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The company that released contaminated flu virus material from a plant in Austria confirmed Friday that the experimental product contained live H5N1 avian flu viruses. And an official of the World Health Organization’s European operation said the body is closely monitoring the investigation into the events that took place at Baxter International’s research facility in Orth-Donau, Austria. “At this juncture we are confident in saying that public health and occupational risk is minimal at present,” medical officer Roberta Andraghetti said from Copenhagen, Denmark. “But what remains unanswered are the circumstances surrounding the incident in the Baxter facility in Orth-Donau.” The...

A bird flu pandemic could be '100 times worse than Covid' and kill up to half of everyone it infects, experts have warned — as the White House says it is 'monitoring' the situation. Speaking at a briefing, virus researchers said the H5N1 strain of bird flu may now be getting 'dangerously close' to triggering a pandemic. Multiple cases of the infection in a variety of mammals, including cows, cats and, more recently, humans, are all raising the risk of the virus mutating to become more transmissible, they said. But others attending the briefing said it was too early to...

It’s just the flu, bro…year 5 (a thread for Flubros and Flubras) Four years ago we started this series of threads based on the premise that…it’s just the flu, bro. Essentially that Covid is just the flu. It should have been nothing more, from an impact point of view, nothing more than a bad flu season. The symptoms, treatment, prevention techniques for Covid were all similar to that of the flu. We present as evidence… https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2024/p0301-respiratory-virus.html an excerpt- “The new guidance brings a unified approach to addressing risks from a range of common respiratory viral illnesses, such as COVID-19, flu,...

So, what the hell did we go through all of this for? I expected another wave of either anger or hilarity regarding the new guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued earlier this month about COVID: we can pretty much treat this viral infection like the flu. Remember, it was not long ago that even uttering such a thing could land you in social media jail or be branded a science denier. The footnote for the COVID pandemic will be that the people were right, and the experts were wrong. Masking is grossly ineffective. The vaccine is...

he nation's top public health agency is expanding a program that tests international travelers for COVID-19 and other infectious diseases. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention program asks arriving international passengers to volunteer to have their noses swabbed and answer questions about their travel. The program operates at six airports and on Tuesday, the CDC said it was adding two more — Chicago's O'Hare and Miami. Those locations should provide more information about respiratory infections coming out of South America, Africa and Asia, particularly, CDC officials said. "Miami and Chicago enable us to collect samples coming from areas of...

Corporation cited for illegal religious discrimination.. A hospital in Grand Rapids, Mich., has agreed to pay a settlement to a job applicant who had been offered a position, but then was arbitrarily rejected because he declined to take a flu shot hospital officials demanded. ... The fight involved Trinity Health Grand Rapids, which previously was known as Mercy Health St. Mary's. The resolution includes a consent decree that allows paying of some $50,000 to the worker who was rejected. The case originally was filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and charged the hospital improperly denied a job applicant’s...

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday mothballed its longstanding COVID isolation guidance, announcing that people no longer need to isolate for five days after catching the coronavirus. Instead, per the CDC, they should stay home if they feel sick but can leave home and resume normal activities as soon as their symptoms are getting better and its been a day since they had a fever (without the help of fever-reducing medication). That means that the CDC is now both streamlining and simplifying its recommendations and advising people to treat their COVID infections like they would the flu...

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) quietly updated its federal COVID-19 guidelines to recommend treating the virus similarly to the flu, vindicating years of dissident opinion and undermining the original justification for drastically upending Americans’ lives in its name. Declaring that COVID is “no longer the emergency that it once was, and its health impacts increasingly resemble those of other respiratory viral illnesses,” the new guidance says COVID’s threat is now “more similar to that of other common respiratory viruses,” justifying the agency’s decision to issue a general “Respiratory Virus Guidance, rather than additional virus-specific guidance.” It...

A lot of you have been getting your flu shots for years without a hitch. But, heads up, there’s a big shift on the horizon you should be aware of. The annual flu vaccine is morphing into an mRNA shot. And chances are, they’re not going to broadcast this change, especially with all the health debates swirling around mRNA technology.A recent study out of Japan reveals alarming facts about cellular immunity.Dr. Malone, the man who is regarded as the “inventor” of mRNA vaccines, has been an outspoken critic of the regulatory oversight regarding the mRNA vaccine products.Camus:Dr. Robert Malone, a...

As Canada's flu season collides with record strep A cases and ongoing COVID-19 concerns, a new study is shedding light on our understanding of respiratory immune responses. Scholars have discovered a surprising facet about a century-old vaccine for tuberculosis, Bacillus Calmette Guérin (BCG). The study uncovered a previously unknown mechanism that extends the vaccine's shield to combat influenza A virus—the most prevalent flu strain. "The immune interactions involved here can 'train' the lungs, which are frequently exposed to infectious agents in the environment. If we can map out the protective immune pathways involved in the lungs, this will revolutionize our...

Pope Francis, who has been suffering from the flu, was taken to a hospital in central Rome after the papal audience Wednesday, the Vatican said. The Vatican did not immediately comment on his condition.The 87-year-old pontiff was seen arriving at Italian capital's Gemelli Hospital on Tiber Island in a small white Fiat 500 and leaving again under escort in the same car after a short period, the ANSA news agency reported."After the general audience Pope Francis went to the Gemelli Isola Tiberina Hospital for some diagnostic tests," the Vatican said in a statement. "At the end he returned to the...

Pope Francis canceled all his scheduled activities Monday for the second time in three days, with the Vatican citing a persistent flu as the cause. “Mild flu-like symptoms persist without fever,” stated Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni in an email to journalists, adding that the day’s events were canceled “as a precaution.” Bruni released a similar notification on Saturday morning, announcing the suspension of all papal activities because of a “mild seasonal flu.” On Sunday, the 87-year-old pontiff appeared briefly at the window of the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican for his weekly Angelus address. Last month, the pope attended a...

As former U.S. President George W. Bush once said, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice — you can’t get fooled again.” That questionable aphorism will be put to the test this election season as states continue to look for excuses to preserve no-excuse mail-in ballots that even U.S. authorities quietly acknowledged were less secure than in-person elections requiring voter identification. Overseas in China, one year prior to the 2020 elections, a worldwide viral pandemic originated. The SARS-CoV-2 virus — now known to have almost certainly originated in a Wuhan laboratory — caught fire; the Covid-19 pandemic would...

Bill Letson had an NDE (Near-Death Experience) after contracting the flu. He flew through a star-filled realm and met three beings and God in Heaven. An NDE (Near-Death Experience) occurs when someone dies, is revived, and knows there is life after death. For Bill, his NDE (Near-Death Experience) was a life-altering experience that changed him forever.

World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus has issued a new warning about the likelihood of Disease X breaking out, telling global world leaders it is "a matter of when, not if" a new pathogen and pandemic will strike. Tedros, who goes by his first name, told attendees at the World Government Summit in Dubai earlier his week he gave a similar warning in 2018 that a pandemic was likely to hit, and he was proven right with the outbreak of the deadly coronavirus.

The US government is spending $1million of American taxpayer money to fund gain-of-function experiments on dangerous bird flu viruses in collaboration with Chinese scientists. The research involves infecting ducks and geese with different strains to make them more transmissible and infectious, and study the viruses' potential to 'jump into mammalian hosts,' according to the research documents. It is being funded through the US Department of Agriculture and will take place at sites in Georgia, Beijing and Edinburgh in Scotland. It comes despite such research being restricted in 2022 and growing concerns that dubious Chinese research may have started the Covid...

[H/T Mewzilla]Allegations of Secrecy and High Mortality Rates Draw ScrutinyAn employee at a Pfizer branch in Kyiv has exposed a shocking clinical trial conducted by the pharmaceutical company, resulting in the tragic deaths of over 40 Ukrainian children at the time of this revelation. These trials have been marred by severe violations of medical and ethical standards, raising alarming concerns. Despite the discovery of these violations in the early stages of the trials and a distressingly high rate of hospitalizations and fatalities, Pfizer stubbornly persists in continuing these experiments.The disturbing revelations came to light through a series of videos that...

Experts from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the US are warning that the country is close to a vaccination tipping point: a point where there aren't enough vaccinated people to protect the unvaccinated, leading to deaths that would otherwise have been prevented. A new commentary, written by FDA Commissioner Robert Califf and FDA vaccine regulator Peter Marks, highlights COVID-19, influenza, and respiratory syncytial virus as three diseases where vaccinations are crucial in protecting communities. Measles also gets a mention, with a record number of people no longer getting vaccinated against it. That has meant a number of recent...

The new year is kicking off with a spike in respiratory illnesses across the U.S., including COVID-19, flu and respiratory syncytial virus. Considering all the circulating illnesses right now, it might be time for masking to make a comeback, experts say. "We're certainly in the winter peak of respiratory viruses," Dr. Albert Ko, professor of epidemiology and medicine at the Yale School of Public Health, tells TODAY.com. A post-holiday COVID spike alongside upticks of the usual winter illnesses, like flu and RSV, make this surge "very much expected," he adds. Amid this rise in the spread of illnesses, mask mandates...

More than three years into the pandemic, hundreds of Americans are still dying from COVID-19 every week. For the week ending Dec. 9, the last week of complete data, there were 1,614 deaths from COVID, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The last four weeks of complete data show an average of 1,488 weekly deaths. By comparison, there were 163 weekly deaths from the flu for the week ending Dec. 9, according to CDC data.