Daily Archives: December 16, 2020

2020-12-16: News Headlines

The Jimmy Dore Show (2020-12-16). Jimmy Trending because AOC against Fighting for Medicare for All. dissidentvoice.org &nbsp…

Saskia Hostetler Lippy (2020-12-16). How Portland Radicalized Me. counterpunch.org Today I find myself in an untenable position. I run an online encrypted mental health service to serve the Portland protest movement. This is the story of how I came to use a code name, an encrypted email and apps, and risk myself to help frontline activists. But the movement I am serving is no

MEE correspondent (2020-12-16). Covid-19: Scholars say having vaccine is religious duty for Egyptians. middleeasteye.net Covid-19: Scholars say having vaccine is religious duty for Egyptians | Arrival of first shipment of vaccine from China has raised religious, political and public debate in the country | Wed, 12/16/2020 – 12: 41 | Worshippers attend Friday prayers inside Cairo's historic al-Azhar mosque (AFP) | Egypt's religious establishment has stepped into the heated debate over Covid-19 vaccines, ur…

Areeb Ullah (2020-12-16). Family of Australian professor detained in Qatar say they fear for his life. middleeasteye.net Family of Australian professor detained in Qatar say they fear for his life | Professor Lukman Thalib told relatives that his blood pressure and heart rate had become dangerously low | Wed, 12/16/2020 – 14: 36 | Professor Lukman Thalib (right) received a teaching award at Qatar University in 2018. He is a public health expert and helped Qatar with its covid-19 response (Supplied) | The family of an Austr…

Gideon Bradshaw (2020-12-16). Local Sheriffs Are Pushing Back on Some of the Lockdown's Harsher Measures. globalresearch.ca The limits of the government's power to follow through with some of its public-health orders are being tested as states impose new restrictions on private gatherings because of COVID-19. | "You have due process," said Sheriff Richard Giardino, of Fulton …

Peoples Dispatch (2020-12-16). Palestinian healthcare is crumbling in face of COVID-19, Israeli occupation. peoplesdispatch.org Authorities are worried that if drastic steps are not taken, the health system might face a major crisis putting the lives and health of Palestinian people at risk…

McGill University (2020-12-16). Health Impacts of "Social Distancing" and Isolation: Scientists Show a Sort of Signature in the Brains of Lonely People. globalresearch.ca This holiday season will be a lonely one for many people as social distancing due to COVID-19 continues, and it is important to understand how isolation affects our health. A new study shows a sort of signature in the brains …

Brian Shilhavy (2020-12-16). Unlike UK, U.S. FDA Allows Pregnant and Nursing Women to Receive Experimental Pfizer COVID Vaccine. globalresearch.ca The U.S. FDA has given emergency use authorization (EUA) to the experimental Pfizer COVID mRNA vaccine, a type of vaccine that has never before been authorized for use in humans. | The FDA's EUA for the Pfizer COVID vaccine follows an …

imperial.ac.uk (2020-12-16). Podcast: Child health, Bionic Olympics, and a better Christmas dinner. imperial.ac.uk In this edition: A new child health centre opens, assistive technologies at the Cybathlon, and healthier Christmas food for you and the planet.

news.un (2020-12-16). Vaccines for all, an 'acid test' in COVID-19 battle. news.un.org Equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines will represent an "acid test" for the international community, the President of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) told journalists on Wednesday, highlighting the importance of global cooperation and solidarity in beating back the disease.

Mehr News Agency (2020-12-16). 7,603 infections, 213 deaths in 24h. en.mehrnews.com TEHRAN, Dec. 16 (MNA) — According to the latest figures released by the Iranian Health Ministry, the declining trend of COVID-19 infections and deaths is continuing.

Cliff Willmeng (2020-12-16). An ER Nurse, Fired for Demanding Protective Equipment, Fights for his Job. zcomm.org Cliff Willmeng, a registered nurse in Minneapolis, was fired from his job at United Hospital, Allina Health Corporation for standing up for his and his coworkers' safety…

John Pilger (2020-12-15). The Most Lethal Virus is Not COVID. It is War. counterpunch.org In the midst of the greatest health emergency in modern times, with more than 4 million surgical procedures delayed by the National Health Service, Boris Johnson has announced a record increase of £16.5 billion in so-called defence spending — a figure that would restore the under-resourced NHS many times over.

teleSUR (2020-12-15). Nicolas Maduro Proposes a COVID-19 Vaccine Bank for ALBA Members. telesurenglish.net At the summit, the President of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro Moros, proposed the creation of a vaccine bank for the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) member countries. | RELATED: | The President highlighted that the region has the four vaccines currently being developed by Cuba, but also other options in the world. | "There is the Sputnik V vaccine from Russia, we are doing the tests in Venezuela a…

Staff (2020-12-15). As COVID Surges Behind Bars in California, Why Is San Quentin Transferring Hundreds of Prisoners? democracynow.org Prisons across the U.S. are facing their greatest swell in COVID-19 cases since the beginning of the pandemic. Nearly a quarter-million incarcerated people in the U.S. have been infected with COVID-19, according to the Marshall Project, and advocates are pushing for incarcerated people to be prioritized in the country's vaccine rollout. All of California's state prisons have active coronavirus cases, but the California Department of Corrections is continuing to transfer incarcerated people between institutions. San Quentin State Prison has begun the transfer of nearly 300 incarcerated people to other institutions…

The Canary (2020-12-15). Immediate action is needed after review finds male doctors are paid more than female colleagues. thecanary.co A doctors' union is calling for immediate action after a review found that male doctors are still being paid more than their female colleagues.Gender gap: The British Medical Association (BMA) said that the review, which is due to be published on 15 December, showed that, based on full-time equivalent pay: | Female doctors in hospitals are paid nearly 9% less than their male counterparts. | Female GPs are paid 15% less. | Clinical academics 11.5% less. | The review is titled Department of Health and Social Care's Mend The Gap: The Independent Review Into Gender Pay Gaps In Medicine In England. It's been re…

RT (2020-12-15). Northern Ireland hospital forced to treat patients in parked ambulances as Covid-19 cases surge. rt.com With no free beds available inside, a hospital in Northern Ireland resorted to treating patients in the back of ambulances pulled up at its car park, a medical official said, as the health service struggles amid the pandemic. | Northern Ireland is witnessing a spike in Covid-19 cases after it exited lockdown last week. Hospital capacity across the region reached 104 percent on Tuesday, according to local authorities. | Queues of ambulances have been spotted outside emergency departments across the country, with the worst situation being in the Mid and East Antrim districts. | A line of more than a dozen ambula…

WSWS (2020-12-15). Workers Struggles: The Americas. wsws.org Health care workers in Ontario, Alberta and other provinces have protested inadequate COVID-19 safety measures while the disease is once again infecting hundreds at meatpacking plants.

Kuehn BM. (2020-12-15). Global Regulators Set Standards for Safe Vaccines. jamanetwork.com The International Coalition of Medicines Regulatory Authorities (ICMRA) and the World Health Organization (WHO) are collaborating to create standards that ensure safe and equitable access to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) medicines and vaccines.

Julian Rose (2020-12-15). COVID's Covert Reengineering of Humanity. "Genetically Modified" Vaccines? globalresearch.ca The first Covid vaccines now being rushed onto the market are genetically modified products. However, they are not publicly referred to as such, because that would likely scare off a high percentage of would be recipients. | Nevertheless, the public …

Wheelock A, Bechtel C, Leff B. (2020-12-15). Human-Centered Design and Trust in Medicine. jamanetwork.com This Viewpoint discusses how human-centered design (HCD) that involves all stakeholders can improve patient trust in physicians and health care systems, describes its methods, and provides examples of its successful application.

Friedman JM, Jones K, Carey JC. (2020-12-15). Exome Sequencing as Part of a Multidisciplinary Approach to Diagnosis—Reply. jamanetwork.com In Reply Dr Doreille and colleagues share our opinion that a genetic disease diagnosis cannot be made on the basis of an exome-sequencing result alone but requires consideration of all of a patient's clinical features and consistency with the spectrum of clinical manifestations that occur in the disease being considered.

Doreille A, Raymond L, Mesnard L. (2020-12-15). Exome Sequencing as Part of a Multidisciplinary Approach to Diagnosis. jamanetwork.com To the Editor The Viewpoint by Dr Friedman and colleagues on whole-exome sequencing claimed that the diagnosis of many genetic diseases cannot be based solely on molecular results but requires a multidisciplinary approach for a final diagnosis. The authors stated "Genomic variants classified as pathogenic or likely pathogenic may be seen in healthy people." This phenomenon has been described for genetically related kidney diseases in particular. We agree with the authors about using a multidisciplinary approach in the field of adult genetically related kidney diseases, in which the pretest probability of a geneti…

McGreevey JD, III, Hanson C, III, Koppel R. (2020-12-15). Conversational Agents in Health Care—Reply. jamanetwork.com In Reply Dr Darcy and colleagues from Woebot Health cite 2 references when suggesting that the CA field is more developed than our Viewpoint suggested. However, we find the use of these references as being off target for 2 reasons. First, both articles address symptom checkers. Symptom checkers typically ask patients preset questions and permit structured or limited free-text replies. Thus, we would not consider symptom checkers to be CAs. Our Viewpoint focused on technologies that accept and interpret a broad range of typed or spoken words, phrases, and sentences and that offer natural-sounding language response…

Jain SH, Lucey C, Crosson FJ. (2020-12-15). The Enduring Importance of Trust in Leadership of Health Care Organizations. jamanetwork.com This Viewpoint discusses the declining trust in the US health care system, especially in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the importance that maintaining public trust should hold in the culture of health care organizations.

jamanetwork (2020-12-15). Experts Discuss COVID-19: Vaccine Allocation, Placebo Groups, and More. jamanetwork.com This JAMA Live Highlights feature provides comments about the coronavirus 2019 pandemic from experts in clinical medicine, public health, and health policy expressed during livestream interviews with JAMA Network Editor in Chief Howard Bauchner, MD.

Khullar D, Darien G, Ness DL. (2020-12-15). Patient Consumerism, Healing Relationships, and Rebuilding Trust in Health Care. jamanetwork.com This Viewpoint discusses barriers to building trust between physicians and patients and offers recommendations to increase that trust, including minimizing emphasis on patient consumerism, promoting authentic partnerships, and accelerating select payment and delivery system reforms.

Darcy A, Robinson A, Wicks P. (2020-12-15). Conversational Agents in Health Care. jamanetwork.com To the Editor The Viewpoint by Dr McGreevey and colleagues drew attention to the increasing use of conversational agents (CAs) in health care. However, they suggested a less mature field than we find in practice, and their call for CA-specific regulations risks creating confusion.

Arora VM, Madison S, Simpson L. (2020-12-15). Addressing Medical Misinformation in the Patient-Clinician Relationship. jamanetwork.com This Viewpoint describes why health misinformation spreads, characterizes a broader set of misinformation types, and discusses solutions to this problem.

Harshfield EL, Pennells L, Schwartz JE, et al. (2020-12-15). Association Between Depressive Symptoms and Incident Cardiovascular Diseases. jamanetwork.com This international study pooled individual-participant data from several long-term prospective studies to evaluate the relationship between depressive symptoms and incident cardiovascular disease.

Brett Wilkins, staff writer (2020-12-15). 'Let's Do This!': Progressive Powerhouses Swiftly Endorse Nina Turner After She Announces House Run. commondreams.org Rep. Ro Khanna said that the former Ohio state senator "will bring a phenomenal commitment to a $15 minimum wage, Medicare for All, and free public college." | www.commondreams.org/sites/default/files…

Herbert Bottcher and Gunther Salz (2020-12-15). The discussion about Corona. indybay.org Corona can only become a kairos if we gain the theoretical capacity of recovery and create the conditions for a transformation. Taking the healthcare system away from the markets and obliging large companies to be oriented in the common good would be steps to infrastructure socialism.

Kari Lydersen (2020-12-15). Warehouse Workers Are on the Front Lines of the Covid Crisis. zcomm.org They're Worried They'll Be Passed Over for the Vaccine…

Sonali Kolhatkar (2020-12-14). How to Cure America's Vaccine Paranoia. counterpunch.org The end is in sight, we are told. The cavalry has arrived in the form of safe and effective vaccines for COVID-19 on the verge of approval and being manufactured for widespread distribution. The stock market has surged in response to every pharmaceutical company's press release of its latest successful clinical trial. Americans are expecting

Juan Cole (2020-12-14). Pandemic Failure, Vaccine Success Indict American Monopoly Capitalism. commondreams.org This vaccine victory is bittersweet. We have lost so many Americans to the virus, who didn't have to die. Many of them died because of stubbornly pro-capitalist public policy. | www.commondreams.org/sites/default/files…

Lyn Redwood (2020-12-14). Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Warned FDA About Ingredient in Pfizer COVID Vaccine that Likely Caused Life-Threatening Reaction in Two UK Healthcare Workers. globalresearch.ca An investigation this week identified polyethylene glycol (PEG) as the likely reason two people in the UK suffered anaphylaxis after receiving Pfizer's COVID vaccine. In September, CHD Chairman RFK, Jr. warned the FDA that PEG in COVID vaccines could lead …

Editor (2020-12-14). Vaccine Thinking Applied to All of American Life. scheerpost.com Marco Verch Professional Photographer / CC BY 2.0] By Liz Theoharis / TomDispatch Martin Luther King, Jr., offered this all-too-relevant comment on his moment in his 1967 speech "Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?": "The contemporary tendency in our society is to base our distribution on scarcity, which has vanished, and to compress our abundance into the overfed mouths of the upper… |

Kit Knightly (2020-12-14). Coronavirus Fact-Check #9: Is the Vaccine Safe? globalresearch.ca There are

Pavan Kulkarni (2020-12-14). South Asian women community health workers demand labor rights and occupational safety. peoplesdispatch.org On the International Day for Universal Health Coverage, Public Services International brought together Community Health Workers from India, Pakistan and Nepal for the launch of the campaign "Community Health Work is Work"

Richard Gale (2020-12-14). Cautionary Tale: This COVID Vaccine Could Heighten HIV Risk for Some, Scientists Warn. globalresearch.ca In a The researchers — from the Fred Hutchinson …

Paul Joseph Watson (2020-12-14). CNN: 'Don't be Alarmed' if People Start Dying After Taking the Vaccine. globalresearch.ca In an article on the COVID vaccine rollout, CNN says that Americans shouldn't be alarmed if people start dying after taking the vaccine because "deaths may occur that won't necessarily have anything to do with the vaccine." | The advisory appeared …

Robert F. Kennedy Jr (2020-12-14). "Digital Vaccine Passports": Yes, Bill Gates Said That. Here's the Proof. globalresearch.ca Gates and his minions insist the billionaire never said we'd need digital vaccine passports. But in a June 2020 TED Talk, Gates said exactly that. Someone edited out the statement, but CHD tracked down the original. | *** | Some chiseler altered…

Jasmine Norden (2020-12-14). Thousands are facing famine in Yemen due to continuing war and lack of foreign aid. thecanary.co Thousands of people in Yemen are on the brink of According to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), 13.5m people in Yemen are facing high food insecurity. From analysis during October to December, the IPC found that about 16,500 people are facing a "catastrophe" level of food insecurity. | The IPC projected this to increase in 2021, leading to around 47,000 people enduring the highest level of food insecurity by June.

Steve Watson (2020-12-14). NJ Lawmaker Wants Mandatory Corona Shot for All Kids Without Exemption. globalresearch.ca A State Senator in New Jersey wants the coronavirus vaccine made mandatory for all school age children, despite them being the least at risk group. | Middlesex Democrat Senator Joseph Vitale also wants to eliminate exemptions that have been used in …

commondreams (2020-12-14). New Analysis of Fracking Science (nearly 2,000 studies) Finds Grave Health, Environmental Justice, and Climate Impacts. commondreams.org ______________________________…

Nicole Karlis (2020-12-14). Who gets vaccinated for COVID-19 next (and who won't). salon.com Healthcare workers started receiving the approved Pfizer vaccine Monday…

Scott Remer (2020-12-14). Americans Are Drowning in Debt. Let's Forgive All of It. zcomm.org In the age of Covid-19, it's time to end our debt epidemic once and for all…

Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis (2020-12-14). Pandemic Lessons for the Rest of Us. zcomm.org Or Vaccine Thinking Applied to All of American Life…

sputniknews (2020-12-14). US Republicans Four Times Likely Than Democrats to Refrain From Taking COVID-19 Vaccine – Poll. sputniknews.com On Monday, some people in the United States, the world's biggest pandemic hotspot, began receiving the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, developed in cooperation between the US-based Pfizer and the German-based BioNTech SE companies, after the emergency use of the shot was authorized by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Friday.

Jimmy Tobias (2020-12-14). What if Scientists Already Know How to Prevent the Next Pandemic? thenation.com What if Scientists Already Know How to Prevent the Next Pandemic?