Category Archives: Viva!

Democratic party elites silence Ilhan Omar at their peril | Trita Parsi and Stephen Wertheim

The congresswoman’s foreign policy views are far more in line with voters than the disconnected party establishment

This week Democrats plunged into two controversies that portend danger for the party as the 2020 election season begins. Both centered on freshman representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, who, not coincidentally, came to America as a Somali refugee and is now one of the two first Muslim women in Congress. Absent an open debate about the party’s values on foreign policy, Democrats are hurtling toward an election more divisive than the one in 2016.

Related: Ilhan Omar is right about the influence of the Israel lobby | Alex Kotch

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How the vegan food trend made a star of the stinking jackfruit

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The easy-to-grow crop has the potential to be much more than just a fashionable alternative to meat in the west

Lush, densely forested Kerala, the exuberantly green south Indian state sometimes called “God’s own country”, is exactly the kind of place you would expect to produce a superfood. It just wouldn’t be the jackfruit.

Covered in spikes and emitting a stench of rotting onions, jackfruit can balloon to an ungainly 45kg, and its inside is coated in a thick gum that stains axes, machetes or whatever heavy-duty tool is employed to attack its leathery shell.

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Macao Health Notified Of Human H9N2 Case In Yunnan Province, China

So, while H9N2 may not be at the top of our pandemic threats list, it is regarded as having at least some pandemic potential (see CDC IRAT SCORE), several candidate vaccines have been developed, and it continues continues to evolve and interact with other avian viruses.

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Macao’s Health Bureau has posted what appears to be the first acknowledged H9N2 case of 2019 – reported to them by Chinese authorities – involving an 8 year old female in Yunnan Province.

In 2018, China reported 7 human cases (see FluTrackers List), although given the limited surveillance and testing, the actual number is likely far higher. Serological studies suggest human infection occurs  more often than official case counts would have us believe

The relevant portion of the announcement reads:

Yunnan confirmed case of human infection cases of H9N2 bird flu

source: Health Bureau
Release date: At 19:09 on February 15 2019

Health Bureau today (February 15) received the Mainland health authorities notified, Yunnan Province confirmed case of human infection of H9N2 avian influenza. According to the briefing refers the patient was an 8-year-old female student, now living in Lushui City, Yunnan Province, on January 27 symptoms, are less severe.

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Admittedly, not much in the way of details, but we may get more in the next WHO update.  Two weeks ago we saw a belated announcement of a case from December 2018 (see Taiwan CDC Notified Of Human H9N2 Case In Hunan Province, China).

Avian H9N2 can be found in poultry across much of Asia and parts of the Middle East, and is famous for its ability to mix its genes (via reassortment) with other viruses in order to produce new – potentially dangerous – new hybrids (see J. Virology:Genetic Compatibility of Reassortants Between Avian H5N1 & H9N2 Influenza Viruses).

Despite relatively few reported human infections – which have been generally mild or moderate – H9N2 viruses continue to evolve, and are showing signs of better adaptation to mammalian hosts (see Virology: Receptor Binding Specificity Of H9N2 Avian Influenza Viruses).

So, while H9N2 may not be at the top of our pandemic threats list, it is regarded as having at least some pandemic potential (see CDC IRAT SCORE), several candidate vaccines have been developed, and it continues continues to evolve and interact with other avian viruses.

Guns, Opioids, Mental Health More Urgent than Wall

By Arturo Castañares / Publisher and CEO

Our nation has serious crises that lead to the deaths of tens of thousands of people each year.

Innocent people are dying and we’re not doing enough to help prevent those deaths.

30,000 killed each year by guns. 45,000 die by suicide. 72,000 overdose on opioids.

Americans are dying in increasing numbers each year yet there is no presidential declaration of an emergency in any of those cases.

During last week’s State of the Union address, President Donald Trump instead focused his attention on fighting illegal immigration with his long-promised border wall, falsely claiming that tens of thousands of Americans have died at the hands of undocumented immigrants.

For weeks, Trump has decried a national emergency at the border, and has alarmed people by claiming that 63,000 Americans have been killed by undocumented immigrants since the September 11th terrorist attacking in 2001.

That dubious claim has been debunked by various groups that study homicide statistics but that clearly doesn’t stop the President from repeating it. There is no evidence of any such number of deaths attributed to undocumented immigrants.

The best estimate of such crimes comes from a Cato Institute study released last year that reviewed homicides in Texas in 2015. Of 951 convictions, 93% were committed by US-born assailants, 1.6% were committed by legal immigrants, and 5.3%, or 51, were committed by people in the country illegally.

Yes, that’s 51 too many, but we must look at them in context.

During the same period, 3,776 people died by suicide in Texas, 3,356 people died from gun related deaths, and 2,979 people overdosed. Where’s the outcry about those deaths.

When compared to homicides by undocumented immigrants, Texans were 74 times more likely to die from a gunshot, 65 times more likely to commit suicide, or 58 times more likely to overdose than to be killed by someone in the country illegally.

And of those people in the country illegally, most arrived legally on visas or passports and simply overstayed their legal visit, not by running across an unprotected border, so a border wall or fence would not have stopped them anyway.

Illegal border crossings at near historic lows. Since 1971, we have had more than 15 years with more illegal crossings that this past year.

So what’s the crisis at the border?

The “crisis” is manmade, engineered by Trump to create a powerful political issue. It’s true that caravans of migrants have and continue to make their way toward our border, but that’s been happening for years. And when they arrive, some seek asylum through the legal process, some return home, and some do attempt to cross the border illegally.

But that’s not a crisis, it’s reality of living on the border with the world’s wealthiest country aligned next to a still developing nation.

We have border walls, fences, double fences, barbed wire, and over 20,000 Border Patrol agents on the border now, along with military personal deployed by Trump last year.

No doubt, there are issues at the border that can be addressed with more physical barriers, technology, and personnel, but a national emergency it is not. And spending $5 billion and up to $30 billion on a wall, or barrier, or fence, is not the answer.

Immigration, both legal and illegal, must be dealt with in a comprehensive way that will allow families to stay intact, allow young adults and children brought here as minor to have a sensible path to citizenship, and allow employers to continue providing good paying jobs to hard working immigrants that want to achieve their own American dream. That’s real immigration reform.

We should also be unified in attacking the causes of gun violence that kill thousands each year, including children.

We should be addressing the mental health issues that lead thousands each year to take their own lives, including military veterans returning from service.

We should be fighting the epidemic of prescription drug overdoses that is claiming the lives of fathers, mothers, and children that have gotten hooked on drugs that were intended to help heal, not kill.

If President Trump is truly serious about protecting Americans, and he’s willing to shut down the government to get his way, he should be boldly leading us toward an America where we are safe from gun violence, protected from dangerous drugs, and healthy enough to want to live our lives, not take them ourselves.

That would make American great again.

A border fence? No, thanks, we already have that.

‘I didn’t need to do this’: Trump declares emergency to build wall ‘much faster’

It’s not an emergency? He just wants to break Constitution to do it faster! Traitor 1st class!

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Saying there’s “an invasion of drugs, invasion of gangs, invasion of people” at the southern border, US President Donald Trump makes official his declaration of a national emergency to secure funding for his border wall.