Free Republic

Community health and LGBTQ rights leaders in California are demanding a much more aggressive response to monkeypox from government and health agencies, saying shortages of vaccines and limited public outreach are exacerbating the outbreaks. Confirmed and probable cases of monkeypox across California have climbed by 65% in the last week, from 85 to 141. There were 47 confirmed and probable cases of the virus in Los Angeles County as of Thursday — an almost 60% increase since last week — and in San Francisco, cases have more than doubled in a similar time frame, rising from 16 to 40. While...

Bioterrorism threat said real Oct 17, 2002 12:00 PM, Harry Cline There are 7,000 unaccounted for former Soviet Union biological warfare scientists and technicians in the world today. Before 9/11/01, that fact would be filed away under "So what...just left over Cold War paranoia." Now, though, that fact is cause for considerable concern to Americans, and a panel of experts on bioterrorism and radical environmental groups speaking at the recent California Plant Health Association and CropLife America joint annual convention in Palm Desert, Calif., only served to heighten that concern when they addressed biological warfare issues facing America today. According...

t was all part of the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) biowarfare plan against the United States. The design of COVID-19 was based on a number of bioweapon features, in particular, highly contagious, low lethality, and a high rate of asymptomatic transmission. Another important feature of a PLA bioweapon, not mentioned on that list, is disguising its origin. That is, the capability of avoiding responsibility for a biowarfare attack by designing a virus that could be blamed on a natural outbreak. Changjun Wang, a high ranking officer in the PLA’s Eastern Theater Command headquartered in Nanjing, was responsible for the isolation...

The best case for a right to party is in the right of assembly, placed in the Bill of Rights as many deadly diseases threatened the American population.In Alexander Pushkin’s “Feast in a Time of Plague,” an old priest returning from a mass funeral of plague victims catches young people partying, and unleashes a 19th-century rant: “A godless banquet, godless madmen all … Go back now to your homes!” “Be off, old man!” The partygoers yell back in a period version of “OK, Boomer.” Another tells the priest: “Our homes are sad. And youth is fond of joyousness.”Human nature remains...

The temporary order will be in place for three weeks through Dec. 20 and will allow essential and emergency workers, and those securing or providing essential and permitted services, to leave their homes, the county said in a news release. On Nov. 17, Los Angeles County established thresholds for additional actions if the five-day average of cases reach 4,500 or more or hospitalizations are more than 2,000 per day. Currently, the five-day average of new coronavirus cases is 4,751. On Friday health officials reported 24 new COVID-19 deaths and 4,544 new cases. Health officials said because cases remain at “alarming...

FLORIDA — Gov. Ron DeSantis announced last week that while vaccines for COVID-19 are coming soon, he won’t require anyone to get vaccinated if they don’t want to. But a GOP state lawmaker said that state law, as currently written, could allow him or any other governor to mandate vaccinations, and he will file legislation in the coming days to repeal that law. “Right now in Florida, under the public health emergency statute chapter 381, they can literally take you, test you, quarantine you, but also force you to take a vaccine. They can restrain you and force you to...

JERUSALEM—Authorities are investigating after witnesses accused a local religious nut named Simon Peter and several others of hosting an unauthorized super spreader event in an enclosed room in Jerusalem. Experts say the event, which was not authorized by the local Jewish or Roman authorities, may put everyone in the area at risk for infectious diseases such as leprosy. "This is completely inexcusable," said local magistrate Biggus Tookus. "We have found that there were at least 11 people at this event. No one's address was recorded at the door and we don't know where they are now." One medical expert named...

When archaeologists discovered thousands of medieval skeletons in a mass burial pit in east London in the 1990s, they assumed they were 14th-century victims of the Black Death or the Great Famine of 1315-17. Now they have been astonished by a more explosive explanation – a cataclysmic volcano that had erupted a century earlier, thousands of miles away in the tropics, and wrought havoc on medieval Britons. Scientific evidence – including radiocarbon dating of the bones and geological data from across the globe – shows for the first time that mass fatalities in the 13th century were caused by one...

Scientists have discovered extinct strains of smallpox in the teeth of Viking skeletons - proving for the first time that the killer disease plagued humanity for at least 1400 years. Smallpox spread from person to person via infectious droplets, killed around a third of sufferers and left another third permanently scarred or blind. Around 300 million people died from it in the 20th century alone before it was officially eradicated in 1980 through a global vaccination effort - the first human disease to be wiped out... He said: "We discovered new strains of smallpox in the teeth of Viking skeletons...

As many as one in five Londoners had syphilis by their mid-30s during the late 18th century, according to a detailed new study on the sexually transmitted infection (STI) and its spread in the capital of the United Kingdom. Researchers used data from hospital admissions and workhouse infirmaries to reach their figures, making allowances for duplicate records, private treatments, and the possibility of syphilis numbers getting mixed in with other diseases like gonorrhea or chlamydia. The findings show a much higher incidence in London than elsewhere in the country at the time – other studies show 'the pox' was half...

La Pestilenza: The Black Death in Italy Pauline Montagna Aug 21, 2016 The Black Death entered Europe through Italy where it brought with it utter devastation. The Black Death arrived in Italy by sea, first making landfall in Sicily in early October, 1347. By January 1348 it had landed in Venice and Genoa. A few weeks later it appeared in Pisa and from this foothold it moved rapidly inland, east through Tuscany and south to Rome. By the time it died down in the winter of 1348 more than a third of Italy’s population had perished. Horrendous as it was,...

...Prof. Haak will also try to detect more plague DNA in hundreds of skeletons from the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age. So far, DNA evidence from a dozen skeletons points to little variability between the strains of Yersinia pestis in such remains, suggesting that the pestilence spread rapidly across the continent. The speed may owe to another human advance at this time -- the domestication of wild horses, which may literally have carried the disease into Europe. "We see the change from wild local horses to domesticated horses, which happened rapidly at the beginning of the Bronze Age," said...

Nearly 5000 years ago, a 20-year-old woman was buried in a tomb in Sweden... Now, researchers have discovered what killed her -- Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes plague. The sample is one of the oldest ever found, and it belongs to a previously unknown branch of the Y. pestis evolutionary tree. This newly discovered strain of plague could have caused the collapse of large Stone Age settlements across Europe in what might be the world's first pandemic, researchers on the project say. But other scientists contend there isn't yet enough evidence to prove the case. The newly discovered Neolithic...

On a hastily built stage before the busy horse market of Strasbourg, scores of people dance to pipes, drums, and horns. The July sun beats down upon them as they hop from leg to leg, spin in circles and whoop loudly. From a distance they might be carnival revellers. But closer inspection reveals a more disquieting scene. Their arms are flailing and their bodies are convulsing spasmodically. Ragged clothes and pinched faces are saturated in sweat. Their eyes are glassy, distant. Blood seeps from swollen feet into leather boots and wooden clogs. These are not revellers but “choreomaniacs”, entirely possessed...

One way to stop countries from polluting the air with lead is to bring back the plague. Research suggests while the infectious and deadly illness known as the Black Death rampaged through Europe and slowed industry, among other side effects, lead disappeared from the air. Scientists analyzed ice samples from a glacier in the Alps along the Swiss-Italian border, looking specifically for lead that would have been deposited from the atmosphere. The study in the journal GeoHealth found between 1349 and 1353 — when the plague was at its peak — “atmospheric lead dropped to undetectable levels.” The Black Death...

In the 14th century, a microbe called Yersinia pestis caused an epidemic of plague known as the Black Death that killed off a third or more of the population of Europe. The long-term shortage of workers that followed helped bring about the end of feudalism. Historians and microbiologists alike have searched for decades for the origins of plague. Until now, the first clear evidence of Yersinia pestis infection was the Plague of Justinian in the 6th century, which severely weakened the Byzantine Empire. But in a new study, published on Thursday in the journal Cell, researchers report that the bacterium...

Y. pestis was the notorious culprit behind the sixth century's Plague of Justinian, the Black Death, which killed 30%-50% of the European population in the mid-1300s, and the Third Pandemic, which emerged in China in the 1850s. Earlier putative plagues, such as the Plague of Athens nearly 2,500 years ago and the second century's Antonine Plague, have been linked to the decline of Classical Greece and the undermining of the Roman army. However, it has been unclear whether Y. pestis could have been responsible for these early epidemics because direct molecular evidence for this bacterium has not been obtained from...

A mass burial site that may contain 30 victims of the Great Plague has been discovered in the City of London. The skeletons were found during excavation of the Bedlam burial ground at Liverpool Street, which will serve the cross-London Crossrail line. A headstone found nearby was marked 1665. Scientists hope to establish whether bubonic plague or some other pestilence was the cause of death. The skeletons will be analysed by the Museum of London Archaeology. Archaeologists said the fact the individuals appear to have been buried on the same day suggest they were victims of the Plague. Crossrail lead...

As many as five plagues have come out of China in the last 20 years and at some point it has to stop, US National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien has said, holding the country responsible for the origin of the coronavirus pandemic which has killed over 2,50,000 people globally. People across the globe are going to rise up and tell the Chinese government that “we can no longer have these plagues coming out of China”, whether it is from labs or wet markets, neither one is a good answer, he told reporters at the White House on Tuesday. We know...

The great waves of plague that twice devastated Europe and changed the course of history had their origins in China, a team of medical geneticists reported Sunday, as did a third plague outbreak that struck less harmfully in the 19th century.