Who profits?

LAWYERS!

Sadly so...

And also in expensive misery, the big health industry with exorbitant charges to patch up and drug up what's left...

Did a drug result in serious injury or death? Call 1-800-BAD-DRUG today and talk to the LAWYERS of Dewey, Cheatem and Howe and get your multi-million dollar justice NOW. You pay nothing unless we win your case. Call NOW!

And what does the drug company have to do? Buy insurance, lots and lots of insurance.

As WHO says New Covid strain is the most transmissible yet and Beijing threatens response to ‘unacceptable’ virus testing of Chinese travelers by some countries (but what the story neglects to say is that while China will drop their quarantine measures on Jan.8 visitors will still be required to provide a negative COVID test before entering the country) the country of Tokelau has entered the list in 231st place taking the MS Zaandam off the bottom of that list.

Thanks for that...

I suspect that the main aspect is:

... They just don't trust the Chinese vaccines and the [Chinese] government narrative...

With, the dire state of politics... Who can be trusted there!...


Stay healthy safe folks!
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

With, the dire state of politics...

Why is medicine political? Oh, I get it, abortion.

With, the dire state of politics...

Why is medicine political? Oh, I get it, abortion.

... And dictatorships dictating what medicine or vaccine is to be used even when better is available...

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Yet still... "Don't Look Up?"

Or blithely "Watching the river flood...?"...

It really doesn't have to be this way:


China Covid: Celebrity deaths spark fears over death toll
wrote:

The growing number of Chinese public figures whose deaths are being made public is prompting people to question the official Covid death toll.

The death of Chu Lanlan, a 40-year-old opera singer, last month came as a shock to many, given how young she was...

... China scrapped its strict zero-Covid policy in December and has seen a rapid surge of infections and deaths. There are reports of hospitals and crematoria becoming overwhelmed.

But the country has stopped publishing daily cases data...

Over a million could die as China’s COVID wave crashes into huge holiday
wrote:

With China's zero-COVID policy abruptly scrapped last month, the pandemic virus is now ripping through the country's population ... The dire situation is expected to be "dramatically enhanced" by mass travel later this month for celebrations of the Lunar New Year on January 22.

Multiple modeling studies have suggested that China could see around 1 million deaths in the coming weeks as the country reopens amid a raging outbreak ... estimated that 957,600 would die in the coming weeks if the country doesn't swiftly roll out fourth-dose COVID-19 vaccines...

... "The [World Health Organization] is concerned about the risk to life in China and has reiterated the importance of vaccination, including booster doses, to protect against hospitalization, severe disease, and death,"...

... [China] has largely stopped reporting case numbers, and mass testing was abandoned last month...

... While experts fear for China's vulnerable populations, there's also some international anxiety over whether mass infection in China [of 1.4 billion people] will brew new variants that could mushroom out from its borders...

... "The duration and magnitude of upcoming outbreaks could be dramatically enhanced by the extensive travels during the Spring Festival" for the Lunar New Year, the researchers wrote. The celebration is the country's biggest, and tens of millions of people often travel around the country to spend the holiday with their families.

While the modeled outcomes look bleak, WHO's Maria Van Kerkhove, the agency's technical lead for the COVID-19 response, emphasized that they're not foregone conclusions. "These models are quite helpful for a scenario base—to plan. But the models are not predictions of what has to happen,"...

... "It is never too late to vaccinate," she said. "That additional boost will save lives… Those predictions do not need to become a reality."

{USA} New omicron subvariant surges to 40.5% as COVID hospitalizations rise
wrote:

A new omicron coronavirus subvariant dubbed XBB.1.5 now accounts for an estimated 40.5 percent of all US COVID-19 cases amid a winter wave that is driving up hospitalizations, particularly in places where XBB.1.5 is most prevalent...

... This does not mean XBB.1.5 is causing more severe disease than previous variants. Hospitalizations can increase due to a variety of reasons as a yet more-transmissible subvariant takes off. That includes waning immunity and the abysmal uptake of the bivalent booster [vaccines]...

... Meanwhile, people are traveling, gathering, and spending more time indoors amid holidays and cold weather—all things that can boost transmission...

... Though early research has suggested that XBB.1.5 is even more immune-evasive than its predecessors, data published late last month in the New England Journal of Medicine offered some good news in regard to vaccine protection ... people boosted with the BA.5-targeting bivalent vaccine used in the US had stronger neutralizing antibody activity...

What is known about new Covid variant XBB.1.5?
wrote:

A new Covid sub-variant is causing some concern in the US, where it is spreading rapidly. Some cases have also been recorded in the UK...

... Symptoms of XBB.1.5 are thought to be similar to those of previous Omicron strains. Most people experience cold-like symptoms...

... XBB had a mutation that helped it beat the body's immune defences ... confirmed that XBB.1.5 has a "growth advantage" over other sub-variants seen so far. But the WHO said there was no indication so far that it was more serious or harmful than previous Omicron variants...

... Covid hospital admissions have been rising in recent weeks across the US, and the government has restarted its free testing programme...

... not especially concerned about the general UK population because there was "no indication" that XBB.1.5 would "break through" the protection against severe illness provided by vaccines...

So... This is all just some sort of cold or flu?... Really?... Think again:

Long COVID stemmed from mild cases of COVID-19 in most people
wrote:

Even mild COVID-19 cases can have major and long-lasting effects on people’s health. That is one of the key findings from our recent multicountry study on long COVID-19 — or long COVID...

... After developing long COVID, however, the typical person experienced symptoms including fatigue, shortness of breath, and cognitive problems such as brain fog—or a combination of these—that affected daily functioning. These symptoms had an impact on health as severe as the long-term effects of traumatic brain injury...

... Among all people with long COVID, our study found that nearly one out of every seven were still experiencing these symptoms a year later, and researchers don’t yet know how many of these cases may become [ongoing] chronic...

... based on the pervasiveness and severity of long COVID, that it is keeping people from working and therefore contributing to labor shortages. Long COVID could also be a factor in how people losing their jobs has disproportionately affected women...

Here in the UK, we already have a big increase in the number of people who are now long term ill or disabled...


Note especially these comments:

• estimated that 957,600 would die in the coming weeks if the country doesn't swiftly roll out fourth-dose COVID-19 vaccines
  
• mass infection in China [of 1.4 billion people] will brew new variants
  
• "These models are quite helpful for a scenario base—to plan. But the models are not predictions of what has to happen,"...
  
• "It is never too late to vaccinate," she said. "That additional boost will save lives… Those predictions do not need to become a reality."
  
• people boosted with the BA.5-targeting bivalent vaccine used in the US had stronger neutralizing antibody activity
  

"Don't Look Up?"!...

Or... Do something!!!???

Our choice all in our only one world...
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

For a simple clear case:

Increasing staff vaccination at nursing homes cuts COVID-19 infections
wrote:

... increasing vaccination for staff at U.S. nursing homes was associated with fewer COVID-19 cases and deaths among residents and fewer cases among staff...

Simples...

Stay healthy folks!
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

More deadly unhealthy consequences:


{UK} Excess deaths in 2022 among worst in 50 years
wrote:

More than 650,000 deaths were registered in the UK in 2022 - 9% more than 2019. This represents one of the largest excess death levels outside the pandemic in 50 years.

Though far below peak pandemic levels, it has prompted questions about why more people [than normal still are dying]...

I worry we're killing people - ambulance dispatcher
wrote:

An ambulance dispatcher at the North West Ambulance Service, who wishes to stay anonymous, has described working amid the extreme pressures of this winter.

"The job is crushingly depressing, stressful and embarrassing," the dispatcher says. "I feel so destroyed. The feeling of saving lives has been taken over by how many can we not kill.

"I never thought I'd leave the NHS - but I'd take a job at [a supermarket]. I'd take a job cleaning.

"The thought of going in and having to manage those calls just fills me with absolute dread. I have seen people leave the ambulance service - they have had enough. We are physically and mentally exhausted."

Most frustrating, the dispatcher says, is the number of crews stuck outside hospital waiting to hand patients over [to be cared for...]...

Desperately soul-destroying conditions.

Stay healthy folks!!
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

There are deadly consequences:


'We don't train to give care in corridors'
wrote:

... patients have had to wait in corridors for as long as 24 hours before being treated on a ward. This is not a localised issue, with similar reports across England; the pressure on the NHS is "intolerable and unsustainable"...

Ambulances taking 90 minutes to get to 999 calls
wrote:

Patients with emergencies such as heart attacks and strokes in England had to wait more than 90 minutes on average for an ambulance at the end of 2022.

It came after a sharp deterioration in 999 response times in December - they were nearly twice as bad as November.

Record worst waits were also recorded for life-threatening cardiac arrests, while A&E waits of over four-hours reached their highest level ever...

'We couldn't get an ambulance for my husband - then he died'
wrote:

Ambulance bosses have apologised to the family of a man who died after he had a heart attack but no ambulance came...

How is it this has been going on, deep in crisis, for so deadly long?

... Hence is this why we have seen an extra 25% of people dying over Christmas?...

And the crisis continues.

What extreme language is needed for our government to wake up and get serious?


Stay healthy folks!
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Anyone seen this Documentary: 'D I E D S U D D E N L Y'?????

It's on R U M B L E dot C O M

and Yes I'm UN V****

SUPER(B)

---

May we All have a METAMORPHOSIS. REASON. GOoD JUDGEMENT and LOVE and ORDER!!!!!

Died Suddenly is a movie for the conspiracy theorists that believe in total B.S..

"Peters has previously produced the anti-vaccine film Watch the Water, which purports that COVID-19 vaccines are derived from snake venom in order to transform people into 'a hybrid of Satan'"

I was already dissatisfied that I failed to become magnetic or receive 5G as predicted, and now I find I'm missing my promised wings, horns and pointy tail. I want my money back for these damned vaccinations.
Oh wait.. they were free. :^p

---

China reports huge rise in COVID-related deaths after data criticism.

China says nearly 60,000 people with COVID-19 have died in hospital since it abandoned its zero-COVID policy last month, a huge increase from previously reported figures that follows global criticism of the country's coronavirus data...

...Between December 8 and January 12, the number of COVID-related deaths in Chinese hospitals totalled 59,938, Jiao Yahui, head of the Bureau of Medical Administration under the National Health Commission (NHC), told a media briefing.

Of those fatalities, 5,503 were caused by respiratory failure due to COVID and the remainder resulted from a combination of COVID and other diseases, she said....

But can even those numbers be trusted?

It seems that China still doesn't want to do the right thing.

In China, doctors say they are discouraged from citing COVID on death certificates.

During a busy shift at the height of Beijing's COVID wave, a physician at a private hospital saw a printed notice in the emergency department: Doctors should "try not to" write COVID-induced respiratory failure on death certificates.

Instead, if the deceased had an underlying disease, that should be named as the main cause of death, according to the notice, a copy of which was seen by Reuters.

If doctors believed that the death was caused solely by COVID-19 pneumonia, they must report to their superiors, who would arrange for two levels of "expert consultations" before a COVID-19 death was confirmed, it said.

Six doctors at public hospitals across China told Reuters they had either received similar oral instructions discouraging them from attributing deaths to COVID-19 or were aware that their hospitals had such policies.

Some relatives of people who have died with COVID-19 say the disease does not appear on their death certificates, and some patients have reported not being tested for coronavirus despite arriving with respiratory symptoms....

The latest for the UK is:

Coronavirus (COVID-19) Infection Survey, UK: 13 January 2023
wrote:

In England, ... people testing positive for COVID-19 was 2,189,300 ... equating to 4.02% of the population ... or around 1 in 25 people.

Note:

• Our hospitals are full and in continued crisis.
  
• Ambulances are stretched so thinly that people die before the emergency services arrive.
  
• The medics are so overwhelmed and disillusioned that they have planned multiple strikes to get some attention.
  
• Health authorities are hiring out entire hotels and elderly care homes to clear patients from the hospital corridors...
  
• Our death rate is 20% above the 5 year average...
  

... And this listing from our Office of National Statistics is to be discontinued at the end of this month, whilst we still have a pandemic of 4% of the population infected.

OK... So that's not as bad as about 50% of the population dying from the old plagues...


Don't Look Up?!

We have the tech and the medical knowledge that this simply should not be happening...

Stay safe and healthy folks!
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Even Xi admits that there's a problem.

Fears for rural population in China as COVID-19 spreads in villages lacking health care.

But how much did they make in profits during that time?

J&J subsidiary to pay $9.75M to resolve kickback allegations.

A subsidiary of health care company Johnson & Johnson has agreed to pay nearly $10 million to settle allegations that it violated federal and state law by providing free products to a surgeon to induce him to use its products in procedures, prosecutors said Friday.

Under the settlement with DePuy Synthes, the company acknowledges and accepts responsibility for giving the surgeon implants and instruments for spinal surgeries from 2013 though 2018, federal prosecutors said.

“We have fully cooperated with the government throughout its investigation of the allegations and were credited for that cooperation in the settlement," Johnson & Johnson said in a statement. “This settlement avoids further lengthy legal processes. We are committed to ensuring our employees conduct business in a way that complies with our credo and with all laws and regulations."...

Ouch!

Amid China’s massive COVID wave, 42% of people on one flight tested positive



There are consequences...

Stay healthy folks!
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Consequences:

COVID surges caused higher mortality among non-COVID patients
wrote:

Overall patient care suffered during the coronavirus pandemic when COVID-19 surges swamped U.S. hospitals, especially in patients 45 years and older...

Don't get ill?...

Stay healthy folks!
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Consequences:


... Covid-flu twindemic cost NHS this winter
wrote:

Simultaneous big waves of Covid and flu - the 'twindemic' experts warned of as people returned to 'normal' pre-pandemic mixing - cost the NHS this winter, say NHS bosses...

... The workload involved gave hospitals a "significant problem" at the turn of the year, he said. It was at this point that record-long waits at A&E were seen.

Since then the pressures have begun to ease a little...

... At the turn of the year one in eight beds were occupied by patients with either Covid or flu.

And Mr Hopson added this combined with the 12,000 beds occupied by patients medically fit to leave but unable to be discharged because of the lack of support in the community meant more than a quarter of beds were lost...

... range of factors that contributed to the pressures, including staffing shortages and a lack of beds after significant cuts to bed numbers over the years, which has left the NHS with one of the lowest number per head of population in western Europe...

Stay healthy folks!
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)