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Ethereum On Bearish Momentum: 4.78% Down In The Last 6 Hours – Via News Agency

Posted on February 7, 2021 by Danzig

Ethereum is currently on bearish momentum. At 22:03 EST on Saturday, 6 February, Ethereum is at $1,629.39 and down by 4.78% in the last 6 hours.

Over the last six hours, Ethereums higher value was $1,707.32 and the lower value was $1,629.39.

Over the last twelve hours, Ethereums higher value was $1,707.32 and the lower value was $1,629.39.

Regarding Ethereums daily highs, its 4.564% down from its trailing 24-hour high of $1,707.32

In relation to Ethereums yearly highs and lows, its 1611.904% up from its 52-week low and 3.589% down from its 52-week high.

Ethereums last day, last week, and last months average volatility was 2.43%, 6.20%, and 5.92%, respectively.

Ethereums last day, last week, and last months high and low average amplitude percentage was 5.41%, 8.82%, and 12.47%, respectively.

Ethereum catapults to new all-time high past $1,600 as investors pile in ahead of next week's launch of CME futures. According to Business Insider on Thursday, 4 February, "Although the trade seems to be partly fueled by speculation, a major factor driving demand is the Chicago Mercantile Exchanges launch of Ethereum futures on February 8.", "Grayscale Investments, the worlds largest cryptocurrency fund manager, this week added an extra 25,000 ETH coins, bringing its total Ethereum holdings to $4.5 billion. "

Bitcoin, ethereum technical analysis: bid into a busy weekend. According to DailyFX on Friday, 5 February, "Should Ethereum pull back, there could be some possible opportunity for analysis to enter the equation. ", "At this point, Ethereum is up more than 130% in 2021 alone, and were barely a month into the New Year."

Klarna CEO cautions executives promoting Bitcoin investments. According to Bloomberg Quint on Thursday, 4 February, "Michael Saylor, CEO of MicroStrategy Inc. and a Bitcoin proselytizer, said this week at his companys World Now global conference that he sees an "avalanche" of companies moving their cash into Bitcoin over the next 12 months."

Bitcoin declines after bouncing off top of recent price range. According to Bloomberg Quint on Thursday, 4 February, "A strengthening dollar since the start of the year has kept Bitcoin stuck in a consolidation phase, but that could be ending soon, according to Ed Moya, senior market analyst at Oanda Corp."

Only 15% of Bitcoin traders are women, broker study shows. According to Bloomberg Quint on Friday, 5 February, "Women make up only 15% of Bitcoin traders, according to a brokerage study that shows how stark the gender disparity is in the world of cryptocurrencies.", "said the percentage of women holding Bitcoin on its platform increased from just 10% a year ago."

According to Business Insider on Friday, 5 February, "The price of Bitcoin skyrocketed in 2020, prompting a wave of new investors to sign up to various trading platforms. "

ON RELIGION: Twisted prayers and temptations to worship political power – GoDanRiver.com

Posted on February 7, 2021 by Danzig

Having reached the vice presidents chair in the U.S. Senate, the self-proclaimed QAnon shaman, UFO expert and metaphysical healer removed his coyote-skin and buffalo horns headdress and announced, with a megaphone, that it was time to pray.

Thank you, Heavenly Father ... for this opportunity to stand up for our God-given inalienable rights, proclaimed Jake Yellowstone Wolf Angeli (born Jacob Chansley), his face painted red, white and blue, and his torso tattooed with Norse symbols that his critics link to the extreme right.

Thank you, divine, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent Creator God for filling this chamber with your white light and love, he added, in a prayer captured on video by a correspondent working for The New Yorker. Thank you for filling this chamber with patriots that love you and that love Christ. ... Thank you, divine Creator God, for surrounding and filling us with the divine, omnipresent white light of love and protection, of peace and harmony. Thank you for allowing the United States of America to be reborn. Thank you for allowing us to get rid of the communists, the globalists and the traitors within our government.

Many phrases in this rambling prayer would sound familiar to worshippers in ordinary churches across America, said Joe Carter, an editor with the Gospel Coalition and a pastor with McLean Bible Church near Washington, D.C. But the prayer also included strange twists and turns that betrayed some extreme influences and agendas.

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ON RELIGION: Twisted prayers and temptations to worship political power - GoDanRiver.com

Faith Matters: Our bold and grand experiment: Shall it endure? – The Recorder

Posted on February 7, 2021 by Danzig

Often I am reluctant to acknowledge myself as a former Baptist. No longer a Baptist (a long story), I am nevertheless proud of a basic Baptist tenet separation of church and state.

The First Amendment short but brilliant is, in fact, the foundation of freedom on which our beloved nation stands. It is a grand and bold statement. The First Amendment reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The Civil War of 1861-1865 was fought over states rights to secede, and eventually and inevitably over the issue of slavery. During that war, at Gettysburg, Penn., President Abraham Lincoln said, Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure.

Sadly, now we are engaged is a great civil and cultural war. It is an attack upon truth itself. The press is assailed as fake news, the findings of science are debunked (global warming), and the exercise of free speech is taken to allow sedition and insurrection as patriotic.

Most pernicious, to my mind, is the conflating of church and state by the religious alt-right, with undertones of white supremacy, racism, anti-LGBTQ, anti-Muslim, anti-Semitism and Christian nationalism. The civil or cultural war of today, in part, is being fought, alas, with sedition and insurrection, over our country being a Christian nation, which it is not now, nor ever was, nor ever should be.

The First Amendment guarantees that the USA is a nation that includes and welcomes peoples of all religious persuasions, and those of no persuasion. Our founders were primarily Enlightenment Deists with a profound faith in reason, upon which the Constitution was based. Thomas Jefferson is famous for the Jefferson Bible, cutting out portions of the Bible with which he disagreed.

We make a grave and grievous mistake conflating our nation with any particular religion to the exclusion of other faiths. The great experiment of our nation, as conceived, is embedded in the First Amendment. One nation, many diverse peoples. One nation, many faiths. It is a bold and grand experiment. Shall it endure?

Conflating nation and religion often results in a distortion of patriotism, which tends toward idolatry of nation. True patriotism is defined by love of ones country indeed, the willingness to fight, and if necessary, to die for the freedoms our country affords, including the freedom of religion, along with free speech, etc.

I love this country and the values and freedoms for which it stands. But I cannot admire nor condone those who strive to undermine the very foundation of freedom that must be afforded to every person. I pray this nation and the foundation on which it stands shall not only long endure, but thrive, with liberty and justice for all.

The Rev. Dr. Lloyd Parrill is a retired United Church of Christ minister. He served the Trinitarian Congregational Church, UCC, in Northfield for 35 years, from 1977 to 2012.

Faith Matters: Our bold and grand experiment: Shall it endure? - The Recorder

Inside the case: Watch testimony behind the Phoenix protest gang charges – ABC15 Arizona

Posted on February 7, 2021 by Danzig

The Maricopa County Attorneys Office and Phoenix police have designated a group of protesters as a criminal street gang.

The controversial decision has been blasted by community groups, defense attorneys, and legal organizations.

Politically Charged is an ongoing ABC15 investigation series. Click here to watch part one of the series and watch part two of the series in the player above.

While declining to provide specifics about the evidence, police and prosecutors have defended the charges.

POLITICALLY CHARGED: Officials create fictional gang to charge protesters

As I have stated numerous times, my office is committed to protecting the safety of everyone in this community, law enforcement and demonstrators alike," County Attorney Allister Adel said in a written statement. I fully support everyone in the exercise of their First Amendment rights, but I will not allow criminal conduct, disguised as protest activity, to harm our community.

ABC15 obtained the full grand jury transcript and video from an 85-minute bond hearing for one of the defendants.

Both pieces of testimony show the legal basis Phoenix officers and county prosecutors used to justify the gang designation and other charges against the group.

Below are excerpts from the grand jury transcript and a bond hearing related to key issues in the case.

ACAB GANG

Arizona statutes regarding criminal street gang classification are broad and only require two of the following criteria to be met: (1) Self proclamation; (2) Witness testimony or statements; (3) Written or electronic correspondence; (4) Paraphernalia or photographs; (5) Tattoos; (6) Clothing or colors; (7) Any other indicators.

Phoenix police Sgt. Doug McBride, a grenadier who manages the Tactical Response Unit and former gang detective, testified that all members of the group met the criteria for three reasons.

The first is the chanting of All Cops are Bastards, which he claimed is self-proclamation. The second was most of the group dressed in black, which meets the colors requirement. And the third was many of the group carried umbrellas, which McBride claimed was part of their uniform.

The following are exchanges between prosecutor April Sponsel and McBride during an October 30, 2020 bond hearing for defendant Suvarna Ratnam.

TIMECODE: 5:35SPONSEL: Were they yelling or saying anything?MCBRIDE: Yes, they were.SPONSEL: What were they yelling or saying?MCBRIDE: I believe it was ACAB. And then the group would respond, "All Cops are Bastards.SPONSEL: In regards to the ACAB, do you know where that came from?MCBRIDE: Weve been dealing with it since May, since these protests started. Its a specific group of individuals that identify themselves as being part of All Cops Are Bastards, or ACAB.

Heres how McBride testified before a grand jury when questioned by a MCAO prosecutor.

PAGES: 31, 34, 36Q: What is that name of this gang?A: It is called ACAB, A-C-A-B, and it stands for All Cops Are Bastards. We first came into contact with this group through graffiti, signage, ACAB written on the back of skateboards and different paraphernalia throughout our 150-plus day employment and mobilization and civil unrest in Phoenix.

Q: And what were those two other criteria where you were able to attribute the other individuals listed in the indictment?A: Both self-proclamation and the colors, the clothing.

Q: And through your training and experience of dealing with this ACAB group, what exactly color what color do they claim?A: Black.

Q: And are you finding that ACAB is following the exact same type of philosophy of lets say the Bloods and the Crips?A: Yes.

Q: And what about even maybe the same philosophy as the Hells Angels?A: Very similar, yes.

Q: And why would that be similar?A: I think because the tattoos, the intimidation factor, how they are directing their violent behavior very similar to the Hells Angel organization where they actually organize their violent behavior, and then they carry that out in a very organized fashion. Its not random with the Hells Angels.

Q: And are you finding thats exactly what this ACAB group is doing is they are organizing for the intent to create violence?A: Yes.

A judge who presided over the Oct. 30, 2020 bond hearing heard similar testimony from McBride.

The judge ruled that Ratnam could be released and said the court did not see evidence of violence the night of the groups arrest.

The court does not see that as a threat of violence, said the judge, discussing the groups actions that night.

A defense attorney at the hearing also cross-examined McBride about his claims about ACAB.

TIMECODE: 46:14DEFENSE: Now you said that this group was yelling all cops are bastards during this protest, correct?MCBRIDE: Yes.DEFENSE: I watched the video, didnt they say other things?MCBRIDE: Im sure they did.DEFENSE: Did you hear them say, black lives matter?MCBRIDE: Not personally no.DEFENSE: Did you watch the video with sound on it?MCBRIDE: I did.DEFENSE: And you didnt hear them save black lives matter at any point of time during this march?MCBRIDE: They may have, Im not saying they didnt. I just dont have an independent recollection.

In court motions, another defense attorney attacked the designation of ACAB as a gang, calling it fictional.

ACAB is not a gang at all but a political slogan, Christopher DuPont wrote in the motion to compel prosecutors to release more evidence. In a continuing affront to the First Amendment, most likely motivated by hatred for a group using such an impolite name (ACAB), state prosecutors abetted by Phoenix police alleged that the protesters had assaulted police officers with deadly weapons, including toy smoke bombs and collapsible umbrellas even insinuating, without foundation, that protesters had weaponized their fingernails.

ACAB is a common protest chant that originated almost a century ago and is used across the world.

DuPont further criticized the comparison to the Crips, Bloods, and Hells Angels.

The state called a witness to testify at grand jury that ACAB was just as dangerous and in many ways more dangerous than notorious gangs like the Crips and the Bloods, two gangs that have accounted for as many as 15,000 homicides in the United States during their 30-year run.

UMBRELLAS

One of the criteria used to file gang charges was that many members of the group carried umbrellas during the protest.

TIMECODE: 19:42; 29:15;SPONSEL: The umbrellas, have you seen this tactic used in the past?MCBRIDE: Yes.SPONSEL: And is this a tactic thats commonly used by this particular group?MCBRIDE: Yes it is.

SPONSEL: What are they doing with the umbrellas right there?MCBRIDE: They are keeping them between us and them, and theyre swinging them back and forth basically as a distraction, to conceal what theyre doing, just cause, theyre trying to prevent us from arresting them.

In testimony before the grand jury, McBride also discussed the umbrellas.

PAGE: 38Q: And what about the umbrella, is that part of their, I guess you could say their gang uniform?A: It is. Its an extension of what they are doing to disrupt us and to try and defeat our tactics which are pepper spray and different types of nonlethal munitions. The umbrella will provide a protective umbrella around them, to use the umbrella word, and then it will also conceal what they are doing. As this group moved on October 17th, they were able to conceal what each person was doing by draping umbrellas around the exterior of the group so we couldnt see inside.

Umbrellas are common at protests and have been seen in many cities across the country.

Its something the defense attorney emphasized in the hearing.

TIMECODE: 48:16DEFENSE: Would you agree those umbrellas are used for them to protect themselves from getting pepper sprayed?MCBRIDE: Thats one example of their use.

Members of the group told ABC15 the umbrellas are also to keep alt-right counter-protesters, who were following along next to police, from "doxxing" them.

PROTESTERS RIFLE

A member of the group, Britney Austin, was carrying a rifle during the protest.

McBride discussed the rifle during his grand jury testimony.

PAGE: 47A: I didnt mention earlier, but there is one individual that we noticed early on who has an AR-15 rifle slung. So they cover that person up as well so we cant see what they are doing either.

Q: Does that create a risk for you guys?A: Absolutely. Its a huge hazard for us.

Q: And even though that person is not pointing the gun at you guys in any way, shape, or form, by the mere fact they are covering it up does that put you guys in apprehension that something could happen?A: Absolutely.

In the bond hearing, the defense attorney questioned McBride about the AR-15.

TIMECODE: 39:30DEFENSE: You said there was an individual with an AR-15 at the scene that day?MCBRIDE: Yes sir.DEENSE: Alright, is there anything illegal about having an AR-15?MCBRIDE: NoDEFENSE: Was that person a prohibited possessor?MCBRIDE: Not to my knowledgeDEFENSE: Did that person ever point it at any officer or threaten to point it at any officer?MCBRIDE: Not to my knowledge.DEFENSE: So youd agree with me that that AR-15 did not calculate into your factors of rioting?MCBRIDE: Correct.

The judge at the hearing also said the gun and the groups other actions did not constitute violence or the threat of violence.

TIMECODE: 1:17:30The court has to look at whether that was a threatening use of force or violence. We are an open carry state, the judge said. You are free to carry a gun. That may be threatening to other people, but that is your right in Arizona.

Contact ABC15 Investigator Dave Biscobing at Dave@abc15.com.

Continued here:

Inside the case: Watch testimony behind the Phoenix protest gang charges - ABC15 Arizona

Opinion Still think your camo is cool? – The CT Mirror

Posted on February 7, 2021 by Danzig

We should never forget what insurrectionists did at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. With President Trumps encouragement, overwhelmingly white men and womenstormed the building, hunted for elected officials, flew the Confederate flag, erected a gallows and killed a member of the Capitol Police.

We should also not forget what we saw, asthey sported such disturbing and bizarre iconography from KKK tattoos, Holocaust denial tee shirts and QAnon costumes to Pepe the Frog flags to crusader crosses- that The New York Times published a decoder. More pernicious due to its very ordinariness, however, was their display of every type, styleand color of tactical or paramilitary apparel and gear.In other words, the rioters dressed like many of us do when practicing yoga.

We need to stop wearing the costumes of the far rightnow. Millions of Americans of all political stripes and economic strata unthinkingly don the same uniforms in everyday life that far right extremists have worn in violent, anti-democratic actions at state capitals over the past four years and on Jan. 6, 2021 in Washington, D.C. What should rightly be called militia-chic is everywherefrom camo baseball caps,womensunderwear, and infantrompers.

For some, like Claire Gibson, who lost several friends in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, wearing a used camo jacket is an act of remembrance or respect. Nevertheless, she contended in 2019, the vast majority of Americans consider camo merely a style, even a new neutral.After the events of Jan. 6, it is something far worseand anything but neutral.

Militia chic is but one representation of the militarization of everything that we have experiencedsince the late 1970s.Post-Vietnam commitments to support the troops has morphed into the bipartisan embrace of all things actually and figuratively military not to mention a reluctance to examine in detail the military budget itself. How else to explain that we attend fitness boot camps at local gyms? That we dont question themilitary flyoversat professional, amateur, high school and Little League sporting events? That Rudy Giulianisexpression trial by combattaken literally by the mobwas introduced into popular lexicon through a hit HBO series?

If the past four years have shown us anything, it has shown us that militia chic has long been anything but a representation of respect, a mere style or simple metaphor. It is a politics, more and more closely associated with anti-Black racism, anti-Semitism, anti-immigration, misogyny and other anti-democratic ideas. Historian Kathleen Belew carefully documents the ways in which Vietnam veterans, bitter at the countrys loss to an Asian people, brought the war home by reigniting the KKK and other white nationalist groups in the 1970s and 1980s.Todays groups say much the same: As one member of the alt-right put it, white men have one biological duty:to wage war.

Even if you think your camo boxers represent respect for the military, consider this: members of far right organizations are joining the armed forces at an alarmingly fast clip and finding quarter there. Up to one half of non-white soldiers have witnessedacts of racismandwhite nationalism. But why should this be a surprise when ten current bases are named forConfederate leaders?And conflation between white nationalism in the military and the Confederate flag hardly remains within the borders of the slave-holding South. AConfederate flagflew for years above a Veterans Administration Medical Center in Hot Springs, South Dakota, less than one hundred miles from the site of the final massacre of the Native people of the plains near Wounded Knee.

While some domestic terrorists, like Timothy McVeigh and Ashli Babbitt, are themselvesmilitary veterans,the vast majority of active duty and retired military personnel are not extremists, not insurrectionists, not terrorists. Instead, they are real-life heroes like Rep. Jason Crow (D-Co), whorefusedto leave the floor of the House until his fellow members were safe, with his only tactical gear a suit and tie.

In fact, most domestic terrorists are wannabe soldiers likeDylann Roof, who killed 12 worshippers at the Mother Emmanuel Church in Charleston, S.C.in 2015, and other white men who may not even qualify for military service, but pretend to have the strength and courage embodied by the soldiers they have seen in video games, the internet and on television.Wrapped in an American flag or a Trump flagthey call themselves patriots when they are in fact traitors.

Maybe you think your camo clothes look great. If so, you might want to consider whose outfits match yours. Im throwing mine out.

Catherine McNicol Stock is the Barbara Zaccheo Kohn 72 Professor of History at Connecticut College.She is the author ofRural Radicals: Righteous Rage in the American Grain, Second Edition (2017) and Nuclear Country: The Origins of the Rural New Right(2020)

Originally posted here:

Opinion Still think your camo is cool? - The CT Mirror

Governor Cuomo Announces More Than 110000 Doses of Covid-19 Vaccine Administered in 24 Hours – ny.gov

Posted on February 7, 2021 by Danzig

Governor Cuomo Announces More Than 110,000 Doses of Covid-19 Vaccine Administered in 24 Hours | Governor Andrew M. Cuomo Skip to main content February 6, 2021

Albany, NY

111,316 First and Second Doses of COVID-19 Vaccine Administered in 24 Hours

As of 11AM today, New York's Health Care Distribution Sites Have Administered91% of the Total First Doses Received from Federal Government

Vaccine DashboardWill Update Daily to Provide Updates on the State's Vaccine Program; Go tony.gov/vaccinetracker

Dashboard Now Includes Demographic Data

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced that111,316doses of the COVID-19 vaccine were administered in New York in24 hours. New York State's large distribution network of vaccination sites is capable of reaching many more New Yorkers than the current supply allows. The network remains ready for an increase in supply. As of 11AM today, New York's health care distribution sites have received1,768,135first doses and already administered91percent or1,602,686first dose vaccinations and78percent of first and second doses. The week 8 allocation from the federal government continues being delivered to providers for administration this week.

The Governor also announced that New York State's Vaccine Dashboard now includes demographic data. Yesterday,Governor Cuomo releasednew statewide demographic data on the vaccine acceptance rate across eligible populations.

"We're working hard every day to distribute the vaccine to as many New Yorkers as possible, as fast as possible, and we're now running out of supply each week before getting the next week's allocation,"Governor Cuomo said."New York has distributors at the ready that can greatly expand the number of people we're vaccinating every weekwe just need the vaccines themselves to make that happen. We're also continuing to prioritize fair and equitable distribution of the vaccine by targeting our underserved communities with mass vaccination sites like the one in Yankee Stadium. The more people we vaccinate, the better it is for all of us - so I encourage New Yorkers to keep wearing their masks and social distancing so we can beat this virus once and for all."

Approximately 7million New Yorkers are currently eligible to receive the vaccine. The federal government has increased the weekly supply by more than 20 percent over the next three weeks, but New York's vast distribution network and large population of eligible individuals still far exceed the supply coming from the federal government. Due to limited supply, New Yorkers are encouraged to remain patient and are advised not to show up at vaccination sites without an appointment.

The state'sVaccine Dashboardincludes a county-by-county breakdown for vaccinations administered through the Long Term Care Facility program and vaccine administration progress for hospital workers. Vaccination program numbers below are for doses distributed and delivered to New York for the state's vaccination program, and do not include those reserved for the federal government's Long Term Care Facility program. A breakdown of the data based on numbers reported to New York State as of 11:00 AM today is as follows. The allocation totals below include67percent of the week 8 allocation which will finish being distributed to New York provider sites on Sunday.

STATEWIDE BREAKDOWN

Region

Total Doses Received

Total Doses Administered

% of Total Doses Administered/Received

(1st and 2nd)

Capital Region

164,575

128,942

78%

Central New York

132,320

109,951

83%

Finger Lakes

161,175

136,135

84%

Long Island

326,455

263,323

81%

Mid-Hudson

249,615

186,020

75%

Mohawk Valley

71,040

52,402

74%

New York City

1,200,735

891,935

74%

North Country

74,460

71,528

96%

Southern Tier

77,595

70,653

91%

Western New York

174,415

153,294

88%

Statewide

2,632,385

2,064,183

78%

1st doses fully delivered to New York for Healthcare Distribution Sites

2nd doses fully delivered to New York for Healthcare Distribution Sites

TOTAL

CUMULATIVE

Week 1

Doses arriving 12/14 - 12/20

90,675

N/A

Week 2Doses arriving 12/21 - 12/27

392,025

482,700

Week 3

Doses arriving 12/28 - 01/03

201,500

684,200

Week 4

Doses arriving 01/04 - 01/10

160,050

Governor Cuomo Announces More Than 110000 Doses of Covid-19 Vaccine Administered in 24 Hours - ny.gov

Governor Cuomo Announces Additional Downstate Covid-19 Testing and Community-Based Vaccination Sites to Suspend Operations Due to Impending Winter…

Posted on February 7, 2021 by Danzig

Governor Andrew Cuomo today announced additional COVID-19 testing and vaccination sites throughout downstate New York will suspend operations on Sunday, February 7 due to the impending winter storm. This follows the previously announced operation suspensions at the state-run mass vaccination sites at Jones Beach and Stony Brook. New Yorkers with testing or vaccination appointments at these sites will receive notification of these suspensions via text message and telephone. Appointments will be rescheduled for later in the week.

"Much of Downstate New York is expected to experience heavy snow and strong winds, creating the potential for dangerous travel conditions on Sunday. As we have already done at several state-run mass vaccination sites, we will be suspending operations at testing sites and community based 'pop up' vaccination sites to protect the safety of all those who work and have appointments at these locations,"Governor Cuomo said."Everyone with appointments can rest assured they will not lose their spots - all appointments will be rescheduled for later in the week and everyone will receive direct notification of these scheduling changes."

State-Run COVID-19 Test Sites

Operations at the following state-run COVID-19 testing sites will be suspended on February 7 due to the impending winter storm:

New Yorkers with appointments scheduled on Sunday, February 7 will receive notice of the closure via text message and telephone. Appointments will be rescheduled for later in the week.

Community-Based 'Pop Up' Vaccination Sites

Seven community-based 'pop up' vaccination sites will also be postponed due to the storm and rescheduled for later in the week. Those eight sites include:

Appointments at these community based 'pop up' vaccination sites are scheduled directly with the host site or partner providers SOMOS Community Care andNorthwellHealth. Those entities are notifying New Yorkers with appointments scheduled on Sunday, February 7 of these postponements and the new dates of operation via text message and telephone.

Additionally, the site atChristian Cultural Centeris cancelling Sunday operations as they were able to extend hours and fulfill all appointments on Saturday.

State-Run Mass Vaccination Sites

As Governor Cuomo previously announced, the state-run mass vaccination sites at Jones Beach and Stony Brook on Long Island will also suspend operations on Sunday, February 7 due to winter weather.New Yorkers with appointments these sites will receive an email or text message rescheduling their vaccination for later this week.As part of the rescheduling process and to the extent possible, timing of new appointments will be scheduled in alignment with the original appointment's time. If that new appointment time does not work for an individual given the change in day, they will be provided with a contact number to identify a different time that may work better for the individual.

Operations at the Westchester County Center, Yankee Stadium,JavitsCenter and Aqueduct Racetrack mass vaccination sites will continue as scheduled as those locations are located indoors and have the infrastructure and equipment in place to ensure New Yorkers with appointments can safely enter and exit the location. Operations at the remaining state-run mass vaccination sites throughout Upstate New York also remainunimpacted.

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Governor Cuomo Announces Additional Downstate Covid-19 Testing and Community-Based Vaccination Sites to Suspend Operations Due to Impending Winter...

COVID-19 Daily Update 2-6-2021 – West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources

Posted on February 7, 2021 by Danzig

The West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR) reports as of February 6, 2021, there have been 1,983,050 total confirmatory laboratory results received for COVID-19, with 124,190 total cases and 2,119 total deaths.

DHHR has confirmed the deaths of a 93-year old male from Monongalia County, a 64-year old male from Mingo County, a 79-year old female from Upshur County, a 63-year old female from Pleasants County, a 69-year old male from Wood County, a 67-year old male from Wood County, a 71-year old female from Wood County, a 90-year old female from Wood County, a 73-year old male from Pleasants County, an 86-year old male from Mingo County, a 69-year old female from Wood County, a 61-year old female from Marshall County, an 88-year old female from Wood County, an 86-year old male from Harrison County, an 82-year old male from Greenbrier County, a 69-year old female from Mercer County, a 79-year old male from McDowell County, a 76-year old male from Mingo County, and a 79-year old female from Mason County.

Today is a difficult day as our state continues to feel the effects of this terrible pandemic, said Bill J. Crouch, DHHR Cabinet Secretary. Our hearts go out to the families who have lost loved ones and to those who are currently battling COVID-19.

CASES PER COUNTY: Barbour (1,146), Berkeley (9,156), Boone (1,474), Braxton (755), Brooke (1,940), Cabell (7,263), Calhoun (216), Clay (362), Doddridge (427), Fayette (2,478), Gilmer (659), Grant (1,015), Greenbrier (2,309), Hampshire (1,427), Hancock (2,527), Hardy (1,239), Harrison (4,607), Jackson (1,598), Jefferson (3,421), Kanawha (11,347), Lewis (904), Lincoln (1,154), Logan (2,529), Marion (3,488), Marshall (2,890), Mason (1,701), McDowell (1,287), Mercer (3,987), Mineral (2,522), Mingo (1,997), Monongalia (7,299), Monroe (900), Morgan (882), Nicholas (1,089), Ohio (3,463), Pendleton (598), Pleasants (778), Pocahontas (568), Preston (2,459), Putnam (3,940), Raleigh (4,315), Randolph (2,264), Ritchie (577), Roane (476), Summers (681), Taylor (1,039), Tucker (476), Tyler (588), Upshur (1,569), Wayne (2,452), Webster (272), Wetzel (1,027), Wirt (331), Wood (6,669), Wyoming (1,653).

Delays may be experienced with the reporting of information from the local health department to DHHR. As case surveillance continues at the local health department level, it may reveal that those tested in a certain county may not be a resident of that county, or even the state as an individual in question may have crossed the state border to be tested.

Original post:

COVID-19 Daily Update 2-6-2021 - West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources

More than 600 people get second dose of COVID-19 vaccine thanks to Travis County, area healthcare providers – KXAN.com

Posted on February 7, 2021 by Danzig

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More than 600 people get second dose of COVID-19 vaccine thanks to Travis County, area healthcare providers - KXAN.com

Burkina Faso hospitals struggle with new wave of COVID-19 – The Associated Press

Posted on February 7, 2021 by Danzig

OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso (AP) For nearly a year, Ousseni Yanogo thought he was doing everything he could to protect himself from the coronavirus. The 63-year-old retired gendarme diligently wore a mask, washed his hands and stayed a safe distance from other adults.

When he held hands with his granddaughter to sing happy birthday when she turned 6, he never imagined hed find himself fighting to survive in a coronavirus isolation ward weeks later.

I didnt know contact (with children) was that dangerous, otherwise I wouldnt have allowed the party to be organized, Yanogo said while seated on his bed at the Bogodogo Medical Teaching Hospital in Ouagadougou, the capital of the West African country of roughly 20 million.

After managing to avoid a catastrophic initial wave of the virus for various reasons, including that its figures were almost surely undercounted, the conflict-riddled nation, like much of Africa, is trying to cope with a much deadlier resurgence. Although Burkina Fasos virus figures are still relatively small compared to those in many parts of the world, officials worry that a general lack of understanding and adherence to basic safeguards will make it hard to rein in and could overwhelm the countrys already strained health system.

When the pandemic started, Burkina Faso was already suffering from a humanitarian crisis fueled by conflict involving Islamic militants, the army and local defense groups that has displaced more than a million people, pushed hundreds of thousands to the brink of starvation and forced the closure of more than 130 health centers in the country roughly the size of Colorado, according to government and aid groups.

As of Sunday, the government had recorded 11,227 COVID-19 cases, since the pandemic started, according to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But since the beginning of December, the average number of daily cases has shot up nearly ninefold, from 15 to 130. The death toll has similarly spiked, from 68 at the end of November to 134 and counting. And while mass vaccinations are underway in some parts of the world and are already being credited with helping keep the disease from spreading as quickly, they arent expected to start in Burkina Faso until next month at the earliest.

Were concerned that in the upcoming weeks or months, the curve might not decrease like in the past. The virus is deep inside the community, said Chivanot Afavi, a supervising nurse with The Alliance for International Medical Action, an international aid group working on the front lines of the coronavirus response. People are not taking the proper precautions and dont seem to be worried about the disease, he said.

If the upward trend isnt reversed, the government warns that the countrys hospitals could be overrun.

If we dont manage to decrease the number of new cases, the risks are an increase in severe cases, which could lead to the inundation of hospitals capacity to ensure the care of severe patients, resulting in an increase in harm linked to the disease and maybe an increase in mortality, said Dr. Brice Bicaba, an epidemiologist in charge of coordinating the countrys coronavirus response.

During a rare visit Thursday to the Bogodogo hospitals coronavirus ward, there were only four patients. But when the secluded wing is full, which it has been for most of the past few months, there are generally four staff members to tend to 11 patients.

Workers told The Associated Press they were understaffed and overworked, and that the surge has taken an emotional toll. Last week, three patients died on the same day.

Its stressful work, said Dr. Dieudonne Wend-Kuni Kientega. Every time a patient dies, were impacted because theyre humans, theyre our brothers, and theyre our relatives.

Health experts worry that as COVID-19 cases and deaths rise, doctors and nurses will be diverted from treating patients with the countrys endemic diseases.

If this second wave of COVID-19 cases continues to rise, the additional strain placed on Burkinas health system, already weakened by the first wave and ongoing conflict, can likely increase disability and death from other causes such as malaria, malnutrition and other respiratory infections, said Donald Brooks, chief executive officer of Initiative: Eau, a U.S. aid group focused on water and sanitation that has been assisting in Burkina Fasos pandemic response.

Once it begins, the vaccine rollout will also likely use resources the country cant afford to reallocate, he said.

On Wednesday, COVAX, a global effort aimed at helping lower-income countries obtain shots, announced plans for an initial distribution of 100 million doses worldwide by the end of March. If certain criteria are fulfilled and the vaccine is approved by the World Health Organization, Burkina Faso could receive 1.6 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine within weeks.

While the country prepares for the vaccines arrival, those treating the virus and suffering from it are calling on their communities to take it more seriously.

Yanogo said when he started coughing and having trouble breathing after his granddaughters party, his son took him to a private clinic, where he tested positive and was then transferred to the public facility, where severe cases are taken. While his hospital stay and general medical care is free, patients have to pay out of pocket for tests such as X-rays and medicines that arent available at the hospital. Since getting sick, Yanogos been forced to ask relatives and friends to help pay approximately $360 for his care, which includes daily oxygen therapy.

Its hard for me. Many relatives contributed and friends contributed. I used all the money I had, said Yanogo, who wept softly into his shirt when talking about how touched he was by the support hes received.

Yanogo said hes faced tough situations before, but that hes never confronted anything like COVID-19. He also said he was feeling better and couldnt wait to get home to his worried family.

I want to return home because of my wife, my children and everyone, he said. As long as Im here, they are not at ease.

___

Follow AP coverage of the coronavirus pandemic at: https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic, https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-vaccine and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak

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Burkina Faso hospitals struggle with new wave of COVID-19 - The Associated Press

Which COVID-19 tests are required for international travel? – WKBN.com

Posted on February 7, 2021 by Danzig

It depends on where youre going

by: The Associated Press, MATTHEW PERRONE

Credit: Peter Zelei Images/Moment/Getty Images

Which COVID-19 tests are required for international travel?

It depends on where youre going.

In an effort to limit the spread of new coronavirus variants, many countries are requiring incoming travelers to show a recent negative test.

The U.S., for example, will accept results from either a test that detects the genetic material of the virus considered the most sensitive type of test or a rapid test that looks for viral proteins called antigens. The tests must have been taken no more than three days before departing for the U.S.

Health professionals usually give more sensitive lab tests via a nasal swab that take a day or more to yield results. Rapid tests have a turnaround time of about 15 to 30 minutes and are increasingly used to screen people at testing sites, offices, schools and nursing homes. For some rapid tests, users can swab themselves at home.

With either test, the U.S. requires electronic or printed proof of the negative result from a medical laboratory. That means that even if you plan to get the faster test youll likely need to see a health care provider who can provide documentation.

England has a similar setup, accepting results from both types of tests. But health authorities there are imposing extra requirements, including that the tests meet certain thresholds for accuracy. Travelers are told to check to make sure their test meets the standards.

After countries instituted varying requirements, officials in the European Union agreed to standardize requirements across the 27-nation bloc.

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Which COVID-19 tests are required for international travel? - WKBN.com

Hundreds of Austin-area veterans receive their first COVID-19 vaccine Saturday – KXAN.com

Posted on February 7, 2021 by Danzig

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Hundreds of Austin-area veterans receive their first COVID-19 vaccine Saturday - KXAN.com

Walmart, Winn-Dixie pharmacies to roll out COVID-19 vaccine this week – FOX 35 Orlando

Posted on February 7, 2021 by Danzig

Vaccines going right to some pharmacies starting this week

Publix has led the way in the state, rolling out COVID-19 vaccines weeks ago in certain Florida counties. Two other popular pharmacies will join them this week.

Starting this week, three pharmacies in Florida will now offer the COVID-19 vaccine.

Publix has led the way in the state, rolling out COVID-19 vaccines weeks ago in certain Florida counties. Two other popular pharmacies, Winn Dixie and Walmart,will join them this week.

LIST: These are the Publix stores offering the COVID-19 vaccine

Shipments will begin as early as Monday, with a million doses going out every week to each provider among its locations nationwide.

So far, CVS and Walgreens pharmacies in Florida are not getting vaccine supplies. Congressman Darren Soto, who sits on the committee that oversees the Center for Disease Control (CDC), wants to see both pharmacies added to Florida's list.

RELATED:Florida Walmart's to receive COVID-19 vaccines: How to book appointment

In addition, local counties are handing out shipments that they also have at their own distribution sites. None of these supplies going to pharmacies will reportedlytakeaway from the supplies that the counties have to give to seniors and others.

Tune in to FOX 35 Orlando for the latest Central Florida news.

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Walmart, Winn-Dixie pharmacies to roll out COVID-19 vaccine this week - FOX 35 Orlando

Even with COVID-19 vaccines, grim outlook puts robust travel recovery out a few … years – OregonLive

Posted on February 7, 2021 by Danzig

As coronavirus vaccines started rolling out late last year, there was a palpable sense of excitement. People began browsing travel websites and airlines grew optimistic about flying again. Ryanair Holdings Plc even launched a Jab & Go campaign alongside images of 20-somethings on holiday, drinks in hand.

Its not working out that way.

For a start, it isnt clear the vaccines actually stop travelers spreading the disease, even if theyre less likely to catch it themselves. Neither are the shots proven against the more-infectious mutant strains that have startled governments from Australia to the U.K. into closing, rather than opening, borders. An ambitious push by carriers for digital health passports to replace the mandatory quarantines killing travel demand is also fraught with challenges and has yet to win over the World Health Organization.

This bleak reality has pushed back expectations of any meaningful recovery in global travel to 2022. That may be too late to save the many airlines with only a few months of cash remaining. And the delay threatens to kill the careers of hundreds of thousands of pilots, flight crew and airport workers whove already been out of work for close to a year. Rather than a return to worldwide connectivity one of the economic miracles of the jet era prolonged international isolation appears unavoidable.

Its very important for people to understand that at the moment, all we know about the vaccines is that they will very effectively reduce your risk of severe disease, said Margaret Harris, a WHO spokesperson in Geneva. We havent seen any evidence yet indicating whether or not they stop transmission.

To be sure, its possible a travel rebound will happen on its own without the need for vaccine passports. Should jabs start to drive down infection and death rates, governments might gain enough confidence to roll back quarantines and other border curbs, and rely more on passengers pre-flight Covid-19 tests.

The United Arab Emirates, for example, has largely done away with entry restrictions, other than the need for a negative test. While U.K. regulators banned Ryanairs Jab & Go ad as misleading, the discount airlines chief Michael OLeary still expects almost the entire population of Europe to be inoculated by the end of September. Thats the point where we are released from these restrictions, he said. Short-haul travel will recover strongly and quickly.

For now though, governments broadly remain skittish about welcoming international visitors and rules change at the slightest hint of trouble. Witness Australia, which slammed shut its borders with New Zealand last month after New Zealand reported one COVID-19 case in the community.

New Zealand and Australia, which have pursued a successful approach aimed at eliminating the virus, have both said their borders wont fully open this year. Travel bubbles, meanwhile, such as one proposed between the Asian financial hubs of Singapore and Hong Kong, have yet to take hold. France on Sunday tightened rules on international travel while Canada is preparing to impose tougher quarantine measures.

Air traffic and aviation is really way down the priority list for governments, said Phil Seymour, president and head of advisory at U.K-based aviation services firm IBA Group Ltd. Its going to be a long haul out of this.

The pace of vaccine rollouts is another sticking point.

While the rate of vaccinations has improved in the U.S. the worlds largest air-travel market before the virus struck inoculation programs have been far from aviations panacea. In some places, theyre just one more thing for people to squabble about. Vaccine nationalism in Europe has dissolved into a rows over supply and who should be protected first. The region is also fractured over whether a jab should be a ticket to unrestricted travel.

It all means a rebound in passenger air traffic is probably a 2022 thing, according to Joshua Ng, Singapore-based director at Alton Aviation Consultancy. Long-haul travel may not properly resume until 2023 or 2024, he predicts. The International Air Transport Association said this week that in a worst-case scenario, passenger traffic may only improve by 13% this year. Its official forecast for a 50% rebound was issued in December.

American Airlines Group Inc. on Wednesday warned 13,000 employees they could be laid off, many of them for the second time in six months.

At the end of 2020 we fully believed that we would be looking at a summer schedule where wed fly all of our airplanes and need the full strength of our team, Chief Executive Officer Doug Parker and President Robert Isom told workers. Regrettably, that is no longer the case.

The lack of progress is clear in the skies. Commercial flights worldwide as of Feb. 1 wallowed at less than half pre-pandemic levels, according to OAG Aviation Worldwide Ltd. Scheduled services in major markets including the U.K., Brazil, Spain are still falling, the data show.

Quarantines that lock up passengers upon arrival for weeks on end remain the great enemy of a real travel rebound. A better alternative, according to IATA, is a digital Travel Pass to store passengers vaccine and testing histories, allowing restrictions to be lifted. Many of the worlds largest airlines have rolled out apps from IATA and others, including Singapore Airlines Ltd., Emirates and British Airways.

We need to be working on as many options as possible, said Richard Treeves, British Airways head of business resilience. Were hopeful for integration on those apps and common standards.

But even IATA recognizes theres no guarantee every state will adopt its Travel Pass right away, if at all. Theres currently no consensus on vaccine passports within the 27-member European Union, with tourism-dependent countries like Greece and Portugal backing the idea and bigger members including France pushing back.

Were going to have a lack of harmony at the beginning, Nick Careen, IATAs senior vice president for passenger matters, said at a briefing last month. None of it is ideal.

The airline group has called on the WHO to determine that it is safe for inoculated people to fly without quarantining, in a bid to bolster the case for Travel Pass. But the global health body remains unmoved.

At this point, all we can do is say, yes, you were vaccinated on this date with this vaccine and you had your booster if its a two-course vaccine on this date, the WHOs Harris said. Were working very hard to get a secure electronic system so people have that information. But at this point, thats all it is. Its a record.

A vaccine passport wouldnt be able to demonstrate the quality or durability of any protective immunity gleaned from being inoculated, or from being infected with virus naturally, either, Harris said.

The idea that your natural immunity should be protective and that you could somehow use this as a way of saying Im good to travel is out completely.

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Even with COVID-19 vaccines, grim outlook puts robust travel recovery out a few ... years - OregonLive

Where are the mutated COVID-19 variants, spreading around the world, coming from? – 11Alive.com WXIA

Posted on February 7, 2021 by Danzig

Researchers at the CDC have been working to track down the origins of those variants.

ATLANTA Almost one year ago, the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was working day and night to track down the origins of the coronavirus and how to stop it.

Today, the work is the same, but the task is heightened. Mutated variants of COVID-19 - deviations of the virus - are now spreading around the world.

As of Tuesday, there were 23 cases of the U.K. variant detected in Georgia, up from the previous 19 cases.

Researchers at the CDC have been working to track down the origins of those mutations, and - just as with the original version of the virus - they are working to keep everyone safe.

According to the latest forecast, the variant strain of the coronavirus that originated in the United Kingdom is spreading so rapidly that it will make up 1% of all COVID-19 cases in the United States within a couple of weeks, and rapidly take over as the dominant strain in the U.S. by March.

"Every time you encounter somebody who has an infection with one of these variants, you are much more likely to get infected," explained Dr. Nahid Bhadelia of Boston Medical Center.

"You are talking about a variant that might be upwards of 50% more transmissible," said Dr. Jodie Guest of Emory University's Rollins Schools of Public Health.

"We should see a huge surge of cases by March" if the variant strains are able to spread unchecked, Dr. Guest said.

But Guest said that, so far, social distancing and masks, along with the vaccines, have been able to stop all of the known variants. That would minimize a possible new surge.

In addition, researchers are working on adapting the existing vaccines to kill even more powerful variants that may emerge.

"It's not going to take very much to reproduce the mRNA vaccine with the changes that are needed, and give everyone who's had it a booster," Guest said. "But, at the moment, we don't believe that that is needed in the current state that we're in."

As of this point, the variants are not more powerful or deadly than the original strain, but they are more contagious - and they are able to infect more people more easily and more rapidly than the original coronavirus.

However, following proper health guidelines - and getting vaccinated as the vaccines become available -- will hinder and even stop the variant strains that have been discovered, so far.

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Where are the mutated COVID-19 variants, spreading around the world, coming from? - 11Alive.com WXIA

How the Search for Covid-19 Treatments Faltered While Vaccines Sped Ahead – The New York Times

Posted on February 7, 2021 by Danzig

Nearly a year into the coronavirus pandemic, as thousands of patients are dying every day in the United States and widespread vaccination is still months away, doctors have precious few drugs to fight the virus.

A handful of therapies remdesivir, monoclonal antibodies and the steroid dexamethasone have improved the care of Covid patients, putting doctors in a better position than they were when the virus surged last spring. But these drugs are not cure-alls and theyre not for everyone, and efforts to repurpose other drugs, or discover new ones, have not had much success.

The government poured $18.5 billion into vaccines, a strategy that resulted in at least five effective products at record-shattering speed. But its investment in drugs was far smaller, about $8.2 billion, most of which went to just a few candidates, such as monoclonal antibodies. Studies of other drugs were poorly organized.

The result was that many promising drugs that could stop the disease early, called antivirals, were neglected. Their trials have stalled, either because researchers couldnt find enough funding or enough patients to participate.

At the same time, a few drugs have received sustained investment despite disappointing results. Theres now a wealth of evidence that the malaria drugs hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine did not work against Covid. And yet there are still 179 clinical trials with 169,370 patients in which at least some are receiving the drugs, according to the Covid Registry of Off-label & New Agents at the University of Pennsylvania. And the federal government funneled tens of millions of dollars into an expanded access program for convalescent plasma, infusing almost 100,000 Covid patients before there was any robust evidence that it worked. In January, those trials revealed that, at least for hospitalized patients, it doesnt.

The lack of centralized coordination meant that many trials for Covid antivirals were doomed from the start too small and poorly designed to provide useful data, according to Dr. Janet Woodcock, the acting commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. If the government had instead set up an organized network of hospitals to carry out large trials and quickly share data, researchers would have many more answers now.

I blame myself to some extent, said Dr. Woodcock, who has overseen the federal governments efforts to develop Covid drugs.

She hopes to tame the chaos with a new effort from the Biden administration. In the next couple of months, she said, the government plans to start large and well-organized trials for existing drugs that could be repurposed to fight Covid-19. We are actively working on that, Dr. Woodcock said.

Brand-new antiviral drugs might also help, but only now is the National Institutes of Health putting together a major initiative to develop them, meaning they wont be ready in time to fight the current pandemic.

This effort will be unlikely to provide therapeutics in 2021, Dr. Francis Collins, the head of the N.I.H., said in a statement. If there is a Covid-24 or Covid-30 coming, we want to be prepared.

Even as the number of cases and deaths have surged around the country, the survival rate of those who are infected has improved significantly. A recent study found that by June, the mortality rates of those hospitalized had dropped to 9 percent from 17 percent at the start of the pandemic, a trend that has been echoed in other studies. Researchers say the improvement is partly because of the steroid dexamethasone, which boosts survival rates of severely ill patients by tamping down the immune system rather than blocking the virus. Patients may also be seeking care earlier in the course of the illness. And masks and social distancing may reduce viral exposure.

When the new coronavirus emerged as a global threat in early 2020, doctors frantically tried an assortment of existing drugs. But the only way to know if they actually worked was to set up large clinical trials in which some people received placebos, and others took the drug in question.

Getting hundreds or thousands of people into such trials was a tremendous logistical challenge. In early 2020, the N.I.H. narrowed its focus to just a few promising drugs. That support included a project known as ACTIV, which enabled trials on antivirals and other treatments for Covid-19 to run at many sites at once. Researchers tested remdesivir, as well as monoclonal antibodies, gathering the data that showed they were indeed effective to some extent. Remdesivir, which stops viruses from replicating inside cells, can modestly shorten the time patients need to recover, but has no effect on mortality. Monoclonal antibodies, which stop the virus from entering cells, can be very potent, but only when given before people are sick enough to be hospitalized.

Hundreds of hospitals and universities began their own trials of existing drugs already deemed safe and widely manufactured that might also work against the coronavirus. But most of these trials were small and disorganized.

In many cases, researchers have been left on their own to set up trials without the backing of the federal government or pharmaceutical companies. In April, as New York City was in the throes of a Covid surge, Charles Mobbs, a neuroscientist at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, heard about some intriguing work in France hinting at the effectiveness of an antipsychotic drug.

Doctors at French psychiatric hospitals had noticed that relatively few patients became ill with Covid-19 compared with the staff members who cared for them. The researchers speculated that the drugs the patients were taking could be protecting them. One of those drugs, the antipsychotic chlorpromazine, had been shown in laboratory experiments to prevent the coronavirus from multiplying.

The doctors tried to start a trial of chlorpromazine, but the pandemic ebbed temporarily, it turned out in France by the time they were ready. Dr. Mobbs then spent weeks making arrangements for a trial of his own on patients hospitalized at Mount Sinai, only to hit the same wall. We ran out of patients, he said.

If doctors like Dr. Mobbs could tap into nationwide networks of hospitals, they would be able to find enough patients to run their trials quickly. Those networks exist, but they were not opened up for drug-repurposing efforts.

Many scientists suspect that the best time to fight the coronavirus is early in an infection, when the virus is multiplying quickly. But its particularly hard to recruit trial volunteers who are not in a hospital. Researchers have to track down people right after theyve tested positive and find a way to deliver the trial drugs to them.

At the University of Kentucky, researchers began such a trial in May to test a drug called camostat, which is normally used to treat inflammation of the pancreas. The scientists thought it might also work as a Covid-19 antiviral because it destroys a protein that the virus depends on to infect human cells. Because camostat comes in pill form, rather than an infusion, it would be especially useful for people like the trial volunteers, many of whom lived in remote rural areas.

But the researchers have spent the past eight months trying to recruit enough participants. They have had trouble finding patients who have recently received a Covid diagnosis, especially with the unpredictable rise and fall of cases.

This has been the source of the delays for essentially all of the trials around the world, said Dr. James Porterfield, an infectious disease clinician at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine, who is leading the trial.

While doctors like Dr. Porterfield have struggled to carry out studies on their own, a few drugs have become sensations, praised as cure-alls despite a lack of evidence.

The first supposed panacea was hydroxychloroquine, a drug developed for malaria. Television pundits claimed it had healing powers, as did President Trump. Rather than start one large, well-designed trial across many hospitals, doctors began a swarm of small trials.

There was no coordination, and no centralized leadership, said Ilan Schwartz, an infectious disease expert at the University of Alberta.

Nevertheless, the F.D.A. gave the drug an emergency clearance as a treatment for people hospitalized with Covid. When large clinical trials finally did begin delivering results, it turned out that the drug provided no benefit and might even do harm. The agency withdrew its authorization in June.

Many scientists were left embittered, considering all that work a waste of precious time and resources.

The clear, unambiguous and compelling lesson from the hydroxychloroquine story for the medical community and the public is that science and politics do not mix, Dr. Michael Saag of University of Alabama at Birmingham wrote in November in JAMA.

Now another drug is becoming popular before theres strong evidence that it works: the parasite-killing compound ivermectin. Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, who extolled hydroxychloroquine in April, held a hearing in December where Dr. Pierre Kory testified about ivermectin. Dr. Kory, a pulmonary and critical care specialist at Aurora St. Lukes Medical Center in Milwaukee at the time, called it effectively a miracle drug against Covid-19. Yet there are no published results from large-scale clinical trials to support such claims, only small, suggestive ones.

Even if the federal government had set up a centralized trial network to evaluate these repurposed antivirals on a large scale, as it is trying to do now, scientists would have still faced some unavoidable hurdles. It takes time to do careful experiments to discover promising drugs and then to confirm that theyre really worth investigating further.

In drug development, were used to 10-to-15-year runways, said Sumit K. Chanda, a virologist at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute in La Jolla, Calif.

In February, Dr. Chanda and his colleagues began a different kind of search for a Covid-19 antiviral. They screened a library of 13,000 drugs, mixing each drug with cells and coronaviruses to see if they stopped infections.

A few drugs proved promising. The researchers tested one of them a cheap leprosy pill called clofazimine over several months, doing experiments in human lung tissue and hamsters. Clofazimine fought off the virus in the animals if they received it soon after being infected.

Now, nearly a year after he started his research, Dr. Chanda is hoping he can get funding for the most difficult part of drug testing: large and randomized clinical trials that can cost millions of dollars. To complete this stage efficiently, researchers almost always need the backing of a large company or the federal government, or both as happened with the large clinical trials for the new coronavirus vaccines.

Its unclear how the Biden administrations new drug-testing effort will choose which drug candidates to support. But if trials begin in the next few months, its possible they could reveal useful data by the end of the year.

Pharmaceutical companies are also beginning to fund some trials of repurposed drugs. A study published this week in Science found that a 24-year-old cancer drug called plitidepsin is 27 times more potent than remdesivir at halting the coronavirus in lab experiments. In October, a Spanish drug company called PharmaMar reported promising results from a small safety trial of plitidepsin. Now the company is preparing to start a late-stage trial in Spain to see if the drug works compared with a placebo.

The pharma giant Merck is running a large, late-stage trial on a pill called molnupiravir, originally developed by Ridgeback Biotherapeutics for influenza, which has been shown to cure ferrets of Covid-19. The trials first results could emerge as early as March.

Experts are particularly eager to see this data because molnupiravir may be effective in treating more than just Covid-19. In April, scientists found that the drug could also treat mice infected with other coronaviruses that cause SARS and MERS.

Any antivirals that may emerge in 2021 wont save the lives already lost to Covid-19. But its possible that one of those drugs may work against coronavirus pandemics to come.

Noah Weiland and Katie Thomas contributed reporting.

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How the Search for Covid-19 Treatments Faltered While Vaccines Sped Ahead - The New York Times

2 more Buffalo Sabres added to NHL’s COVID-19 protocol – WGRZ.com

Posted on February 7, 2021 by Danzig

The Sabres' number of players on the NHL's COVID-19 protocol list is up to seven on Saturday, after Dylan Cozens and Curtis Lazar were added.

BUFFALO, N.Y. Forwards Dylan Cozens and Curtis Lazar on Saturday became the sixth and seventh Sabres players to be added to the NHL's COVID-19 protocol list.

Head coach Ralph Krueger tested positive for the coronavirus earlier in the week as well.

Cozens and Lazar are now on the list with five other Sabres players, including forwards Taylor Hall and Tobias Rieder and defensemen Rasmus Ristolainen, Brandon Montour and Jake McCabe.

The addition comes after the Sabres had no players put on the list Friday for the first time in four days.

The team has been in quarantine since Tuesday, when they were supposed to travel to Long Island to play the New York Islanders on the day of the game. Their initial flight out of Buffalo on Monday was delayed after a significant snowstorm hit the northeast, including eastern New York.

The Sabres were coming off of a weekend series Saturday and Sunday against New Jersey, in Buffalo. The Devils were in the middle of their own COVID-19 problems at the time.

The league canceled the Sabres next four games. As of right now they are supposed to play again next Thursday against Washington.

The team also announced changes to twelve regular season games earlier on Saturday.

Literary manga ‘The Man Without Talent’ speaks volumes in hermetic angst – The Japan Times

Posted on February 7, 2021 by Danzig

A crane framed by a moonlit windowsill. A family hike, and the arguments and nihilism that ensue. A poet dissolving into the mist.

These are some of the moments that make up The Man Without Talent, a compelling work from one of Japans masters of literary manga, Yoshiharu Tsuge. With the release of The Swamp last year, and The Man Without Talent in January (both translated by Ryan Holmberg), Tsuge is finally coming alive for English readers.

The Man Without Talent, by Yoshiharu TsugeTranslated by Ryan Holmberg240 pagesNEW YORK REVIEW COMICS

The Man Without Talent explores the daily life, meditations and human interactions of Tsuges cartoon stand-in, Sukezo Sukegawa, as he attempts to support his family through selling stones, fixing up broken cameras and any other endeavor that seems destined to fail.

The real merit of the work comes from its breadth: While the focus remains trained on Sukezo, images, stories and mythologies float in and out of the background: the wonder of beautiful stones, bird-whisperers in the forest. It is a thoughtful work enveloped in the authenticity and crudeness of its self-centered protagonist, broken down by the cruelty of modern life and the inability of Sukezo, or rather Tsuge, to connect with others.

Tsuge is nothing short of one of Japans most important manga artists. His unequivocal influence on manga begins with his use of mature themes in a comic format and his integration of autobiographical material, and extends to his blend of the fantastic and surreal with meditations on traditional Japanese culture and customs. He has had a pronounced impact on generations of artists and writers, from seasoned horror master Hideshi Hino to contemporary author Hiromi Kawakami.

The amount of writing about Tsuge is probably second only to (Astro Boy creator) Osamu Tezuka, says Holmberg. I think Tsuges mastery and influence will naturally dawn on English-language manga readers.

While Tsuges early work from the mid-1960s was compiled in The Swamp, The Man Without Talent was published during the late 1980s. It became immensely popular and was even adapted into a film in 1991.

Today, the book serves as a prime example of the I-novel a Japanese literary genre that is characterized by an autobiographical narrative done in manga form. Author Osamu Dazai is another champion of the I-novel, and in some ways, The Man Without Talent is reminiscent of Dazais novel, No Longer Human. Both works draw out the self-pity, misery and narcissism of a philosophical deadbeat a man both pathetic and admirable, as easy to loathe as he is easy to empathize with.

If youre puzzled about how a deadbeat like Sukezo could be considered a sage, consider the times, writes Holmberg in the foreword. By the time The Man Without Talent was turned into a movie, fissures in Japans real estate and stock market bubbles were the stuff of daily headlines. Being mun (talentless) became seen as not helpless and shameful, but an affirmative way of life based on using your skills in ways other than what society deems proper.

Sukezos incompetence is astonishing. He insists on selling stones despite never getting even a single customer. He neglects his child. But this man without talent escapes drowning in self-pity. Sukezo encounters the world around him with a philosophical flair, so his idleness (and perceptiveness) points the readers attention to the mangas arguably more compelling vignettes and moments.

Another obvious highlight of the book is Tsuges art. He uses cinematic angles and composed frames, cloaking characters in light and shadow. He depicts sunlight, wind, dirt and rain with sensitivity and alertness. The last chapter of the manga explores the life of a poet named Seigetsu Inoue and features some truly beautiful and creative pages.

According to Holmberg, Tsuges comics and his accompanying real life habit of shutting himself off from the world represented an ideal of masculine hermitude to many critics in the 1970s and 80s. Separating himself from family concerns and the burdens of a capitalist society was seen as a noble pursuit. But the small nuclear family, regardless of its internal aggravations, is ultimately a ballast and refuge for Tsuge, says Holmberg. Sukezo is flawed but real, and thats precisely why the angst makes for a compelling story.

Tsuge has received buzz in Japan and internationally in the past few years. Last February, Tsuge received an honorary award at the Angouleme International Comics Festival in France, the biggest manga festival in Europe. A few months later, major publishing firm Kodansha released a complete collection of his works in Japanese. After years of attempting to license Tsuges work in English, overseas publishers have only recently succeeded.

Tsuge is now 83 years old and long-retired, but his work has a cache unlike others. As a Kodansha comics official told the Asahi Shimbun last year: Tsuges way of life and his very existence are considered legendary.

While the self-pitying nature of the I-novel genre can feel off-putting at times, Tsuges thoughtfulness and attention to detail makes The Man Without Talent a captivating read. It also speaks to a wider world of literary manga that remains underappreciated in English and that we will hopefully see continue to be opened up in the coming years.

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Literary manga 'The Man Without Talent' speaks volumes in hermetic angst - The Japan Times

The unaccommodated man: Review of Manoranjan Byaparis The Runaway Boy – The Hindu

Posted on February 7, 2021 by Danzig

Manoranjan Byapari is unique among Indian writers because he comes from the working class. In that, he represents a huge swathe of our population that is born in anonymity, toils without honour, is exploited ruthlessly, and dies without redress. These people go unnoticed in the India of Mercs and condos because they cannot make themselves heard at best, they can depend on a middle-class author to lend them voice and presence. Byapari is exceptional because he is one of them, but with the decisive ability to write his experience, which he brings out raw and bleeding in his books. As he said in an interview, I write because I cant kill. His rage is directed at Brahmins, landowners, police, the state, and also at us the genteel, privileged reader for whom deprivation is an idea. Byapari can make us feel ashamed.

Im a Chandal

This self-taught writer pulls off a near-impossible literary feat in his works he closes the gap between life and art so seamlessly that one can almost stand for the other. (It helps, of course, that he writes in his mother tongue Bengali. The contribution of translators like V. Ramaswamy or Arunava Sinha in rendering Byaparis writings into English while keeping his cadence intact cannot be gainsaid.) In The Runaway Boy, the first part of his semi-autobiographical Chandal Jibon trilogy, we are introduced to Jibon, born unfortunate though not unwanted, who, true to his name, is indomitable. He is Shakespeares poor, bare unaccommodated man who walks and keeps on walking, no matter how much the world tries to crush him. The story of The Runaway Boy is unadorned, unrelenting, sometimes rambling, but always true to the life the author has led. As the boy screams out at his assailants at one point, My names Jibon, Im a Chandal. What more do you want to know?

It takes a child born into a low-caste, disenfranchised, utterly disadvantaged family to ask the simplest but toughest question of them all, the question Job had put to God: what has he done to deserve it? He runs away from his starving family in hope of a better life but hunger dogs him everywhere. The alternative to enduring starvation is to suffer the gratuitous cruelty of his employers, who beat him, cheat him, sexually abuse him, and treat him as untouchable. Battered relentlessly, Jibon gets an insight into the injustice inherent in social order: Someone or the other had once told Jibon that the wages for minor work were low. The more important the work, the higher the wage. Jibon could not figure out why the work of men who ploughed the land under sun and rain and provided the country food... of the workers in farms and factories who worked their hammers and tools and made the country wealthy, was considered small, and why were their wages so low? And how was it that the tonsured Brahmins muttering om-bom and ringing bells before stone images in temples, the babu sitting on a chair in his office and sipping tea were considered big?... Who made this classification of work?

Wings of light

Abjection gives Jibon a nihilistic view of life and society. Yet his is not the intellectual nihilism of the decadent bourgeois. If Jibon loses his belief in religion, in politics of the Left or Right, in ideas of social welfare, even in humanity, it is because he simply cannot afford to trust. In the instances when he does, he is inevitably betrayed. The incident in Gauhati Mail where a man treats him kindly only to con him is gut-wrenching, all the more because we feel our hopes rising along with Jibons. The fall, when it comes, hits hard.

But no experience, however painful, can snuff out Jibons will to live. Byapari creates moments of levity such as when Jibon has a solemn conversation with his spectral friend, Maran (Death), or when, at playtime, Jibon assumes the role of the great archer Ramachandra, his pants torn at the backside that flit on wings of light against the darkness. His descriptions of cities like Calcutta controlled by the privileged few who laughed, walked and talked like machines can recall images of urban superficiality in the works of great modernists like Eliot. But Byaparis subject position gives his account a robust, hard-won authenticity.

The Runaway Boy will make the reader look at life through Jibons eyes and the view isnt flattering, to put it mildly. Get ready to confront some bitter truths: In this country, the son of a Baniya used to go on a fast from time to time, for two or ten days every month or two. He had become a leader by doing that. Later, he became the father of the nation. But the names of Jibon and many more like him who began fasting from the time they were in their mothers wombs and ended it only when they finally died found no place in history. No one spoke about them Could there be anything more incredible than that!

The Runaway Boy; Manoranjan Byapari, trs V. Ramaswamy, Eka, 599

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The unaccommodated man: Review of Manoranjan Byaparis The Runaway Boy - The Hindu

Trump’s impunity is another sign of the degradation of the US Senate 02/03/2021 Lcia Guimares KSU | The Sentinel Newspaper – KSU | The Sentinel…

Posted on February 7, 2021 by Danzig

The institutions are functioning. This phrase has been repeated, with or without a question mark, in the United States for over four years and, since the end of the military dictatorship, it has not been used as much in Brazil.

Its hard to believe the institutions are working when we wake up to news that a rogue QAnon spokesperson manages to hold the Republican leadership hostage in the House in Washington, and that a distraught extremist has won the leadership of the powerful Constitution and Justice Commission in Brasilia.

The functioning of the institutions does not depend solely on the independence of the three powers. In the American case, more than two centuries of unbroken constitutional rule have been crucial in stemming the lawless wickedness of Donald Trump. He had neither the time nor the competence to undermine the entire institutional apparatus of the federal government. But he has tried and achieved successes that will mark the legislature and the bench, in addition to Joe Bidens tenure.

The funeral ceremony at the Capitol Roundabout on Wednesday (3), when MPs and Senators paid tribute to policeman Brian Sicknick, murdered during Trumps invasion of the House, spoke of the contrast to the violence and chaos that reigned supreme in the same room. , January 6th. A sign that the institutions are functioning?

The presence of Republican leader Mitch McConnell at the roundabout does not eclipse the fact that he has spent the past two weeks maneuvering to obstruct the Senate committee scrutiny that Democrats have rightfully won at the polls. The nihilism of the party is still personified by the leadership of McConnell, who, despite hating Trump, decided the former president was a useful idiot.

The tenuous Democratic control of the Senate 50 seats plus Vice President Kamala Harris tie-breaker vote at a time when the Republican Party does not decide whether it wants to be the bunch of lunatics and renegades that instigated the Capitol breach , makes it more urgent. question: does the Senate work?

In the mythology of American exceptionalism, a clich coined in the 19th century describes the Senate as the greatest deliberative body in the world. No one demoralized this pride more than McConnell himself by declaring in 2010 that his only mission was to make Barack Obama president for one term.

The composition of the Senate is often criticized as a guarantee of minority power, a modern Republican electoral project since the years of Richard Nixon. Since every state, regardless of its population, has the same right to send two senators to Washington, the 50 Democratic senators today represent 41 million more Americans than the 50 Republican senators.

Tuesday (9) we will have another opportunity to ask ourselves whether the Senate serves American democracy or the power projects of its members. Unfortunately, there is no suspense in sight. It will be impossible to rally Republican voices to condemn Donald Trump in the second and unprecedented impeachment trial.

If in the first trial a year ago hypocrisy was barely disguised as absolving the presidents criminality, this time the senators who insisted Biden stole the election are more difficult.

How can a large deliberative body go unpunished for a president who launched the terrorist invasion, which barely claimed the lives of its members?

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Trump's impunity is another sign of the degradation of the US Senate 02/03/2021 Lcia Guimares KSU | The Sentinel Newspaper - KSU | The Sentinel...

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