old dog, and loved him very much. The king always talked to his dog. One of the days the king decided that he needs his dog to talk back.

The king announced: “If anyone could teach my dog how to talk, I will award him one thousand gold coins. And if the trainer failed and my dog couldn’t talk after the lessons, I will order to execute that person.”

The amount of the award was so high, that made a few covetous to try to teach King’s dog to talk. And of course, the dog didn’t learn and they got executed.

The king increased the 1000 to 2000 gold coins, but people were afraid of losing their lives and never volunteered.

Until one day that an old man walked to the palace and said: “I will teach your dog to talk under…

View original post 171 more words