Tag: COVID-19

COVID Associated With Higher Risk for A-Fib

Newsmax – September 9, 2022

About 1 in 20 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 develop the heart rhythm disorder atrial fibrillation, according to data from an American Heart Association (AHA) registry.

Having a new case of A-fib in the hospital was associated with major heart events, the study found, as well as longer hospital stays and greater need for intensive care and intubation. About 45% of those patients died while in the hospital.

“In 2001, experts predicted the number of Americans living with A-fib would double by 2050 — the situation may be more dire following the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Dr. Jonathan Piccini. He is volunteer chairman of an AHA advisory group on A-fib and an associate professor at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C.

“Research suggests A-fib is likely to influence more Americans and could put more people at greater risk of stroke and heart failure than previously expected,” Piccini said in an AHA news release.

At least 2.7 million Americans have A-fib, which is a quivering or irregular heartbeat. It can lead to blood clots, stroke, heart failure and other heart-related complications.

The findings, which accounted for underlying health conditions and factors in the hospital, suggest new-onset A-fib in COVID patients is a marker of adverse clinical factors, according to the heart association. A study published in July also pointed to increased risk of heart problems in COVID patients.

The AHA offers patient resources during September, which is A-Fib Awareness Month, and throughout the year at heart.org.

The study was published in the journal Circulation: Arrhythmia and Electrophysiology.

https://www.newsmax.com

Long COVID: The search for a cure

Joel S. Hirschhorn – April 19, 2022

The COVID pandemic is far from over. It has now morphed into long COVID with millions of people suffering.

Sometimes what seems like a miraculous new medical remedy comes along. And without government involvement. In those cases, millions of long COVID sufferers have an opportunity to use a new remedy and judge whether it’s safe and truly effective. In contrast, the medical establishment and specialists work at fixing the many diverse symptoms and illnesses of long COVID patients.

So, what are long COVID sufferers to do? There are no easy choices.

This analysis and discussion aim to help them make informed and difficult decisions.

Over the past year or so a great many victims of long COVID believe they have found a medical cure. There is a lot of skepticism among medical professionals treating long COVID patients, often at specialized hospital centers – and that skepticism is warranted.

A recent article is titled, “66 hospitals, health systems that have launched post-COVID-19 clinics.” It notes: “Many hospitals and health systems have created COVID-19 recovery programs, or post-COVID clinics, to support patients who experience lingering symptoms weeks or months after being cleared of the illness – a population now widely known as COVID-19 long-haulers. Most COVID-19 recovery programs currently involve an initial evaluation and, as needed, referrals to a network of specialists such as pulmonologists, cardiologists and neurologists, among others.”

Several excellent, detailed investigative reports examine the system that the impressively credentialed Dr. Bruce Patterson and his company IncellDX have created. His treatment has also built a large following on social media sites. No surprise. COVID long-haulers want to restore their quality of life.

One big problem in fairly examining the new revolutionary medical solution is the vast array of long COVD symptoms, as shown in the figure below. Physicians face the daunting challenge of addressing many symptoms successfully to fully satisfy patients.

https://www.wnd.com

Judge removes father’s custody rights to his children over refusal to get vaccinated

Ricky Scaparo – February 6, 2022

After refusing to get vaccinated against COVID-19, a father has reportedly lost the right to see his kids in person, one of whom is immunocompromised. The Canadian Press reports a judge in New Brunswick, Justice Nathalie Godbout, wrote in her Jan. 31 decision the revoking of the father’s custody rights was done “with a heavy heart,” but he can still be in contact with his children by use of phone calls or video chats.

Godbout made her decision, she says, because the father’s insistence he remains unvaccinated posed too great a threat and risk to his 10-year-old immunocompromised daughter, who receives specialized care for non-cancerous tumors in her blood vessels.

According to CBC, Their mother asked the court for a change to the custody agreement ending the father’s in-person access. She applied to the court last year and the hearing took place on Jan. 24.

“As the parents who are caring for [the child] 50 percent of the time, in close quarters, unmasked and unvaccinated, they are well-positioned to transmit the virus to [the child] should they contract it, this despite their best efforts,” the ruling says.

“It is no contest: the current science in the face of a highly contagious virus far outweighs Mr. F.’s layman wait-and-see approach.”  The parents and the children are not named in the 26-page court ruling.

They are only identified by initials. The new order allows the father “generous” visiting rights via Zoom but no in-person contact. If he gets vaccinated, he can return to court to ask for a change to the decision. While waiting for the hearing, the father also refused to consent to the children being vaccinated after they became eligible last November. Godbout ruled the mother could get that done without his agreement.

https://endtimeheadlines.org

Swedish startup Epicenter unveils rice-sized microchip implant that stores your COVID vaccine passport under your skin and is read with technology used to take contactless payments

Stacy Liberatore – December 20, 2021

Epicenter, a Stockholm-based startup, unveiled a new way of carrying around a COVID vaccine passport – in a microchip implanted under your skin.

The implant can be read by any device using the near-field communication (NFC) protocol – technology used for contactless payments and keyless entry systems.

In a video shared by Epicenter, Hannes Sjöblad, chief distribution officer, has the chip in his arm and simply waves a smartphone over it to pull up his vaccination status.

‘Implants are very versatile technology that can be used for many different things, and right now it is very convenient to have COVID passport always accessible on your implant, he said in a statement.

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19, the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2, a pandemic.

From then, the virus took hold of the world – shuttering businesses and forcing people into their homes for months.

Although lockdowns have since eased worldwide, the coronavirus is still running rampant and is mutating into new variants that are harder to stop from spreading.

However, the world now has access to vaccines, which eases symptoms of the deadly virus, and information of vaccine status is provided in paper or digital form known as a COVID passport.

Many venues, restaurants, bars, concert halls and museums, across the US are requiring visitors present their vaccination status in order to enter the building.

And Epicenter wants to make presenting this information as easy as possible.

‘In case your phone runs out of battery, it’s always accessible to you. So of course, that’s how we use this technology today, next year we are going to use it for something else,’ said Sjoblad.

The microchip sits directly beneath the skin, either in the arm or between the thumb and forefinger.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk

New COVID variant considered ‘worse than’ Delta is ‘spreading rapidly’ in South Africa and worrying health experts across the globe

Phil Shiver – November 26, 2021

A new COVID-19 variant recently identified in South Africa is causing concern from public health experts across the globe due to its high number of mutations and increased transmissibility among young people. Some are even warning the new strain could prove to be more dangerous than the Delta variant.

What are the details?

It’s unclear where exactly the new strain, formerly known as B.1.1.529, initially arose but it was first detected in South Africa and has since been detected among South African travelers in neighboring Botswana as well as Hong Kong, the Associated Press reported. On Friday, Israel also said it had detected cases.

South Africa’s minister of health, Joe Phaahla, announced this week that the variant has been linked to a rapid increase in the number of cases in the country’s Gauteng province over the last few days.

“Over the last four or five days, there has been more of an exponential rise,” Phaahla said, according to Time. The magazine noted that South African scientists are presently working to determine the percentage of new cases that were caused by the new variant, but they suspect it to be high.

Over the past several weeks, COVID-19 transmission in the country had settled to a relatively low rate at just over 200 new confirmed cases per day. But in the past week, the daily new cases suddenly shot up to more than 1,200. And then on Thursday, the number of new cases skyrocketed to 2,465.

One of the most worrying elements about the new variant is its “constellation” of more than 30 new mutations, said Tulio de Oliveira of the Network for Genomic Surveillance in South Africa.

“We can see that the variant is potentially spreading very fast,” de Oliveira added. “We do expect to start seeing pressure in the healthcare system in the next few days and weeks.”

“[The] very high number of mutations is a concern for predicted immune evasion and transmissibility,” he explained.

https://www.theblaze.com

Lancet study: Vaccinated as likely as unvaccinated to spread delta variant

Art Moore – October 28, 2021

A yearlong, peer-reviewed study published in the prestigious British science journal The Lancet found people vaccinated against COVID-19 are as likely to spread the delta variant to contacts in their household as those who have not been vaccinated.Scientists, including researchers at the Imperial College of London, studied 621 people in the United Kingdom who had mild COVID-19 and found that the peak viral load of the vaccinated was similar to the unvaccinated.

The analysis, published Thursday in The Lancet Infectious Diseases medical journal, covered the period of Sept. 13, 2020, to Sept. 15, 2021.

It found that vaccinated people transmitted a delta variant infection to others at a rate of 25% . For the unvaccinated, the rate was 23%.

The delta variant is by far the most common source of COVID-19 disease around the world. In the United States, it comprises 99% of novel coronavirus cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A co-leader of the new study, Ajit Lalvani, a professor of infectious diseases at Imperial College London, said the findings “show that vaccination alone is not enough to prevent people from being infected with the delta variant and spreading it in household settings.”

https://www.wnd.com

Pfizer Asks FDA to Allow COVID Shots for Kids Ages 5 to 11

Newsmax – October 8, 2021

Pfizer asked the U.S. government Thursday to allow use of its COVID-19 vaccine in children ages 5 to 11 — and if regulators agree, shots could begin within a matter of weeks.

Many parents and pediatricians are clamoring for protection for children younger than 12, today’s age cutoff for the vaccine made by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech. Not only can youngsters sometimes get seriously ill, but keeping them in school can be a challenge with the coronavirus still raging in poorly vaccinated communities.

Pfizer announced in a tweet that it had formally filed its application with the Food and Drug Administration.

Now the FDA will have to decide if there’s enough evidence that the shots are safe and will work for younger children like they do for teens and adults. An independent expert panel will publicly debate the evidence on Oct. 26.

One big change: Pfizer says its research shows the younger kids should get a third of the dose now given to everyone else. After their second dose, the 5- to 11-year-olds developed virus-fighting antibody levels just as strong as teens and young adults get from regular-strength shots.

https://www.newsmax.com

DHS Bulletin Says Opposition To COVID Mandates Is Potential “Domestic Terrorism Threat”

Tyler Durden – August 15, 2021

On Friday the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued an almost unbelievable new “terrorism” alert contained in a so-called ‘awareness bulletin’. While focused heavily on the threat posed by “false narratives and conspiracy theories about the 2020 election” – clearly making connections to Jan.6, the bulletin pivoted to unprecedented territory.

It’s nothing new for the Biden administration to warn and hype about “calls to violence” related to the “Capitol insurrection” – but what is new and unprecedented is its warning about potential “attacks” by “violent extremists” related to COVID-19 “conspiracy theories”.

The document was the result of a DHS meeting held with top officials and high ranking intelligence officers across multiple agencies from departments in New York, Washington, and Las Vegas, NBC News reported.

The threat bulletin describes that extremists “may seek to exploit the emergence of COVID-19 variants by viewing the potential re-establishment of public health restrictions across the United States as a rationale to conduct attacks.”

This is the first time to our knowledge that “terrorism” is linked to the movement among large groups of skeptical Americans to push back against local, state and federal efforts to impose drastic mask, vaccine, and so-called ‘COVID passport’ mandates.

Interestingly the DHS document is heavily focused on such “extremism” initially manifest online in social media and chat forum groups.

Presumably, given the demographic breakdown, this means DHS is accusing young black folk of being “domestic terrorists?

https://www.zerohedge.com

Transgender Surgeries Surged During Pandemic as All Other Health Care Fell Dramatically

Dr. Susan Berry – August 19, 2021

The American Society of Plastic Surgery (ASPS) released its first report outlining statistics for “gender confirmation surgeries,” one that reveals a double-digit increase in transgender surgeries in 2020, even as all other healthcare services dropped dramatically because of the coronavirus pandemic’s restrictions.

“Despite the pandemic and its accompanying difficulties, the report shows a double-digit increase of 12 percent in [transgender] procedures performed from 2019 to 2020,” ASPS noted in a report published at the end of July on surgeries performed by its member surgeons in 2020.

Elective mastectomies for “trans male patients,” i.e., biological women who identify as men, saw a 15 percent increase from 2019 to 2020, and “trans female” facial and breast surgeries similarly jumped 14 percent.

ASPS member Loren Schechter, M.D., said it should not be surprising to see double-digit increases in elective double mastectomies and other transgender surgeries during a pandemic.

“I think the trend line over the last eight to 10 years has been an increase in the number of individuals seeking surgery – across most types of procedures,” Schechter said, suggesting that COVID-19 presented a “confounding” issue, with various restrictions on surgeries.

“Some of the more complex surgeries, which required longer inpatient stays, like the male bottom surgeries, were down – not necessarily because of interest, but practical issues related to COVID-19,” Schechter added.

https://www.breitbart.com

Parents File Lawsuit against Washington D.C. over Law Allowing Officials to Vaccinate Children without Parental Consent

Amanda Casanova – July 15, 2021

Parents in Washington, D.C., are suing the District over a new law that allows officials to vaccinate children in public schools without parental consent.

According to The Christian Post, the parents say they have a religious objection to the “Minor Consent to Vaccinations Act of 2020,” which was passed into law in November and went into effect in March.

The law allows children ages 11 and older to decide to receive a vaccination if they are deemed “capable of meeting the informed consent standard” and “able to comprehend … significant risks ordinarily inherent in the medical care.”

The law also allows insurance providers to seek reimbursement for the vaccination without parental consent, and insurance companies do not have to provide an “Explanation of Benefits,” which would give the vaccination details.

Four parents filed suit with support from the Children’s Health Defense and the Parental Rights Foundation.

“The D.C. Act is reckless, unconstitutional, and needlessly endangers children’s lives by stripping away parental protection and the protection of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986,” said Mary Holland, president and general counsel of the Children’s Health Defense, in a statement.

“The Minor Consent Act subverts the right and duty of parents to make informed decisions about whether their children should receive vaccinations, by both depriving them of the opportunity to make those decisions and by concealing from parents that their children have been asked to consent to vaccinations or may have indeed been vaccinated.”

District of Columbia Public Schools are not requiring the COVID-19 vaccination to enroll, but the district could vaccinate eligible students for COVID-19 under the new law.

In May, Lewis Ferebee, chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools, sent an email to parents saying it was their “responsibility” to get vaccinated if they wanted to see their children back in school classrooms.

https://www.christianheadlines.com