Free Republic

Get stuck and take a puff. Cannabis activist group DC Marijuana Justice plans to offer weed gift bags to those who get the COVID-19 vaccine in the nation’s capital, the organization has announced. “We are looking for ways to safely celebrate the end of the pandemic and we know nothing brings people together like cannabis,” wrote DCMJ co-founder Nikoas Schiller in a press release for the initiative, dubbed “Joints for Jabs.” The group plans to hand out free ganja baggies at Washington, DC, vaccination sites, both to commemorate what is hopefully the beginning of the end of the coronavirus pandemic...

The professional nags at the World Health Organization are at it again. Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the world was on the brink of a “catastrophic moral failure” for the inequitable distribution of the COVID vaccine. The WHO chief said that the “recent emergence of rapidly-spreading variants makes the rapid and equitable rollout of vaccines all the more important.” He said that there have been 39 million vaccine doses distributed in 49 rich Western countries, and only 25 doses in one of the poorest. Via CNBC: "Beginning his speech, Tedros had emphasized that the development and approval of safe coronavirus...

The evidence that the second dose can be delayed for three months looks shaky - not even the manufacturers recommend it. Vaccines have to work in the real world, not in the artificial bubble of a clinical trial. So the findings from Israel's impressively-rapid rollout of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine are troubling. They suggest the UK's decision to delay the second dose exposes the elderly and vulnerable to a significantly higher risk of infection than we were told by the government's vaccines advisers. But the stats from Israel suggests that the efficacy of one dose is just 33%. The Israeli scientists...

Out of an abundance of caution, Santa Cruz County is slowing down their vaccination process after learning Moderna’s newest COVID-19 vaccine, Lot 41L20A, has caused allergic reactions to less than 10 people in Southern California. “Anaphylactic shock refers to a drop in blood pressure due to an allergic reaction. Most of us think of it in terms of like a bee sting if you’re allergic to bee stings, you can go into shock,” explained David Ghilarducci M.D., Deputy Health Officer for Santa Cruz County. “But again, that reaction is pretty rare. It’s one in 100,000 from the trials that we’ve...

January 18, 2021 Dear Reverend Clergy, Greetings and blessings to you and your families in the Name of our Great God and Savior, Jesus Christ! I pray that you and your holy communities have celebrated joyous and grace-filled feasts of our Lord's Nativity in the flesh, Circumcision on the eighth day, and Baptism in the Jordan. In all of these holy feasts, we witness the love, humility, and obedience of our Lord. He was born to the humble Virgin and laid in a manger to unite His divinity to our humanity. He submitted to circumcision in the flesh in accordance...

NBA commissioner Adam Silver said Tuesday the league has discussed having players receive COVID-19 vaccines to educate and influence the public regarding their safety and effectiveness. "There have been discussions. It's something we're particularly focused on," Silver said at a virtual conference hosted by Sportico. "In the African American community, there's been enormously disparate impact from COVID ... but now, somewhat perversely, there's been enormous resistance [to vaccinations] in the African American community for understandable historical reasons. ... If that resistance continues, it would be very much a double whammy to the Black community, because the only way out of...

SNIP Nachman Ash — Israel’s equivalent of Dr. Anthony Fauci — said the protection offered by the first dose is “less effective than we had thought,” Army Radio reported. “Many people have been infected between the first and second injections of the vaccine,” Ash said, adding that the protective effect appears “lower than [the data] presented by Pfizer.” The pharmaceutical giant has claimed that trials show it is roughly 52 percent effective around 12 days after receiving the first shot, the BBC reported.

The eastern state of Saxony, where hospitals have been struggling to cope with one of the worst coronavirus outbreaks in the country, has confirmed plans to hold quarantine breakers in a fenced off section of a refugee camp. Saxony is set to construct the centre next week. The regional state has stressed that the facility will only be used for people who have repeatedly broken the rules around quarantine even after facing financial penalties. Three further states - Baden-Württemberg, Brandenburg and Schleswig-Holstein - have also either already created such facilities or are in the process of doing so, a report...

THINK ABOUT IT! Questions to Government we all should be asking.... If I get vaccinated: 1. Can I stop wearing the mask? - No 2. Can they reopen restaurants etc. and everyone work normally? - No 3. Will I be resistant to covid? - Maybe, but we don't know exactly, it probably won't stop you getting it 4. At least I won't be contagious to others anymore? - No, you can still pass it on, possibly, nobody knows. 5. If we vaccinate all children, will school resume normally? - No 6. If I am vaccinated, can I stop social distancing?...

On Wednesday of last week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that residents age 65 and above were now eligible to schedule appointments to receive either Pfizer or Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine. Just one problem: The state does not have final say over who gets vaccinated when. That power rests with individual counties and health care providers. “We’re not done with our health care workers,” Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said when explaining why her county is not ready to expand eligibility. “We haven’t heard back from the state about vaccine availability and how it would be distributed.” Dr....

California’s top epidemiologist told healthcare providers on Sunday to stop using a batch of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine after a “higher than usual” number of people had apparent allergic reactions at a San Diego vaccination clinic.Dr. Erica Pan, the state epidemiologist, said Sunday that “out of an extreme abundance of caution,” providers should stop using the doses until federal, state and company officials finish an investigation.California has received about 330,000 doses from the Moderna lot in question — about 10% of all the vaccine, both Moderna’s and Pfizer’s, that have been distributed across the Golden State, officials said.The apparent allergic reactions...

A year after it emerged, COVID-19 has now claimed more than 2 million lives worldwide. Experts have said for much of the last year that the only way to escape the coronavirus‘ grasp is through widespread vaccination. Weapons to win that war have been and continue to be approved by individual countries’ drug regulators in record time.Dr. Fauci told CBS News in November that the bottom line is simple: “We need to get as many people as possible vaccinated.”But is the vaccine safe? And is it okay in for Americans to question the wisdom of the all powerful Oz Dr....

Fifty-five people in the United States have died after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine, according to reports submitted to a federal system. Deaths have occurred among people receiving both the Moderna and the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, according to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a federal database. The system is passive, meaning reports aren’t automatically collected and must be filed. VAERS reports can be filed by anyone, including health care providers, patients, or family members. VAERS reports “often lack details and sometimes can have information that contains errors,” according to the reporting system’s website. Still, reports on VAERS represent “only a...

The nations quickest to enact social distancing and contact-tracing systems have mostly kept COVID-19 in check, but their citizens now find themselves lagging in receiving the shots needed to finally end a pandemic that has devastated millions of lives. Governments from Japan and Australia to Hong Kong and South Korea are taking their time before granting regulatory approvals for vaccines, in stark contrast to the Western nations that have rushed to inoculate populations. That cautious approach may seem strange given the urgency to resume normal life, but low infection rates mean that Asian governments are able to wait to see...

Amid increasing calls for suspension of the use of mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines produced by companies such as Pfizer, especially among elderly people, the situation in Norway has escalated significantly as the Scandi nation has now registered a total of 29 deaths among people over the age of 75 who’ve had their first COVID-19 vaccination shot.As Bloomberg reports, this adds six to the number of known fatalities in Norway, and also lowers the age group thought to be affected from 80.Until Friday, Pfizer/BioNTech was the only vaccine available in Norway, and “all deaths are thus linked to this vaccine,” the Norwegian...

The National Guard and the Federal Emergency Management Agency will have key roles in President-elect Joe Biden’s plan to increase the numbers of Americans being vaccinated against the coronavirus. Biden’s plan, released Friday, calls for the National Guard and FEMA to build vaccine clinics, according to CNBC. He had said last fall that he planned to have the federal government foot the bill for National Guard deployments related to COVID-19. “It costs a lot of money and governors need that paid for,” Biden said at the time, according to Politico. “The fact is that this is a national emergency —...

Late last year, firefighters were the first city workers given access to the shots. After an initial burst of activity, the number showing up to get the vaccine has plummeted. This past week only 143 firefighters visited one of the department’s vaccination centers, according to data released by the city Friday night. So far, 1,944 of the agency’s just under 3,400 members have been inoculated, leaving four in 10 vulnerable to the highly infectious coronavirus. The reluctance of L.A. firefighters adds to the list of healthcare workers in the state who are declining to take the vaccine... In a bid...

The President-elect said his team plans to "manage the hell out of this operation," to hit the ground running on vaccinating Americans.

Sure. Create a two-tier society which allows freedom for some people, but not for others, and have it regulated by the very groups and figures that people suspicious of vaccines already have at the very top of their list. That's bound to go well. A coalition of health and technology organizations are working to develop a digital COVID-19 vaccination passport to allow businesses, airlines and countries to check if people have received the vaccine. The initiative, which includes members like Microsoft, Oracle and U.S. nonprofit Mayo Clinic, is using the work from member Commons Project’s international digital document that verifies...

Twenty-three people died in Norway within days of receiving their first dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, with 13 of those deaths — all nursing home patients — apparently related to the side effects of the shots, health officials said. Common reactions to the vaccine, including fever and nausea, “may have contributed to a fatal outcome in some frail patients,” Sigurd Hortemo, chief physician at the Norwegian Medicines Agency, said in a Friday statement. All 13 were nursing home patients and at least 80 years old. While officials aren’t expressing serious concern, they are adjusting their guidance on who should...