Free Republic

There was one woman behind the counter, who had the unenviable task of running background checks for every firearm purchased. In most cases that meant she had to disappoint customers and tell them it would be days or weeks before they will be able to collect their weapons. She had been ringing up and disappointing people, non-stop for weeks. As I neared the front of the line I heard her say to the room: “I don’t get it. Do they think they’re going to shoot a virus?” “It’s not the virus they’re worried about,” I offered. “It’s their neighbours if...

DOUGLASVILLE, Ga. (CBS46) - Georgia Governor Brian Kemp signed a bill Tuesday making it legal to carry a gun in public without a permit. “SB 319 makes sure that law abiding Georgians, law abiding Georgians, including our daughters, and your family too, can protect themselves without having to have permission from your state government. The Constitution of the United States gives us that right, not the government,” said Gov. Kemp, (R) Georgia. The governor signed the so-called Constitutional Carry Act into law Tuesday afternoon at a gun store in Douglasville. “The logic that if we put more guns on the...

From Mariupol to Missouri, in real wars and culture wars, soldiers like to film themselves in battle. Twitter is awash with footage of Ukrainian and Russian troops showing off their tactical prowess and grisly exploits. US culture warriors do likewise. A recent video of a young teacher, for example, shows her awkwardly speaking into a camera: “There is a way to be sneaky about supporting, say, queer students in your classroom, and I want to show you it.” The camera pans to a homemade-looking pink triangle on her dry-erase board. The teacher continues, “The pink triangle was used in concentration...

Kansas senators early Thursday morning narrowly passed a bill that would force pharmacists to fill unproven off-label prescriptions for drugs intended to treat or prevent COVID-19. The bill's promotion of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine has been a priority of right-wing Republicans, as well as its protection for doctors against health board investigations and anti-vaccine mandate measure. The Senate worked on a host of bills into the early morning hours in a marathon session. The off-label drug bill, HB 2280, passed 21-16 shortly before 1:30 a.m. "Thousands of Kansans and hundreds of thousands of Americans have died because of this propaganda that...

CONCORD, N.H. — The controversial debate over treating COVID-19 with the drug ivermectin made it to the floor of the New Hampshire House on Wednesday, with the Republican majority voting to make it easier to obtain the drug at pharmacies. On a 183-159 vote, the House approved legislation allowing pharmacists to make ivermectin available via standing order. "A standing order is a prescriptive protocol written by a physician or nurse practitioner that allows a pharmacist to dispense a medication without an individual prescription," said state Rep. Leah Cushman, R-Weare. Ivermectin is an anti-parasitic drug that gained notoriety as a supposed...

What is the "People’s Convoy,” headed for Maryland and Virginia this weekend? The movement’s website, which tells the whole story from its beginning last month in Adelanto, Calif., boasts a slogan that is telling enough: “End Mandates Everywhere.” But the succinct, if off-point, description provided by one of the organizers is: “The largest convoy in global history.” The caravan was about eight miles long as it moved from Indiana into Ohio, and it's sure to grow as it nears the Capital Beltway. The convoy is expected to arrive outside of Washington on Saturday; organizers announced Thursday that the convoy would...

The seriousness of a stagnant COVID-19 variant identified in France in November was downplayed by global health officials, who said they were still watching it closely on Tuesday. The variant, nicknamed IHU after the research hospital it was discovered in, “probably” originated in Cameroon, scientists said last week. It was identified in 12 patients in the Southern Alps around the same time the highly transmissible Omicron variant was surging in South Africa, officials said. The variant “has been on our radar,” Abdi Mahamud, a WHO incident manager on COVID, said at a press briefing in Geneva on Tuesday, according to...

A teacher who resigned after a photo emerged of him at the January 6 riot at the Capitol has won a seat on a school committee in Massachusetts. Matthew Lynch, 35, won one of three seats on the Braintree school board committee after getting 2,319 votes, according to unofficial results. Lynch taught at Braintree High School for more than 10 years before leaving in February after images of him standing in front of the Capitol building on January 6 were posted on social media. Lynch told Patch that he was later questioned by FBI agents, but did not confirm whether...

At the start of the pandemic, researchers began testing existing antivirals in people hospitalized with severe Covid-19. But many of those trials failed to show any benefit from the antivirals. In hindsight, the choice to work in hospitals was a mistake. Scientists now know that the best time to try to block the coronavirus is in the first few days of the disease, when the virus is replicating rapidly and the immune system has not yet mounted a defense. In a trial of hospitalized patients, however, molnupiravir seemed to have no effect on the disease. In April, the companies announced...

Hospital staff in New York State have to prove they are vaccinated against Covid this week or face losing their jobs. It is possible hundreds of employees will refuse to be vaccinated and resign their positions. Earlier this week, Northwell Health fired two dozen employees for not complying with the vaccine mandate, according to Newsday. Environmental and food service professionals, nurses, medical technicians, and physicians are all prepared to quit. As an infectious diseases physician and researcher involved in Covid vaccine trials, I am often questioned by both the vaccinated and unvaccinated. Many of the vaccinated are baffled, unable to...

The Arkansas Medical Board is investigating after a doctor said he prescribed an anti-parasitic drug "thousands" of times for treatment of Covid-19, including to inmates in an Arkansas jail. The FDA has been warning against the use of ivermectin for treatment of Covid-19 since March. The drug is used to treat parasitic infections, primarily in livestock, and the CDC recently cautioned about an increase in reports to poison centers of severe illness caused by the drug. Justice of the Peace Eva Madison raised the issue during a county budget hearing in Fayetteville on Tuesday, saying a county employee had told...

It’s been nearly a decade since a pair of biologists discovered CRISPR, the gene-editing technology that allows scientists to edit DNA with relative ease. Last year, the two scientists—Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier—shared a Nobel Prize for their work. Since the discovery, scientists around the world have been investigating how the method could be used as a treatment for diseases from sickle cell anemia to HIV. Until now, scientists have used CRISPR to treat diseases by removing some of a person’s cells and applying the gene-editing technology to the cells in a lab. In the case of sickle cell anemia,...

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is adding a label on Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine, warning that it has been linked to rare cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS), a neurological disorder in which the body's immune system mistakenly attacks part of its nervous system. There have been 100 preliminary reports following vaccination after approximately 12.5 million doses administered, FDA said in a statement. Of these reports, 95 of them were serious and required hospitalization. There was one reported death. The cases have largely occurred about two weeks after vaccination and mostly in men, many aged 50 and older, the...

Former President Donald J. Trump on Wednesday sued three tech giants — Facebook, Twitter and Google — and the firms’ chief executives after the platforms took various steps to ban him or block him from posting. Mr. Trump, speaking from his Bedminster, N.J., golf club, announced that he would serve as the lead plaintiff in the class-action lawsuit, arguing that he has been censored wrongfully by the tech companies. Speaking about “freedom of speech” and the First Amendment — which applies to the government, not to private-sector companies — Mr. Trump called his lawsuit, which was filed on Wednesday in...

Around the world, different pharmaceutical companies have taken different approaches to developing vaccines. Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna created mRNA vaccines. Oxford-AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson went with what are called viral vectors. The Novavax COVID-19 vaccine is protein-based. So mixing vaccines could mean more than just switching manufacturers — like from Pfizer for dose one to Moderna for dose two. You might be tapping into a different way to stimulate your immune response if you opt for a first dose of AstraZeneca and a second dose of Moderna. The most obvious benefits of treating various brands and kinds of COVID-19 vaccine...

(CNN)In one week, there were nine cases of Covid-19 in fully vaccinated members of the New York Yankees organization: one player, three coaches and five team staff. The revelation has led to questions about vaccine efficacy and fears of super-strength variant strains. But experts say these cases show the vaccine is working, and testing remains a useful tool. A Major League Baseball spokesperson confirmed to CNN Wednesday that eight of those nine cases were asymptomatic. Each of the nine were fully vaccinated -- it had been at least 14 days since their single dose of the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19...

"We teach them to use gender-neutral words until a person tells us about themself," Myers continued. "We call kids friends. We have taught Zoomer about their own body without using boy-girl labels. Zoomer understands that some girls have penises and some boys have vulvas, and some intersex kids have vulvas and testes. Zoomer knows some daddies get pregnant and some nonbinary parents are called Zazas." Myers concluded her essay, "I'm witnessing my child create their own gender — and who Zoomer has become is greater than anything I could have imagined or assigned. Instead of us telling the children who...

NO ONE EXPECTED the first Covid-19 vaccine to be as good as it was. “We were hoping for around 70 per cent, that’s a success,” says Dr Ann Falsey, a professor of medicine at the University of Rochester, New York, who ran a 150-person trial site for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in 2020. Even Uğur Şahin, the co-founder and CEO of BioNTech, who had shepherded the drug from its earliest stages, had some doubts. All the preliminary laboratory tests looked good; since he saw them in June, he would routinely tell people that “immunologically, this is a near-perfect vaccine.” But that...

PAWTUCKET, R.I. (WPRI) — Free donuts, and even free marijuana have been offered to those who show proof of getting vaccinated against COVID-19 in the United States. Last weekend, Francesco’s Pizza in Providence gave away a free slice to those who showed a COVID-19 vaccination card. Frank Schiavone, who opened the pizza shop in October — the height of the pandemic — said Sunday’s event was a way to “mix business in trying to do something good.” He gave away hundreds of slices. Local incentives continue next week in an effort to get younger Rhode Islanders vaccinated. The City of...

Vaccination rates across the country have plateaued as more states expand eligibility to all residents. To get more people to roll up their sleeves, incentives ranging from free beer to signing bonuses are being offered by cities, states and local businesses. The average daily rate of vaccination has been on the decline for about two weeks. More than 20 states are not ordering all available doses of the vaccine as interest slows. Just last week, Philadelphia nearly lost 1,000 doses that were set to expire. So far, just 40% of the adult population in the United States is vaccinated, and...