Wuhan Corona virus

[GSOgymrat]

I work for a hospital and today administration announced that wearing a mask in non-patient areas such as offices and break rooms is now optional.

[Hydra009]

[Hydra009]

Fun fact: the "Rhesus factor" is just an arbitrary name researchers came up with for that antigen due to studying rhesus monkey blood prior to studying human blood (monkeys were generally more accessible test subjects)

Having that antigen in your blood doesn't actually mean you're some sort of transgenic monkey-person lol

[SGOS]

Fun fact: the "Rhesus factor" is just an arbitrary name researchers came up with for that antigen due to studying rhesus monkey blood prior to studying human blood (monkeys were generally more accessible test subjects)

Having that antigen in your blood doesn't actually mean you're some sort of transgenic monkey-person lol

The thoughts we can fuck up with help of language!

[Hydra009]

Tax dollars hard at work:  Pentagon ran antivax campaign in Asia to sow fear about chinese vaccines

The U.S. military's anti-vax effort began in the spring of 2020 and expanded beyond Southeast Asia before it was terminated in mid-2021, Reuters determined. Tailoring the propaganda campaign to local audiences across Central Asia and the Middle East, the Pentagon used a combination of fake social media accounts on multiple platforms to spread fear of China's vaccines among Muslims at a time when the virus was killing tens of thousands of people each day. A key part of the strategy: amplify the disputed contention that, because vaccines sometimes contain pork gelatin, China's shots could be considered forbidden under Islamic law.

The military program started under former President Donald Trump and continued months into Joe Biden's presidency, Reuters found – even after alarmed social media executives warned the new administration that the Pentagon had been trafficking in COVID misinformation. The Biden White House issued an edict in spring 2021 banning the anti-vax effort, which also disparaged vaccines produced by other rivals, and the Pentagon initiated an internal review, Reuters found.

It's very disappointing that this was done under both Presidents.

Also, it's likely that both Russia and China also engaged in such efforts - IIRC, one of the earliest sources of covid denialism was Russian, in an attempt to exacerbate covid's economic toll on western countries by undermining public trust in their vaccines while at the same touting the Russian-produced "Sputnik" vaccine.  Instead, it kicked off a global wave of denialism, with most people thinking that their concerns were homegrown and wholly their own idea, not manufactured fear from antagonistic agents seeking to exacerbate damage to their rivals.

[Hydra009]

Hydroxychloroquine officially busted - the controversial study that shot hydroxychloroquine to prominence has been retracted.  After a great deal of testing, it turns out that it actually has no effect.

A study that stoked enthusiasm for the now-disproven idea that a cheap malaria drug can treat COVID-19 has been retracted — more than four-and-a-half years after it was published.

Because it contributed so much to the HCQ hype, "the most important unintended effect of this study was to partially side-track and slow down the development of anti-COVID-19 drugs at a time when the need for effective treatments was critical", says Ole Søgaard, an infectious-disease physician at Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark, who was not involved with the work or its critiques. "The study was clearly hastily conducted and did not adhere to common scientific and ethical standards."

Once again I ask how many people saw the erroneous claim and how many people will see the retraction.

I'm noticing a trend, where the initial sensational claim guides people and policy and certain political parties and the far more accurate updated findings get little notice.  Having a not-great relationship with reality makes a bad pandemic a lot worse, adding to the deathtoll.

[Dark Lightning]

It's the anti-science bent in the US, sad to say.