1403: In Silico

Markets overheated

VAERS from Vax - Heartattcks

Vax hestiancy

Merck pill fails

Pfizermectin on deck

Control

Kill Us

COVID-19 patients commonly suffer from fever.

Weakness and pain in the muscles often accompany it.

Your throat may feel sore as well.

COVID-19 is typically characterized by cough, either dry or productive.

There might be Breathing Difficulties.

Disorientation, dizziness, altered mental state, and headache.

COVID Fog or COVID brain fog is a kind of cognitive disorder characterized by memory loss, inattention, poor concentration, or a lack of orientation.

Some people may experience temporary loss of sense of smell as a side effect of COVID-19.

Food tastes differently for some people who are affected by COVID-19.

Various gastrointestinal symptoms may occur, such as vomiting, diarrhea, and loss of appetite.

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Manufacturers have been reluctant to tweak vaccines for other new variants because this could become a game of whack-a-mole. Plus, modifying a vaccine for a new variant may leave it less effective against others. It’s also worth remembering that vaccines generate T-cell immune protection, beyond antibodies, that variants can’t easily evade.

Anti-viral Covid pills by Merck and Pfizer—which the FDA ought to approve pronto—have shown remarkable success in trials at preventing severe illness in high-risk groups. Both drug makers have licensed their pills to other manufacturers, so they should be widely available within months. The Biden Administration has ordered 13 million courses of the two drugs.

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The precautionary measure announced Friday is intended to help hospitals in the state prepare for a potential winter wave caused by the new variant, which the World Health Organization has said might be more transmissible and pose a greater risk of illness than existing strains of the coronavirus. New York is the first state to declare a state of emergency in response to the Omicron variant.

First detected in South Africa, Omicron hasn’t been found anywhere in the U.S.

An alien takes over the body of an Earthman in order to learn about the planet so his race can take it over.

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Pictures of shopping streets no masks

Diet is very different and healthier people

Ivermectin

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Source Study

“The allegations exposed in February were troubling to say the least — swapped samples, inaccurate results, contamination and beyond. Not to mention, private labs are producing the same results at a reduced cost,” Wilk said Monday.

Public health officials, in an email Tuesday, said the contract can be rescinded without cause with 45 days notice.

“The state chose to allow the auto renew provision in the contract with PerkinElmer to take effect to ensure we have the capabilities in place for a potential surge,” officials said. “The laboratory continues to play a critical role in meeting California’s goal of expanding equitable and affordable access to COVID-19 testing.” ​

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The Australian government will introduce new legislation forcing social media companies to “unmask” anonymous users who post offensive comments, or make them pay defamation fines if they are unable or refuse to do so.

The new initiative seeks to define social media giants as publishers, making them responsible for the user-generated content on their platforms, as well as to introduce special mechanisms through which anyone can file a complaint and demand a post takedown if they think they are being defamed, bullied or harassed, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced during a televised press briefing on Sunday.

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Shared with people

Red pilled nodded and said yup…we know.

The blue pilled made excuses for them…completely missing the point that they forced so much compliance and restrictions onto us out of their pride and arrogance

of being “the experts”

One person said “They weren’t to know” ….. gee I wish I could use that excuse next time I mess up…and these are intelligent people I have as friends…all very high

up network and systems engineers in companies like Cisco

BTW I had a local Covid ICU doctor in my photo studio today. He said about 30% of those with Covid in ICU die in malaysia. I asked him about the increase in cases

of myocarditis and he said that here its usually people who had Sinovac and were then boostered with Pfizer. He told me to wait as Sinovacs booster is coming here

soon, and to not get the Pfizer.

I had Sinovac as you aren’t allowed into any supermarket, wet market, pub, restaurant or other shops without the local vaccine app and they have guards who check

your entry into malls. We were locked down for 18 months, the first 4-5 like Australia is now. We saw a doubling in suicides ads peoples businesses crumbled and

savings evaporated. There is no financial safety net here.

I also personally know of 2 people who had their left arm paralysed for a couple of weeks each due to the pfizer booster. But my blue pilled friends ignore it…sad

to say it seems like they need a personal encounter to shake them out of their sleep.

All the best from Malaysia.

Grant

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Archived Version

Sun, 28 Nov 2021 16:03

In November 2019, Matt Hancock, then the United Kingdom's health secretary, unveiled a lofty ambition: to sequence the genome of every baby in the country. It would usher in a ''genomic revolution,'' he said, with the future being ''predictive, preventative, personalized health care.''

Hancock's dreams are finally coming to pass. In October, the government announced that Genomics England, a government-owned company, would receive funding to run a research pilot in the UK that aims to sequence the genomes of between 100,000 and 200,000 babies. Dubbed the Newborn Genomes Programme, the plan will be embedded within the UK's National Health Service and will specifically look for ''actionable'' genetic conditions'--meaning those for which there are existing treatments or interventions'--and which manifest in early life, such as pyridoxine-dependent epilepsy and congenital adrenal hyperplasia.

It will be at least 18 months before recruitment for participants starts, says Simon Wilde, engagement director at Genomics England. The program won't reach Hancock's goal of including ''every'' baby; during the pilot phase, parents will be recruited to join. The results will be fed back to the parents ''as soon as possible,'' says Wilde. ''For many of the rare diseases we will be looking for, the earlier you can intervene with a treatment or therapy, the better the longer-term outcomes for the child are.''

The babies' genomes will also be de-identified and added to the UK's National Genomic Research Library, where the data can be mined by researchers and commercial health companies to study, with the goal of developing new treatments and diagnostics. The aims of the research pilot, according to Genomics England, are to expand the number of rare genetic diseases screened for in early life to enable research into new therapies, and to explore the potential of having a person's genome be part of their medical record that can be used at later stages of life.

Whole genome sequencing, the mapping of the 3 billion base pairs that make up your genetic code, can return illuminating insights into your health. By comparing a genome to a reference database, scientists can identify gene variants, some of which are associated with certain diseases. As the cost of whole genome sequencing has taken a nosedive (it now costs just a few hundred bucks and can return results within the day), its promises to revolutionize health care have become all the more enticing'--and ethically murky. Unraveling a bounty of genetic knowledge from millions of people requires keeping it safe from abuse. But advocates have argued that sequencing the genomes of newborns could help diagnose rare diseases earlier, improve health later in life, and further the field of genetics as a whole.

Back in 2019, Hancock's words left a bad taste in Josephine Johnston's mouth. ''It sounded ridiculous, the way he said it,'' says Johnston, director of research at the Hastings Center, a bioethics research institute in New York, and a visiting researcher at the University of Otago in New Zealand. ''It had this other agenda, which isn't a health-based agenda'--it's an agenda of being perceived to be technologically advanced, and therefore winning some kind of race.''

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Archived Version

Sun, 28 Nov 2021 15:46

The Salvation Army has gone woke.

The charity is asking its white donors to do more than just drop some coins into the kettle when they go shopping this holiday season. Leaders of the Army want whites to apologize for being racist.

''The desire is that Salvationists achieve the following,'' the Army says in an online ''resource'' titled ''Let's Talk About Racism,'' listing several goals including to ''lament, repent and apologize for biases or racist ideologies held and actions committed.''

The resource claims Christianity is inherently racist and calls for white Christians to repent and offer ''a sincere apology'' to blacks for being ''antagonistic'... to black people or the culture, values and interests of the black community.''

''Many have come to believe that we live in a post-racial society, but racism is very real for our brothers and sisters who are refused jobs and housing, denied basic rights and brutalized and oppressed simply because of the color of their skin,'' one lesson in the resource says. ''There is an urgent need for Christians to evaluate racist attitudes and practices in light of our faith, and to live faithfully in today's world.''

''And as we engage in conversations about race and racism, we must keep in mind that sincere repentance and apologies are necessary if we want to move towards racial reconciliation. We recognize that it is a profound challenge to sit on the hot seat and listen with an open heart to the hurt and anger of the wounded. Yet, we are all hardwired to desire justice and fairness, so the need to receive a sincere apology is necessary,'' said the resource.

In an accompanying Study Guide on Racism, the Salvation Army says whites are racist. ''The subtle nature of racism is such that people who are not consciously racist easily function with the privileges, empowerment and benefits of the dominant ethnicity, thus unintentionally perpetuating injustice,'' it says.

''We must stop denying the existence of individual and systemic/institutional racism. They exist, and are still at work to keep White Americans in power,'' the lesson says.

The Army's declaration comes as liberal media are blasting Thanksgiving as a holiday that promotes genocide and white supremacy.

''What is Thanksgiving to Indigenous people? 'A day of mourning,''' a USA Today headline on Tuesday said.

''For many, rather than a celebration of peace and shared prosperity between Native Americans and Pilgrims, Thanksgiving represents the dark shadow of genocide and the resilience of Native people,'' said the piece. ''Every tribe and every individual may have a different way of spending Thanksgiving. Some will gather with their families and share a meal, exchanging prayers and stories from the rich oral history of Native Americans. Others will fast for the entire day.''

The paper quoted American Indian Dennis W. Zotigh saying that Thanksgiving is ''a day of mourning.'' ''To most natives, Thanksgiving is not a celebration,'' Zotigh said. ''Natives, particularly in the New England area, remember this attempted genocide as a factual part of their history and are reminded each year during the modern Thanksgiving.''

A weather service called Currently also posted an article Tuesday suggesting that Americans who celebrate the holiday are ''hurting'' the Native American community.

''Thanksgiving will be celebrated by many people across the country,'' the service said on Twitter. ''The holiday perpetuates in a false narrative, that spins the true history of genocide and colonization into a light and largely false story.''

The Daily Wire is one of America's fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a member.

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Archived Version

Sun, 28 Nov 2021 15:40

A number of European and Asian nations have suspended flights from southern Africa after authorities announced a new coronavirus variant had been found.

The United Kingdom said Thursday it is temporarily suspending flights from six countries. European Union member states collectively agreed to an emergency restriction on travel into the EU from southern Africa.

Italy's Health Minister Roberto Speranza said scientists are studying the new variant, but "in the meantime, we will adopt the greatest possible caution," according to a translation from Reuters.

In Asia, Singapore is also barring arrivals from the region and Japan tightened border controls for those arriving from southern Africa. India is stepping up tests for international arrivals.

A concerning variantThe World Health Organization has called for a special meeting on Friday to further study the variant, which has been detected in small numbers in South Africa and is known as B.1.1.529.

Experts have already warned the new variant could be problematic because its genetic composition makes it more transmissible.

Pasi Penttinen, a public health emergency response manager at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, told CNBC Friday that "it looks like this particular variant has a very concerning sets of mutations especially in the spike protein, which is needed for its transmission properties as well as its protection against the vaccines."

"So based on the genetic information we are quite concerned about it," he said.

South African officials have said that the decision to ban flights is premature. However, British officials explained the need to take a cautious approach.

"More data is needed but we're taking precautions now. From noon tomorrow six African countries will be added to the red list, flights will be temporarily banned, and UK travelers must quarantine," Sajid Javid, the U.K.'s health secretary, said Thursday.

In addition to South Africa, the countries of Namibia, Lesotho, Eswatini, Zimbabwe and Botswana are included in the new restrictions.

The variant has spread rapidly through the Gauteng province, which contains South Africa's largest city of Johannesburg.

The variant has also been detected in Botswana, Hong Kong, and Israel.

"We don't know very much about this yet. What we do know is that this variant has a large number of mutations. And the concern is that when you have so many mutations, it can have an impact on how the virus behaves," Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO's technical lead on Covid-19, said in a Q&A that was livestreamed on the organization's social media channels on Thursday.

Covid cases in EuropeThe newly detected variant arrives as infection levels remain high in countries across the world. In Europe, Austria and Italy have announced new restrictions in recent days aimed at slowing the spread of the older delta variant.

The WHO warned recently that the situation in Europe is "very serious."

There is also an ongoing push to drive more Europeans to get vaccinated. The EU's vaccination average is at 68%, but this number masks the differences among member states. Portugal and Spain have inoculation rates above 80%, but Austria and Germany, for instance, have only about 67% of their populations vaccinated.

Countries have used restrictions on flights as a tool to slow the spread of Covid since the early days of the pandemic. The U.S. just lifted its travel ban from 33 countries, including the U.K., earlier this month.

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Archived Version

Sun, 28 Nov 2021 15:40

Authored by Kit Knightly via Off-Guardian.org,

Yesterday the WHO labelled the sars-cov-2 variant B.1.1.529 as a ''variant of concern'' and officially named it ''Omicron''.

This was as entirely predictable as it is completely meaningless. The ''variants'' are just tools to stretch the story out and keep people on their toes.

If you want to know exactly how the Omicron variant is going to affect the narrative, well The Guardian has done a handy ''here's all the bullshit we're gonna sell you over the next couple of weeks'' guide:

The Omicron variant is more transmissable, but they don't know if it's more dangerous yet (keeping their options open)

It originated in Africa, possible mutating in an ''untreated AIDS patient'' (sick people are breeding grounds for dangerous ''mutations'')

''it has more than double the mutations of Delta'...scientists anticipate that the virus will be more likely to infect '' or reinfect '' people who have immunity to earlier variants. (undermining natural immunity, selling more boosters, keeping the scarefest going)

''Scientists are concerned'' that current vaccines may not be as effective against the new strain, they may need to be ''tweaked'' (get your boosters, and the new booster we haven't invented yet)

''Scientists expect that recently approved antiviral drugs, such as Merck's pill, will work as effectively against the new variant'' (more on this later)

It's already spreading around the world, and travel bans may be needed to prevent the need for another lockdown

We're already seeing preparations for more ''public health measures'', with the press breathlessly quoting ''concerned'' public health officials. We're being told that a new lockdown won't be necessary'...as long as we remember to get boosted and wear masks and blah blah blah.

Generally speaking, it's all fairly boilerplate scary nonsense. Although it is quite funny that the Biden administration has already put a bunch of African nations on a travel ban list, when Biden called Trump a racist for doing the same thing in 2020.

pic.twitter.com/AJBoDKU37p

'-- Defiant L's (@DefiantLs) November 26, 2021AFRICAIt's interesting that the new variant has allegedly come from Africa, perhaps ''mutating in the body of an AIDS patient'', since Africa has been the biggest hole in the Covid narrative for well over a year.

Africa is by far the poorest continent, it is densely populated, malnourishment and extreme poverty are endemic across many African nations, and it is home to more AIDS patients than the entire rest of the world combined. And yet, no Covid crisis.

This is a weak point in the story, and always has been.

Last Summer, the UK's virus modeller-in-chief Neil Ferguson attempted to explain it by arguing that African nations have, on average, younger populations than the rest of the world, and Covid is only a threat to the elderly. But five minutes of common sense debunks that idea.

The reason Africa has a younger population, on average, is that '' on average '' they are much sicker.

There are diseases endemic to large parts of Africa that are all but wiped out in most of the Western world. Cholera, typhus, yellow fever, tuberculosis, malaria. Access to clean water, and healthcare are also much more limited.

And while it has been nailed into the public mind that being elderly is the biggest risk factor for Covid, that is inaccurate. In fact, the biggest risk factor for dying ''of Covid'' is, and always has been, already dying of something else.

The truth is that any REAL dangerous respiratory virus would have cut a bloody swath across the entire continent.

Instead, as recently as last week, we were getting articles about how Africa ''escaped Covid'', and the continent's low covid deaths with only 6% of people vaccinated is ''mystifying'' and ''baffling'' scientists.

Politically, African nations have shown themselves far less likely to buy into the ''pandemic'' narrative than their European, Asian or American counterparts. At least two ''Covid denying'' African presidents '' Pierre Nkurunziza of Burundi and John Magufuli of Tanzania '' have died suddenly in the last year, and seen their successors immediately reverse their covid policies.

So maybe the Omicron Variant is a way of trying to fold Africa into the covid narrative that the other continents have already fully embraced. That will become clear as the story develops.

Of course, it's also true that being ''African'' is media shorthand for being scary, relying on the deeply-seated xenophobia of Western audiences. See: ''Africanized killer bees''.

But, either way, Africa is the long game. There's a more obvious, and more cynical, short term agenda here.

THE MAGIC PILLSLet's go back to the Guardian's ''Omicron'' bullet points, above:

Scientists are concerned by the number of mutations and the fact some of them have already been linked to an ability to evade existing [vaccine-created] immune protection.

Scientists expect that recently approved antiviral drugs, such as Merck's pill, [will work effectively] against the new variant

The ''new variant'' is already being described as potentially resistant to the vaccines, but NOT the new anti-viral medications.

Pharmaceutical giants Merck and Pfizer are both working on ''Covid pills'', which as recently as three days ago, were being hyped up in the press:

US may have a 'game changer' new Covid pill soon, but its success will hinge on rapid testing

In the US, an emergency use authorisation can only be issued if there is no effective medication or treatment already available, so the vaccines not being proof against Omicron would be vital to rushing the pills onto the US market, at least.

If Omicron is found to be ''resistant to the vaccines'', but NOT the pills, that will give governments an excuse to rush through approving the pills on an EUA, just as they did with the vaccines.

So, you bet your ass that testing is gonna be ''rapid''. Super rapid. Blink-and-you'll-miss-it rapid. Rapid to the point you're not even sure it definitely happened. And now they have an excuse.

Really, it's all just more of the same.

A scare before the new year. An excuse to make people believe their Christmas could be in peril. An exercise in flexing their control muscles a bit, milking even more money out of the double-jabbed and boosted crowd, now newly terrified of the Omicron variant, and a nice holiday bump to Pfizer's ever-inflating stock price.

At this point either you can see the pattern, or you can't. You're free of the fear machinery, or you're not.

There is one potential silver lining here: It feels rushed and frantic. Discovered on Tuesday, named on Friday, travel bans on Saturday. It is hurried, and maybe that's a reaction to feeling like the ''pandemic'' is losing its grip on the public mind.

Hopefully, as the narrative becomes more and more absurd, more and more people will wake up to reality.

It has been pointed out that ''Omicron'' is an anagram of ''moronic''.

One wonders if that's deliberate and they're making fun of us.

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Archived Version

Sun, 28 Nov 2021 15:18

Posted 23/06/2017 by Don Arthur

The Australian Government has two separate cards designed to restrict how income support recipients can spend their payments'--the BasicsCard and the cashless debit card. While both schemes rely on cards provided by payments company, Indue, they work in different ways.

The biggest differences are:

Who can accept the card. The BasicsCard can only be used at merchants that the Department of Human Services has approved. The cashless debit card can be used at any merchant the Department has not blocked (provided it is able to accept Visa Debit).

Merchant responsibilities. All merchants who accept BasicsCard must sign an agreement not to process transactions for excluded goods such as alcohol or tobacco. Most merchants who accept the cashless debit card have no agreement with either the Department or the card provider.

Both cards prevent income support recipients from withdrawing cash. Income support recipients receive part of their payment on their card with the remainder transferred to their bank account in the normal way.

Recently there has been some confusion about the two schemes. With the Government planning to add two new sites for its trial of the cashless debit card people around Australia are discussing how the card might affect their communities. Federal Member for Hinkler, Keith Pitt, has started a petition to drum up support for a trial in the Bundaberg region. When a Bundaberg newspaper asked supermarket chain Aldi whether they would accept the card, an Aldi representative initially said no. However, Pitt suspected Aldi was confusing the cashless debit card currently being trialled in Ceduna and the East Kimberley with the BasicsCard used in income management sites. He was right. Aldi have since confirmed that they can accept the cashless debit card.

The BasicsCardThe BasicsCard was introduced to support the Government's income management initiatives. Various forms of income management operate in locations around Australia including the Northern Territory, Cape York, the Kimberley, Perth, Playford, Shepparton, Bankstown, Logan, Rockhampton and a number of remote Indigenous communities.

The BasicsCard is a PIN protected magnetic stripe card that allows income support recipients to spend their payments at approved businesses. The card works on the EFTPOS system. Cardholders cannot use the card to withdraw cash from automatic teller machines or EFTPOS terminals or to buy alcohol, tobacco, pornography or gambling products.

Only some retailers and service providers are approved to accept the BasicsCard. To get approval, a business must agree to accept a list of obligations that include not allowing people to use the card to buy excluded goods, gift cards or cash.

A common complaint from cardholders in some income management trial sites is that many retailers and service providers do not accept the BasicsCard. For example, Aldi, Bunnings, Officeworks and some government agencies.

The cashless debit cardThe cashless debit card was introduced in response to a recommendation by the Forrest Review of Indigenous jobs and training. The review argued that the BasicsCard had been an effective tool but that it was 'very expensive to deliver and unaffordable on a large scale.'

The cashless debit card is a Visa debit card. It works the same way as a normal bank-issued debit card except that cardholders cannot use it to withdraw cash and cannot use it at blocked merchants such as bottle shops.

While the BasicsCard will only work at retailers who have been approved by the Department of Human Services, the cashless debit card will work at any merchant that has not been blocked. The card provider, Indue, blocks merchants using a merchant category code (MCC) that identifies merchants by the kind of goods or services they sell. Merchants are able to accept the card unless Indue has blocked the category they belong to.

Blocking merchants by category means that it is not feasible to stop cardholders from buying cigarettes since these are available from merchant categories that are not blocked (for example, supermarkets, petrol stations and newsagents). Blocking sales of homebrew kits may be difficult for the same reason.

A major difficulty with the cashless debit card is dealing with merchants that sell a mix of excluded goods and non-excluded goods. According to Indue:

Merchants who sell Excluded Goods and Services and have the ability to prevent the sale of Excluded Goods and Services will be required to enter into a Merchant Agreement with Indue in order to be eligible to participate in the Trial and accept the Visa Debit Card.

Currently, the cashless debit card cannot automatically block purchases of individual products. It can only automatically block merchant categories and individual point of sale terminals. This means that staff at mixed merchants need to see the card, identify when a cardholder is trying to buy excluded goods, and refuse the purchase (this issue is discussed in an earlier Flagpost'--'The computer says no': automatic product blocking for the Cashless Debit Card).

This means that the cashless debit card is vulnerable to changes in state government liquor licencing regimes. It is much more difficult to implement the cashless debit card in a state or territory like the Australian Capital Territory that allows supermarkets to sell alcohol from the same point of sale terminals as other goods. Each supermarket would need to enter into a Merchant Agreement with Indue in order to accept the card.

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Archived Version

Sun, 28 Nov 2021 15:01

British cardiologist and writer

Aseem Malhotra is a British cardiologist,[1] and public health campaigner. He is a visiting professor,[2] author of several books and writer of articles in newspapers, who has written scores of editorials and maintains a high profile on social media and television. He has received recognition for his campaigning particularly on reducing sugar in the diet[3] and when Action on Sugar was founded in 2014, he was its first Science Director.[5] He is also recognized for campaigning on reducing over-prescribing of medicines.[6] He has been listed as one of The Sunday Times 500 most influential people,[3] identified as one of the top ten "Smart Set" in the London Evening Standard,[7] and twice being recognized as one of the top 50 BME pioneers in the UK National Health Service.[8][6] The judges for the Health Service Journal top 50 BME pioneers commented "Yes. He challenges people".[8] He promotes a low carb, high fat diet and is co-author of a book called the Pioppi diet.[9][10]

Maholtra's views on diet and health have been criticized by the British Heart Foundation as "misleading and wrong", and his public questioning of the need ever to use statins has been condemned as a danger to public health.[11] His "Pioppi diet" was named by the British Dietetic Association as one of the "top 5 worst celeb diets to avoid in 2018".[9] During the COVID-19 pandemic Malhotra published a book called the "21 day Immunity plan"[12] making claims that following this healthy diet program could quickly help people reduce their risk from the virus; critics point out that such claims are not backed by medical research evidence.[1]

Biography Early Influences Malhotra was born in New Delhi in India in October 1977, the younger son of two doctors: Kailash Chand and Anisha Malhotra.[13] The family moved to Britain in 1978 when his father had a clinical attachment at Alder Hey Hospital and was studying for a Diploma in Tropical Medicine at Liverpool University[14] Both parents became General Practitioners in Ashton-under-Lyme, Greater Manchester. In 1988, Malhotra's brother Amit, who was two year's older than Malhotra, and had been born with Down's Syndrome[15] died of heart failure aged thirteen. This inspired Malhotra with the ambition to become a cardiologist.[5] Malhotra was educated at Manchester Grammar School. [5] Malhotra's father went on to become the first Asian to be elected as honorary vice-president and deputy chair of the council of the British Medical Association and received an O.B.E for long-standing service to the NHS.[16] Malhotra has said that he had a unique relationship with his father, who was his best friend and the most loving and amazing father.[17] Malhotra's mother's religious faith was important to her[13] and Malhotra observed that she fasted weekly by only consuming one meal on a fast day.[18] She died in 2018 aged 68 after several years of illness when she was cared for by her husband.[15] Three months later, Malhotra who blamed her obesity, years of illness and premature death on her vegetarian diet that he said was high in sugar and ultra-processed foods and low in protein said "I very much hope that her premature and painful death was not in vain and we can learn that much of these ills are preventable."[18] Malhotra's father died suddenly in 2021 after suffering a cardiac arrest.[14]

Career Malhotra studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh and graduated in 2001.[19] He was already ambitious to become a cardiologist when he spent his foundation years as a doctor in Scotland, at Wishaw General Hospital then at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh and finally at Liberton Hospital which specialises in care of the elderly.[19] He completed his post-graduate medical diploma during two years working at the Manchester Royal Infirmary.[19] He held specialist registrar positions at St James's University Hospital in Leeds and Blackpool Victoria Hospital. [19]

In 2018, Malhotra was described as a charming and telegenic young cardiologist in private practice.[11] He has held cardiology posts with the UK National Health Service as a cardiology specialist registrar at Harefield Hospital,[19][20] at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead[19] and as an Honorary Consultant Cardiologist at Frimley Park Hospital.[21][22] He is a former Consultant Clinical Associate to the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges[21] and is a visiting professor at Bahiana School of Medicine and Public Health, Salvador, Brazil.[2][23] In 2015 he was appointed as a trustee of the King's Fund and was reappointed for a further three years in 2018.[24][25]

In addition to his work as a cardiologist, he has been described as a "highly regarded public health campaigner" and an anti-obesity expert[24] who is "passionate about tackling the companies and policies responsible for creating ... an obesogenic environment".[26] In 2013 he was recognized in the inaugural list of the top 50 BME Pioneers in the NHS Health Service Journal, for his research on sugar rich diets and obesity and cardio-vascular disease and for his public health campaigns, including profit-making of big corporations at the expense of public health, unhealthy hospital meals and sale of junk food in hospitals [8] The judges commented that "Yes. He challenges people".[8] In 2014 he was recognized for a second year running in the Health Services Journal top 50 BME Pioneers: described by the judges as "An upcoming star", the entry recognized that he had ignited a debate about over-investigation, over-diagnosis and over-medication and brought media attention to the BMJ's "Too much medicine" campaign.[6]

At the end of 2013, Malhotra won the accolade of being named a "Food Hero" for the Children's Food Campaign for his campaigning against junk food being marketed to children and sugar filled vending machines in hospitals.[26] When Action on Sugar was founded in 2014, he was its first Science Director.[5] Later in that year, his campaigning on sugar led to his being featured in the Evening Standard as being one of ten of London's brightest stars working in science and technology.[7] Malhotra was named as one of the 500 most influential people in Britain in the Sunday Times-Debretts list of 2016, for his campaigning about high levels of sugar in the diet. [3] In 2021, Malhotra was appointed chair of the charity The Public Health Collaboration.[23][27]

Interests Malhotra lists his interests as cooking, playing guitar, watching movies, keeping fit and playing sport.[5]

Public Health Campaigns and Controversies Pioppi diet and low carb diet advocacy The established consensus on what constitutes a healthy diet for the general population of adults in the UK is described in the NHS Eatwell plate Guidelines.[28][29] The recommendation is for a balanced diet consisting of carbohydrates, protein and fat. This should include at least 5 portions of fruit and vegetables per day, meals based on higher fibre starchy foods, plenty of fluids, some protein, some dairy or dairy alternatives and limited amounts of fat, which should be unsaturated. Foods high in fat, salt or sugar, should be not be eaten often and should be eaten only in small amounts. The NHS makes the points that most people are overweight or obese and need to reduce the amount of calories they eat, and most people don't eat enough vegetables or fruit, fibre or fish. The guidelines also state that people should eat less red meat and less processed meat. The guidelines apply to the general population of adults: people with medical conditions should consult their doctor for individual advice and people with medical or dietary conditions may need to consult a dietician to tailor the guidelines.[28]

Malhotra is a proponent of low-carbohydrate diets and in 2017 he co-authored a low carb diet book called the "Pioppi diet",[30][31] which provides a 21 day eating plan. Malhotra's personal royalties from the book are donated to charity.[32] The book recommends the daily consumption of two to four table spoons of extra-virgin olive oil, a small handful of tree nuts, five to seven portions of fibrous vegetables and low sugar fruits and oily fish at least three times a week. It advises people to avoid all added sugars, fruit juice, honey, and syrups, packaged refined carbohydrates, in particular anything flour based including all bread, pastries, cakes, biscuits, muesli bars, packaged noodles, pasta, couscous and rice and seed oils.[33] Very dark chocolate, butter, coconut oil, cheese, yoghurt are allowed.[32] The moderate consumption of alcohol is allowed but only within the limits set by the NHS and a maximum of 500g of red meat per week is recommended in line with the recommendations of the World Cancer Research Fund.[32] It promotes a higher fat intake with fewer carbs than the NHS reference intakes.[33] [34]

The diet is called Pioppi after the Italian village recognized as the home of the Mediterranean diet.[33] The authors use the lifestyles of residents of the town to explain the principles of a healthier Lifestyle and the book also explains how policy changes are needed to change the obesogenic environment.[30] The Pioppi diet book has endorsements from then Member of Parliament (MP) Andy Burnham and Dame Sue Bailey, Chair of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges.[30] Keith Vaz, who was the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on diabetes, promoted it to fellow MPs[35] and then MP and Labour Deputy Leader, Tom Watson, lost seven stones in less than twelve months by following the diet, putting his type 2 diabetes into remission in the process.[36]

The British Nutrition Foundation's response to the Pioppi diet explained that there is no single definition of the Mediterranean diet, which is generally considered to be a healthy way of eating.[37] However they identified that the advice in the Pioppi diet to cut out starchy carbohydrates is not consistent with a Mediterranean diet which would include bread, pasta and rice. In addition, Mediterranean diets are normally low in saturated fat which is contrary to the advice in the book that people can eat as much saturated fat as they like. Rosemary Stanton also says that in most traditional Mediterranean diets, bread would be a part of every meal.[38]

The Pioppi diet was listed as one of the "top 5 worst celeb diets to avoid in 2018" by the British Dietetic Association.[9] According to the BDA and others,[1][9][37] it is a new spin on a low-carb high fat diet that "hijacked" the term Mediterranean diet: substituting cauliflower for rice or pizza base and cooking with coconut oil are not parts of the traditional diet of the villagers of Pioppi.

Saturated Fat, Cholesterol and Statins The UK National Health Service website on healthy eating states that "Too much fat in your diet, especially saturated fats, can raise your cholesterol, which increases the risk of heart disease".[39]. This advice is part of a medical and dietary mainstream consensus about saturated fat shared with the World Health Organization[40] and the health authorities of many other nations.[41] [42] [43] [44] [45] [46] [47] Current guidelines for doctors from the UK National Institute for Health and Care Excellence for reduction of the risk of cardiovascular disease include giving advice on lifestyle changes before prescribing statins. [48] The UK National Health Service website explains to patients that the lifestyle changes that doctors will recommend before prescribing statins include eating a healthy diet, exercising, stopping smoking, limiting alcohol and maintaining a healthy weight.[49] Prof Mark Baker, Director of the Centre for Guidelines at NICE, stated that the use of statins in people with established heart disease was not controversial and expanding the prescription of statins to people with a 10% risk of disease was recent but based on robust evidence.[50]

Malhotra believes that saturated fat is part of a healthy diet: he is known to put a tablespoon of butter and coconut oil into his coffee.[51] He has attacked the standard advice on saturated fat consumption to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease.[52] Malhotra instead directs his attention to the effects of sugar and in particular to its role in diabetes.[52]

In 2017 Malhotra wrote an opinion piece for the British Journal of Sports Medicine which made the claim that saturated fat did "not clog the arteries" and that heart disease can be cured with a daily walk and "eating real food".[11] The British Heart Foundation criticised these "misleading and wrong" claims and several researchers took issue with the methodology of the report on which Malhotra based his claims.[11][53][54] Prof Louis Levy, the head of nutrition science at Public Health England says ''There is good evidence that a high intake of saturated fat increases your risk of heart disease".[11]

Malhotra denounces what he calls the government's "obsession" with levels of total cholesterol, which, he says, has led to the overmedication of millions of people with statins, and has diverted attention from the "more egregious" risk factor of atherogenic dyslipidaemia.[52] He has questioned the worth of statins, saying they may not be of benefit to anybody.[11] With Robert H. Lustig and Maryanne Demasi, Malhotra authored a 2017 article in The Pharmaceutical Journal which disputes the Lipid hypothesis, the link between blood cholesterol levels and occurrence of heart disease.[55] The article was criticized by two medical experts, for being based on cherry-picked science and for creating the impression that most doctors don't believe that diet and exercise are as important as drugs, and that drugs and lifestyle changes are an either/or option.[50] Cardiologist Tim Chico commented that "high cholesterol has been proven beyond all doubt to contribute to coronary artery disease and heart attack ... to say the cholesterol hypothesis is dead is simply incorrect."[50] Rory Collins, an Oxford medical professor, has also sharply criticised pronouncements about statins, and accused Malhotra of endangering lives.[11] Rory Collins has been quoted as saying that scare stories about statins could be as dangerous to public health as Andrew Wakefield's bogus claims about vaccination and autism.[11]

Too Much Medicine He believes that over-diagnosis and over-treatment is ''the greatest threat to our healthcare system''.[56] He says that in the UK at least £2bn is wasted each year on unnecessary tests and treatment.[57] He co-ordinated the Too Much Medicine campaign by the BMJ and the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges.[23] His claims are supported by Sir Richard Thompson a past president of the Royal College of Physicians.[58]

COVID-19 In 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic and before there were any approved vaccines for Covid-19, Malhotra published a book[12] claiming that following his dietary advice could grant "metabolic optimization" which would, in 21 days, decrease the risk of viral infection. David Gorski criticized the book[1] because the biggest single risk factor for Covid-19 infection is age, which people cannot change. Gorski said that while Malhotra had a germ of a good point and that it was undeniable that losing weight for someone who is obese would reduce their risk of complications, the claims about the book were massively exaggerated and there was no specific evidence for the impact of lifestyle recommendations on the risk of Covid-19 or that Malhotra's version of a healthy diet was better or worse than any other healthy lifestyle recommendation. Gorski was also concerned that telling people that they should be in control of their susceptibility to disease may have an element of victim blaming because that shifts responsibility for disease onto individuals, many of whom are unable to follow the kind of diet Malhotra advocates.[1]

Bibliography Books The Pioppi Diet: A 21-Day Lifestyle Plan (with Donal O'Neill), Penguin Books, 2017 ISBN 9781405932639The 21-Day Immunity Plan, Yellow Kite, 2020 ISBN 9781529349672A Statin-Free Life: A revolutionary life plan for tackling heart disease - without the use of statins, Hodder & Stoughton, 2021 ISBN 9781529354102Selected Newspaper Articles and Website Articles Malhotra, Aseem (1 February 2015). "Is the failure of health regulation damaging our well-being?". Guardian . Retrieved 13 May 2015 . "Lose weight and live longer: Dr Aseem Malhotra reveals the secrets of the world's healthiest village". Telegraph. 25 June 2017 . Retrieved 4 December 2018 . Molhatra, Aseem (23 September 2018). "I came up with the low carb diet Tom Watson used to lose seven stone. This is how it works". I news . Retrieved 4 December 2018 . Selected Editorials and Opinion Pieces in Academic Journals Malhotra, Aseem (22 October 2013). "Saturated fat is not the major issue". British Medical Journal. 347: f6340. doi:10.1136/bmj.f6340. PMID 24149521. S2CID 35280596 . Retrieved 13 May 2015 . Malhotra, A; Maughan, D; Ansell, J; Lehman, R; Henderson, A; Gray, M; Stephenson, T; Bailey, S (12 May 2015). "Choosing Wisely in the UK: the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges' initiative to reduce the harms of too much medicine". 2015;350:h2308. BMJ . Retrieved 6 October 2021 . Malhotra, Aseem; DiNicolantonio, James; Capewell, Simon (8 July 2015). "It is time to stop counting calories". Open Heart. BMJ. Volume 2 Issue 2 . Retrieved 6 October 2021 . Malhotra, A; Noakes, T; Phinney, S (August 2015). "It is time to bust the myth of physical inactivity and obesity: you cannot outrun a bad diet". British Journal of Sports Medicine. 49 (15): 967''968. doi:10.1136/bjsports-2015-094911. PMID 25904145. S2CID 31361420. Malhotra, Aseem; Apps, Andrew; Saini, Vikas; Gray, Muir (24 August 2015). "Right care and high-value cardiology: doctors' responsibilities to the patient and the population". Postgraduate Medical Journal. BMJ. 91 Issue=1078 . Retrieved 6 October 2021 . Malhotra, Aseem; Redberg, Rita; Meier, Pascal (5 April 2017). "Saturated fat does not clog the arteries: coronary heart disease is a chronic inflammatory condition, the risk of which can be effectively reduced from healthy lifestyle interventions". British Journal of Sports Medicine. BMJ. volume 51 issue 15 . Retrieved 6 October 2021 . Malhotra, Aseem; Kamepalli, Ravi Kumar; Bamrah, JS (8 July 2020). "Perspective: Poor metabolic health is a major issue for increased COVID-19 mortality in BAME groups". volume 6, no 2. The Physician . Retrieved 6 October 2021 . References ^ a b c d e David Gorski (31 August 2020). "Can 'optimizing your metabolism' through diet prevent or cure COVID-19?". Science-Based Medicine. ^ a b "Bahiana no The Guardian". Bahiana University. 30 August 2018 . Retrieved 7 September 2021 . ^ a b c "Britain's 500 Most Influential". Sunday Times. 24 January 2016 . Retrieved 3 September 2021 . ^ a b c d e O'Hara, Mary (18 November 2015). " ' We need to make people get angry about sugar' says cardiologist campaigner | Mary O'Hara". The Guardian. ^ a b c Gbadamosi, Nosmot; Paton, Nic (6 November 2014). "HSJ BME Pioneers 2014". Health Services Journal . Retrieved 1 September 2021 . ^ a b Urwin, Rosamund (16 October 2014). "The super smart set: 10 of London's clever clogs and big brains". Evening Standard . Retrieved 1 September 2021 . ^ a b c d Taylor, Jennifer (27 November 2013). "HSJ BME Pioneers 2013". Health Services Journal . Retrieved 1 September 2021 . ^ a b c d "Top 5 worst celeb diets to avoid in 2018". British Dietetic Association. 7 December 2017. the authors may well be the only people in the history of the planet who have been to Italy and come back with a diet named after an Italian village that excludes pasta, rice and bread ^ Mellor, Duane. (2017). "Dietitians like me don't take the Pioppi Diet seriously". The Spectator. Retrieved December 2, 2018. ^ a b c d e f g h Boseley S (30 October 2018). "Butter nonsense: the rise of the cholesterol deniers". The Guardian. ^ a b Oury, Jean-Paul (28 August 2020). "Dr. Aseem Malhotra : The best defense against Coronavirus is optimising metabolic health". European Scientist . Retrieved 6 October 2021 . ^ a b Chand, Kailash (3 December 2018). "Obituary: Dr Anisha Malhotra '' dedicated GP, wife and mother". Pulse Today. ^ a b Higgins, Adam (26 July 2021). "Tributes to Former Thameside GP and NHS Campaigner who has died". Thameside Reporter. ^ a b Trueland, Jennifer (2 August 2021). "Doctors mourn passing of unique BMA leader". BMA. ^ Quach, Georgina (27 July 2021). "Respected GP and fearless defender of NHS dies at 73". The Guardian. ^ Cox, Charlotte (28 July 2021). "Son of Leading Doctor and NHS Campaigner Records Moving Tribute After Sudden Death". Manchester Evening News. ^ a b Gallagher, Paul (27 February 2019). "NHS cardiologist says mother's vegetarian diet contributed to premature and painful death". INews. ^ a b c d e f "Aseem Malhotra". University of Edinburgh. 22 September 2016 . Retrieved 23 September 2021 . ^ "Lose weight and live longer: Dr Aseem Malhotra reveals the secrets of the world's healthiest village". Telegraph. 25 June 2017 . Retrieved 4 December 2018 . ^ a b Malhotra, A; Noakes, T; Phinney, S (August 2015). "It is time to bust the myth of physical inactivity and obesity: you cannot outrun a bad diet". British Journal of Sports Medicine. 49 (15): 967''968. doi:10.1136/bjsports-2015-094911. PMID 25904145. S2CID 31361420. ^ Hobbs, FD Richard; Banach, Maciej; Mikhailidis, Dimitri P.; Malhotra, Aseem; Capewell, Simon (14 January 2016). "Is statin-modified reduction in lipids the most important preventive therapy for cardiovascular disease? A pro/con debate". BMC Medicine. 14 (1): 4. doi:10.1186/s12916-016-0550-5 . PMC 4714436 . PMID 26769594. ^ a b c "Aseem Malhotra (Chair)". Public Health Collaboration. 2021 . Retrieved 6 September 2021 . ^ a b "The King's Fund welcomes Dr Aseem Malhotra as a new trustee". Kings Fund. 26 August 2015 . Retrieved 6 September 2021 . ^ Trustee's Annual report and Accounts for the Year Ended 31 December 2018 (PDF) (Report). Kings Fund. 2018 . Retrieved 1 September 2021 . ^ a b Clarke, Malcolm (20 December 2013). "Children's Food Campaign". Sustain . Retrieved 1 September 2021 . ^ Gallagher, Paul (23 August 2021). "Doctors create rival to 'failing' Public Health England in bid to boost nation's health". INews . Retrieved 9 October 2021 . ^ a b "Eat Well". NHS . Retrieved 2 September 2021 . ^ "The Eat Well Guide". NHS . Retrieved 2 September 2021 . ^ a b c Gerada, Claire (September 2017). "Books: The Pioppi diet: A 21 day lifestyle plan". British Journal of General Practice. 67(662): 414 . Retrieved 2 September 2021 . ^ "Low carb, Paleo or fasting '' which diet is best?". NHS . Retrieved 2 September 2021 . ^ a b c Molhatra, Aseem (23 September 2018). "I came up with the low carb diet Tom Watson used to lose seven stone. This is how it works". I news . Retrieved 4 December 2018 . ^ a b c Torrens, Kerry (29 August 2018). "What is the Pioppi diet?". BBC . Retrieved 4 December 2018 . ^ "Reference intakes explained". NHS UK. 27 April 2018 . Retrieved 4 December 2018 . ^ Gallagher, Paul (21 July 2017). "Keith Vaz tells 100 MPs to take up the Pioppi diet over summer". I news . Retrieved 3 September 2021 . ^ Sandhu, Serina (12 September 2018). "Tom Watson says his Type 2 diabetes went into remission after following a strict diet". I news . Retrieved 3 September 2021 . ^ a b "BNF response to the Pioppi diet". British Nutrition Foundation. Retrieved November 28, 2018. ^ "Should you try the Pioppi diet?". New Daily. 12 October 2018 . Retrieved 4 December 2018 . ^ "Fat: the facts". NHS . Retrieved 12 September 2021 . ^ Joint WHO/FAO Expert Consultation (2003). Diet, Nutrition and the Prevention of Chronic Diseases (PDF) . WHO Technical Report Series. 916. Geneva. ISBN 978-9241209168. ISSN 0512-3054. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2013-10-31. page 56 table 6, ^ "Choosing foods with healthy fats". Health Canada. 2018-10-10 . Retrieved 2021-09-12 . ^ "Cut Down on Saturated Fats" (PDF) . United States Department of Health and Human Services . Retrieved 2021-09-12 . ^ "Fat". Australia's National Health and Medical Research Council and Department of Health and Ageing. 2012-09-24 . Retrieved 2021-09-12 . ^ "Getting the Fats Right!". Singapore's Ministry of Health . Retrieved 2021-09-12 . ^ "Health Diet". India's Ministry of Health and Family Welfare . Retrieved 2021-09-12 . ^ "Making healthier food choices". New Zealand's Ministry of Health . Retrieved 2021-09-12 . ^ "Know More about Fat". Hong Kong's Department of Health . Retrieved 2021-09-12 . ^ "Cardiovascular disease: risk assessment and reduction, including lipid modification". National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. 27 September 2016 . Retrieved 12 September 2021 . ^ "Statins". NHS . Retrieved 12 September 2021 . ^ a b c "Expert reaction to new report on statins and the cholesterol hypothesis". Science Media Centre . Retrieved December 2, 2018 . ^ O'Connor, Anahad (23 August 2016). "An Unconventional Cardiologist Promotes a High-Fat Diet". The New York Times . Retrieved November 28, 2018 . ^ a b c Malhotra, Aseem (22 October 2013). "Saturated fat is not the major issue". British Medical Journal. 347: f6340. doi:10.1136/bmj.f6340. PMID 24149521. S2CID 35280596 . Retrieved 13 May 2015 . ^ Scutti, Susan (27 April 2017). "Does saturated fat clog your arteries? Controversial paper says 'no ' ". CNN . Retrieved 13 May 2020 . ^ Mole, Beth (26 April 2017). "Experts: Headline-grabbing editorial on saturated fats "bizarre," "misleading " ". Ars Technica. Archived from the original on 13 May 2020 . Retrieved 13 May 2020 . ^ Demasi, M; Lustig R. H; Malhotra A. (2017). The cholesterol and calorie hypotheses are both dead '-- it is time to focus on the real culprit: insulin resistance. The Pharmaceutical Journal doi:10.1211/CP.2017.20203046. ^ " ' Over-treating' patients is wasteful, unnecessary and can cause them harm, campaign claims". Independent. 13 May 2015 . Retrieved 13 May 2015 . ^ "Is the failure of health regulation damaging our well-being?". Guardian. 1 February 2015 . Retrieved 13 May 2015 . ^ "Health experts are calling for a 'Chilcot-style inquiry' into excess prescription drug deaths". I news. 11 April 2018 . Retrieved 4 December 2018 . External links Official website

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System and Method for Testing for COVID-19 Download PDF Info Publication number US20200279585A1 US20200279585A1 US16/876,114 US202016876114A US2020279585A1 US 20200279585 A1 US20200279585 A1 US 20200279585A1 US 202016876114 A US202016876114 A US 202016876114A US 2020279585 A1 US2020279585 A1 US 2020279585A1 Authority US United States Prior art keywords data user video biometric movement Prior art date 2015-10-13 Legal status (The legal status is an assumption and is not a legal conclusion. Google has not performed a legal analysis and makes no representation as to the accuracy of the status listed.) Granted Application number US16/876,114 Other versions US11024339B2 (en Inventor Richard A. ROTHSCHILD Original Assignee Richard A. ROTHSCHILD Priority date (The priority date is an assumption and is not a legal conclusion. 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medical expert systems G '--PHYSICS G11 '--INFORMATION STORAGE G11B '--INFORMATION STORAGE BASED ON RELATIVE MOVEMENT BETWEEN RECORD CARRIER AND TRANSDUCER G11B27/00 '--Editing; Indexing; Addressing; Timing or synchronising; Monitoring; Measuring tape travel G11B27/10 '--Indexing; Addressing; Timing or synchronising; Measuring tape travel G '--PHYSICS G06 '--COMPUTING; CALCULATING; COUNTING G06K '--RECOGNITION OF DATA; PRESENTATION OF DATA; RECORD CARRIERS; HANDLING RECORD CARRIERS G06K9/00 '--Methods or arrangements for reading or recognising printed or written characters or for recognising patterns, e.g. fingerprints G06K9/00885 '--Biometric patterns not provided for under G06K9/00006, G06K9/00154, G06K9/00335, G06K9/00362, G06K9/00597; Biometric specific functions not specific to the kind of biometric G06K9/00892 '--Use of multiple biometrics G '--PHYSICS G11 '--INFORMATION STORAGE G11B '--INFORMATION STORAGE BASED ON RELATIVE MOVEMENT BETWEEN RECORD CARRIER AND TRANSDUCER G11B27/00 '--Editing; Indexing; Addressing; Timing or synchronising; Monitoring; Measuring tape travel G11B27/02 '--Editing, e.g. varying the order of information signals recorded on, or reproduced from, record carriers G11B27/031 '--Electronic editing of digitised analogue information signals, e.g. audio or video signals G '--PHYSICS G11 '--INFORMATION STORAGE G11B '--INFORMATION STORAGE BASED ON RELATIVE MOVEMENT BETWEEN RECORD CARRIER AND TRANSDUCER G11B27/00 '--Editing; Indexing; Addressing; Timing or synchronising; Monitoring; Measuring tape travel G11B27/10 '--Indexing; Addressing; Timing or synchronising; Measuring tape travel G11B27/102 '--Programmed access in sequence to addressed parts of tracks of operating record carriers G '--PHYSICS G16 '--INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY [ICT] SPECIALLY ADAPTED FOR SPECIFIC APPLICATION FIELDS G16H '--HEALTHCARE INFORMATICS, i.e. INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY [ICT] SPECIALLY ADAPTED FOR THE HANDLING OR PROCESSING OF MEDICAL OR HEALTHCARE DATA G16H40/00 '--ICT specially adapted for the management or administration of healthcare resources or facilities; ICT specially adapted for the management or operation of medical equipment or devices G16H40/60 '--ICT specially adapted for the management or administration of healthcare resources or facilities; ICT specially adapted for the management or operation of medical equipment or devices for the operation of medical equipment or devices G16H40/63 '--ICT specially adapted for the management or administration of healthcare resources or facilities; ICT specially adapted for the management or operation of medical equipment or devices for the operation of medical equipment or devices for local operation G '--PHYSICS G16 '--INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY [ICT] SPECIALLY ADAPTED FOR SPECIFIC APPLICATION FIELDS G16H '--HEALTHCARE INFORMATICS, i.e. INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY [ICT] SPECIALLY ADAPTED FOR THE HANDLING OR PROCESSING OF MEDICAL OR HEALTHCARE DATA G16H40/00 '--ICT specially adapted for the management or administration of healthcare resources or facilities; ICT specially adapted for the management or operation of medical equipment or devices G16H40/60 '--ICT specially adapted for the management or administration of healthcare resources or facilities; ICT specially adapted for the management or operation of medical equipment or devices for the operation of medical equipment or devices G16H40/67 '--ICT specially adapted for the management or administration of healthcare resources or facilities; ICT specially adapted for the management or operation of medical equipment or devices for the operation of medical equipment or devices for remote operation H '--ELECTRICITY H04 '--ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE H04N '--PICTORIAL COMMUNICATION, e.g. TELEVISION H04N5/00 '--Details of television systems H04N5/76 '--Television signal recording H '--ELECTRICITY H04 '--ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE H04N '--PICTORIAL COMMUNICATION, e.g. TELEVISION H04N9/00 '--Details of colour television systems H04N9/79 '--Processing of colour television signals in connection with recording H04N9/80 '--Transformation of the television signal for recording, e.g. modulation, frequency changing; Inverse transformation for playback H04N9/82 '--Transformation of the television signal for recording, e.g. modulation, frequency changing; Inverse transformation for playback the individual colour picture signal components being recorded simultaneously only H04N9/8205 '--Transformation of the television signal for recording, e.g. modulation, frequency changing; Inverse transformation for playback the individual colour picture signal components being recorded simultaneously only involving the multiplexing of an additional signal and the colour video signal G '--PHYSICS G06 '--COMPUTING; CALCULATING; COUNTING G06K '--RECOGNITION OF DATA; PRESENTATION OF DATA; RECORD CARRIERS; HANDLING RECORD CARRIERS G06K9/00 '--Methods or arrangements for reading or recognising printed or written characters or for recognising patterns, e.g. fingerprints G06K9/00885 '--Biometric patterns not provided for under G06K9/00006, G06K9/00154, G06K9/00335, G06K9/00362, G06K9/00597; Biometric specific functions not specific to the kind of biometric G06K2009/00939 '--Biometric patterns based on physiological signals, e.g. heartbeat, blood flow AbstractA method is provided for acquiring and transmitting biometric data (e.g., vital signs) of a user, where the data is analyzed to determine whether the user is suffering from a viral infection, such as COVID-19. The method includes using a pulse oximeter to acquire at least pulse and blood oxygen saturation percentage, which is transmitted wirelessly to a smartphone. To ensure that the data is accurate, an accelerometer within the smartphone is used to measure movement of the smartphone and/or the user. Once accurate data is acquired, it is uploaded to the cloud (or host), where the data is used (alone or together with other vital signs) to determine whether the user is suffering from (or likely to suffer from) a viral infection, such as COVID-19. Depending on the specific requirements, the data, changes thereto, and/or the determination can be used to alert medical staff and take corresponding actions.

Description BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to diagnosing an individual's health/wellness, and more particularly, to a system and method for using a mobile computing device (e.g., a smartphone) to acquire and provide vital signs, which can then be used to determine (or aid in the determination of) an individual's health/wellness, including whether an individual is suffering from a bacterial and/or viral infection (e.g., COVID-19, etc.) or other respiratory conditions or symptoms. The present invention could be used in conjunction with a telemedicine or ''digital health'' system to provide a reliable and convenient method for remote collection and observation of a patient's vital signs.

2. Description of Related Art Recently, devices have been developed that are capable of measuring, sensing, or estimating in a convenient form factor at least one or more metric related to physiological characteristics, commonly referred to as biometric data. For example, devices that resemble watches have been developed which are capable of measuring an individual's heart rate or pulse, and, using that data together with other information (e.g., the individual's age, weight, etc.), to calculate a resultant, such as the total calories burned by the individual in a given day. Similar devices have been developed for measuring, sensing, or estimating other kinds of metrics, such as blood pressure, blood oxygenation levels, breathing patterns, breath composition, sleep patterns, and blood-alcohol level, to name a few. These devices are generically referred to as biometric devices or biosensor metrics devices.

The types of biometric devices continue to grow, as do the ways in which both the core biometric data and the data that can additionally be derived or further extrapolated from that biometric data. For example, heart rate data is typically used to give an individual information on their pulse and calories burned, whereas HRV or heart rate variability is sometimes also increasingly being used as a determinant of an individual's stress levels. The data measured from oximeters (perfusion index, oxygen saturation level and pulse) can additionally be used to derive algorithmically the individual's respiratory rate or RR. By way of another example, blood-alcohol data is typically used to give an individual information on their blood-alcohol level, and hence to inform the individual on whether or not they can safely or legally operate a motor vehicle.

By way other examples, an individual's breathing pattern (measurable for example either by loudness level in decibels, or by variations in decibel level over a time interval), or measurable changes over a short space of time in levels of oxygen saturation in their blood caused by a stopped or snore breathing event (SBE), or by the total number of SBEs occurring during sleep, may be monitored by a doctor, nurse, or medical technician to help determine whether the individual suffers from sleep apnea. Similarly, an individual's vital signs (e.g., pulse, breathing rate, oxygen saturation levels, etc.) may be monitored (e.g., by a doctor, etc.) to determine the individual's health and/or wellness in relation to certain medical conditions or symptoms. Such information can also be used to determine whether a person is suffering from a bacterial and/or viral infection, such as coronavirus, or COVID-19.

With that being said, it would be beneficial if biometric data could be acquired and provided to a medical facility or the like without requiring human contact between the patient and the monitoring staff (i.e., remotely) for reasons including convenience, cost and diminished risk of infection or cross infection. The biometric data would also be more informative or dynamic if it could be combined with other data (e.g., video data, etc.), provided (e.g., wirelessly, over a network, etc.) to a remote device, and/or searchable (e.g., allowing certain conditions, such as an elevated heart rate or hypoxia, to be quickly identified) and/or cross-searchable (e.g., using biometric data to identify a video section illustrating a specific characteristic, or vice-versa). Thus, a need exists for an efficient system and method capable of achieving at least some, or indeed all, of the foregoing advantages, and capable also of merging the data generated in either automatic or manual form by the various devices, which are often using operating systems or technologies (e.g., hardware platforms, protocols, data types, etc.) that are incompatible with one another.

In certain embodiments of the present invention, remote collection of biometric data (e.g., vital signs, etc.) could be used to enable or enhance telemedicine procedures and carry out diagnostics. This could be an extremely valuable tool, especially during the current COVID-19 pandemic, in that it would reduce risk of infectious exposure (both to patient and medical staff) and provide a reliable, convenient, and cost effective method for remote collection and frequent observation of a patient's vital signs. The system could be utilized both pre- and post-hospitalization or treatment.

In a pre-hospitalization context, where individuals are experiencing symptoms, or have already been in contact with medical services and not yet been (or needed to be) hospitalized but are nevertheless in need of regular observation for any change in their condition, this would allow for consistent and timely monitoring of the patients' vital signs. Once the vital signs are recorded, the data can be uploaded automatically to the medical services. In a post-hospitalization utilization, if the patient is considered well enough to continue recovery and convalescence at home, it could allow for an earlier discharge from hospital (freeing up hospital beds), while still having the patient's condition monitored without having to rely on medical staff physically collecting their vital signs. In both cases, vital signs could be uploaded to the cloud, providing medical services with a digital record of its evolution, as well as integration into the patient record keeping system or electronic health record (EHR).

Such a system would be beneficial, especially in light of the current COVID-19 pandemic, by: (1) reducing physical contact between patient and medical facility or staff, thereby minimizing the risk of infection in either direction; (2) increasing patient convenience, as well as the capability for quicker medical response if necessary; (3) reducing human resources, and therefore costs; (4) making more effective use of medical staff, thereby allowing them to spend more time on patient treatment; (5) allowing for more regular recording of vital signs with a digital, searchable record of the evolution of the same; (6) providing anonymized but richer, data to derive potentially significant trends both for the individual and the COVID-19 symptomatic population taken as a whole, extrapolated from demographics and progress of illness or recovery;

(7) better utilizing critical care facilities and planning/scheduling of in-hospital resource availability; (8) lowering cost of diagnostic equipment and accompanying software infrastructure, in comparison to the current use of medical staff to fulfill the function of recording vital signs; and (8) providing for more frequent and timely recording of vital sign, since there is no restriction linked to the availability or cost of medical staff to take the measurements.

In other embodiments of the present invention, the system and/or method is configured to receive, manage, and filter the quantity of information on a timely and cost-effective basis, and could also be of further value through the accurate measurement, visualization (e.g., synchronized visualization, etc.), and rapid notification of data points which are outside (or within) a defined or predefined range.

Such a system and/or method could be used by an individual (e.g., athlete, etc.) or their trainer, coach, etc., to visualize the individual during the performance of an athletic event (e.g., jogging, biking, weightlifting, playing soccer, etc.) in real-time (live) or afterwards, together with the individual's concurrently measured biometric data (e.g., heart rate, etc.), and/or concurrently gathered ''self-realization data,'' or subject-generated experiential data, where the individual inputs their own subjective physical or mental states during their exercise, fitness or sports activity/training (e.g., feeling the onset of an adrenaline ''rush'' or endorphins in the system, feeling tired, ''getting a second wind,'' etc.). This would allow a person (e.g., the individual, the individual's trainer, a third party, etc.) to monitor/observe physiological and/or subjective psychological characteristics of an individual while watching or reviewing the individual in the performance of an athletic event, or other physical activity. Such inputting of the self-realization data, ca be achieved by various methods, including automatically, time-stamped-in-the-system voice notes, short-form or abbreviation key commands on a smart phone, smart watch, enabled fitness band, or any other system-linked input method which is convenient for the individual to utilize so as not to impede (or as little as possible) the flow and practice by the individual of the activity in progress.

Such a system and/or method would also facilitate, for example, remote observation and diagnosis in telemedicine applications, where there is a need for the medical staff, or monitoring party or parent, to have clear and rapid confirmation of the identity of the patient or infant, as well as their visible physical condition, together with their concurrently generated biometric and/or self-realization data.

Furthermore, the system and/or method should also provide the subject, or monitoring party, with a way of using video indexing to efficiently and intuitively benchmark, map and evaluate the subject's data, both against the subject's own biometric history and/or against other subjects' data samples, or demographic comparables, independently of whichever operating platforms or applications have been used to generate the biometric and video information. By being able to filter/search for particular events (e.g., biometric events, self-realization events, physical events, etc.), the acquired data can be reduced down or edited (e.g., to create a ''highlight reel,'' etc.) while maintaining synchronization between individual video segments and measured and/or gathered data (e.g., biometric data, self-realization data, GPS data, etc.). Such comprehensive indexing of the events, and with it the ability to perform structured aggregation of the related data (video and other) with (or without) data from other individuals or other relevant sources, can also be utilized to provide richer levels of information using methods of ''Big Data'' analysis and ''Machine Learning,'' and adding artificial intelligence (''AI'') for the implementation of recommendations and calls to action.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention provides a system and method for acquiring, processing, transmitting, comparing and/or displaying biometric data, or a resultant thereof (e.g., assisting in determining whether the user suffers from a particular ailment (e.g., COVID-19)), either alone or together (e.g., in synchronization) with other data (e.g., video data, etc.). Preferred embodiments of the present invention operate in accordance with a computing device (e.g., a smart phone, etc.) in communication with at least one external device (e.g., a biometric device for acquiring biometric data including vital signs, a video device for acquiring video data, etc.). In a first embodiment of the present invention, video data, which may include audio data, and non-video data, such as biometric data, are stored separately on the computing device and linked to other data, which allows searching and synchronization of the video and non-video data.

In one embodiment of the present invention, an application (e.g., running on the computing device, etc.) includes a plurality of modules for performing a plurality of functions. For example, the application may include a video capture module for receiving video data from an internal and/or external camera, and a biometric capture module for receiving biometric data from an internal and/or external biometric device. The client platform may also include a user interface module, allowing a user to interact with the platform, a video editing module for editing video data, a file handling module for managing data, a database and sync module for replicating data, an algorithm module for processing received data, a sharing module for sharing and/or storing data, and a central login and ID module for interfacing with third party social media websites, such as Facebook'.

These modules can be used, for example, to start a new session, receive video data for the session (i.e., via the video capture module) and receive biometric data for the session (i.e., via the biometric capture module). This data can be stored in local storage, in a local database, and/or on a remote storage device (e.g., in the company cloud or a third-party cloud service, such as Dropbox', etc.). In a preferred embodiment, the data is stored so that it is linked to information that (i) identifies the session and (ii) enables synchronization.

For example, video data is preferably linked to at least a start time (e.g., a start time of the session) and an identifier. The identifier may be a single number uniquely identifying the session, or a plurality of numbers (e.g., a plurality of global or universal unique identifiers (GUIDs/UUIDs)), where a first number uniquely identifying the session and a second number uniquely identifies an activity within the session, allowing a session to include a plurality of activities. The identifier may also include a session name and/or a session description. Other information about the video data (e.g., video length, video source, etc.) (i.e., ''video metadata'') can also be stored and linked to the video data. Biometric data is preferably linked to at least the start time (e.g., the same start time linked to the video data), the identifier (e.g., the same identifier linked to the video data), and a sample rate, which identifies the rate at which biometric data is received and/or stored.

Once the video and biometric data is stored and linked, algorithms can be used to display the data together. For example, if biometric data is stored at a sample rate of 30 samples per minute (spm), algorithms can be used to display a first biometric value (e.g., below the video data, superimposed over the video data, etc.) at the start of the video clip, a second biometric value two seconds later (two seconds into the video clip), a third biometric value two seconds later (four seconds into the video clip), etc. In alternate embodiments of the present invention, non-video data (e.g., biometric data, self-realization data, etc.) can be stored with a plurality of time-stamps (e.g., individual stamps or offsets for each stored value, or individual sample rates for each data type), which can be used together with the start time to synchronize non-video data to video data.

In one embodiment of the present invention, the biometric device may include a sensor for sensing biometric data, a display for interfacing with the user and displaying various information (e.g., biometric data, set-up data, operation data, such as start, stop, and pause, etc.), a memory for storing the sensed biometric data, a transceiver for communicating with the exemplary computing device, and a processor for operating and/or driving the transceiver, memory, sensor, and display. The exemplary computing device includes a transceiver(1) for receiving biometric data from the exemplary biometric device, a memory for storing the biometric data, a display for interfacing with the user and displaying various information (e.g., biometric data, set-up data, operation data, such as start, stop, and pause, input in-session comments or add voice notes, etc.), a keyboard (or other user input) for receiving user input data, a transceiver(2) for providing the biometric data to the host computing device via the Internet, and a processor for operating and/or driving the transceiver(1), transceiver(2), keyboard, display, and memory.

The keyboard (or other input device) in the computing device, or alternatively the keyboard (or other input device) in the biometric device, may be used to enter self-realization data, or data on how the user is feeling at a particular time. For example, if the user is feeling tired, the user may enter the ''T'' on the keyboard. If the user is feeling their endorphins kick in, the user may enter the ''E'' on the keyboard. And if the user is getting their second wind, the user may enter the ''S'' on the keyboard. Alternatively, to further facilitate operation during the exercise, or sporting activity, short-code key buttons such as ''T,'' ''E,'' and ''S'' can be preassigned, like speed-dial telephone numbers for frequently called contacts on a smart phone, etc., which can be selected manually or using voice recognition. This data (e.g., the entry or its representation) is then stored and linked to either a sample rate (like biometric data) or time-stamp data, which may be a time or an offset to the start time that each button was pressed. This would allow the self-realization data to be synchronized to the video data. It would also allow the self-realization data, like biometric data, to be searched or filtered (e.g., in order to find video corresponding to a particular event, such as when the user started to feel tired, etc.).

In an alternate embodiment of the present invention, the computing device (e.g., a smart phone, etc.) is also in communication with a host computing device via a wide area network (''WAN''), such as the Internet. This embodiment allows the computing device to download the application from the host computing device, offload at least some of the above-identified functions to the host computing device, and store data on the host computing device (e.g., allowing video data, alone or synchronized to non-video data, such as biometric data and self-realization data, to be viewed by another networked device). For example, the software operating on the computing device (e.g., the application, program, etc.) may allow the user to play the video and/or audio data, but not to synchronize the video and/or audio data to the biometric data. This may be because the host computing device is used to store data critical to synchronization (time-stamp index, metadata, biometric data, sample rate, etc.) and/or software operating on the host computing device is necessary for synchronization. By way of another example, the software operating on the computing device may allow the user to play the video and/or audio data, either alone or synchronized with the biometric data, but may not allow the computing device (or may limit the computing device's ability) to search or otherwise extrapolate from, or process the biometric data to identify relevant portions (e.g., which may be used to create a ''highlight reel'' of the synchronized video/audio/biometric data) or to rank the biometric and/or video data. This may be because the host computing device is used to store data critical to search and/or to rank the biometric data (biometric data, biometric metadata, etc.), and/or software necessary for searching (or performing advanced searching of) and/or ranking (or performing advanced ranking of) the biometric data.

In one embodiment, as discussed above, the present invention can also be used to address concerns with the current COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic. For example, the present invention may be used to provide telemedicine services, allowing diagnostic checks to be conducted in a safe, reliable, and convenient manner, and to do so more efficiently and with reduced risk of infection exposure both for patients and medical staff.

In this embodiment, a communication device, such as a smartphone, other mobile connected device or fixed or mobile loT device, would communicate (e.g., wirelessly or physically connected via a port on the device) with a pulse oximeter attached to or otherwise in contact with a patient. The pulse oximeter would provide the communication device, such as a smartphone, with pulse oximeter data over a given period of time (e.g., ten seconds, etc.), which may include at least pulse measurement and blood oxygen saturation percentage (or level). The data could then be uploaded to the cloud (or host) and used to assist in determining whether the patient is suffering from an illness, such as COVID-19, or, if the patient has already been diagnosed as such and has had treatment and is subsequently convalescing, to assist in determining whether the patient is now recovering from illness, or not. Depending on the specific requirements of the medical service (hospital, doctor, medical insurance company, etc.), the incoming data can be used to alert the medical staff of any change in vital signs (or determination) requiring an action to be taken.

While different biometrics (e.g., temperature, etc.) can be used in helping to determine whether a patient is suffering from COVID-19, pulse oximeter data also is particularly relevant as the virus is very often accompanied by respiratory insufficiency or reduced pulmonary function, and can therefore be detected by analyzing the patient's blood oxygen saturation percentage (or level) as well as the other data from the oximeter including perfusion index and pulse rate. However, pulse oximeter accuracy is dependent on the patient remaining still, as well as the oximeter, in relation to the patient, also not being moved since movement of the oximeter, attached in one or other form to the patient, often results in the generation of incorrect data.

Thus, it may be necessary for the present invention to determine whether the patient is moving (or not remaining sufficiently still) during the time that the pulse oximeter data is being acquired. In one embodiment, this is accomplished using the accelerometer within the smartphone, since at the time of acquisition of the data, the oximeter is connected typically by Bluetooth or other available data transport protocol to the communication device. An accelerometer is an electromechanical device used to measure acceleration forces, or a change in velocity. By using the accelerometer in the smartphone, the system can ensure that the patient is not moving (or moving very little) while pulse oximeter data (or other vital signs) are being acquired.

With respect to embodiments of the present invention involving video, the video data, which may also include audio data, may start at a time ''T'' and continue for a duration of ''n.'' The video data is preferably stored in memory (locally and/or remotely) and linked to other data, such as an identifier, start time, and duration. Such data ties the video data to at least a particular session, a particular start time, and identifies the duration of the video included therein. In one embodiment of the present invention, each session can include different activities. For example, a trip to Berlin on a particular day (session) may involve a bike ride through the city (first activity) and a walk through a park (second activity). Thus, the identifier may include both a session identifier, uniquely identifying the session via a globally unique identifier (GUID), and an activity identifier, uniquely identifying the activity via a globally unique identifier (GUID), where the session/activity relationship is that of a parent/child.

In one embodiment of the present invention, the biometric data is stored in memory and linked to the identifier and a sample rate ''m.'' This allows the biometric data to be linked to video data upon playback. For example, if identifier is one, start time is 1:00 PM, video duration is one minute, and the sample rate is 30 spm, then the playing of the video at 2:00 PM would result in the first biometric value to be displayed (e.g., below the video, over the video, etc.) at 2:00 PM, the second biometric value to be displayed (e.g., below the video, over the video, etc.) two seconds later, and so on until the video ends at 2:01 PM. While self-realization data can be stored like biometric data (e.g., linked to a sample rate), if such data is only received periodically, it may be more advantageous to store this data linked to the identifier and a time-stamp, where ''m'' is either the time that the self-realization data was received or an offset between this time and the start time (e.g., ten minutes and four seconds after the start time, etc.). By storing video and non-video data separately from one another, data can be easily search and synchronized.

With respect to linking data to an identifier, which may be linked to other data (e.g., start time, sample rate, etc.), if the data is received in real-time, the data can be linked to the identifier(s) for the current session (and/or activity). However, when data is received after the fact (e.g., after a session has ended), there are several ways in which the data can be linked to a particular session and/or activity (or identifier(s) associated therewith). The data can be manually linked (e.g., by the user) or automatically linked via the application. With respect to the latter, this can be accomplished, for example, by comparing the duration of the received data (e.g., the video length) with the duration of the session and/or activity, by assuming that the received data is related to the most recent session and/or activity, or by analyzing data included within the received data. For example, in one embodiment, data included with the received data (e.g., metadata) may identify a time and/or location associated with the data, which can then be used to link the received data to the session and/or activity. In another embodiment, the computing device could display data (e.g., a barcode, such as a QR code, etc.) that identifies the session and/or activity. An external video recorder could record the identifying data (as displayed by the computing device) along with (e.g., before, after, or during) the user and/or his/her surroundings. The application could then search the video data for identifying data and use this data to link the video data to a session and/or activity. The identifying portion of the video data could then be deleted by the application if desired.

A more complete understanding of a system and method for using, processing, and displaying biometric data, or a resultant thereof, will be afforded to those skilled in the art, as well as a realization of additional advantages and objects thereof, by a consideration of the following detailed description of the preferred embodiment. Reference will be made to the appended sheets of drawings, which will first be described briefly.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS FIG. 1 illustrates a system for using, processing, and displaying biometric data, and for synchronizing biometric data with other data (e.g., video data, audio data, etc.) in accordance with one embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 2A illustrates a system for using, processing, and displaying biometric data, and for synchronizing biometric data with other data (e.g., video data, audio data, etc.) in accordance with another embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 2B illustrates a system for using, processing, and displaying biometric data, and for synchronizing biometric data with other data (e.g., video data, audio data, etc.) in accordance with yet another embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 3 illustrates an exemplary display of video data synchronized with biometric data in accordance with one embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 4 illustrates a block diagram for using, processing, and displaying biometric data, and for synchronizing biometric data with other data (e.g., video data, audio data, etc.) in accordance with one embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 5 illustrates a block diagram for using, processing, and displaying biometric data, and for synchronizing biometric data with other data (e.g., video data, audio data, etc.) in accordance with another embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 6 illustrates a method for synchronizing video data with biometric data, operating the video data, and searching the biometric data, in accordance with one embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 7 illustrates an exemplary display of video data synchronized with biometric data in accordance with another embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 8 illustrates exemplary video data, which is preferably linked to an identifier (ID), a start time (T), and a finish time or duration (n);

FIG. 9 illustrates an exemplary identifier (ID), comprising a session identifier and an activity identifier;

FIG. 10 illustrates exemplary biometric data, which is preferably linked to an identifier (ID), a start time (T), and a sample rate (S);

FIG. 11 illustrates exemplary self-realization data, which is preferably linked to an identifier (ID) and a time (m);

FIG. 12 illustrates how sampled biometric data points can be used to extrapolate other biometric data point in accordance with one embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 13 illustrates how sampled biometric data points can be used to extrapolate other biometric data points in accordance with another embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 14 illustrates an example of how a start time and data related thereto (e.g., sample rate, etc.) can be used to synchronized biometric data and self-realization data to video data;

FIG. 15 depicts an exemplary ''sign in'' screen shot for an application that allows a user to capture at least video and biometric data of the user performing an athletic event (e.g., bike riding, etc.) and to display the video data together (or in synchronization) with the biometric data;

FIG. 16 depict an exemplary ''create session'' screen shot for the application depicted in FIG. 15, allowing the user to create a new session;

FIG. 17 depicts an exemplary ''session name'' screen shot for the application depicted in FIG. 15, allowing the user to enter a name for the session;

FIG. 18 depicts an exemplary ''session description'' screen shot for the application depicted in FIG. 15, allowing the user to enter a description for the session;

FIG. 19 depicts an exemplary ''session started'' screen shot for the application depicted in FIG. 15, showing the video and biometric data received in real-time;

FIG. 20 depicts an exemplary ''review session'' screen shot for the application depicted in FIG. 15, allowing the user to playback the session at a later time;

FIG. 21 depicts an exemplary ''graph display option'' screen shot for the application depicted in FIG. 15, allowing the user to select data (e.g., heart rate data, etc.) to be displayed along with the video data;

FIG. 22 depicts an exemplary ''review session'' screen shot for the application depicted in FIG. 15, where the video data is displayed together (or in synchronization) with the biometric data;

FIG. 23 depicts an exemplary ''map'' screen shot for the application depicted in FIG. 15, showing GPS data displayed on a Google map;

FIG. 24 depicts an exemplary ''summary'' screen shot for the application depicted in FIG. 15, showing a summary of the session;

FIG. 25 depicts an exemplary ''biometric search'' screen shot for the application depicted in FIG. 15, allowing a user to search the biometric data for particular biometric event (e.g., a particular value, a particular range, etc.);

FIG. 26 depicts an exemplary ''first result'' screen shot for the application depicted in FIG. 15, showing a first result for the biometric event shown in FIG. 25, together with corresponding video;

FIG. 27 depicts an exemplary ''second result'' screen shot for the application depicted in FIG. 15, showing a second result for the biometric event shown in FIG. 25, together with corresponding video;

FIG. 28 depicts an exemplary ''session search'' screen shot for the application depicted in FIG. 15, allowing a user to search for sessions that meet certain criteria;

FIG. 29 depicts an exemplary ''list'' screen shot for the application depicted in FIG. 15, showing a result for the criteria shown in FIG. 28;

FIG. 30 illustrates a system for acquiring, processing, and using biometric data (e.g., vital signs, etc.) in accordance with another embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 31 illustrates a block diagram for a portable computing device for acquiring, processing, and transmitting biometric data in accordance with another embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 32 illustrates one way of ensuring accuracy of biometric data (e.g., pulse oximeter data, etc.) acquired via the mobile computing device, as illustrated in FIG. 31;

FIG. 33 illustrates a first alternate way of ensuring accuracy of biometric data (e.g., pulse oximeter data, etc.) acquired via the mobile computing device, as illustrated in FIG. 31;

FIG. 34 illustrates a second alternate way of ensuring accuracy of biometric data (e.g., pulse oximeter data, etc.) acquired via the mobile computing device, as illustrated in FIG. 31; and

FIG. 35 illustrates a method for ensuring accuracy of acquired biometric data (e.g., pulse oximeter data, etc.) in accordance with one embodiment of the present invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENT The present invention provides a system and method for acquiring, processing, transmitting, comparing and/or displaying biometric data, or a resultant thereof (e.g., a determination as to whether the user is suffering from an ailment, such as COVID-19), either alone or together (e.g., in synchronization) with other data (e.g., video data, etc.). It should be appreciated that while the invention is described herein in terms of certain biometric data (e.g., heart rate, breathing patterns, blood-alcohol level, etc.), the invention is not so limited, and can be used in conjunction with any biometric and/or physical data, including, but not limited to oxygen levels, CO2 levels, oxygen saturation, blood pressure, blood glucose, lung function, eye pressure, body and ambient conditions (temperature, humidity, light levels, altitude, and barometric pressure), speed (walking speed, running speed), location and distance travelled, breathing rate, heart rate variance (HRV), EKG data, perspiration levels, calories consumed and/or burnt, ketones, waste discharge content and/or levels, hormone levels, blood content, saliva content, audible levels (e.g., snoring, etc.), mood levels and changes, galvanic skin response, brain waves and/or activity or other neurological measurements, sleep patterns, physical characteristics (e.g., height, weight, eye color, hair color, iris data, fingerprints, etc.) or responses (e.g., facial changes, retinal, iris (or pupil) changes, voice (or tone) changes, etc.), or any combination or resultant thereof.

As shown in FIG. 1, a biometric device 110 may be in communication with a computing device 108, such as a smart phone, which, in turn, is in communication with at least one computing device (102, 104, 106) via a wide area network (''WAN'') 100, such as the Internet. The computing devices can be of different types, such as a PC, laptop, tablet, smart phone, smart watch etc., using one or different operating systems or platforms. In one embodiment of the present invention, the biometric device 110 is configured to acquire (e.g., measure, sense, estimate, etc.) an individual's heart rate (e.g., biometric data). The biometric data is then provided to the computing device 108, which includes a video and/or audio recorder (not shown).

In a first embodiment of the present invention, the video and/or audio data are provided along with the heart rate data to a host computing device 106 via the network 100. Because the concurrent video and/or audio data and the heart rate data are provided to the host computing device 106, a host application operating thereon (not shown) can be used to synchronize the video data, audio data, and/or heart rate data, thereby allowing a user (e.g., via the user computing devices 102, 104) to view the video data and/or listen to the audio data (either in real-time or time delayed) while viewing the biometric data. For example, as shown in FIG. 3, the host application may use a time-stamp 320, or other sequencing method using metadata, to synchronize the video data 310 with the biometric data 330, allowing a user to view, for example, an individual (e.g., patient in a hospital or at home or other location remote from the hospital or clinic environment, baby in a crib, etc.) at a particular time 340 (e.g., 76 seconds past the start time) and biometric data associated with the individual at that particular time 340 (e.g., 76 seconds past the start time).

It should be appreciated that the host application may further be configured to perform other functions, such as search for a particular activity in video data, audio data, biometric data and/or metadata, and/or ranking video data, audio data, and/or biometric data. For example, the host application may allow the user to search for a particular biometric event, such as a heart rate that has exceeded a particular threshold or value, a heart rate that has dropped below a particular threshold or value, a particular heart rate (or range) for a minimum period of time, etc. By way of another example, the host application may rank video data, audio data, biometric data, or a plurality of synchronized clips (e.g., highlight reels) chronologically, by biometric magnitude (highest to lowest, lowest to highest, etc.), by review (best to worst, worst to best, etc.), or by views (most to least, least to most, etc.). It should further be appreciated that such functions as the ranking, searching, and analysis of data is not limited to a user's individual session, but can be performed across any number of individual sessions of the user, as well as the session or number of sessions of multiple users. One use of this collection of all the various information (video, biometric and other) is to be able to generate sufficient data points for Big Data analysis and Machine Learning of the purposes of generating Al inferences and recommendations.

By way of example, in a clinical or diagnostic context, machine learning algorithms could be used to monitor in near real-time, or search through video data automatically, identifying relevant key occurrences and data. Machine learning algorithms could also be used to search through video data automatically, looking for the most compelling content which could subsequently be stitched together into a short ''highlight reel.'' The neural network could be trained using a plurality of sports videos, along with ratings from users of their level of interest as the videos progress. The input nodes to the network could be a sample of change in intensity of pixels between frames along with the median excitement rating of the current frame. The machine learning algorithms could also be used, in conjunction with a multi-layer convolutional neural network, to automatically classify video content (e.g., what sport is in the video). Once the content is identified, either automatically or manually, algorithms can be used to compare the user's activity to an idealized activity. For example, the system could compare a video recording of the user's golf swing to that of a professional golfer. The system could then provide incremental tips to the user on how the user could improve their swing. Algorithms could also be used to predict fitness levels for users (e.g., if they maintain their program, giving them an incentive to continue working out), match users to other users or practitioners having similar fitness levels, and/or create routines optimized for each user.

It should also be appreciated, as shown in FIG. 2A, that the biometric data may be provided to the host computing device 106 directly, without going through the computing device 108. For example, the computing device 108 and the biometric device 110 may communicate independently with the host computing device, either directly or via the network 100. It should further be appreciated that the video data, the audio data, and/or the biometric data need not be provided to the host computing device 106 in real-time. For example, video data could be provided at a later time as long as the data can be identified or tied to a particular session. If the video data can be identified, it can then be synchronized to other data (e.g., biometric data) received in real-time.

In one embodiment of the present invention, as shown in FIG. 2B, the system includes a computing device 200, such as a smart phone, in communication with a plurality of devices, including a host computing device 240 via a WAN (see, e.g., FIG. 1 at 100), third party devices 250 via the WAN (see, e.g., FIG. 1 at 100), and local devices 230 (e.g., via wireless or wired connections). In a preferred embodiment, the computing device 200 downloads a program or application (i.e., client platform) from the host computing device 240 (e.g., company cloud). The client platform includes a plurality of modules that are configured to perform a plurality of functions.

For example, the client platform may include a video capture module 210 for receiving video data from an internal and/or external camera, and a biometric capture module 212 for receiving biometric data from an internal and/or external biometric device. The client platform may also include a user interface module 202, allowing a user to interact with the platform, a video editing module 204 for editing video data, a file handling module 206 for managing (e.g., storing, linking, etc.) data (e.g., video data, biometric data, identification data, start time data, duration data, sample rate data, self-realization data, time-stamp data, etc.), a database and sync module 214 for replicating data (e.g., copying data stored on the computing device 200 to the host computing device 240 and/or copying user data stored on the host computing device 240 to the computing device 200), an algorithm module 216 for processing received data (e.g., synchronizing data, searching/filtering data, creating a highlight reel, etc.), a sharing module 220 for sharing and/or storing data (e.g., video data, highlight reel, etc.) relating either to a single session or multiple sessions, and a central login and ID module 218 for interfacing with third party social media websites, such as Facebook'.

With respect to FIG. 2B, the computing device 200, which may be a smart phone, a tablet, or any other computing device, may be configured to download the client platform from the host computing device 240. Once the client platform is running on the computing device 200, the platform can be used to start a new session, receive video data for the session (i.e., via the video capture module 210) and receive biometric data for the session (i.e., via the biometric capture module 212). This data can be stored in local storage, in a local database, and/or on a remote storage device (e.g., in the company cloud or a third-party cloud, such as Dropbox', etc.). In a preferred embodiment, the data is stored so that it is linked to information that (i) identifies the session and (ii) enables synchronization.

For example, video data is preferably linked to at least a start time (e.g., a start time of the session) and an identifier. The identifier may be a single number uniquely identifying the session, or a plurality of numbers (e.g., a plurality of globally (or universally) unique identifiers (GUIDs/UUIDs), where a first number uniquely identifying the session and a second number uniquely identifies an activity within the session, allowing a session (e.g., a trip to or an itinerary in a destination, such as Berlin) to include a plurality of activities (e.g., a bike ride, a walk, etc.). By way of example only, an activity (or session) identifier may be a 128 bit identifier that has a high probability of uniqueness, such as 8bf25512-f17a-4e9e-b49a-7c3f59ec1e85). The identifier may also include a session name and/or a session description. Other information about the video data (e.g., video length, video source, etc.) (i.e., ''video metadata'') can also be stored and linked to the video data. Biometric data is preferably linked to at least the start time (e.g., the same start time linked to the video data), the identifier (e.g., the same identifier linked to the video data), and a sample rate, which identifies the rate at which biometric data is received and/or stored. For example, heart rate data may be received and stored at a rate of thirty samples per minute (30 spm), i.e., once every two seconds, or some other predetermined time interval sample.

In some cases, the sample rate used by the platform may be the sample rate of the biometric device (i.e., the rate at which data is provided by the biometric device). In other cases, the sample rate used by the platform may be independent from the rate at which data is received (e.g., a fixed rate, a configurable rate, etc.). For example, if the biometric device is configured to provide biometric data at a rate of sixty samples per minute (60 spm), the platform may still store the data at a rate of 30 spm. In other words, with a sample rate of 30 spm, the platform will have stored five values after ten seconds, the first value being the second value transmitted by the biometric device, the second value being the fourth value transmitted by the biometric device, and so on. Alternatively, if the biometric device is configured to provide biometric data only when the biometric data changes, the platform may still store the data at a rate of 30 spm. In this case, the first value stored by the platform may be the first value transmitted by the biometric device, the second value stored may be the first value transmitted by the biometric device if at the time of storage no new value has been transmitted by the biometric device, the third value stored may be the second value transmitted by the biometric device if at the time of storage a new value is being transmitted by the biometric device, and so on.

Once the video and biometric data is stored and linked, algorithms can be used to display the data together. For example, if biometric data is stored at a sample rate of 30 spm, which may be fixed or configurable, algorithms (e.g., 216) can be used to display a first biometric value (e.g., below the video data, superimposed over the video data, etc.) at the start of the video clip, a second biometric value two seconds later (two seconds into the video clip), a third biometric value two seconds later (four seconds into the video clip), etc. In alternate embodiments of the present invention, non-video data (e.g., biometric data, self-realization data, etc.) can be stored with a plurality of time-stamps (e.g., individual stamps or offsets for each stored value), which can be used together with the start time to synchronize non-video data to video data.

It should be appreciated that while the client platform can be configured to function autonomously (i.e., independent of the host network device 240), in one embodiment of the present invention, certain functions of the client platform are performed by the host network device 240, and can only be performed when the computing device 200 is in communication with the host computing device 240. Such an embodiment is advantageous in that it not only offloads certain functions to the host computing device 240, but it ensures that these functions can only be performed by the host computing device 240 (e.g., requiring a user to subscribe to a cloud service in order to perform certain functions). Functions offloaded to the cloud may include functions that are necessary to display non-video data together with video data (e.g., the linking of information to video data, the linking of information to non-video data, synchronizing non-video data to video data, etc.), or may include more advanced functions, such as generating and/or sharing a ''highlight reel.'' In alternate embodiments, the computing device 200 is configured to perform the foregoing functions as long as certain criteria has been met. This criteria may include the computing device 200 being in communication with the host computing device 240, or the computing device 200 previously being in communication with the host computing device 240 and the period of time since the last communication being equal to or less than a predetermined amount of time. Technology known to those skilled in the art (e.g., using a keyed hash-based method authentication code (HMAC), a stored time of said last communication (allowing said computing device to determine whether said delta is less than a predetermined amount of time), etc.) can be used to ensure that this criteria is met before allowing the performance of certain functions.

Block diagrams of an exemplary computing device and an exemplary biometric device are shown in FIG. 5. In particular, the exemplary biometric device 500 includes a sensor for sensing biometric data, a display for interfacing with the user and displaying various information (e.g., biometric data, set-up data, operation data, such as start, stop, and pause, etc.), a memory for storing the sensed biometric data, a transceiver for communicating with the exemplary computing device 600, and a processor for operating and/or driving the transceiver, memory, sensor, and display. The exemplary computing device 600 includes a transceiver(1) for receiving biometric data from the exemplary biometric device 500 (e.g., using any of telemetry, any WiFi standard, DNLA, Apple AirPlay, Bluetooth, near field communication (NFC), RFID, ZigBee, Z-Wave, Thread, Cellular, a wired connection, infrared or other method of data transmission, datacasting or streaming, etc.), a memory for storing the biometric data, a display for interfacing with the user and displaying various information (e.g., biometric data, set-up data, operation data, such as start, stop, and pause, input in-session comments or add voice notes, etc.), a keyboard for receiving user input data, a transceiver(2) for providing the biometric data to the host computing device via the Internet (e.g., using any of telemetry, any WiFi standard, DNLA, Apple AirPlay, Bluetooth, near field communication (NFC), RFID, ZigBee, Z-Wave, Thread, Cellular, a wired connection, infrared or other method of data transmission, datacasting or streaming, etc.), and a processor for operating and/or driving the transceiver(1), transceiver(2), keyboard, display, and memory.

The keyboard in the computing device 600, or alternatively the keyboard in biometric device 500, may be used to enter self-realization data, or data on how the user is feeling at a particular time. For example, if the user is feeling tired, the user may hit the ''T'' button on the keyboard. If the user is feeling their endorphins kick in, the user may hit the ''E'' button on the keyboard. And if the user is getting their second wind, the user may hit the ''S'' button on the keyboard. This data is then stored and linked to either a sample rate (like biometric data) or time-stamp data, which may be a time or an offset to the start time that each button was pressed. This would allow the self-realization data, in the same way as the biometric data, to be synchronized to the video data. It would also allow the self-realization data, like the biometric data, to be searched or filtered (e.g., in order to find video corresponding to a particular event, such as when the user started to feel tired, etc.).

It should be appreciated that the present invention is not limited to the block diagrams shown in FIG. 5, and a biometric device and/or a computing device that includes fewer or more components is within the spirit and scope of the present invention. For example, a biometric device that does not include a display, or includes a camera and/or microphone is within the spirit and scope of the present invention, as are other data-entry devices or methods beyond a keyboard, such as a touch screen, digital pen, voice/audible recognition device, gesture recognition device, so-called ''wearable,'' or any other recognition device generally known to those skilled in the art. Similarly, a computing device that only includes one transceiver, further includes a camera (for capturing video) and/or microphone (for capturing audio or for performing spatial analytics through recording or measurement of sound and how it travels), or further includes a sensor (see FIG. 4) is within the spirit and scope of the present invention. It should also be appreciated that self-realization data is not limited to how a user feels, but could also include an event that the user or the application desires to memorialize. For example, the user may want to record (or time-stamp) the user biking past wildlife, or a particular architectural structure, or the application may want to record (or time-stamp) a patient pressing a ''request nurse'' button, or any other sensed non-biometric activity of the user.

Referring back to FIG. 1, as discussed above in conjunction with FIG. 2B, the host application (or client platform) may operate on the computing device 108. In this embodiment, the computing device 108 (e.g., a smart phone) may be configured to receive biometric data from the biometric device 110 (either in real-time, or at a later stage, with a time-stamp corresponding to the occurrence of the biometric data), and to synchronize the biometric data with the video data and/or the audio data recorded by the computing device 108 (or a camera and/or microphone operating thereon). It should be appreciated that in this embodiment of the present invention, other than the host application being run locally (e.g., on the computing device 108), the host application (or client platform) operates as previously discussed.

Again, with reference to FIG. 1, in another embodiment of the present invention, the computing device 108 further includes a sensor for sensing biometric data. In this embodiment of the present invention, the host application (or client platform) operates as previously discussed (locally on the computing device 108), and functions to at least synchronize the video, audio, and/or biometric data, and allow the synchronized data to be played or presented to a user (e.g., via a display portion, via a display device connected directly to the computing device, via a user computing device connected to the computing device (e.g., directly, via the network, etc.), etc.).

It should be appreciated that the present invention, in any embodiment, is not limited to the computing devices (number or type) shown in FIGS. 1 and 2, and may include any of a computing, sensing, digital recording, GPS or otherwise location-enabled device (for example, using WiFi Positioning Systems ''WPS'', ''AGPS'' or other forms of deriving geographical location, such as through network triangulation), generally known to those skilled in the art, such as a personal computer, a server, a laptop, a tablet, a smart phone, a cellular phone, a smart watch, an activity band, a heart-rate strap, a mattress sensor, a shoe sole sensor, a digital camera, a near field sensor or sensing device, etc. It should also be appreciated that the present invention is not limited to any particular biometric device, and includes biometric devices that are configured to be worn on the wrist (e.g., like a watch), worn on the skin (e.g., like a skin patch) or scalp, or incorporated into computing devices (e.g., smart phones, etc.), either integrated in, or added to items such as bedding, wearable devices such as clothing, footwear, helmets or hats, or ear phones, or athletic equipment such as rackets, golf clubs, or bicycles, where other kinds of data, including physical performance metrics such as racket or club head speed, or pedal rotation/second, or footwear recording such things as impact zones, gait or shear, can also be measured synchronously with biometrics, and synchronized to video. Other data can also be measured synchronously with video data, including biometrics on animals (e.g., a bull's acceleration or pivot or buck in a bull riding event, a horse's acceleration matched to heart rate in a horse race, etc.), and physical performance metrics of inanimate objects, such a revolutions/minute (e.g., in a vehicle, such as an automobile, a motorcycle, etc.), miles/hour (or the like) (e.g., in a vehicle, such as an automobile, a motorcycle, etc., a bicycle, etc.), or G-forces (e.g., experienced by the user, an animal, and inanimate object, etc.). All of this data (collectively ''non-video data,'' which may include metadata, or data on non-video data) can be synchronized to video data using a sample rate and/or at least one time-stamp, as discussed above.

It should further be appreciated that the present invention need not operate in conjunction with a network, such as the Internet. For example, as shown in FIG. 2A, the biometric device 110, which may be, for example, be a wireless activity band for sensing heart rate, and the computing device 108, which may be, for example, a digital video recorder, may be connected directly to the host computing device 106 running the host application (not shown), where the host application functions as previously discussed. In this embodiment, the video, audio, and/or biometric data can be provided to the host application either (i) in real time, or (ii) at a later time, since the data is synchronized with a sample rate and/or time-stamp. This would allow, for example, at least video of an athlete, or a sportsman or woman (e.g., a football player, a soccer player, a racing driver, etc.) to be shown in action (e.g., playing football, playing soccer, motor racing, etc.) along with biometric data of the athlete in action (see, e.g., FIG. 7). By way of example only, this would allow a user to view a soccer player's heart rate 730 as the soccer player dribbles a ball, kicks the ball, heads the ball, etc. This can be accomplished using a time stamp 720 (e.g., start time, etc.), or other sequencing method using metadata (e.g., sample rate, etc.), to synchronize the video data 710 with the biometric data 730, allowing the user to view the soccer player at a particular time 740 (e.g., 76 seconds) and biometric data associated with the athlete at that particular time 340 (e.g., 76 seconds). Similar technology can be used to display biometric data on other athletes, card players, actors, online gamers, etc.

Where it is desirable to monitor or watch more than one individual from a camera view, for example, patients in a hospital ward being observed from a remote nursing station or, during a televised broadcast of a sporting event such as a football game, with multiple players on the sports field, the system can be so configured, by the subjects using Bluetooth or other wearable or NFC sensors (in some cases with their sensing capability also being location-enabled in order to identify which specific individual to track) capable of transmitting their biometrics over practicable distances, in conjunction with relays or beacons if necessary, such that the viewer can switch the selection of which of one or multiple individuals' biometric data to track, alongside the video or broadcast, and, if wanted and where possible within the limitations of the video capture field of the camera used, also to concentrate the view of the video camera on a reduced group or on a specific individual. In an alternate embodiment of the present invention, selection of biometric data is automatically accomplished, for example, based on the individual's location in the video frame (e.g., center of the frame), rate of movement (e.g., moving quicker than other individuals), or proximity to a sensor (e.g., being worn by the individual, embedded in the ball being carried by the individual, etc.), which may be previously activate or activated by a remote radio frequency signal. Activation of the sensor may result in biometric data of the individual being transmitted to a receiver, or may allow the receiver to identified biometric data of the individual amongst other data being transmitted (e.g., biometric data from other individuals).

In the context of fitness or sports tracking, it should be appreciated that the capturing of an individual's activity on video is not dependent on the presence of a third party to do this, but various methods of self-videoing can be envisaged, such as a video capture device mounted on the subject's wrist or a body harness, or on a selfie attachment or a gimbal, or fixed to an object (e.g., sports equipment such as bicycle handlebars, objects found in sporting environments such as a basketball or tennis net, a football goal post, a ceiling, etc., a drone-borne camera following the individual, a tripod, etc.). It should be further noted that such video capture devices can include more than one camera lens, such that not only the individual's activity may be videoed, but also simultaneously a different view, such as what the individual is watching or sees in front of them (i.e., the user's surroundings). The video capture device could also be fitted with a convex mirror lens, or have a convex mirror added as an attachment on the front of the lens, or be a full 360 degree camera, or multiple 360 cameras linked together, such that either with or without the use of specialized software known in the art, a 360 degree all-around or surround view can be generated, or a 360 global view in all axes can be generated.

In the context of augmented or virtual reality, where the individual is wearing suitably equipped augmented reality (''AR'') or virtual reality (''VR'') glasses, goggles, headset or is equipped with another type of viewing display capable of rendering AR, VR, or other synthesized or real 3D imagery, the biometric data such as heart rate from the sensor, together with other data such as, for example, work-out run or speed, from a suitably equipped sensor, such as an accelerometer capable of measuring motion and velocity, could be viewable by the individual, superimposed on their viewing field. Additionally an avatar of the individual in motion could be superimposed in front of the individual's viewing field, such that they could monitor or improve their exercise performance, or otherwise enhance the experience of the activity by viewing themselves or their own avatar, together (e.g., synchronized) with their performance (e.g., biometric data, etc.). Optionally, the biometric data also of their avatar, or the competing avatar, could be simultaneously displayed in the viewing field. In addition (or alternatively), at least one additional training or competing avatar can be superimposed on the individual's view, which may show the competing avatar(s) in relation to the individual (e.g., showing them superimposed in front of the individual, showing them superimposed to the side of the user, showing them behind the individual (e.g., in a rear-view-mirror portion of the display, etc.), and/or showing them in relation to the individual (e.g., as blips on a radar-screen portion of the display, etc.), etc. Competing avatar(s), either of real people such as their friends or training acquaintances, can be used to motivate the user to improve or correct their performance and/or to make their exercise routine more interesting (e.g., by allowing the individual to ''compete'' in the AR, VR, or Mixed Reality (''MR'') environment while exercising, or training, or virtually ''gamifying'' their activity through the visualization of virtual destinations or locations, imagined or real, such as historical sites, scanned or synthetically created through computer modeling).

Additionally, any multimedia sources to which the user is being exposed whilst engaging in the activity which is being tracked and recorded, should similarly be able to be recorded with the time stamp, for analysis and/or correlation of the individual's biometric response. An example of an application of this could be in the selection of specific music tracks for when someone is carrying out a training activity, where the correlation of the individual's past response, based, for example, on heart rate (and how well they achieved specific performance levels or objectives) to music type (e.g., the specific music track(s), a track(s) similar to the specific track(s), a track(s) recommended or selected by others who have listened to or liked the specific track(s), etc.) is used to develop a personalized algorithm, in order to optimize automated music selection to either enhance the physical effort, or to maximize recovery during and after exertion. The individual could further specify that they wished for the specific track or music type, based upon the personalized selection algorithm, to be played based upon their geographical location; an example of this would be someone who frequently or regularly uses a particular circuit for training or recreational purposes. Alternatively, tracks or types of music could be selected through recording or correlation of past biometric response in conjunction with self-realization inputting when particular tracks were being listened to.

It should be appreciated that biometric data does not need to be linked to physical movement or sporting activity, but may instead be combined with video of an individual at a fixed location (e.g., where the individual is being monitored remotely or recorded for subsequent review), for example, as shown in FIG. 3, for health reasons or a medical condition, such as in their home or in hospital, or a senior citizen in an assisted-living environment, or a sleeping infant being monitored by parents whilst in another room or location.

Alternatively, the individual might be driving past or in the proximity of a park or a shopping mall, with their location being recorded, typically by geo-stamping, or additional information being added by geo-tagging, such as the altitude or weather at the specific location, together with what the information or content is, being viewed or interacted with by the individual (e.g., a particular advertisement, a movie trailer, a dating profile, etc.) on the Internet or a smart/enabled television, or on any other networked device incorporating a screen, and their interaction with that information or content, being viewable or recorded by video, in conjunction with their biometric data, with all these sources of data being able to be synchronized for review, by virtue of each of these individual sources being time-stamped or the like (e.g., sampled, etc.). This would allow a third party (e.g., a service provider, an advertiser, a provider of advertisements, a movie production company/promoter, a poster of a dating profile, a dating site, etc.) to acquire for analysis of their response, the biometric data associated with the viewing of certain data by the viewer, where either the viewer or their profile could optionally be identifiable by the third party's system, or where only the identity of the viewer's interacting device is known, or can be acquired from the biometric sending party's GPS, or otherwise location-enabled, device.

For example, an advertiser or an advertisement provider could see how people are responding to an advertisement, or a movie production company/promoter could evaluate how people are responding to a movie trailer, or a poster of a dating profile or the dating site itself, could see how people are responding to the dating profile. Alternatively, viewers of online players of an online gaming or eSports broadcast service such as twitch.tv, or of a televised or streamed online poker game, could view the active participants' biometric data simultaneously with the primary video source as well as the participants' visible reactions or performance. As with video/audio, this can either be synchronized in real-time, or synchronized later using the embedded time-stamp or the like (e.g., sample rate, etc.). Additionally, where facial expression analysis is being generated from the source video, for example in the context of measuring an individual's response to advertising messages, since the video is already time-stamped (e.g., with a start time), the facial expression data can be synchronized and correlated to the physical biometric data of the individual, which has similarly been time-stamped and/or sampled,

As previously discussed, the host application may be configured to perform a plurality of functions. For example, the host application may be configured to synchronize video and/or audio data with biometric data. This would allow, for example, an individual watching a sporting event (e.g., on a TV, computer screen, etc.) to watch how each player's biometric data changes during play of the sporting event, or also to map those biometric data changes to other players or other comparison models. Similarly, a doctor, nurse, or medical technician could record a person's sleep habits, and watch, search or later review, the recording (e.g., on a TV, computer screen, etc.)

while monitoring the person's biometric data. The system could also use machine learning to build a profile for each patient, identifying certain characteristics of the patient (e.g., their heart rate rhythm, their breathing pattern, etc.) and notify a doctor, a nurse, or medical technician or trigger an alarm if the measured characteristics appear abnormal or irregular.

The host application could also be configured to provide biometric data to a remote user via a network, such as the Internet. For example, a biometric device (e.g., a smart phone with a blood-alcohol sensor) could be used to measure a person's blood-alcohol level (e.g., while the person is talking to the remote user via the smart phone), and to provide the person's blood-alcohol level to the remote user. By placing the sensor near, or incorporating it in the microphone, such a system would allow a parent to determine whether their child has been drinking alcohol by participating in a telephone or video call with their child. Different sensors known in the art could be used to sense different chemicals in the person's breath, or detect people's breathing patterns through analysis of sound and speed variations, allowing the monitoring party to determine whether the subject has been using alcohol or other controlled substances or to conduct breath analysis for other diagnostic reasons including respiratory rate measurement.

The system could also be adapted with a so-called ''lab on a chip'' (LOC) integrated in the device itself, or with a suitable attachment added to it, for the remote testing for example, of blood samples where the smart-phone is either used for the collection and sending of the sample to a testing laboratory for analysis, or is used to carry out the sample collection and analysis within the device itself. In either case the system is adapted such that the identity of the subject and their blood sample are cross-authenticated for the purposes of sample and analysis integrity as well as patient identity certainty, through the simultaneous recording of the time-stamped video and time and/or location (or GPS) stamping of the sample at the point of collection and/or submission of the sample. This confirmation of identity is particularly important for regulatory, record keeping and health insurance reasons in the context of telemedicine, since the individual will increasingly be performing functions which, till now, have been carried out typically on-site at the relevant facility, by qualified and regulated medical or laboratory staff, rather than by the subject using a networked device, either for upload to the central analysis facility, or for remote analysis on the device itself.

This, or the collection of other biometric data such as heart rate or blood pressure, could also be applied in situations where it is critical for safety reasons, to check, via regular remote video monitoring in real time, whether say a pilot of a plane, a truck or train driver, are in fit and sound condition to be in control of their vehicle or vessel or whether for example they are experiencing a sudden incapacity or heart attack etc. Because the monitored person is being videoed at the same time as providing time-stamped, geo-stamped and/or sampled biometric data, there is less possibility for the monitored person or a third party, to ''trick'', ''spoof'' or bypass the system. In a patient/doctor remote consultation setting, the system could be used for secure video consults where also, from a regulatory or health insurance perspective, the consultation and its occurrence is validated through the time and/or geo stamp validation. Furthermore, where there is a requirement for a higher level of authentication, the system could further be adapted to use facial recognition or biometric algorithms, to ensure that the correct person is being monitored, or facial expression analysis could be used for behavioral pattern assessment.

The present invention can also be used to address concerns with the current COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic. One of the most immediate consequences of the pandemic for medical staff and health services has been the increased burden of carrying out diagnostic checks on patients. In one embodiment, the present invention could be used to provide telemedicine services, allowing diagnostic checks (e.g., health and wellness testing, coronavirus testing, etc.) to be conducted in a safe, reliable, and convenient manner, and to do so more efficiently and with reduced risk of infection exposure both for patients and medical staff. This could be achieved on a scalable basis through providing the patients with a system utilizing a mobile computing device (e.g., smartphone, tablet, etc.) to securely record their vital signs and then transmit them to the relevant medical services. Such a system would be readily accessible for the patients reporting their vital signs, as well as for the medical staff monitoring those patients.

As discussed above, the system could be utilized both pre- and post-hospitalization or treatment. In a pre-hospitalization context, where individuals are experiencing symptoms, or have already been in contact with medical services and not yet been (or needed to be) hospitalized but are nevertheless in need of regular observation for any change in their condition, this would allow for consistent and timely monitoring of the patients' vital signs. Once the vital signs are recorded, the data can be uploaded automatically to the medical services. In a post-hospitalization utilization, if the patient is considered well enough to continue recovery and convalescence at home, it could allow for an earlier discharge from hospital (freeing up hospital beds), while still having the patient's condition monitored without having to rely on medical staff physically collecting their vital signs. In both cases, the vital signs could be uploaded to the cloud so that the medical services have a digitalized record of the evolution of that data, as well as being able to integrate it in the patient record keeping system or electronic health record (EHR).

This evolution of data (e.g., collecting vital signs from a single patient over a period of days, weeks, months, etc.) can be used to determine whether a treated patient (e.g., diagnosed with COVID-19) is getting better or worse, or provide a benchmark for the patient, or their vital signs, prior to being diagnosed with an illness. For example, in order to evaluate pulse oximeter data, it may be necessary to review previous pulse oximeter data (i.e., when they were healthy, or at least not suffering from the illness-at-issue). Thus, while pulse oximeter data (in and of itself) may be evaluated to help determine whether a patient is suffering from an illness, it may be beneficial to analyze the current pulse oximeter data in conjunction with prior pulse oximeter data (e.g., from months ago), or a differential thereof (i.e., a different between the prior reading and the current reading), or a combination thereof, to help determine whether the patient is suffering from an illness. The evolution of data could also be used in the aggregate, to determine trends with respect to particular illnesses, ailments, general health, or wellbeing.

Such a system in shown in FIG. 30, which is identical (structurally and functionally) to the system shown in FIG. 1. In FIG. 30, however, the communication device 108 is further (or alternatively) in communication with a pulse oximeter 3002, which may be configured to be worn over a patient's finger 3000. (Note that dependent on the type of oximeter used it can be placed on a patient's ear lobe or other extremity, or worn on a wrist such as in a fitness band or smartwatch). As with the biometric device 110 shown in FIG. 1, the pulse oximeter 3002 may communicate with the communication device 108 via a wired and/or wireless (e.g., Bluetooth, NFC, etc.) communication channel 3004. This channel may be used to provide pulse oximeter data to the communication device 108 over a particular period of time (typically determined via the communication device 108 or an application operating thereon). This may include, but is not limited to, pulse (bpmPR) and blood oxygen saturation level (or percentage) (SpO2).

It should be appreciated that other vital signs may be acquired (e.g., automatically (e.g., via at least one sensor) or manually (e.g., by requiring the user to enter the information), including, but not limited to respiratory rate (e.g., number of breaths per minute), body temperature, and blood pressure (e.g., systolic pressure, diastolic pressure), and used together with (or to calculate) other values, such as perfusion Index (PI %), perfusion Index Trend Waveform, age, weight, sex, etc., to determine the patient's health, wellness, and/or wellbeing (e.g., whether the patient is suffering from a bacterial and/or viral infection, etc.). It should be appreciated that this determination can be made manually (e.g., by a doctor, technician, etc.) or automatically (e.g., using software, artificial intelligence, etc.), and (i) in isolation, (ii) by comparing measured data to at least one known value (e.g., values indicative of COVID-19, etc.), or (iii) by comparing measured data with previously patient data to determine a differential and comparing the differential to at least one known value (e.g., values indicative of COVID-19, etc.).

Depending on the specific requirements of the medical service (hospital, doctor etc.) the incoming data can be used to alert the medical staff of any change in vital signs (or determination) requiring an action to be taken. Subject to the prevailing patient privacy regulations, the data could either be held on a trusted third-party server, such as that operated by the system provider, or sent directly to the medical services' portal without transiting through another server.

The recording of the vital signs is preferably done through the communication device 108 (e.g., smartphone, etc.), or an application operating thereon, using a simple user interface. Once the application is downloaded and installed on the communication device 108, the application may start a first-time set-up process by checking that Internet connectivity through Wi-Fi and/or the wireless cellular network is established. The credentials of the patient may then be verified, and their unique ID confirmed (note that the system and the application should be GDPR and HIPPA compliant, as well as having choice of language e.g. English, Spanish, German, etc.). There may be an option for the patient to view a symptoms list/checker and to enter any other observations which may be of relevance for medical or monitoring staff as well as self-realization measures of their perceived state of health or physical condition. Also, in the case of monitoring for other conditions such as sleep disorders like sleep apnea, which can be screened by using oximetry data, other elements could be noted such as the number of hours slept or the perceived quality of sleep

In a preferred embodiment, the patient would then switch the pulse oximeter 3002 on and establishes a wireless (e.g., Bluetooth) connection with the communication device 108. This is verified by the application and confirms to the patient that the system is configured and operating correctly. The patient may be informed that for future use, both Bluetooth and data network connectivity must be enabled on the phone when using the vital signs reporting system.

The patient would then begin a vital signs data session, which may include: (1) taking their temperature and manually entering it into the application; (2) measuring their respiratory rate (RR) using the timer viewer within the application over a predetermined time period (increments of 30 seconds upwards) (note, the application may automatically calculate breaths per minute from the entered information); (3) attaching the pulse oximeter (e.g., placing onto their pointer finger); vital signs (e.g., SpO2, bpmPR, PI %, Perfusion Index Trend Waveform, etc.) are recorded; (5) confirming to the patient that the information is complete and ready to be sent; (6) allowing the patient to transmit the data into the cloud (e.g., host); (7) confirming that the data has been successfully uploaded and/or received; (8) setting a reminder within the application for when next to record and send the vital signs; and (9) optionally enabling a return-loop messaging system from the medical monitoring staff back to the patient over the mobile phone application depending on regulatory provisions.

At the monitoring end, where the data is viewable, an alert system can be enabled, but this is dependent both on the preferences of the medical staff and also on the specific regulatory framework as to where the data is stored and what happens to the data afterwards. Alerts can be provided to medical staff and/or the patient and may be based on the data itself, a change in the data, or a determination based on the data, where the determination is made either manually or automatically, as discussed above.

It should be appreciated that the present invention is not limited to the foregoing method and may involve additional, fewer, or different steps. For example, certain data (e.g., temperature, etc.) could be acquired manually and/or automatically (e.g., via a temperature sensor, blood pressure sensor, respiratory rate sensor, etc., where the devices used for acquiring the biometric data, such as a thermometer for body temperature readings, are similarly connected by Bluetooth or some other connection protocol, or physically, to the smartphone or other such storage and network device.).

By way of another example, other biometric data could be measured and/or entered (or acquired) to determine whether a particular medical condition (e.g., COVID-19, etc.) is present, including, for example, CO2 levels, blood glucose, ambient conditions (temperature, humidity, light levels, altitude, and barometric pressure), heart rate variance (HRV), EKG data, perspiration levels, ketones, blood content, saliva content, audible levels, brain waves (e.g., EEG) and/or activity or other neurological measurements, physical characteristics (e.g., weight, etc.) or responses (e.g., facial changes, iris (or pupil) changes, voice (or tone) changes, etc.), or any combination or resultant thereof.

As discussed above, software or artificial intelligent (Al) can be used to make a medical diagnosis based on the received information. This may require normalization or adjusting the data received over a period of time (and/or external data) to then be compared to known values to determine whether, or the likelihood that the individual suffers from a particular medical condition (e.g. COVID-19, etc.). The results provided to the individual could be an indication (e.g., positive, negative) or the likelihood (e.g., 1-10, low, medium, high) of the medical condition. The results could then be provided to the individual and/or to a third party (e.g., to a hospital, confirming a medical condition and/or the likelihood thereof, etc.).

While different biometric data can be used to determine whether a patient is suffering from COVID-19 (e.g., the presence of a fever, etc.), pulse oximeter data is particularly relevant as the virus very often results in respiratory complications and can therefore be detected by analyzing the patient's blood oxygen saturation percentage (or level) or in conjunction with respiratory rate However, readings from a pulse oximeter are only accurate if the patient is relatively still while the data is being acquired. Thus, it may be necessary for the present invention to determine whether the patient is still (or sufficiently still) while pulse oximeter data is being acquired. This is further necessary if the measurement of respiratory rate is being acquired through deriving a value for this algorithmically from, in this case, the underlying oximetry values. In one embodiment, this is accomplished using the accelerometer within the communication device (see FIG. 31). An accelerometer is an electromechanical device used to measure acceleration forces, which can be static (constant, like gravity) or dynamic (movement or vibrations). Acceleration is the measurement of the change in velocity, or speed divided by time. Typical accelerometers are made up of multiple axes, two to determine most two-dimensional movement with the option of a third for 3D positioning. Most smartphones typically make use of three-axis models. The sensitivity of these devices is quite high as they are intended to measure even very minute shifts in acceleration. The more sensitive the accelerometer, the more easily it can measure acceleration.

By using the accelerometer in the communication device 108 (e.g., smartphone), the application can ensure that the patient is not moving (or sufficiently immobile) while pulse oximeter data (or other vital signs) are being measured. Generally speaking, the less movement, the greater certainty as to the accuracy of the reading (although other factors are known which can also affect the ability to acquire accurate data from the oximeter, such as for example nail polish on a finger nail preventing the light passing through to the recording sensor on an oximeter worn on a finger etc. In such cases the medical staff or an instruction manual given with the device, or an FAQ visible in the application help file etc. will inform the patient of the way to ensure that the device can acquire correct readings). Thus, a predetermined value for movement may be used to ensure that a certain level of accuracy is achieved.

If the patient is holding the communication device 108, as shown in FIG. 32, then the accelerometer (or the like (e.g. gyroscope, etc.)) can be used to measure movement (or the lack thereof) in the patient. In other words, if the patient is moving, then most likely the phone will move as well. This would also be the case if the user were lying on a bed, with the communication device 108 by their side (see FIG. 33); if the patient moved around during acquisition of the biometric data, then the smartphone would register this through the movement in the bed mattress.

However, if the communication device is on a fixed surface (e.g., a table), then other techniques may be used to ensure that the patient is remaining relatively still. For example, as shown in FIG. 34, the user may be asked to place their hand on the device's touchscreen. The touchscreen (or resistive or capacitive properties thereof) could then be used to ensure that the patient is not moving (or remaining sufficiently still such that no or minimal movement is registered). This may be accomplished by monitoring movement of the pulse oximeter 3002 while in use. Alternatively, the device could measure movement at a location adjacent to the pulse oximeter 3010A (as the pulse oximeter itself, which may be made out of plastic or metal, may not register as a ''touch''), of individual fingers (3010B, 3010C, 3010D), and/or the palm 3010E.

It should be appreciated that while a finger pulse oximeter is illustrated in FIGS. 30 and 32-34, the present invention is not so limited, and other pulse oximeters (e.g., incorporated into the smartphone, wristwatch, etc.) are within the spirit and scope of the present invention. It should also be appreciated that the foregoing are merely examples and other methods for determining movement are within the spirit and scope of the present invention. For example, the communication device may also (or alternatively) use its GPS (or location) feature (e.g., triangulation, etc.) to detect movement, use its camera and facial recognition to ensure that the patient is not moving, or merely compare pulse oximeter data over a period of time (e.g., if the pulse oximeter data does not change or fluctuate over time, then it is more likely that the patient is not moving during this period of time). It should also be appreciated that the accelerometer, if used to detect movement, does not have to be in the communication device, and may be located within the pulse oximeter itself or other device in communication with the communication device. Regardless of how the system measures movement, it can use this data to ensure that the data that is being acquired has not been rendered inaccurate through movement of the patient. This is true regardless of what data is being measured and how that data is being used. For example, while pulse oximeter data can be used to diagnose a respiratory infection, it may also be used to diagnose other illnesses or disorders, such as sleep apnea. A method of using movement data to ensure accuracy is provided in FIG. 35.

Starting at step 3500, pulse oximeter data is acquired over a period of time at step 3502. Pulse oximeters generally take readings periodically at regular intervals (a technique known as sampling). By way of example, if the pulse oximeter is configured to sample data at a rate of sixty readings per minute, then it should provide ten readings to the device over a ten second period. At step 3504, the device will measure movement of the patient (as discussed above). A determination will then be made at step 3506 as to whether the patient (or device) is moving, and if so, whether the movement is acceptable. If movement is detected (e.g., above the allowable rate), then pulse oximeter data is reacquired at step 3502. Otherwise, the pulse oximeter readings (or at least one thereof) are considered accurate at step 3508, ending the method at step 3510. It should be appreciated that the present invention is not limited to the foregoing method, and other methods, including fewer, additional, and/or different steps, are within the spirit and scope of the present invention.

Another method for measuring respiratory rate which neither uses an additional device to the oximeter and mobile phone, nor derives a value algorithmically from the vital signs data provided by the oximeter would be for the patient to place the mobile phone on the chest area or thorax, whilst lying supine on their back, and use the accelerometer within the mobile phone to measure within a specified period of time (say a period of a minimum of one thirty second increment) the amount of times the phone was moved up and down, representing one complete breath cycle. See, e.g., FIG. 33, where the phone 108 would be resting on the chest of the user 3006.

In one embodiment, this could be done independently (at another time) to the oximetry measurement, as has already been described. However, in another embodiment, it is possible to combine the movement of the smartphone via the accelerometer readings with the measurement of respiratory rate. In other words, within the mobile phone application, when measuring respiratory rate using this method at the same time as using the oximeter for the other readings, the application would have a setting for measuring respiratory rate and the accelerometer within the smartphone would be regulated to recognize that the phone was now in RR measurement mode from the distinctive movement pattern of the patient's breathing cycle (inhale/exhale). In this embodiment it would be preferable to combine the measurement of oximeter readings, whereby the value for RR derived algorithmically from the oximeter readings could be cross-checked against the readings for RR from the accelerometer on the smartphone. In this case, it would again be necessary for the patient to remain relatively still during the data acquisition and the accelerometer would be able to recognize if movement of the smartphone placed on the patient's chest area or thorax corresponded to the relative regularity of breathing/respiratory cycle, or instead a non-typical movement signal suggesting instead a more sudden, less typical movement of the smartphone movement of the part of the body to which the oximeter is attached.

In other words, an acceptable level of movement (e.g., to detect breathing) would be allowed, whereas an unacceptable level of movement (e.g., breathing too deep, etc.) would require the user to start the RR/oximeter reading again, this time while moving less. Preferably there would be a predetermined level of movement that would be acceptable. Alternatively, the oximeter readings would be evaluated to determine whether additional readings were necessary.

Regardless of the embodiment, the concern that a monitored party would not wish to be permanently monitored (e.g., a senior citizen not wanting to have their every move and action continuously videoed) could be mitigated by the incorporation of various additional features. In one embodiment, the video would be permanently recording in a loop system which uses a reserved memory space, recording for a predetermined time period, and then, automatically erasing the video, where n represents the selected minutes in the loop and E is the event which prevents the recorded loop of n minutes being erased, and triggers both the real time transmission of the visible state or actions of the monitored person to the monitoring party, as well as the ability to rewind, in order for the monitoring party to be able to review the physical manifestation leading up to E. The trigger mechanism for E could be, for example, the occurrence of biometric data outside the predefined range, or the notification of another anomaly such as a fall alert, activated by movement or location sensors such as a gyroscope, accelerometer or magnetometer within the health band device worn by, say the senior citizen, or on their mobile phone or other networked motion-sensing device in their proximity. The monitoring party would be able not only to view the physical state of the monitored party after E, whilst getting a simultaneous read-out of their relevant biometric data, but also to review the events and biometric data immediately leading up to the event trigger notification. Alternatively, it could be further calibrated so that although video is recorded, as before, in the n loop, no video from the n loop will actually be transmitted to a monitoring party until the occurrence of E. The advantages of this system include the respect of the privacy of the individual, where only the critical event and the time preceding the event would be available to a third party, resulting also in a desired optimization of both the necessary transmission bandwidth and the data storage requirements. It should be appreciated that the foregoing system could also be configured such that the E notification for remote senior, infant or patient monitoring is further adapted to include facial tracking and/or expression recognition features.

Privacy could be further improved for the user if their video data and biometric data are stored by themselves, on their own device, or on their own external, or own secure third-party ''cloud'' storage, but with the index metadata of the source material, which enables the sequencing, extrapolation, searching and general processing of the source data, remaining at a central server, such as, in the case of medical records for example, at a doctor's office or other healthcare facility. Such a system would enable the monitoring party to have access to the video and other data at the time of consultation, but with the video etc. remaining in the possession of the subject. A further advantage of separating the hosting of the storage of the video and biometric source data from the treatment of the data, beyond enhancing the user's privacy and their data security, is that by virtue of its storage locally with the subject, not having to upload it to the computational server results both in reduced cost and increased efficiency of storage and data bandwidth. This would be of benefit also where such kind of remote upload of tests for review by qualified medical staff at a different location from the subject are occurring in areas of lower-bandwidth network coverage. A choice can also be made to lower the frame rate of the video material, provided that this is made consistent with sampling rate to confirm the correct time stamp, as previously described.

It should be appreciated that with information being stored at the central server (or the host device), various techniques known in the art can be implemented to secure the information, and prevent unauthorized individuals or entities from accessing the information. Thus, for example, a user may be provided (or allowed to create) a user name, password, and/or any other identifying (or authenticating) information (e.g., a user biometric, a key fob, etc.), and the host device may be configured to use the identifying (or authenticating) information to grant access to the information (or a portion thereof). Similar security procedures can be implemented for third parties, such as medical providers, insurance companies, etc., to ensure that the information is only accessible by authorized individuals or entities. In certain embodiments, the authentication may allow access to all the stored data, or to only a portion of the stored data (e.g., a user authentication may allow access to personal information as well as stored video and/or biometric data, whereas a third party authentication may only allow access to stored video and/or biometric data). In other embodiments, the authentication is used to determine what services are available to an individual or entity logging into the host device, or the website. For example, visitors to the website (or non-subscribers) may only be able to synchronize video/audio data to biometric data and/or perform rudimentary searching or other processing, whereas a subscriber may be able to synchronize video/audio data to biometric data and/or perform more detailed searching or other processing (e.g., to create a highlight reel, etc.).

It should further be appreciated that while there are advantages to keeping just the index metadata at the central server in the interests of storage and data upload efficiency as well as so providing a common platform for the interoperability of the different data types and storing the video and/or audio data on the user's own device (e.g., iCloud', DropBox', OneDrive', etc.), the present invention is not so limited. Thus, in certain embodiments, where feasible, it may be beneficial to (1) store data (e.g., video, audio, biometric data, and metadata) on the user's device (e.g., allowing the user device to operate independent of the host device), (2) store data (e.g., video, audio, biometric data, and metadata) on the central server (e.g., host device) (e.g., allowing the user to access the data from any network-enabled device), or (3) store a first portion (e.g., video and audio data) on the user's device and store a second portion (e.g., biometric data and metadata) on the central server (e.g., host device) (e.g., allowing the user to only view the synchronized video/audio/biometric data when the user device is in communication with the host device, allowing the user to only search the biometric data (e.g., to create a ''highlight reel'') or rank the biometric data (to identify and/or list data chronologically, magnitude (highest to lowest), magnitude (lowest to highest), best reviewed, worst reviewed, most viewed, least viewed, etc.) when the user device is in communication with the host device, etc.).

In another embodiment of the present invention, the functionality of the system is further (or alternatively) limited by the software operating on the user device and/or the host device. For example, the software operating on the user device may allow the user to play the video and/or audio data, but not to synchronize the video and/or audio data to the biometric data. This may be because the central server is used to store data critical to synchronization (time-stamp index, metadata, biometric data, sample rate, etc.) and/or software operating on the host device is necessary for synchronization. By way of another example, the software operating on the user device may allow the user to play the video and/or audio data, either alone or synchronized with the biometric data, but may not allow the user device (or may limit the user device's ability) to search or otherwise extrapolate from, or process the biometric data to identify relevant portions (e.g., which may be used to create a ''highlight reel'' of the synchronized video/audio/biometric data) or to rank the biometric and/or video data. This may be because the central server is used to store data critical to search and/or rank the biometric data (biometric data, biometric metadata, etc.), and/or software necessary for searching (or performing advanced searching of) and/or ranking (or performing advanced ranking of) the biometric data.

In any or all of the above embodiments, the system could be further adapted to include password or other forms of authentication to enable secured access (or deny unauthorized access) to the data in either of one or both directions, such that the user requires permission to access the host, or the host to access the user's data. Where interaction between the user and the monitoring party or host is occurring in real time such as in a secure video consult between patient and their medical practitioner or other medical staff, data could be exchanged and viewed through the establishment of a Virtual Private Network (VPN). The actual data (biometric, video, metadata index, etc.) can alternatively or further be encrypted both at the data source, for example at the individual's storage, whether local or cloud-based, and/or at the monitoring reviewing party, for example at patient records at the medical facility, or at the host administration level.

In the context of very young infant monitoring, a critical and often unexplained problem is Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Whilst the incidences of SIDS are often unexplained, various devices attempt to prevent its occurrence. However, by combining the elements of the current system to include sensor devices in or near the baby's crib to measure relevant biometric data including heart rate, sleep pattern, breath analyzer, and other measures such as ambient temperature, together with a recording device to capture movement, audible breathing, or lack thereof (i.e., silence) over a predefined period of time, the various parameters could be set in conjunction with the time-stamped video record, by the parent, medical or other monitoring party, to provide a more comprehensive alert, to initiate a more timely action or intervention by the user, or indeed to decide that no action response would in fact be necessary. Additionally, in the case, for example, of a crib monitoring situation, the system could be so configured to develop from previous observation, with or without input from a monitoring party, a learning algorithm to help in discerning what is ''normal,'' what is false positive, or what might constitute an anomaly, and therefore a call to action. In the furthermore complex context such as neo-natal monitoring other biometric data could include EEG, EOC and EMG sensors.

The host application could also be configured to play video data that has been synchronized to biometric data, or search for the existence of certain biometric data. For example, as previously discussed, by video recording with sound a person sleeping, and synchronizing the recording with biometric data (e.g., sleep patterns, brain activity, snoring, breathing patterns, etc.), the biometric data can be searched to identify where certain measures such as sound levels, as measured for example in decibels, or periods of silences, exceed or drop below a threshold value, allowing the doctor, nurse, or medical technician to view the corresponding video portion without having to watch the entire video of the person sleeping.

Such a method is shown in FIG. 6, starting at step 700, where biometric data and time stamp data (e.g., start time, sample rate) is received (or linked) at step 702. Audio/video data and time stamp data (e.g., start time, etc.) is then received (or linked) at step 704. The time stamp data (from steps 702 and 704) is then used to synchronize the biometric data with the audio/video data. The user is then allowed to operate the audio/video at step 708. If the user selects play, then the audio/video is played at step 710. If the user selects search, then the user is allowed to search the biometric data at step 712. Finally, if the user selects stop, then the video is stopped at step 714.

It should be appreciated that the present invention is not limited to the steps shown in FIG. 6. For example, a method that allows a user to search for biometric data that meets at least one condition, play the corresponding portion of the video (or a portion just before the condition), and stop the video from playing after the biometric data no longer meets the at least one condition (or just after the biometric data non longer meets the condition) is within the spirit and scope of the present invention. By way of another example, if the method involves interacting between the user device and the host device to synchronize the video/audio data and the biometric data and/or search the biometric data, then the method may further involve the steps of uploading the biometric data and/or metadata to the host device (e.g., in this embodiment the video/audio data may be stored on the user device), and using the biometric data and/or metadata to create a time-stamp index for synchronization and/or to search the biometric data for relevant or meaningful data (e.g., data that exceeds a threshold, etc.). By way of yet another example, the method may not require step 706 if the audio/video data and the biometric data are played together (synchronized) in real-time, or at the time the data is being played (e.g., at step 710).

In one embodiment of the present invention, as shown in FIG. 8, the video data 800, which may also include audio data, starts at a time ''T'' and continues for a duration of ''n.'' The video data is preferably stored in memory (locally and/or remotely) and linked to other data, such as an identifier 802, start time 804, and duration 806. Such data ties the video data to at least a particular session, a particular start time, and identifies the duration of the video included therein. In one embodiment of the present invention, each session can include different activities. For example, a trip to a destination in Berlin, or following a specific itinerary on a particular day (session) may involve a bike ride through the city (first activity) and a walk through a park (second activity). Thus, as shown in FIG. 9, the identifier 802 may include both a session identifier 902, uniquely identifying the session via a globally unique identifier (GUID), and an activity identifier 904, uniquely identifying the activity via a globally unique identifier (GUID), where the session/activity relationship is that of a parent/child.

In one embodiment of the present invention, as shown in FIG. 10, the biometric data 1000 is stored in memory and linked to the identifier 802 and a sample rate ''m'' 1104. This allows the biometric data to be linked to video data upon playback. For example, if identifier 802 is one, start time 804 is 1:00 PM, video duration is one minute, and the sample rate 1104 is 30 spm, then the playing of the video at 2:00 PM would result in the first biometric value (biometric (1)) to be displayed (e.g., below the video, over the video, etc.) at 2:00 PM, the second biometric value (biometric (2)) to be displayed (e.g., below the video, over the video, etc.) two seconds later, and so on until the video ends at 2:01 PM. While self-realization data can be stored like biometric data (e.g., linked to a sample rate), if such data is only received periodically, it may be more advantageous to store this data 110 as shown in FIG. 11, i.e., linked to the identifier 802 and a time-stamp 1104, where ''m'' is either the time that the self-realization data 1100 was received or an offset between this time and the start time 804 (e.g., ten minutes and four seconds after the start time, etc.).

This can be seen, for example, in FIG. 14, where video data starts at time T, biometric data is sampled every two seconds (30 spm), and self-realization data is received at time T+3 (or three units past the start time). While the video 1402 is playing, a first biometric value 1404 is displayed at time T+1, first self-realization data 1406 is displayed at time T+2, and a second biometric value 1406 is displayed at time T+4. By storing data in this fashion, both video and non-video data can be stored separately from one another and synchronized in real-time, or at the time the video is being played. It should be appreciated that while separate storage of data may be advantageous for devices having minimal memory and/or processing power, the client platform may be configured to create new video data, or data that includes both video and non-video data displayed synchronously. Such a feature may advantageous in creating a highlight reel, which can then be shared using social media websites, such as Facebook' or Youtube', and played using standard playback software, such as Quicktime'. As discussed in greater detail below, a highlight reel may include various portions (or clips) of video data (e.g., when certain activity takes place, etc.) along with corresponding biometric data.

When sampled data is subsequently displayed, the client platform can be configured to display this data using certain extrapolation techniques. For example, in one embodiment of the present invention, as shown in FIG. 12, where a first biometric value 1202 is displayed at T+1, a second biometric value 1204 is displayed at T+2, and a third biometric value 1206 is displayed at T+3, biometric data can be displayed at non-sampled times using known extrapolation techniques, including linear and non-linear interpolation and all other extrapolation and/or interpolation techniques generally known to those skilled in the art. In another embodiment of the present invention, as shown in FIG. 13, the first biometric value 1202 remains on the display until the second biometric value 1204 is displayed, the second biometric value 1204 remains on the display until the third biometric value 1206 is displayed, and so on.

With respect to linking data to an identifier, which may be linked to other data (e.g., start time, sample rate, etc.), if the data is received in real-time, the data can be linked to the identifier(s) for the current session (and/or activity). However, when data is received after the fact (e.g., after a session has ended), there are several ways in which the data can be linked to a particular session and/or activity (or identifier(s) associated therewith). The data can be manually linked (e.g., by the user) or automatically linked via the application. With respect to the latter, this can be accomplished, for example, by comparing the duration of the received data (e.g., the video length) with the duration of the session and/or activity, by assuming that the received data is related to the most recent session and/or activity, or by analyzing data included within the received data. For example, in one embodiment, data included with the received data (e.g., metadata) may identify a time and/or location associated with the data, which can then be used to link the received data to the session and/or activity. In another embodiment, the computing device could display or play data (e.g., a barcode, such as a QR code, a sound, such as a repeating sequence of notes, etc.) that identifies the session and/or activity. An external video/audio recorder could record the identifying data (as displayed or played by the computing device) along with (e.g., before, after, or during) the user and/or his/her surroundings. The application could then search the video/audio data for identifying data and use this data to link the video/audio data to a session and/or activity. The identifying portion of the video/audio data could then be deleted by the application if desired. In an alternate embodiment, a barcode (e.g., a QR code) could be printed on a physical device (e.g., a medical testing module, which may allow communication of medical data over a network (e.g., via a smart phone)) and used (as previously described) to synchronize video of the user using the device to data provided by the device. In the case of a medical testing module, the barcode printed on the module could be used to synchronize video of the testing to the test result provided by the module. In yet another embodiment, both the computing device and the external video/audio recorder are used to record video and/or audio of the user (e.g., the user stating ''begin Berlin biking session,'' etc.) and to use the user-provided data to link the video/audio data to a session and/or activity. For example, the computing device may be configured to link the user-provided data with a particular session and/or activity (e.g., one that is started, one that is about to start, one that just ended, etc.), and to use the user-provided data in the video/audio data to link the video/audio data to the particular session and/or activity.

In one embodiment of the present invention, the client platform (or application) is configured to operate on a smart phone or a tablet. The platform (either alone or together with software operating on the host device) may be configured to create a session, receive video and non-video data during the session, and playback video data together (synchronized) with non-video data. The platform may also allow a user to search for a session, search for certain video and/or non-video events, and/or create a highlight reel. FIGS. 15-29 show exemplary screen shots of such a platform.

For example, FIG. 15 shows an exemplary ''sign in'' screen 1500, allowing a user to sign into the application and have access to application-related, user-specific data, as stored on the computing device and/or the host computing device. The login may involve a user ID and password unique to the application, the company cloud, or a social service website, such as Facebook'.

Once the user is signed in, the user may be allowed to create a session via an exemplary ''create session'' screen 1600, as shown in FIG. 16. In creating a session, the user may be allowed to select a camera (e.g., internal to the computing device, external to the computing device (e.g., accessible via the Internet, connected to the computing device via a wired or wireless connection), etc.) that will be providing video data. Once a camera is selected, video data 1602 from the camera may be displayed on the screen. The user may also be allowed to select a biometric device (e.g., internal to the computing device, external to the computing device (e.g., accessible via the Internet, connected to the computing device via a wired or wireless connection), etc.) that will be providing biometric data. Once a biometric device is selected, biometric data 1604 from the biometric device may be displayed on the screen. The user can then start the session by clicking the ''start session'' button 1608. While the selection process is preferably performed before the session is started, the user may defer selection of the camera and/or biometric device until after the session is over. This allows the application to receive data that is not available in real-time, or is being provided by a device that is not yet connected to the computing device (e.g., an external camera that will be plugged into the computing device once the session is over).

It should be appreciated that in a preferred embodiment of the present invention, clicking the ''start session'' button 1608 not only starts a timer 1606 that indicates a current length of the session, but it triggers a start time that is stored in memory and linked to a globally unique identifier (GUID) for the session. By linking the video and biometric data to the GUID, and linking the GUID to the start time, the video and biometric data is also (by definition) linked to the start time. Other data, such as sample rate, can also be linked to the biometric data, either by linking the data to the biometric data, or linking the data to the GUID, which is in turn linked to the biometric data.

Either before the session is started, or after the session is over, the user may be allowed to enter a session name via an exemplary ''session name'' screen 1700, as shown in FIG. 17. Similarly, the user may also be allowed to enter a session description via an exemplary ''session description'' screen 1800, as shown in FIG. 18.

FIG. 19 shows an exemplary ''session started'' screen 1900, which is a screen that the user might see while the session is running. On this screen, the user may see the video data 1902 (if provided in real-time), the biometric data 1904 (if provided in real-time), and the current running time of the session 1906. If the user wishes to pause the session, the user can press the ''pause session'' button 1908, or if the user wishes to stop the session, the user can press the ''stop session'' button (not shown). By pressing the ''stop session'' button (not shown), the session is ended, and a stop time is stored in memory and linked to the session GUID. Alternatively, by pressing the ''pause session'' button 1908, a pause time (first pause time) is stored in memory and linked to the session GUID. Once paused, the session can then be resumed (e.g., by pressing the ''resume session'' button, not shown), which will result in a resume time (first resume time) to be stored in memory and linked to the session GUID. Regardless of whether a session is started and stopped (i.e., resulting in a single continuous video), or started, paused (any number of times), resumed (any number of times), and stopped (i.e., resulting in a plurality of video clips), for each start/pause time stored in memory, there should be a corresponding stop/resume time stored in memory.

Once a session has been stopped, it can be reviewed via an exemplary ''review session'' screen 2000, as shown in FIG. 20. In its simplest form, the review screen may playback video data linked to the session (e.g., either a single continuous video if the session does not include at least one pause/resume, multiple video clips played one after another if the session includes at least one pause/resume, or multiple video clips played together if the multiple video clips are related to one another (e.g., two videos (e.g., from different vantage points) of the user performing a particular activity, a first video of the user performing a particular activity while viewing a second video, such as a training video). If the user wants to see non-video data displayed along with the video data, the user can press the ''show graph options'' button 2022. By pressing this button, the user is presented with an exemplary ''graph display option'' screen 2100, as shown in FIG. 21. Here, the user can select data that he/she would like to see along with the video data, such as biometric data (e.g., heart rate, heart rate variance, user speed, etc.), environmental data (e.g., temperature, altitude, GPS, etc.), or self-realization data (e.g., how the user felt during the session). FIG. 22 shows an exemplary ''review session'' screen 2000 that includes both video data 2202 and biometric data, which may be shown in graph form 2204 or written form 2206. If more than one individual can be seen in the video, the application may be configured to show biometric data on each individual, either at one time, or as selected by the user (e.g., allowing the user to view biometric data on a first individual by selecting the first individual, allowing the user to view biometric data on a second individual by selecting the second individual, etc.).

FIG. 23 shows an exemplary ''map'' screen 2300, which may be used to show GPS data to the user. Alternatively, GPS data can be presented together with the video data (e.g., below the video data, over the video data, etc.). An exemplary ''summary'' screen 2400 of the session may also be presented to the user (see FIG. 24), displaying session information such as session name, session description, various metrics, etc.

By storing video and non-video data separately, the data can easily be searched. For example, FIG. 25 shows an exemplary ''biometric search'' screen 2500, where a user can search for a particular biometric value or range (i.e., a biometric event). By way of example, the user may want to jump to a point in the session where their heart rate is between 95 and 105 beats-per-minute (bpm). FIG. 26 shows an exemplary ''first result'' screen 2600 where the user's heart rate is at 100.46 bmp twenty minutes and forty-two seconds into the session (see, e.g., 2608). FIG. 27 shows an exemplary ''second result'' screen 2700 where the user's heart rate is at 100.48 bmp twenty-three minutes and forty-eight seconds into the session (see, e.g., 2708). It should be appreciated that other events can be searched for in a session, including video events and self-realization events.

Not only can data within a session be searched, but so too can data from multiple sessions. For example, FIG. 28 shows an exemplary ''session search'' screen 2800, where a user can enter particular search criteria, including session date, session length, biometric events, video event, self-realization event, etc. FIG. 29 shows an exemplary ''list'' screen 2900, showing sessions that meet the entered criteria.

The foregoing description of a system and method for using, processing, and displaying biometric data, or a resultant thereof, has been presented for the purposes of illustration and description. It is not intended to be exhaustive or to limit the invention to the precise forms disclosed, and many modifications and variations are possible in light of the above teachings. Those skilled in the art will appreciate that there are a number of ways to implement the foregoing features, and that the present invention it not limited to any particular way of implementing these features. The invention is solely defined by the following claims.

Claims (20 ) What is claimed is: 1. A system for detecting COVID-19 in a user, comprising:

at least one server in communication with a wide area network (WAN); and

at least one memory device for storing machine readable instructions, at least a first set of said machine readable instructions being provided to a mobile computing device via said at least one server and said WAN, said first set of said machine readable instructions being adapted to operate on said mobile computing device and perform the steps of:

receiving pulse and oxygen saturation level data from a pulse oximeter attached to said user periodically over a period of time, resulting in a plurality of sets of said pulse oximeter data;

receiving movement data during said period of time, said movement data being indicative of at least movement of said user with respect to at least one fixed location; and

identifying at least one of said plurality of sets of pulse oximeter data as being accurate when said movement data indicates that said movement of said user with respect to said fixed location is equal to or less than a pre-determined amount;

wherein a second set of said machine readable instructions are adapted to perform the steps of:

storing at least said accurate set of pulse oximeter data on said user and comparing it to previously stored pulse oximeter data from said user to determine a differential;

comparing said differential to at least one known value; and

using at least said comparison to help determine whether said user is currently suffering from COVID-19.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein said movement data is generated using at least an accelerometer within said mobile computing device.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein said movement data is further indicative of at least movement of said mobile computing device with respect to said fixed location.

4. The system of claim 3, wherein said movement data is further generated using at least a touchscreen of said mobile computing device.

5. The system of claim 4, wherein said movement data is further indicative of at least movement of at least a portion of said user's hand with respect to said touch screen, said pulse oximeter being attached to a finger on said user's hand.

6. The system of claim 5, wherein said first set of machine readable instructions are further configured to perform the step of instructing said user to place their hand on a particular portion of said touch screen, thereby allowing said computing device to determine whether said portion of said user's hand is moving during said period of time.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein said first set of machine readable instructions are further configured to acquire temperature data of said user during said period of time, said temperature data being used in helping to determine whether said user is suffering from COVID-19.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein said first set of machine readable instructions are further configured to acquire respiratory rate data of said user during said period of time, said respiratory rate data being used in helping to determine whether said user is suffering from COVID-19.

9. The system of claim 1, wherein said second set of machine readable instructions are further configured to use said comparison to determine a likelihood that said user is suffering from COVID-19, wherein said likelihood is determined using artificial intelligence (AI).

10. The system of claim 1, wherein said second set of said machine readable instructions are provided to said mobile computing device via said at least one server and said WAN, allowing artificial intelligence (Al) to determine whether said user is currently suffering from COVID-19.

11. A method for using at least a mobile computing device to detect coronavirus in a user, comprising the steps of:

receiving by said mobile computing device pulse and oxygen saturation level data from a pulse oximeter attached to said user periodically over a period of time, resulting in a plurality of sets of said pulse oximeter data;

receiving movement data during said period of time, said movement data being indicative of at least movement of said user with respect to at least one fixed location;

identifying at least one of said plurality of sets of pulse oximeter data as being accurate when said movement data indicates that said movement of said user with respect to said fixed location is equal to or less than a pre-determined amount;

storing at least said accurate set of pulse oximeter data on said user and comparing it to previously stored pulse oximeter data from said user to determine a differential;

comparing said differential to at least one known value; and

using at least said comparison to determine whether said user is suffering from coronavirus.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein said movement data is generated using at least an accelerometer within said mobile computing device.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein said movement data is further indicative of at least movement of said mobile computing device with respect to said fixed location.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein said movement data is further generated using at least a touchscreen of said mobile computing device.

15. The method of claim 14, wherein said movement data is further indicative of at least movement of at least a portion of said user's hand with respect to said touch screen, said pulse oximeter being attached to a finger on said user's hand.

16. The method of claim 1, further comprising the step of said mobile computing device acquiring respiratory rate data of said user during said period of time, said respiratory rate data being used in helping to determine whether said user is suffering from coronavirus.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein said movement data is further used to determine said user's respiratory rate.

18. A method for using a mobile computing device to detect a viral infection or respiratory insufficiency in a user, comprising the steps of:

receiving by said mobile computing device data from a pulse oximeter attached to said user over a period of time;

receiving movement data during said period of time, said movement data being indicative of at least movement of said user;

identifying at least a portion of said data as accurate when said movement data indicates that said movement of said user is equal to or less than a pre-determined amount;

comparing at least said portion of said data to previously stored data from said user to determine a differential;

using said differential to determine a likelihood that said user is suffering from said viral infection or low respiratory or pulmonary efficiency.

19. The method of claim 18, wherein said movement data is generated using at least an accelerometer within said mobile computing device.

20. The method of claim 18, wherein said differential is used to determine a likelihood that said user is suffering from sleep apnea.

US16/876,114 2015-10-13 2020-05-17 System and method for testing for COVID-19 Active US11024339B2 (en ) Priority Applications (6) Application Number Priority Date Filing Date Title US201562240783P true 2015-10-13 2015-10-13 US201615293211A true 2016-10-13 2016-10-13 US15/495,485 US10242713B2 (en ) 2015-10-13 2017-04-24 System and method for using, processing, and displaying biometric data US16/273,141 US10522188B2 (en ) 2015-10-13 2019-02-11 System and method for using, processing, and displaying biometric data US16/704,844 US10910016B2 (en ) 2015-10-13 2019-12-05 System and method for using, processing, and displaying biometric data US16/876,114 US11024339B2 (en ) 2015-10-13 2020-05-17 System and method for testing for COVID-19 Applications Claiming Priority (2) Application Number Priority Date Filing Date Title US16/876,114 US11024339B2 (en ) 2015-10-13 2020-05-17 System and method for testing for COVID-19 US17/308,015 US20210257004A1 (en ) 2015-10-13 2021-05-04 System And Method For Diagnosing An Individual's Health And/Or Wellness Using Enhanced Telemedicine Vital Sign Tracking Related Parent Applications (1) Application Number Title Priority Date Filing Date US16/704,844 Continuation-In-Part US10910016B2 (en ) 2015-10-13 2019-12-05 System and method for using, processing, and displaying biometric data Related Child Applications (1) Application Number Title Priority Date Filing Date US17/308,015 Continuation US20210257004A1 (en ) 2015-10-13 2021-05-04 System And Method For Diagnosing An Individual's Health And/Or Wellness Using Enhanced Telemedicine Vital Sign Tracking Publications (2) ID=72235969 Family Applications (2) Application Number Title Priority Date Filing Date US16/876,114 Active US11024339B2 (en ) 2015-10-13 2020-05-17 System and method for testing for COVID-19 US17/308,015 Pending US20210257004A1 (en ) 2015-10-13 2021-05-04 System And Method For Diagnosing An Individual's Health And/Or Wellness Using Enhanced Telemedicine Vital Sign Tracking Family Applications After (1) Application Number Title Priority Date Filing Date US17/308,015 Pending US20210257004A1 (en ) 2015-10-13 2021-05-04 System And Method For Diagnosing An Individual's Health And/Or Wellness Using Enhanced Telemedicine Vital Sign Tracking Country Status (1) Cited By (1) * Cited by examiner, ' Cited by third party Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title US10991190B1 (en ) 2020-07-20 2021-04-27 Abbott Laboratories Digital pass verification systems and methods Family Cites Families (1) * Cited by examiner, ' Cited by third party Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title US10478127B2 (en ) * 2014-06-23 2019-11-19 Sherlock Solutions, LLC Apparatuses, methods, processes, and systems related to significant detrimental changes in health parameters and activating lifesaving measures 2020 2020-05-17 US US16/876,114 patent/US11024339B2/en active Active 2021 2021-05-04 US US17/308,015 patent/US20210257004A1/en active Pending Cited By (2) * Cited by examiner, ' Cited by third party Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title US10991190B1 (en ) 2020-07-20 2021-04-27 Abbott Laboratories Digital pass verification systems and methods US10991185B1 (en ) 2020-07-20 2021-04-27 Abbott Laboratories Digital pass verification systems and methods Also Published As Similar Documents Publication Publication Date Title US10910016B2 (en ) 2021-02-02 System and method for using, processing, and displaying biometric data US9712629B2 (en ) 2017-07-18 Tracking user physical activity with multiple devices JP6827018B2 (en ) 2021-02-10 Conducting a session using captured image data of physical activity and uploading using a token-verifiable proxy uploader US10983945B2 (en ) 2021-04-20 Method of data synthesis US8849610B2 (en ) 2014-09-30 Tracking user physical activity with multiple devices US8775120B2 (en ) 2014-07-08 Method of data synthesis US20160103970A1 (en ) 2016-04-14 Information sharing method and device US9069380B2 (en ) 2015-06-30 Media device, application, and content management using sensory input US20210257004A1 (en ) 2021-08-19 System And Method For Diagnosing An Individual's Health And/Or Wellness Using Enhanced Telemedicine Vital Sign Tracking US20140195166A1 (en ) 2014-07-10 Device control using sensory input US20140303900A1 (en ) 2014-10-09 Motion profile templates and movement languages for wearable devices US20210059591A1 (en ) 2021-03-04 Systems and methods for estimating and predicting emotional states and affects and providing real time feedback US20130245396A1 (en ) 2013-09-19 Mental state analysis using wearable-camera devices US20150082408A1 (en ) 2015-03-19 Quick login to user profile on exercise machine US20120317024A1 (en ) 2012-12-13 Wearable device data security AU2012267525A1 (en ) 2013-04-11 Motion profile templates and movement languages for wearable devices CN108574701A (en ) 2018-09-25 System and method for determining User Status US20210005224A1 (en ) 2021-01-07 System and Method for Determining a State of a User US20210265055A1 (en ) 2021-08-26 Smart Meditation and Physiological System for the Cloud US20210316185A1 (en ) 2021-10-14 Methods and apparatus for managing sequential tasks via task specific user interface elements Altunel 2018 Adoption of Sensors in Mobile Health WO2020214699A1 (en ) 2020-10-22 Animal data prediction system Legal Events Date Code Title Description 2020-05-17 FEPP Fee payment procedure Free format text: ENTITY STATUS SET TO UNDISCOUNTED (ORIGINAL EVENT CODE: BIG.); ENTITY STATUS OF PATENT OWNER: SMALL ENTITY

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Sun, 28 Nov 2021 13:54

American academic administrator

Sue Desmond-Hellmann is an American oncologist and biotechnology leader who served as the Chief Executive Officer of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation from 2014''2020. She was previously Chancellor of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), the first woman to hold the position, and Arthur and Toni Rembe Rock Distinguished Professor, and before that president of product development at Genentech, where she played a role in the development of the first gene-targeted cancer drugs, Avastin and Herceptin.[1]

Early life and education [ edit ] Desmond-Hellmann grew up in Reno, Nevada, as one of seven children. Her father worked as a pharmacist and her mother was an English teacher.[2] She earned her bachelor of science degree in pre-medicine and her medical degree from the University of Nevada, Reno and received her residency training at UCSF, where she served as chief resident. She is board-certified in internal medicine and medical oncology, and also holds a master's degree in public health from the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health.[3]

Career [ edit ] Early beginnings [ edit ] Desmond-Hellmann served as an associate adjunct professor of epidemiology and biostatistics At UCSF. She joined the UCSF medical faculty at the time of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in San Francisco, and therefore worked on Kaposi's sarcoma. Beginning in 1989 both she and her husband, an infectious disease doctor, spent two years as visiting faculty at the Uganda Cancer Institute, studying and treating patients with infectious diseases and Kaposi's sarcoma in a project funded by the Rockefeller Foundation.[3][2] She then spent two years in private practice.

Returning to clinical research, Desmond-Hellmann became associate director of clinical cancer research at Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceutical Research Institute. While there, she was the project team leader for Taxol.

In 1995 Desmond-Hellmann joined Genentech as a clinical scientist; she was named chief medical officer the following year, and in 1999 became executive vice president of development and product operations. From March 2004 through April 2009 she was president of product development, playing a role in the development of two of the first gene-targeted therapies for cancer, Avastin and Herceptin.[2][3][4] She left after the company was bought out by Roche Pharmaceuticals.[2][5] At that point her compensation was $8 million a year.[2]

From 2005 to 2008, Desmond-Hellmann served a three-year term as a member of the American Association for Cancer Research board of directors, and from 2001 to 2009, she served on the executive committee of the board of directors of the Biotechnology Industry Organization. She also served a three-year term on the Economic Advisory Council of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco beginning in January 2009.[3] She served on the corporate board of Affymetrix from 2004 to 2009[3] and on the board of Procter & Gamble in 2012''13,[6]

Chancellor of UCSF, 2009''2013 [ edit ] After being invited to apply, on August 3, 2009, Desmond-Hellmann became Chancellor of UCSF, the first woman to hold the position and the first drawn from outside academia. Her starting salary was $450,000 a year.[2]

In June 2010, one day after being questioned by The New York Times, Desmond-Hellmann sold her stock in the Altria Group, which owns Phillip Morris USA and other tobacco companies, and subsequently donated $134,000 to the tobacco control center at UCSF. She said that many of her holdings had been purchased on her behalf by her stockbroker and that she was too busy to oversee all her investments, although she had written the stock on her financial disclosure statement.[7][8]

In January 2012 Desmond-Hellmann proposed to change the relationship between UCSF, a health sciences university, and the University of California as a whole.[9] She proposed creating partnerships between UCSF and private pharmaceutical corporations and other sources of funding, in order to increase its revenues and solve its projected financial difficulties.[2][5][10][11]

Desmond-Hellmann served as UCSF Chancellor until March 2014, holding the Arthur and Toni Rembe Rock Distinguished Professorship during her tenure.[3]

Precision medicine based on Google Maps [ edit ] In 2011, Desmond-Hellmann co-chaired a National Academy of Sciences committee that recommended creating a Google Maps-like data network aimed at developing more diagnostics and treatments tailored to individual patients '-- a concept known as "precision medicine".[12] The so-called "knowledge network" would integrate the wealth of data emerging on the molecular basis of disease with information on environmental factors and patients' electronic medical records and would allow scientists to share emerging research findings faster, thereby accelerating the development of tailored treatments. It also would allow clinicians to make more informed decisions about treatments, reduce health care costs and ultimately improve care.[13] The NAS report, titled "Toward Precision Medicine: Building a Knowledge Network for Biomedical Research and a New Taxonomy of Disease", was described by Keith Yamamoto, Vice Chancellor for Research at UCSF, as "the most important National Academy of Sciences Framework Analysis since that advisory body recommended that the United States go forward with the Human Genome Project".[14]

CEO of Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, 2014''2020 [ edit ] On December 17, 2013, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced that it had selected Desmond-Hellmann as its next chief executive officer.[12][4] She assumed her role on May 1, 2014, the first head of the foundation to be neither a former Microsoft executive nor a personal friend of the Gates', and the first physician.[15]

In 2017 Desmond-Hellmann became a member of the Prix Galien USA Committee,[16] succeeding Roy Vagelos as Chair of that Committee in 2018. She is also Chair of the Prix Galien International and Member of the Prix Galien Africa Committee.

In December 2019, Desmond-Hellmann announced plans to step down from her role as BMGF CEO "for health and family reasons". Mark Suzman will leave his role of BMGF president of Global Policy & Advocacy and chief strategy officer to become the new BMGF CEO on February 1, 2020.[17]

Later career [ edit ] In 2021, Desmond-Hellmann was appointed by President Joe Biden to the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), co-chaired by Frances Arnold, Eric Lander and Maria Zuber.[18]

Other activities [ edit ] Corporate boards [ edit ] Facebook, Member of the Board of Directors (2013''2019)[19][20]Pfizer, Member of the Board of Directors (since 2020)[21]Non-profit organizations [ edit ] Global He@lth 2030 Innovation Task Force, Member of the Advisory Council (since 2015)[22]California Academy of Sciences, Member of the Board of Trustees (since 2008)Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Member of the Board of Trustees (since 2012)[23]Honors and plaudits [ edit ] Desmond-Hellmann was listed among Fortune magazine's Top 50 Most Powerful Women in Business in 2001 and from 2003 to 2008. From 2004 to 2006, the Wall Street Journal listed Desmond-Hellmann as one of its Women to Watch. In 2017 she gave the fifth annual Patrusky Lecture. In 2009, Desmond-Hellmann was honored with an Edison Achievement Award for her commitment to innovation throughout her career.

Personal life [ edit ] Desmond-Hellmann married Nicholas Hellmann in 1987.[2]

References [ edit ] ^ Garde, Damian (17 December 2013). "Genentech's ex-R&D boss takes the reins at the Gates Foundation". Questex LLC. Fierce Biotech. ^ a b c d e f g h Grady, Denise (October 10, 2011). "Profiles in Science: An Innovator Shapes an Empire". The New York Times. ^ a b c d e f "UCSF profiles: Susan Desmond-Hellmann". University of California, San Francisco . Retrieved March 17, 2016 . ^ a b Ravelo, Jenny Lei (December 23, 2013). "Susan Desmond-Hellmann: A passionate innovator to lead the Gates Foundation" . Devex. ^ a b "Susan Desmond-Hellmann - The 25 most influential people in biopharma today". FierceBiotech. February 8, 2012 . Retrieved March 17, 2016 . ^ Lambert, Diana; Koseff, Alexei (March 4, 2016). "UC Davis chancellor apologizes, will donate textbook stock to student scholarships". Sacramento Bee. ^ Wilson, Duff (June 30, 2010). "Chancellor's Slip Benefits Tobacco Research". The New York Times . Retrieved September 16, 2011 . ^ Wilson, Duff (June 29, 2010). "University Chief Is Selling Tobacco Holdings". The New York Times . Retrieved September 16, 2011 . ^ Asimov, Nanette (January 20, 2012). "UCSF seeks to ease ties with UC". San Francisco Chronicle . Retrieved January 26, 2012 . ^ Cisneros, Lisa. "Chancellor Proposes New Approach to Secure UCSF's Financial Future". University of California, San Francisco . Retrieved January 26, 2012 . ^ Krasny, Michael. "UCSF May Step Away From UC System". KQED Radio . Retrieved January 26, 2012 . ^ a b O'Brien, Jennifer (December 17, 2013). "UCSF Chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellmann to Step Down". University of California, San Francisco. ^ O'Brien, Jennifer (November 18, 2011). "NAS Report Calls for Building Biomedical Knowledge Network to Drive Precision Medicine". University of California, San Francisco. ^ O'Brien, Jennifer (April 11, 2012). "UCSF Chancellor Issues Call-To-Arms to Patient Advocates". University of California, San Francisco. ^ Doughton, Sandi (June 29, 2014). "Tough bosses no problem for Gates Foundation's new CEO". Seattle Times. ^ "United States of America '' Galien Foundation" . Retrieved 2021-04-07 . ^ McKay, Betsy. "Gates Foundation CEO to Step Down". WSJ . Retrieved 2019-12-10 . ^ President Biden Announces Members of President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology White House, press release of September 22, 2021. ^ Taylor, Colleen (March 6, 2013). "UCSF Chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellmann Joins Facebook's Board, Adding Another Woman Alongside Sandberg". TechCrunch. ^ "Dr. Susan Desmond-Hellmann Departs Facebook Board of Directors". October 30, 2019. ^ "SUSAN DESMOND-HELLMANN ELECTED TO PFIZER'S BOARD OF DIRECTORS". www.pfizer.com. Archived from the original on 2020-04-29 . Retrieved 17 April 2020 . ^ About Us Global He@lth 2030 Innovation Task Force. ^ "Susan Desmond-Hellmann Elected as Trustee of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute". Howard Hughes Medical Institute. November 7, 2012. External links [ edit ] Gates Foundation CEO Sue Desmond-HellmannSusan Desmond-Hellmann's Short Talk: "Herceptin and Drug Development"

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Sun, 28 Nov 2021 13:48

Director Writer All cast & crewSee more cast details at IMDbProAn alien takes over the body of an Earthman in order to learn about the planet so his race can take it over.

Plot summaryAdd synopsis Genres Parents guide The November 2021 remake is a little more moronic

But I guess what more can you expect from billionaire movie-makers. There are no funny moments in the remake so I suggest everyone should watch the original instead. I'm certainly going to.

Hopefully the crowds see the remake for what it is this time.

Runtime1 hour 42 minutes

Color Sound mix Aspect ratio Contribute to this pageSuggest an edit or add missing content

By what name was Omicron (1963) officially released in India in English?

Answer

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Sun, 28 Nov 2021 12:47

As his former envoy tours the Balkans, US ex-President Donald Trump has expressed dismay over the failure to implement the agreements he brokered between Kosovo and Serbia.

Donald Trump presiding over Serbia-Kosovo signing ceremony in the White House. Photo: Twitter/@jeffmason1

Former US President Donald Trump said in Thursday that the agreements between Kosovo and Serbia he brokered during his last year in the White House should be implemented, while his former Balkan envoy, Richard Grenell, called on Joe Biden's administration to become ''more aggressive'' in his leadership towards the region.

Highlighting the agreements on economic normalization brokered between the two sides, Trump said in a statement posted on his official website that ''the great people of Serbia and Kosovo have overcome tremendous obstacles in their pursuit of economic normalization.

''The agreements my administration brokered are historic and should not be abandoned, many lives are at stake. The region is too important and the people have waited too long for this work to be cast aside,'' Trump said.

The statement comes as his former envoy to the Kosovo-Serbia dialogue, Richard Grenell, tours the region.

In the statement, Trump referred to Grenell as ''my envoy'' '' a reference which drew criticism from the White House.

''Donald Trump is no longer President and doesn't have any 'envoy ambassadors' representing the United States,'' Bloomberg quoted a White House statement as saying.

After visiting Albania, Grenell visited Kosovo and now is in Serbia on a mission ''to find economic opportunities'' for the region.

On Thursday, he visited the Kosovo-Serbia crossing point of Merdare, where he highlighted the economic agreements that the US mediated and called for their implementation.

Trump appointed Grenell, then US ambassador to Germany, as his special envoy for the stalled Kosovo-Serbia dialogue in October 2019.

Instead of focusing like the EU on political relations, Grenell's main focus was on economic development. In January 2020, Trump announced an agreement between Kosovo and Serbia on restoring air traffic for the first time in 21 years, which he called ''another win''. One month later, Grenell witnessed Kosovo and Serbia official signing another agreement on resuming rail services.

But the biggest agreement came in September, two months before US Presidential elections, when the Kosovo and Serbia leaders, under the auspices of Trump himself, met in the White House and signed an agreement on economic, energy and political issues.

Speaking from Merdare on Thursday, Grenell voiced his frustration that the agreements have not been implemented.

''I come here because we are frustrated. Former Trump administration officials and many American people are frustrated because we saw the historic economic agreement, four economic agreement that were negotiated for the people of Kosovo and for the people of Serbia. This was not done for the government, this was not political. It was solely for economic development,'' Grenell said, referring to economic pledges signed between Pristina and Belgrade during 2020.

''There is this idea in this region of a perceived conflict'... Many westerners think that there is hostilities going on and they think that there is a conflict going on. What ends up happening is businesses don't move here because of a perceived conflict,'' he added.

Grenell also criticized the European Union, and urged Brussels to take ''more action'' when it comes to the Kosovo-Serbia dialogue.

''I got criticized a lot when I was in government because they said I did not include the Europeans. That was one of criticism but that's not true. I included the French and Germans, I briefed them constantly'... My idea was to brief French and Germans and then let them go to Brussels [and ask] for more action,'' Grenell said.

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Sun, 28 Nov 2021 12:45

Alexey Gryazev

Tension has been growing between Serbia and Kosovo all week: the sides are putting their forces on alert, Belgrade is deploying heavy equipment near the border. Experts on the region told Gazeta.Ru what are the reasons for the outbreak of the conflict and whether the license plates will become a pretext for starting a new war in the Balkans.

Latest news from the Balkans

On Saturday, the Serbian media spread information about the activity of military aircraft near the administrative line with Kosovo. Military aircraft and helicopters of the Serbian army, namely the MiG-29 and Mi-35 purchased from Russia, patrolled the airspace over the Yarine checkpoint three times at about noon.

Serbia's National Television, covering these maneuvers, published a video of glee and applause from Serbs living in Kosovo towards aviation.

Soon, the information about the activity of aviation was confirmed by the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Serbia and ex-Minister of Defense Alexander Vulin .

According to him, the Serbian security forces and the army are ready for escalation from Kosovo, although they themselves do not intend to unleash a conflict.

On the same day, videos of military vehicles, including tanks, moving along the roads, began to be actively disseminated on Serbian social networks. Presumably, among them are the upgraded T-72MS transferred by Russia last year.

According to the Serbian media, the equipment is being pulled to the city of Raska, located just 10 kilometers from the administrative line with Kosovo. At the same time, according to their data, the movement of equipment has been observed for several days.

There are no official comments on these movements, but they are not needed to confirm military activity: since Thursday, units of the Serbian army in the south of the country have been put on high alert.''Our weapons and equipment are in the hands of professionals. Nobody dares to humiliate and trample on us. Serbia is much stronger today than it was a decade earlier, and we are ready to protect our people at any time by order of the President, ''- declared the Minister of Defense of Serbia Nebojsa Stefanovic upon arrival in Novi Pazar '' another border town, where reinforcements were also sent.

How did it all start?

The flywheel of the conflict was launched on Monday, when the authorities of the self-proclaimed republic of Kosovo banned the use of Serbian registration plates in the territory under their control. Serbian state plates were forcibly removed from cars, replacing them with temporary Kosovo ones. At the same time, car owners are charged a fee of '‚¬ 5 for such a ''service''.

To enforce the new rules, the Kosovar authorities have deployed hundreds of police officers and snipers at the Yarine and Brnjak checkpoints.

However, this did not help prevent an escalation: the Serbs living in Ibar Kolasin (northern Kosovo) staged a riot.

On Monday, the Serbs in more than 400 vehicles moved to the checkpoints and, blocking their work, began a peaceful protest.

Pristina's reaction was uncompromising: additional forces were pulled into northern Kosovo '' this time the police were equipped with heavy equipment and automatic weapons and arrived in armored vehicles. They began to use special means, including tear gas, against the protesters.

The fourth day of clashes between Kosovo police and Serb protesters was marked by a dramatic incident.

Three Serbian citizens crossing the Brnjak checkpoint were stopped by a Kosovo special forces unit. The security forces took the Serbs out of the car and began to beat them severely. According to the victims, they had nothing to do with the protests and crossed the checkpoint to participate in seasonal logging.

''They were shouting something in Albanian, I did not understand, they threw me on the asphalt, hit me in the back, in the face, they broke my tooth. There was blood there, I asked for water, but no one wanted to give it to me, ''said Dragisha Vlashkovich, one of the beaten.

This incident caused a sharp reaction from Belgra-de '' it was after it that the army in southern Serbia was put on high alert.

Even before that, the Serbian side did not seem inclined to compromise. Even before the incident with the beating of its citizens, President Aleksandar Vucic, in an ultimatum, demanded from Pristina a unilateral withdrawal from the administrative line of all detachments of the Kosovo security forces.

''Our solution is to withdraw all units from the north of Kosovo and Metohija, return to the previous state, and after that '' negotiations in Brussels,'' he said.

What will happen next?

The Kosovo authorities are fully responsible for the conflict, says Sergei Artemov , chairman of the Balkan Club of the Center for Eastern European Studies at MGIMO .

''Throughout the summer, attacks on the Serbs returning to the region could be observed in Kosovo. They were indeed systematic: people who have every right to return to their homes were created terrible living conditions. In addition, Pristina has been moving away from its international obligations for a long time, ''says the expert.

At the same time, Artyomov considers the current aggravation to be quite serious, as evidenced by the military mobilization of each of the parties.

Georgy Engelhardt, an expert at the Institute of Sl-avic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, adheres to a different point of view '' he notes that relations between Kosovo and Serbia are exacerbated on a regular basis.

''Such conflicts take place about once a year. This is quite typical for the region. And their scenario is always quite typical: Pristina makes another step either towards asserting its power in northern Kosovo, or towards strengthening control at the border. In response, Belgrade makes a lot of public declarations and gradually everything goes down on the brakes, ''he says.

''Until now, the Kosovar authorities in this way, step by step, by centimeter, by half a meter, have expanded their sphere of control. And with each such incident, Belgrade moved further and further away from its goals of control over Kosovo, ''says Engelhardt.

Sergei Artyomov, for his part, notes: even if this time the Serbian authorities agree to the principle and do not allow Kosovo to establish the rules for the treatment of Serbian license plates, Pristina will still try to benefit from this situation.

''For them, this is one of the parts of their political game. Break of the blockade. Pristina is bullish because he understands that the train is slowly leaving her, the expert emphasizes. ''In a situation where Serbia is developing positively relations with Albania and North Macedonia, and integration processes are actively bypassing Kosovo in the Western Balkans, this conflict is an opportunity for Pristina to draw attention to itself and bargain some conditions at the all-Balkan level.'' '...

Experts do not believe that the current conflict may turn into a stage of direct armed conflict.

''The current situation is unlikely to lead to war. There are no prerequisites for this '' after all, the situation there is not like in 1999. What is happening should be perceived as an act of demonstration of force, both from the Serbian and Kosovo sides,'' sums up Sergei Artyomov.

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Sun, 28 Nov 2021 12:38

The first South African doctor to alert the authorities about patients with the omicron variant has told The Telegraph that the symptoms of the new variant are unusual but mild.

Dr Angelique Coetzee said she was first alerted to the possibility of a new variant when patients in her busy private practice in the capital Pretoria started to come in earlier this month with Covid-19 symptoms that did not make immediate sense.

They included young people of different backgrounds and ethnicities with intense fatigue and a six-year-old child with a very high pulse rate, she said. None suffered from a loss of taste or smell.

''Their symptoms were so different and so mild from those I had treated before,'' said Dr Coetzee, a GP for 33 years who chairs the South African Medical Association alongside running her practice.

On November 18, when four family members all tested positive for Covid-19 with complete exhaustion, she informed the country's vaccine advisory committee.

She said, in total, about two dozen of her patients have tested positive for Covid-19 with symptoms of the new variant. They were mostly healthy men who turned up ''feeling so tired''. About half of them were unvaccinated.

''We had one very interesting case, a kid, about six years old, with a temperature and a very high pulse rate, and I wondered if I should admit her. But when I followed up two days later, she was so much better,'' Dr Coetzee says.

Dr Coetzee, who was briefing other African medical associations on Saturday, made clear her patients were all healthy and she was worried the new variant could still hit older people '' with co-morbidities such as diabetes or heart disease '' much harder.

''What we have to worry about now is that when older, unvaccinated people are infected with the new variant, and if they are not vaccinated, we are going to see many people with a severe [form of the] disease,'' she said.

South African demographics are very different from those in the UK. Only about six per cent of the population are over the age of 65. This means that older individuals who are more vulnerable to the virus may take some time to present.

Two cases of omicron in UKThe B.1.1.529 variant, now called omicron, was first identified in Botswana on November 11. It has now been detected in the UK as well as South Africa, Israel, the Netherlands, Hong Kong and Belgium.

It is the most mutated form of Covid-19 discovered thus far, with 32 mutations to the spike protein. Scientists are concerned that the mutations may allow it to evade existing vaccines and spread quickly.

Two cases of omicron have now been found in the UK, with two people in Essex and Nottinghamshire testing positive for the new variant.

UK officials are busy scouring testing databases for any further sign of the omicron variant, not least because there were many South Africans in the Twickenham area of south-west London for the England and South Africa match last Saturday.

South African scientists say omicron is behind an explosion of cases in the country's Gauteng province, which is home to the country's commercial capital Johannesburg and Pretoria. Cases have rocketed up from about 550 a day last week to almost 4,000 a day currently.

The UK, US, the EU and Israel have all suspended travel to and from South Africa and the five surrounding countries: Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, and Zimbabwe. The UK Government added Angola, Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia to the travel red list on Sunday.

The Western travel ban has provoked anger among South Africans, with many claiming that they are being punished for having outstanding research institutions and being transparent about their findings.

Protect yourself and your family by learning more about Global Health Security

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Sun, 28 Nov 2021 12:30

Often heard in today's boardrooms and C-suites and their virtual equivalents: a mixture of anxiety and enthusiasm about environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues. ''What risks are we sitting on?'' leaders (and investors) are asking, as pressure for ESG disclosures mount. ''How do we measure and manage them when there are no common standards? Where should we focus, when the list of potential issues is a mile long?'' And, critically'--which is where the enthusiasm comes in'--''As we take a hard look at our business, what opportunities can we identify to solve big problems and create value in new ways?'' The answers to these questions are interrelated, as are the initiatives those answers will motivate: reimagined reporting, strategic reinvention, and, ultimately, wholesale business transformation.

The underlying forces at work are well known. Investors, lenders and rating agencies expect greater visibility of an ever-broader range of nonfinancial metrics to better understand diverse social and environmental risks. Governments' ambitious, top-down commitments to limit carbon emissions are increasingly backed by new regulations and new taxes. More'--much more'--can be expected. Activist shareholders, among many other stakeholders, are advocating for net-zero policies and for tighter linkages between ESG targets and executive compensation packages. Socially conscious consumers are more inclined to vote with their wallets, encouraging businesses to reappraise their products and purpose, including their role as employers of diverse, engaged workforces. And the global pandemic has created significant additional momentum for change.

Against this backdrop, the ESG maturity level of companies varies widely. When PwC segmented executives responding to a recent survey according to their awareness and prioritization of ESG issues, their personal commitment and their belief in the potential for business to positively impact society, it became clear that leaders in most organizations (nearly three-quarters) were in the early stages of their ESG journey. A few companies, though, have begun reorienting their business toward a value creation ecosystem that adds environmental sustainability, employee engagement, external partnerships and broader societal impact to financial imperatives as measures of success. Companies that have earned top ratings on ESG indexes and that also produce solid investor returns include asset managers such as Norges Bank; tech companies such as Adobe, Salesforce, and Microsoft; and consumer-oriented firms such as Procter & Gamble and Best Buy.

Whatever the starting point for the ESG dialogue, the project will result in changes in all dimensions of a business, including strategic decision-making, implementation of the new direction and reporting of progress and outcomes.

The ESG agenda encompasses reporting, strategy and business transformation.

The three dimensions of the ESG revolution

Strategic reinventionTranslates ESG aspirations'--What must we do? What should we do? What could we do?'--into a blueprint for where and how to compete

Business transformationEnables the measurement and management of ESG factors such as carbon emissions, workforce diversity and supply chain sustainability

Reimagined reportingDrives ESG strategy and reporting into the heart of the business, often informing and extending ongoing digital transformation

Not only are those dimensions interdependent, but each of them can create momentum that helps fuel the others. In industries as varied as oil and gas, consumer goods, telecommunications, manufacturing, and hospitality and other services, companies are striving to build trust among, and deliver sustained outcomes to, their stakeholders. They are doing so by tackling these imperatives:

Reimagined reporting. The most immediate call for action often is some combination of heightened regulatory requirements, risk awareness, and demand for data and transparency to enable the management and disclosure of ESG factors. Everything from carbon emissions to racial and gender balance to the sustainability of sourcing strategies is under the microscope; investors, governments and other stakeholders are interested in assessing whether businesses have identified and are managing ESG risks. As companies reevaluate what they report publicly, formal nonfinancial disclosures are starting to augment or replace nonbinding frameworks.

Strategic reinvention. In some cases, reimagined reporting will convince companies that to make progress against new metrics, they must rethink basic strategic questions about where and how to compete. In other cases, companies are moving aggressively to redefine their strategy with ESG at its core before grappling with changes in the reporting environment. Management teams are taking a fresh look at difficult strategic trade-offs in response to both new opportunities and external pressures, such as concerns about heavy carbon emissions (very much on the radar, for example, of energy companies and cement manufacturers) and about a range of social concerns, including health, race, gender, and inclusion and inequality. If its current strategic priorities are resulting in outcomes that are increasingly viewed as unsustainable (or even unacceptable), a business needs a strategy that addresses such concerns, exploits different opportunities, and, ultimately, redefines not only what the business does, but how it does it.

Business transformation. A business that begins to report against broader nonfinancial metrics will quickly find that it needs to define objectives to manage these metrics, and therefore to drive change'--transformation'--to achieve these objectives. Similarly, a business that has had to redefine its strategic priorities to ensure its sustainability and relevance will urgently need to transform if it is to deliver on the new strategic objectives. Either way, businesses will have to actively manage ESG outcomes by internalizing ESG into strategy, by transforming to implement the related change and by reporting on both progress and outcomes. Senior leaders have a critical role to play in driving this agenda for transformation, which is not separate from ongoing digital transformations, but which will inform and build on them, redefining their context (and their purpose).

Every company is uniquely situated, and so is the scope of change it needs. Regardless of the motivations'--an ambitious emissions target that inspires strategic reinvention; deals to exit or restructure businesses that are unsustainable; ambitious diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) priorities; or supply chain overhaul'--the resulting ESG agenda will eventually encompass reporting, strategic and business transformation initiatives. It all adds up to a new equation for business: behaviors based on purpose and trust that create value by finding solutions to the challenges society is facing.

Reimagined reportingIf you spend much time in management reviews or board meetings these days, you'll probably be presented at some point with a lengthy description of ESG issues, initiatives and metrics that someone is tracking. Unfortunately, it's rarely clear what the objective of each initiative is, let alone how far the organization is from that goal, or how all the parts add up to an overall aspiration or value creation goal. One result: endless discussion of which benchmarks to use, instead of where the company wants to go on its ESG journey.

Part of the challenge is the proliferation of ESG ratings and risk assessment metrics, which largely were developed in silos. Scoring is opaque and noncomparable because the ratings are based on different criteria plucked from frameworks set out by multiple standard-setting bodies. Not surprisingly, ''lack of reporting standards'' was cited as a top barrier to ESG effectiveness by executives in a recent PwC survey.

Competing business priorities, reporting standards and leadership commitments hold ESG back, even in companies that prioritize ESG issues.

Top barriers to ESG effectiveness, % of respondents

OverallESG leaders Difference in percentage points ESG laggards Balancing ESG with growth targets 40%

39%

+1

40%

Lack of reporting standards and regulations/complexity 37%

31%

+8

39%

Lack of attention or support from leadership 33%

30%

+4

34%

Volatility of regulatory requirements 31%

36%

-6

30%

Difficulty quantifying potential ROI 31%

31%

31%

To be sure, ESG standards are winnowing as the mandatory assurance of corporate nonfinancial statements comes into effect. It's happening first in the European Union, for both asset managers and larger companies, as part of the European Green Deal. The US SEC is considering following suit, a move that would be consistent with a May 2021 executive order from President Biden on climate-related financial risk. In the near future, it won't be enough simply to have ESG targets on DEI or emissions reduction; they'll need to be benchmarked, measured, disclosed, tracked over time, and assured.

Urgent as the need is for common, external reporting standards to guide corporate disclosures, each business will also need to identify and then manage the critical factors that are most relevant for that particular business. This requires a rigorous approach to understanding and defining the critical metrics for the business, establishing a baseline, and enhancing measurement and reporting for management purposes.

Establishing a baselineAny kind of rigorous reporting regime needs a baseline. The farther businesses get from traditional financial targets'--for example, if they start mapping the carbon footprint of an office building or a supply chain, or assessing whether a manufacturing facility or crops are vulnerable to flooding or droughts'--the more difficult it can be to define relevant baselines. Breakthroughs are possible, though, if you gather the right data.

Regulatory targets in British Columbia, Canada, for example, led an energy supplier to set an ambitious midterm climate goal: a 30% reduction in emissions by 2030. The first step was to identify the measures that could contribute to significant emissions reductions. Then the utility created a governance and reporting structure that provides senior leadership with oversight and the ability to communicate progress toward the target. The company will be tracking activities through a series of milestones on the way to achieving the target over the next ten years. It now has a narrative that regulators and stakeholders can assess, and checkpoints along the way that help ensure it is on track. Those milestones build confidence to make decisions about capital expenditures, invest in training, and approach the capital markets in the future.

90% of S&P 500 companies published sustainability reports in 2019.

Enhancing measurementCarbon footprinting, though complex, is becoming more common, of necessity, just as valuing stranded assets such as coal or oil in the ground is now well understood. Across sectors, companies will have to measure and report on their impact in an abundance of areas that are far from obvious. Consider these examples:

A telecom company has begun forecasting and reporting the financial impact severe weather could have on its business operations a decade from now, to inform long-term capital expenditure decisions for itself, its customers and its investors.A beverage company is undertaking research on the degree to which teenagers who attend lectures on the effects of binge drinking change their attitude toward alcohol use and abuse. The goal is not only to encourage responsible drinking'--which helps the company's brand'--but also to collect auditable data that shows it is taking action to mitigate potentially dangerous behavior with social consequences.When it was applying for permission to build an offshore wind farm as part of its transition out of fossil fuels, an energy company was pushed by local authorities and residents to address and quantify the environmental effects of overground versus underground electricity transmission.All these assessments, and many more, will show up on nonfinancial statements. In 2019, 90% of the constituents of the S&P 500 published sustainability reports; 29% had some kind of assurance review. Not surprisingly, the process of gathering, verifying and presenting this data is having profound effects. Companies providing information to rating agencies need specific, granular data to feed into the ratings algorithms that determine membership in ESG-branded stock indexes. In turn, the expanded outlook of stakeholders is forcing leaders to reassess their strategies and capabilities as they address issues that were not on the radar a decade ago.

Strategic reinventionWhether the cause is new disclosure requirements, stakeholder scrutiny, climate risk, or green growth opportunities, at some point, ESG issues will bring leaders to the heart of their strategy'--their blueprint for where and how to compete that reflects their view of the future, the opportunities and threats they face, and the capabilities they can bring to bear. In practice, that might mean moving from carbon mapping and greenhouse gas reduction to creating a product road map for new, low-carbon products.

Strategic dialogue may start with questions of ambition: What must we do? What should we do? What could we do? The answers to these questions help define a company's degrees of strategic freedom, and must reflect an informed sense of the risks and opportunities that face the business in the short, medium, and long term. Given the long time frames associated with some of the fundamental shifts an ESG strategy requires (transitions from fossil fuels, supply chain overhauls, investing in upskilling), the ability to fine-tune forecasting is crucial. Interestingly, the CEOs in PwC's 24th Annual Global CEO Survey whose companies have set formal decarbonization targets through the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) of the World Resources Institute have significantly greater confidence in their organization's revenue-forecasting capabilities than do a control group of CEOs in the survey matched for country, industry and company size.

The CEOs of companies with formal decarbonization targets express greater confidence in their organization's forecasting capabilities.

Organization's typical forecasting accuracy for 12-month revenue growth (under normal circumstances'--i.e., before COVID-19), share of respondents

Forecast is within± 2% of actual

± 3''9% of actual

± 10% or greater of actual

Don't know

Non-decarbonization control groupAlthough it's still early days for most companies' strategic reinvention, one message is already clear: as the context within which business operates changes rapidly, so too must the strategic journey. Leaders need to establish a constantly iterating process, underpinned by high-quality data, to assess, adjust and flex strategic priorities and milestones that ensure resilience and success in a highly dynamic world. To bring that dynamism to life, we'll describe the experiences of a chemicals company and an industrial company that have been revisiting their strategies with ESG in mind.

Reformulating a chemicals company's product portfolioOver the course of a decade, a global chemicals company changed many of its products and operations following the realization that its processes, which are carbon intensive, and its products'--literally thousands of chemical components'--could end up being outlawed or shunned by customers, even though the bulk of what the company produced was beneficial to society. (One example: biodegradable and bio-based packaging for consumer products.)

To reformulate its strategy in the face of this threat, the company undertook a massive product portfolio review with several purposes: to establish where it was hurting the environment and what needed to change, to identify which products to reengineer, and to pinpoint where it was adding the most value and how it could remain competitive in its field.

As a means of better informing strategy formulation, the company now uses an impact assessment tool that brings together tailored economic and operational data to determine the effects of a decision'--such as its product portfolio changes'--on ESG criteria including pollution outputs, CO2 emissions, labor practices, social welfare and more. This creates the kind of granularity that helps leaders make strategic decisions, understand trade-offs, identify opportunities and tell their story to all their stakeholders. The tool has also enabled the company to develop and regularly refine a road map for refocusing R&D, overhauling operations, changing incentives and evolving hiring practices.

Resetting an industrial company's carbon strategyConsider next the experience of an industrial company that has begun taking far-reaching steps to put itself on a more sustainable trajectory. The company began by defining a clear ambition centered on bold targets, initially aiming for short-term operational emissions reduction and becoming a net-zero company by 2050. To achieve these goals, the organization elevated sustainability to a strategic priority and identified a set of supporting management interventions, starting with a revamped planning process with sustainability at its core.

To inform its strategic priorities, the company studied new energy technologies in areas such as wind, solar, batteries and hydrogen, along with emissions reduction technologies such as carbon capture. Using the insights from those findings, the company developed a portfolio strategy out to 2050, showing the rate at which it would need to divest traditional businesses and power sources, and how quickly it would need to replace those with greener options. Then, to generate early options, the company created a venture fund that could identify and invest in promising technologies, through straight investments or joint ventures with others.

Next, the company began applying a sustainability lens to future capital investments. For example, before constructing a new facility, the organization had previously used traditional financial analyses such as net present value to determine whether that facility represented the best use of capital. In that analysis, the carbon component was relegated to an afterthought (an internal carbon-pricing mechanism). The company realized that this approach was no longer sufficient to deliver on its strategic goals. When it began to factor in carbon in a more explicit way, the company actually changed the design and construction methods for new sites, expressly to reduce emissions. As it reallocates capital as a result, the company is evolving its strategic commitments.

Business transformationAn ESG transformation can flow from a new strategy, from changed reporting requirements, or from ongoing efforts to rewire processes or data-informed decision-making. ESG transformation isn't distinct from, but rather should inform and extend, digital transformation efforts that have been a critical area of focus for many companies in recent years. The business transformation also can extend beyond a company's borders to its broader ecosystem. Below, we'll look in more detail at ESG-flavored ecosystem and digital transformations for the chemicals and industrial companies we just described'--and at the role of senior leadership in company-wide transitions.

''It is therefore the policy of my Administration to advance consistent, clear, intelligible, comparable, and accurate disclosure of climate-related risk.''

Ecosystem evolution, digital transformationLet's return to the chemicals company, whose reinvention effort caused it to look beyond its own four walls. One example: the promotion of sustainable use of plastics, a significant opportunity for the company to transform toward a more circular business model characterized by recyclable design, use of alternative raw materials and remanufacturing in a new value ecosystem.

Such initiatives can lead to innovative collaborations born of the need to improve processes and outputs. In the case of the chemicals company, this happened with the polymers it supplies to carmakers, which can now be recycled. To maximize circular opportunities, those carmakers have to know when the car is at the end of its life cycle, which could be more than ten years from manufacture, and must have a way to retrieve the plastic. These car companies have teamed up with dealers, recyclers and others in the value chain to make this happen.

The industrial company, too, is working more closely with its suppliers to push the net-zero agenda out across its entire network. This step is critical because for this industrial company, as for many other large organizations, the bulk of the carbon footprint is in the supply chain, not within the boundaries of the company itself. Digital transformation is enabling this ecosystem effort: one of the company's business units recently put its entire supply chain on a cloud-based ERP system'--an important first step in helping suppliers track, report and reduce their carbon impact.

Already, the industrial company has good news to report: it is a year ahead of schedule in achieving its short-term operational emissions targets. Those successes have heartened executives, employees and other stakeholders directing their energies toward the next wave of progress and more ambitious targets. To cement those goals in the minds of executives, the company set aside millions of dollars in management incentives, linked to sustainability performance. It is now creating a similar incentive structure for the full workforce.

Leading the transformationThe far-reaching effects of ESG transformations mean their success is heavily dependent on the focus and drive of senior leaders. In many organizations, the needed leadership is still emerging. ''Lack of attention or support from leadership'' ranked high on the list of barriers to ESG effectiveness in PwC's recent executive survey.

In our experience, committed leaders can make an enormous difference by focusing on two priorities. First, leaders need to be able to connect ESG initiatives with the organization's overall direction. For example, a large asset manager is undertaking a set of pilot projects to encourage the decarbonization of three portfolio companies. It would be easy for three small experiments to get swallowed up or fall by the wayside but for the fact that they connect with a much bigger aspiration: to focus the asset manager's entire investment portfolio on companies whose operations are consistent with limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. In short, the pilots'--which are running simultaneously with a full program to assess emissions across the portfolio'--have a purpose that extends beyond their individual results. The senior team is staying close to those outcomes, which are creating energy for deeper transformation.

A second critical priority for leaders is to back up their ESG initiatives and aspirations with real resources. This is easier said than done in most organizations because budgets are sticky, there's considerable competition for capital and the best people and it's easy for here-and-now priorities to trump ESG investments. The executives surveyed by PwC called out ''balancing ESG with growth targets'' as the top barrier to ESG effectiveness; ''difficulty quantifying potential ROI'' wasn't far behind. Strong leaders can help change the conversation, though. The CEO and COO of a North American utility, for example, developed and frequently repeated a simple slogan to describe the (costly) shift they envisioned from coal- and gas-powered plants to wind- and solar-powered ones. Not only has this helped galvanize the organization, it's also supported their efforts to educate the investor community about the long-term financial benefits of their strategy as alternative energy economics improve'--which, in turn, has helped keep the needed capital flowing their way.

When leaders connect ESG with their strategy'--as opposed to having it be a ''bolt-on'' set of initiatives'--and focus intently on ESG resourcing, they're better able to develop a true agenda for ESG transformation. Such an agenda can be invaluable for leaders as they seek to make the right trade-offs between compliance and ESG leadership, to capture the imagination of stakeholders and to maintain focus in busy organizations that frequently are trying to transform in other ways, too.

The impetus for business to address ESG issues and opportunities is likely to continue to grow, spurred by investors and shareholders, governments and policymakers, employees, suppliers, customers and citizens more broadly. There is a heightened awareness of the risks that need to be identified and managed, but there is also a growing sense of the huge opportunities offered by the scale of the transformation society is now facing. Whether your journey starts as a response to a new reporting requirement or reflects a top-down strategy refresh, it will lead to a pervasive reappraisal of operations, activities and (especially) outcomes throughout the business. It will also create opportunities to identify and realize significant new sources of value creation.

Peter Gassmann leads PwC's global environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practice and is managing director for Strategy& Europe, PwC's strategy consulting group. Based in D¼sseldorf, he is a partner with PwC Germany.

Casey Herman leads PwC's ESG practice in the United States. Based in Chicago, he is a partner with PwC US.

Colm Kelly is PwC's global leader for purpose, policy, and corporate responsibility. Based in Dublin, he is a partner with PwC Ireland.

The authors would like to thank Duncan Cox, Sara De Smith, Will Evison, Paul Leinwand, Frederik Lindblad, Matt Mani, Alan McGill, Gavin Sanderson, and Ruirui Zong-R¼he.

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Sun, 28 Nov 2021 12:24

The plant-based antiviral agent thapsigargin (TG), derived from a group of poisonous plants known as 'deadly carrots', appears to be effective against all variants of SARS-CoV-2 in the lab '' and that includes the quick-spreading Delta variant.

A previous study published in February demonstrated that TG can be effective against a host of viruses. Now, this latest work by the same research team confirms that the antiviral also isn't being outflanked as SARS-CoV-2 evolves. With the emergence of new variants an ongoing possibility, it's intriguing to observe the continuous efficacy of TG.

In tests on cell cultures in the lab, doses of TG delivered either before infection or during active infection were shown to block and inhibit SARS-CoV-2 variants, triggering a broad and powerful protective response.

''A single pre-infection priming dose of TG effectively blocked all single-variant infections and every combination (AB, AD, BD variants) of co-infection at greater than 95 percent relative to controls,'' write the researchers in their published paper.

As a host-centric antiviral, TG seems to break some of the mechanisms that viruses like SARS-CoV-2 hijack in host cells to replicate themselves and spread throughout the body.

''All available data (generated by us and others) as exemplified in influenza virus, respiratory syncytial virus, and coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-2, indicate that TG does not prevent viral entry but rather triggers intracellular pathways to inhibit virus replication,'' the team writes.

The cell culture study also confirmed the higher replication rate and cell-to-cell transmission rate of the Delta variant: it was found to spread at four times the rate of the Alpha variant of coronavirus and at nine times the rate of the Beta variant.

What's more, Delta can accelerate the multiplication of other variants when co-infections occur. If someone succumbs to two variants of SARS-CoV-2 at the same time, then Delta acts as an extra boost for whatever other variant it's partnering up with.

''Our new study has given us better insights into the dominance of the Delta variant,'' says Kin-Chow Chang, a professor of Veterinary Molecular Medicine at the University of Nottingham in the UK.

''Even though we have shown that this variant is clearly the most infectious and promotes production of other variants in co-infections, we are pleased to have shown that TG is just as effective against all of them.''

While vaccinations massively reduce the risk of getting infected with SARS-CoV-2, they don't reduce the risk entirely '' and of course, there are substantial numbers of people who can't or won't agree to get a jab to protect themselves against the virus.

With that in mind, finding new treatments to manage COVID-19 will remain a high priority for controlling the ongoing global pandemic. It's not certain that TG would be as effective against future variants, but the signs are good.

After demonstrating its efficacy in the lab, the next step is actually developing treatments from TG, which would of course take time '' as you might expect from an agent developed from a poisonous plant, it's going to take a significant amount of further research to turn it into something safe for humans.

Testing it against cell cultures and getting promising results is by no means even a guarantee that this antiviral would eventually pass a clinical trial, but it's a hugely exciting first step for sure.

''Together, these results point to the antiviral potential of TG as a post-exposure prophylactic and an active therapeutic agent,'' says Kin-Chow Chang.

The research has been published in Virulence.

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Sun, 28 Nov 2021 12:23

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

The new 'Omicron' variant of COVID-19 was first detected in four people who were fully vaccinated, according to a public statement by the Botswana government.

The new variant, which some claim is three times more contagious, was initially discovered in Botswana before it spread across South Africa.

The news was met with global alarm, prompting financial markets to plummet and new travel bans to be put in place.

According to a public statement by the Botswana government, the new mutation was first discovered in four people who had received both doses of the COVID-19 vaccine.

The Botswana Government says that the new COVID variant (named Omicron) was first detected in four patients who were FULLY VACCINATED for COVID. https://t.co/twfaWmK2Gu

'-- Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) November 26, 2021According to the report, four cases of the new variant ''were reported and recorded'' on November 22.

''The preliminary report revealed that all the four had been completely vaccinated for COVID-19,'' according to Botswana authorities.

In a subsequent statement, the government revealed that the new variant ''was detected on four foreign nationals who had entered Botswana on the 7th November 2021, on a diplomatic mission.''

STATEMENT ON THE NEW COVID-19 VARIANT pic.twitter.com/ItmUi8H6j8

'-- Botswana Government (@BWGovernment) November 26, 2021''The quartet tested positive for COVID-19 on the 11th November 2021 as they were preparing to return,'' according to the statement.

In a piece of good news, others who had close contact with the infectees ''have no COVID-19 symptoms and have tested negative for COVID-19.''

As we highlighted earlier, according to Belgian Prime Minister , the Omicron variant is so potentially devastating that it should be called 'COVID-21'.

Meanwhile, South Africa's medical chief Dr. Angelique Coetzee described the panic as a ''storm in a teacup,'' adding that she had only seen ''very very mild cases'' of the variant so far.

* * *

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Sun, 28 Nov 2021 12:13

No sanctions will be brought against the state-funded, $25 million COVID testing lab in Valencia despite whistleblower accounts of untrained technicians sleeping on the job, swapping specimens and posting too many inconclusive results.

The California Department of Public Health on Monday issued a long overdue report declaring that deficiencies reported by whistleblowers or found by its own inspections had not been proven or were corrected at the lab, which mostly services racial minorities and schoolchildren.

''All deficiencies were addressed and there was no impact to the integrity of the tests processed at the laboratory,'' said the report, which was due last March after whistleblower allegations were broadcast in February by CBS13 in Sacramento.

The state announcement Monday came weeks after the state automatically renewed its $1.7 billion, no-bid contract with lab operator PerkinElmer of Massachusetts, sparking protests from state Sen. Scott Wilk, R-Santa Clarita. Wilk had urged the state to hold off on the contract renewal until at least after the report was released.

Allegations troubling''The allegations exposed in February were troubling to say the least '-- swapped samples, inaccurate results, contamination and beyond. Not to mention, private labs are producing the same results at a reduced cost,'' Wilk said Monday.

Public health officials, in an email Tuesday, said the contract can be rescinded without cause with 45 days notice.

''The state chose to allow the auto renew provision in the contract with PerkinElmer to take effect to ensure we have the capabilities in place for a potential surge,'' officials said. ''The laboratory continues to play a critical role in meeting California's goal of expanding equitable and affordable access to COVID-19 testing.'' '‹

Processes, documentation improvedPerkinElmer spokesman Chet Murray added that the Valencia branch laboratory is now fully accredited.

''We have worked with (the state's Laboratory Field Services) to clarify our practices and, where appropriate, implement improved processes and documentation to address any and all concerns by LFS,'' Murray said Tuesday. ''As a result of these efforts and our work with LFS, we are pleased to say that LFS has recently informed us that the (Valencia lab) is in full compliance with state laws and regulations governing clinical laboratories.

''This is further evidence that PerkinElmer and CDPH remain steadfastly focused on operating a best-in-class laboratory for the benefit of California residents.''

Earlier inspections by the health department's Laboratory Field Services found problems in documentation, record-keeping, process and training, which the state labeled as normal for such a lab in the development stages.

Problems at the lab were first reported by CBS13 last February in a Super Bowl Sunday broadcast that prompted laboratory officials to order some supervisors to immediately report to the lab. Whistleblowers alleged those employees were told to destroy records, an accusation that could not later be corroborated by state inspectors.

Problems detailedOther problems reported by insiders, as told by CBS13 :

Employees sleeping or playing video games while COVID-19 tests were being processed.Used COVID-19 swabs found in the bathroom. Some tests were swapped with each otherInconclusive or erroneous results sent to consumers.Contamination.Repeated errors in processing.Employees properly trainedThe initial state investigation '-- basically California investigating itself '-- found that the laboratory allowed half of its staff, 236 of 426 workers, to process samples without completing training and competency protocols. The lab responded that all the employees were trained, but it was not properly documented.

The state also found that lost, missing or discarded samples were reported simply as ''unsatisfactory'' samples.

''The laboratory reports indicating the samples were unsatisfactory, when in fact the samples were inadvertently discarded, is misleading, and failed to provide the correct condition and disposition of the specimens,'' said the first state investigation.

Director criticizedMore trouble emerged when laboratory director Adam Rosendorff was criticized during testimony in an unrelated fraud case against the former chief officer of the Theranos blood lab. Rosendorff is the former director of the Theranos laboratory. Defense attorneys for former CEO Elizabeth Holmes attempted to use his problems at the Valencia lab to blame him for the problems at Theranos.

Rosendorff is himself a whistleblower and key witness in the government's case against Holmes.

According to the state, the Valencia lab has performed more than 5.5 million tests on samples from more than 4,700 specimen collection sites developed with churches, schools, clinics, essential workplaces and community-based organizations. Although Gov. Gavin Newsom said the lab would process 150,000 tests a day, it is now doing about 40,000 samples a day, on peak days. Roughly 0.35% of results are inconclusive, meaning a retest is recommended.

State officials did not answer how much each test cost.

The median turnaround time at the laboratory is 36 hours from collection to result. The contract requires that tests be turned around in 24 to 48 hours.

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Sun, 28 Nov 2021 12:08

The Australian government will introduce new legislation forcing social media companies to ''unmask'' anonymous users who post offensive comments, or make them pay defamation fines if they are unable or refuse to do so.

The new initiative seeks to define social media giants as publishers, making them responsible for the user-generated content on their platforms, as well as to introduce special mechanisms through which anyone can file a complaint and demand a post takedown if they think they are being defamed, bullied or harassed, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced during a televised press briefing on Sunday.

The online world should not be a wild west where bots and bigots and trolls and others are anonymously going around and can harm people.

If a platform refuses to delete offensive content, a court may order it to reveal the identity of the anonymous commenter. In case the company again refuses or is unable to identify the troll '' then it will be held ultimately liable and will have to pay any resulting fines.

''Free speech is not being allowed to cowardly hide in your basement and sledge and slur and harass people anonymously and seek to destroy their lives,'' Morrison stated. ''In a free society such as Australia where we value our free speech, it is only free when that is balanced with the responsibility for what you say.''

Morrison offered little insight into details of the proposed legislation, or if it will be up for public debate, but said he expects strong support from parliament. He previously hinted at an imminent crackdown on online anonymity during a G20 summit last month, where he said ''the rules that apply in the real world should apply in the digital world.'' However, it remains unclear how exactly the Australian government expects social media companies to verify the identities of their users.

Revealed: The shocking conditions at Belmarsh Prison to which Julian Assange is exposed

The new measures, according to Attorney-General Michaelia Cash, are also supposed to bring more ''clarity'' to Australia's High Court's decision back in September, which ruled that media are liable for user comments even if the stories themselves are not defamatory. The ruling forced several media including CNN to shut their Facebook pages for Australian users over uncertainty and the risk of defamation claims.

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Archived Version

Sun, 28 Nov 2021 05:09

What is the new variant?

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has named the new B.1.1529 coronavirus variant ''Omicron'', designating it as a variant of concern just weeks after it was first detected.

The announcement came on Friday amid growing concerns that it is highly transmissible and could reduce the efficacy of vaccines. However, given that Omicron only emerged recently, scientists believe it could take a few months before we have a more complete understanding of the scale of the threat it poses.

What is certain is that this variant, which descends from the B.1.1 lineage, is ''unprecedented'' and ''very unusual'' in the number of its mutations.

B.1.1529 has 32 mutations located in its spike protein. These include E484A, K417N and N440K, which are associated with helping the virus to escape detection from antibodies.

Another mutation, N501Y, appears to increase the ability of the virus to gain entry to our cells, making it more transmissible.

Where did it come from?

The variant was first spotted in Botswana on 11 November, where three cases have now been recorded.

Meanwhile in South Africa, where the first case was spotted on 14 November, 22 cases have now been recorded, according to the National Institute for Communicable Diseases.

More cases are expected to be confirmed in the country as sequencing results come out, with the South African government saying on Thursday that many of the Omicron cases were located in Gauteng province. It has also requested an urgent meeting with the WHO's Covid technical working group.

An additional case has been identified in Hong Kong, involving a 36-year-old traveller '' who had stayed in South Africa from 23 October to 11 November '' and who tested positive three days into quarantine on his return home.

On Friday, Europe had its first confirmed case after an infection was reported in Belgium. Virologist Marc Van Ranst tweeted that the variant had been detected in a traveller who returned from Egypt earlier this month.

Scientists have said that the variant has more changes to its spike protein than any other they have seen. There are suggestions that it might have emerged from an immunocompromised person who harboured the virus for a long period of time, possibly someone with undiagnosed HIV/AIDS.

Professor Francois Balloux, the director of the Genetics Institute at University College London, said that the variant's mutations are in ''an unusual constellation'' that ''accumulated apparently in a single burst''.

He explained that this indicates it could have evolved during a ''chronic infection of an immunocompromised person, possibly in an untreated HIV/AIDS patient''.

So far, no cases of the variant have been recorded in the UK.

Is it resistant to vaccines?

The spike proteins which coat the outside of the Covid virus allow it to attach and gain entry to human cells. The vaccines train the body to recognise these spikes and neutralise them, therefore preventing infection of cells.

The 32 mutations detected in the new variant's spike protein will change the shape of this structure, making it problematic for the immune response induced by the vaccines.

These mutations can make the spike protein less recognisable to our antibodies. As a result, they won't be as effective at neutralising the virus, which is then able to slip past immune defences and cause infection.

Should we be concerned?

Two infections with the new Omicron variant of Covid have been detected in the UK, it has been announced.

The cases '' in Chelmsford, Essex, and in Nottingham '' are ''linked'' and have been traced to southern Africa, health secretary Sajid Javid said, as he started targeted sequence testing of other cases in the areas.

Mr Javid announced that four countries '' Angola, Mozambique, Malawi, and Zambia '' are being added to the travel 'red list' from Sunday, requiring arrivals to quarantine in a hotel for 10 days.

Scientists have mixed opinions over whether or not we should be worried about the latest variant.

Dr Tom Peacock, a virologist at Imperial College London, warned that the variant could be ''of real concern'' due to its 32 mutations in its spike protein.

However, Prof Balloux said that at the moment there is ''no reason to get overly concerned.''

Taking to Twitter, Dr Peacock wrote that the variant ''very, very much should be monitored due to that horrific spike profile'' which could mean that it is more contagious than any other variant so far.

He said: ''Export to Asia implies this might be more widespread than sequences alone would imply.

''Also the extremely long branch length and incredibly high amount of spike mutations suggest this could be of real concern (predicted escape from most known monoclonal antibodies).''

But Dr Peacock said that he ''hopes'' the variant will turn out to be one of these ''odd clusters'' and that it will not be as transmissible as feared.

Meanwhile, Prof Balloux said that ''it is difficult to predict how transmissible it may be at this stage.''

The professor explained: ''For the time being, it should be closely monitored and analysed, but there is no reason to get overly concerned, unless it starts going up in frequency in the near future.''

Dr Meera Chand, the Covid-19 incident director at the UK Health Security Agency, said that the status of new Covid variants worldwide is constantly being monitored at random and that a small number of cases with ''new sets of mutations'' were ''not unusual.''

She explained: ''As it is in the nature of viruses to mutate often and at random, it is not unusual for small numbers of cases to arise featuring new sets of mutations. Any variants showing evidence of spread are rapidly assessed.''

Countries have started to act against the threat, with the UK adding Botswana, Eswatini, Namibia, Lesotho, South and Zimbabwe to the UK's travel red list to stem the spread of the variant.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid said there is ''huge international concern'' about the Omicron variant, while Professor John Edmunds, a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), called its emergence ''extremely worrying''.

''The molecular data is extremely worrying...the molecular data would point to that perhaps this thing might be able to evade the immune response,'' he said.

Professor Andrew Pollard, of the Oxford Vaccine Group, said it is ''extremely unlikely'' to trigger a major new wave of the Covid pandemic in the UK, despite the travel restrictions.

And the microbiologist Professor Calum Semple, who sits on the Sage advisory group, said the development was ''not a disaster''.

''The headlines from some of my colleagues saying 'this is horrendous' I think are hugely overstating the situation. Immunity from the vaccination is still likely to protect you from severe disease,'' he said.

''You might get a snuffle or a headache or a filthy cold but your chance of coming into hospital or intensive care or sadly dying are greatly diminished by the vaccine and still will be going into the future.''

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Sun, 28 Nov 2021 05:02

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., October 14, 2021.

Brendan McDermid | Reuters

Uncertainty about a new emerging coronavirus strain could continue to spook markets, just as Friday's employment report and other data in the week ahead show the economy has been getting stronger.

Stocks and other risk assets were slammed in the post-Thanksgiving session Friday on reports of a new variant in South Africa, and investors sought safety in Treasurys. Initial reports on the variant show it could be more transmissible than the Delta variant, and scientists are studying how effective vaccines are against it.

The Dow was down 905 points, or 2.5% Friday in its worse day since October, 2020. The S&P 500 tumbled 2.3% Friday to 4,594, giving it a 2.2% decline for the week.

"I think that's going to override what else we're going to see," said Peter Boockvar, chief investment officer at Bleakley Advisory Group. "It's a heavy data week with the ISMs and certainly payrolls, but I think this new variant is going to freeze behavior until there's more clarity."

According to Dow Jones, economists expect a strong payroll report Friday, with 581,000 jobs added, after October's 531,000 payrolls. They expect the economy has shaken off the effects of the slowdown linked to the Covid delta variant, and growth in the current quarter could be far stronger than the third quarter.

The Institute of Supply Management manufacturing survey is released Wednesday, and that should also be strong.

Scott Redler, partner with T3Live.com, said many traders were caught off sides in the shortened session Friday, usually a positive one for the market, and there are key levels the market must hold in the week ahead in order to stage a yearend Santa rally.

"Right now, the market lost some momentum, but it's not broken. It could be just fine and refuel if the 50-day moving average on the S&P 500 holds next week. It's all very fluid," he said.

The 50-day, at 4,527, is a widely-watched momentum indicator, and it is basically the average close of the last 50 sessions.

The market had already been losing momentum this past Monday with a bearish reversal, he said.

"On Wednesday, the market absorbed the weakness and gave traders a false sense of security which is normally a nice easy holiday-shortened session Friday," Redler said.

Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA, said the S&P 500 typically gains 7% between its October low and year-end close, but this year it had already gained more than 9%.

"We're ahead of the game and due for some sort of digestion," Stovall said on CNBC.

The Dow dipped more than 1,000 points during Friday trading. Riskier assets were down even more, with the Russell 2000 closing off 3.7% Friday. West Texas Intermediate oil futures plunged more than 12%, and bitcoin was down nearly 8%. Some investors began to reverse bets in the futures market that a strong economic rebound and inflationary pressures would pull the Fed off the sidelines sooner-than-expected.

The 10-year Treasury yield, which moves opposite price, fell to 1.48% from Wednesday's high of 1.69%.

Investors will be looking for guidance from Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, who appears before Congress in the week ahead with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to discuss the coronavirus and the CARES Act stimulus package. On Tuesday, there is a hearing before the Senate Banking Committee.

"I think you have to assume the base case is the virus remains endemic, not back to being a pandemic," said Barry Knapp, founder of Ironsides Macroeconomics. The worry is that the variant spreads and slows activity, hitting supply chains even more. That could boost inflation while slowing growth.

Knapp said there are risks for stocks, and investors need to be cautious buying the market on the decline.

Knapp said the Fed could end up accelerating the taper of its bond purchases, which would move forward the time frame for potential interest rate hikes.

"The problem with trying to buy the market overall and buying tech stocks in particular is if you buy now because it is down a couple of percent, it rallies into the end of the year and then the market sells off," he said. For that reason, he favors dipping into cheaper sectors like energy and financials, the worst performing sectors Friday.

Oil and energy will be in the spotlight in the coming week, as OPEC+ meets Thursday. The U.S. and other governments agreed to release oil from their strategic petroleum reserves in an attempt to drive prices lower. The U.S. plans to release 50 million barrels.

OPEC+ has said it would continue to increase production by 400,000 barrels monthly, despite calls from the White House to speed up the release.

Helima Croft, head of global commodities strategy at RBC, said on CNBC there is a chance OPEC could decide to pause its own production increase because of the SPR releases.

"I think as we head into the OPEC meeting Thursday, the question is not only do they do a pause but potentially will they actually pull back some barrels because of concerns about this new variant alongside the very large SPR release," she said.

She said the U.S. is releasing a record amount of oil. "We are going to have a lot of barrels hitting this market, as we have these concerns about new Covid lockdown restrictions," she said. "Again, too soon to say whether governments will pull the trigger on such measures, but the market will be concerned."

Week ahead calendarMonday

10:00 a.m. Pending home sales

3:00 p.m. New York Fed President John Williams

3:05 p.m. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell makes opening remarks at New York Fed event introducing the New York Innovation Center

5:05 p.m. Fed Governor Michelle Bowman

Tuesday

Earnings: Salesforce.com, Box, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, NetApp, Zscaler, Ambarella

9:00 a.m. FHFA home prices

9:00 a.m. Case-Shiller home prices

9:45 a.m. Chicago PMI

10:00 a.m. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen speak before Senate Banking on Coronavirus and the CARES Act

10:00 a.m. Consumer confidence

1:00 p.m. Fed Vice Chairman Richard Clarida and Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester

Wednesday

Earnings: Royal Bank of Canada, PVH, Okta, Five Below, CrowdStrike, Splunk, Snowflake, Synopsys

Vehicle sales

7:00 a.m. Mortgage applications

8:15 a.m. ADP private payrolls

10:00 a.m. Powell and Yellen at House Financial Services committee

10:00 a.m. Construction spending

10:00 a.m. ISM Manufacturing

10:30 a.m. New York Fed's Williams

2:00 p.m. Beige book

Thursday

Earnings: Ulta Beauty, Signet Jewelers, Dollar General, Express, Kroger, Toronto Dominion, Imperial Canadian Bank, DocuSign, Assana, Marvell Technology, Ollie's Bargain Outlet, Zumiez, Smith and Wesson

8:30 a.m. Jobless claims

8:30 a.m. Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic

11:30 a.m. Atlanta Fed's Bostic

1:00 p.m. Fed Vice Chairman Randal Quarles

Friday

8:30 a.m. Employment report

10:00 a.m. ISM Services

10:00 a.m. Factory orders

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Archived Version

Sat, 27 Nov 2021 16:33

Authored by 'sundance' via TheConservativeTreehouse.com,

A big win for medical privacy and the principles of freedom.

Ford, General Motors and Stellantis have agreed the United Auto Workers union members will not be forced to take the mandatory vaccine as a condition of employment.

Additionally, the vaccine status of the workers will remain private with a policy of private and voluntary disclosure.

UAW '' At a meeting Monday evening, the COVID-19 Joint Task Force, comprised of the UAW, Ford, General Motors and Stellantis, has aligned on a policy of voluntary and confidential disclosure of vaccination status for UAW members. Each company will provide additional communication to employees on how, where and when to report their vaccination status.

In addition to encouraging members to disclose their vaccination status, the Task Force continues to urge all members, coworkers, and their families to get vaccinated and get booster vaccinations against COVID-19, while understanding that there are personal reasons that may prevent some members from being vaccinated, such as health issues or religious beliefs.

After reviewing the status of CDC and OSHA guidelines, the Task Force also decided it is in the best interest of worker safety to continue masks in all worksites at this time. (read more)

This helps swing the pendulum back toward the American worker.

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Sat, 27 Nov 2021 15:40

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Sat, 27 Nov 2021 15:10

Despite rave reviews, Disney's Encanto, an animated musical with songs from Lin-Manuel Miranda, took a nosedive at the holiday box office.

Lol.

As of Thursday, this tale of a magic castle in Colombia (or something) is expected to gross just $26 million over three days and an anemic $38.6 million over the full five-day holiday.

First off, no one can blame streaming. This is a theatrical-only release.

Secondly, no one can blame the pandemic. Plenty of movies are opening just fine.

How bad is this?

Oh, it's bad.

By comparison, one of Disney's biggest bombs, The Good Dinosaur, grossed $55.4 million over the five-day Thanksgiving weekend.

This is also the second time Hollywood's precious Lin-Manuel Miranda has failed to juice the box office this year. His live-action musical, In the Heights, opened to a devastating $11 million back in June. This, after the so-called experts predicted it would haul in up to $50 million.

Well, this is what happens to an industry that's lost touch with its audience. Outside of Manhattan and Los Angeles, no one knows or cares who Lin-Manuel Miranda is. And those of us who do know him find his woketardery obnoxious and off-putting. He's not here to entertain. He's here to lecture!

So why did Encanto flop?

I have no idea.

Although I'm sure the far-left entertainment media will soon blame this failure on ''racist'' Americans ignoring a movie set in Colombia, that holds no water. Disney's Coco (2017) was set in Mexico and grossed $210 million in the U.S. and almost $900 million worldwide. Disney's Moana (2016) was set in Polynesia and grossed $250 million in the U.S. and nearly $650 million worldwide.

Whatever the reason, here's what should worry Disney'...

Disney couldn't open this sucker.

If there is one area where the Walt Disney Co. outshines all others, and by a country mile, it is/was the ability to open a movie. Not only is the Disney brand itself magic, but Disney has the greatest opening machine we've ever seen.

Well, not so much anymore, and I blame Disney's Woke Nazism for tarnishing the brand, for monkey-wrenching the machine.

Disney's brand problems began with squatting over its Star Wars brand and dropping a dump of woke all over it.

Disney's brand problems got worse when these fascist China-humpers blacklisted Gina Carano for the sin of rejecting servitude on the Woke Plantation.

Disney is open and strident about its racist and intolerant left-wing politics.

Disney is destroying the innocence of children with its appalling embrace of sexual politics.

And now Disney has no Star Wars film franchise, its streaming service is under-performing, its Marvel franchise has stumbled, and it didn't open a no-brainer like Encanto.

Disney has worked overtime to tarnish a once trusted and beloved brand by all Americans, most especially parents.

Disney used to entertain and inspire. Now it lectures and perverts, and those chickens are coming home to roost.

Lol.

Elsewhere at the box office, the non-woke Ghostbusters: Afterlife had a terrific second weekend with a $34 million haul, which puts its gross at $87 million. House of Gucci is doing pretty well with a $22 million opener. Disney's Eternals sputtered with an $11 million fourth weekend, which brings it to an awful $150 million total.

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.

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Sat, 27 Nov 2021 15:02

Collated from a twitter thread by Yaffa Shir-Raz

The Israeli "Real-Time News" reports: Breaking news: 500% increase in deaths - SCD/SUD of FIFA players in 2021

Not 24 athletes, not 30, nor 75 - Since December, 183 professional athletes and coaches have suddenly collapsed! 108 of them died! According to the literature, the phenomenon of collapsing athlete breakdown for reasons unrelated to injury is rare.

So what is causing this sudden epidemic?

The "Real-Time News" investigation presents a list of athletes who were injured and/or died. Analyzing the list we found:

Most athletes are males (only 15 females)

TheVast majority are 17-40 years. Only 21 are older (5 aged 42-45, six aged 46-49, 7 aged 51-54, and 3 others aged 60-64).

23 are teenagers, aged 12-17, 16 died.

In over 80 of the cases, such as football stars Sergio Aguero and Christian Eriksen, the athletes collapsed while playing, racing or training, or immediately after.

In most cases, it has been reported that the cause of the collapse is heart-related, including myocarditis, pericarditis, heart attacks, or cardiac arrest.

The second cause reported is clotting events.

We emphasize that the list we have is even longer, but for the sake of caution, dozens of cases were removed, from it in which we did not have full details, so that only the cases that were reported in detail were included.

In addition, cases were removed in which evidence of previous risk factors was mentioned, such as a cardiac disease or diabetes.

To get a better picture of the data compared to previous years, we only looked at data relating to deaths among athletes registered with FIFA, and compared the data regarding the number of SCD (sudden cardiac death)/SUD (sudden unexplained death) among these athletes in previous years, to the number of cases in 2021.

To find out how many deaths actually occurred during the last two decades among FIFA players (2001-2020), we used Wikipedia - "List of association footballers who died while playing". To know how many cases occurred in 2021, we used the list collected by us in "Real-Time News" (which includes the cases noted in Wikipedia for 2021).

Dr. Josh Guetzkow, a senior lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and the Institute of Criminology at the Hebrew University, analyzed the data. "An article published in the British Medical Journal shows that the risk of SCD is one in 50,000 (with a range from one in 30,000 to one in 80,000)," he explains. "According to FIFA data, in 2000 there were 242,000 athletes registered in the association, and in 2006 there were 265,000 athletes registered. Assuming FIFA has not changed significantly in twenty years, can expect about 5 deaths a year".

According to Wikipedia, under "List of association footballers who died while playing", in 2001-2020 there was an average of 4.2 deaths per year attributed to SCD or SUD, the vast majority being SCD. In contrast, in 2021, according to our list, there were 21 cases of SCD/SUD among FIFA players. In other words, instead of 4 SCD/SUD deaths per year (according to Wikipedia data), or 5 cases per year (calculated according to the BMJ) during 2001-2020, 21 players have died so far this year.That is, about 5 times more than the annual average!

This figure is found to be statistically significant. In fact, there is no other year since 2001 where the difference between the number of observed cases of SCD/SUD and the expected number is statistically significant.In 2021 it is highly statistically significant and only likely to happen by chance about 2 in 1,000 times.

Yaffa's notes:

List of athletes who have been injured and/or died since December 2020

Stephen's notes:

A quick and dirty statistical analysis (not rigorous, but good enough for a sanity check of the ''this figure is found to be statistically significant'':When counting events like SCD, we expect a certain base rate and the events will follow what is called a Poisson distribution. One property of the Poisson distribution is that the standard deviation (a measure of how much variability from random chance) is the square root of the base rate.

If we typically see 4 events per year, the standard deviation will be 2, and 95% of the time we will see something within 2 standard deviations from that base rate.

If we see 20 events in one year that's 8 standard deviations from the mean, so 20 events is very very unusual.

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Archived Version

Sat, 27 Nov 2021 14:17

Omicron variant timeline Monday, 22 November : Variant found in Hong Kong, Botswana and South Africa Tuesday, 23 November : UK scientist sounds the alarm about 'horrific' 32 mutations Wednesday, 24 November : Downing Street claims strain is not an 'issue' but ministers meet behind the scenes Thursday, 25 November : Cases soar in South Africa and Britain issue flight ban Friday, 26 November : Strain found in Belgium and countries across world close borders The world shut itself off from Southern Africa today in response to a super mutant variant that was unheard of just days ago.

B.1.1.529 '-- which has now been named Omicron'-- was first picked up in Hong Kong on Monday in a patient who had travelled from South Africa.

It did not catch international attention until Wednesday after a British scientists mentioned its 32 'horrific' mutations on social media after cases were picked up in Botswana and South Africa as well.

Boris Johnson's spokesperson said the variant was not an 'issue' on Wednesday afternoon despite UK experts warning it had a horrific set of mutations that could allow it to dodge vaccines.

By Thursday the South African Government was forced to warn the world about the strain at a sombre press conference, admitting it had triggered an 'exponential' rise in Guateng province and was likely in every corner of the country, outpacing Delta at ferocious speed.

The UK Health and Security Agency (UKHSA) said it was monitoring the situation closely but that it did not pose a threat to the UK at the time. Chris Whitty and other prominent experts warned of a potential global outbreak that could undermine the UK's vaccine programme.

Journalists were briefed on Thursday night by senior scientists at a hastily organised briefing where they were told the variant was at least 40 per cent more vaccine evasive than Delta.

The media was told the strain was the worst seen 'ever' and that the variant could be at least 40 per cent more vaccine evasive.

At the same time, an emergency Covid committee cabinet meeting convened to discuss Britain's next steps to deal with the variant.

It prompted a rapid announcement from Health Secretary Sajid Javid last night that there would be a travel ban on six African countries in the south of the continent.

And scientists hit the airwaves this morning to warn of the potential return of draconian Covid restrictions this winter because of the strain.

New cases were picked up in Israel and then Belgium and European countries began shutting off their borders to people coming in from South Africa, with passengers unable to leave a plane in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Here MailOnline reviews how the Botswana variant inspired global pandemic within the space of 48 hours...

Monday and Tuesday

Researchers in Hong Kong were the first to raise the alarm about the new strain on Monday after discovering the strain in two passengers who had recently returned from South Africa.

It was also picked up in Botswana, where it was sequenced three times, and South Africa '-- who had only seen one case at the time.

Scientists from all three countries uploaded it to an international database of variants used by experts from across the world, including the UK.

Dr Tom Peacock, a British virologist at Imperial College London who works with the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), voiced concern about the strain's 32 'horrific' mutations '-- twice as many as Delta '-- on Tuesday.

Writing on social media, Dr Peacock said: 'Just spotted: Very small cluster of variant associated with Southern Africa with very long branch length and really awful Spike mutation profile.'

Wednesday

MailOnline broke the news about the variant on Wednesday, before No10's official spokesperson shrugged it off as 'not seen as something that is an issue' despite experts' fears that it would be more vaccine evasive than Delta.

Some scientists dismissed fears, saying the strain's large amount of mutations meant it could become unstable '-- meaning it would be unlikely to become widespread.

But others warned if it started taking over the dominant Delta variant in South Africa it could have knock-on effects for the rest of the world.

Professor Francois Balloux, a geneticist at University College London, said it likely emerged in a lingering infection in an immunocompromised patient, possibly someone with undiagnosed AIDS.

He said it was likely the variant would be much more able to dodge antibodies than Delta.

Professor Balloux told MailOnline: 'For the time being, it should be closely monitored. But there's no need to be overly concerned, unless it starts going up in frequency.'

Behind the scenes, MailOnline understands there were 'extensive talks' between British Government scientists and those in South Africa on Wednesday and Thursday.

Thursday

Cases began to grow exponentially in the Guateng Province in South Africa on Thursday, with a particular spike in Johannesburg, where they shot up 93 per cent in a single day.

The South African Government held a press conference on the same day, saying that they are 'concerned by the jump in evolution in this variant'.

British ministers were called to an emergency meeting of the Covid Operations Cabinet Committee on Thursday, chaired by Cabinet Office minister Steven Barclay, to discuss shutting Britain's borders to travellers from Africa.

They were told vaccines would be at least 40 per cent less effective against the variant '-- because of a mutation it shares with the original South African Beta variant '-- at the meeting.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid attended the meeting but Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, the housing minister, were not part of discussions.

It was set up due to concerns raised by England's Chief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty and UKHSA boss Dr Jenny Harries.

Passengers on last flights back from South Africa say they faced no extra restrictions Passengers arriving into the UK on one of the last flights from South Africa have revealed they were not offered tests and left to mix with hundreds of others despite mounting concern over the new variant.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid has announced that flights from South Africa - as well as Namibia, Lesotho, Botswana, Eswatini and Zimbabwe - will be suspended from midday. They have all been placed on the red list.

But passengers arriving from Johannesburg - the capital of the province of Gauteng where the variant was first identified - were subjected to 'no additional precautions', according to one of the people on the flight - one of three arriving at Heathrow before the ban comes into force.

Writer and political commentator Adam Schwarz tweeted: 'A friend arrived in London this morning on one of the last flights from South Africa. Health officials met the plane, but no additional precautions are being taken for the hundreds of passengers.

'The captain read out a statement ''advising'' self-isolation and further tests. But it's at the discretion of passengers and it's not legally enforceable. Passengers then got on the airport shuttle to baggage reclaim, mixing with dozens of other flights. No testing was offered.'

A Government source said: 'Whitty and the experts said we needed to act. They wanted to get it out as soon as possible.'

Insiders stressed they were acting out of an 'abundance of caution'. The issue only came on the radar at No10 on Wednesday. 'We have moved more quickly than with previous decisions,' one source said.

Later, senior UK Government scientists briefed the media at a hastily organised press conference last night at 7.45pm.

One senior UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) expert said: 'This is the worst variant we have seen so far.'

Experts from the UKHSA have been advising ministers on the issue, with a number of scientists expressing serious concern over the variant due to the significant number of mutations in the spike protein.

One senior scientist said: 'One of our major worries is this virus spike protein is so dramatically different to the virus spike that was in the original Wuhan strain, and therefore in our vaccines, that it has a great cause of concern.'

Sajid Javid released a video on Twitter on Thursday night at around 8.50pm announcing the Government was banning all flights from South Africa, Namibia, Lesotho, Botswana, Eswatini and Zimbabwe.

Friday

7am

Scientists hit the airwaves this morning to warn Britain may have to accept the reintroduction of draconian lockdown restrictions this Christmas as a result of the warning.

Professor Adam Finn, a member of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), earlier raised the prospect of lockdown curbs being reintroduced, warning that people must be braced for a 'change in restrictions' if the variant spreads to the UK.

Dr Susan Hopkins, chief medical adviser of the UK's Health and Security Agency (UKHSA), warned it was 'possible' the strain has already entered Britain.

She said 'people are arriving every day' to the UK from Belgium, South Africa, Botswana, Hong Kong and Israel where the variant has been officially detected.

Belgium's health ministry said a case was spotted in an unvaccinated young woman who got tested after suffering symptoms. She had returned from Egypt 11 days ago.

11am

Israel has also detected a case in a vaccinated individual, meaning it has now been confirmed in three continents. The Israeli had returned from Malawi. Two other suspected cases are being investigated.

Passengers flying to Holland from South Africa were banned from getting off the plane as the continent tightened its borders in an attempt to shut out the strain.

Flights in and out of Britain from the six African countries were supposed to be scrapped at midday today, despite No10 scrapping the no-fly travel 'red list' just weeks ago.

Yet, British arrivals from the variant's epicentre Johannesburg were left to mingle with hundreds of others as they flew into Heathrow on the last flights out of Africa before the red list was re-imposed at midday. Passengers revealed they were not tested or questioned about their travel history.

Those coming from variant epicentre Johannesburg said they faced 'no additional precautions'. Others told how they were getting around the ban by flying to other countries and then to the UK.

Ursula von der Leyen called for the EU to pull the 'emergency brake' on travel from southern Africa on the back of the announcement, warning that the strain could be world-dominant in months.

The EU Commission president said: 'All air travel to these countries should be suspended until we have a clearer understanding about the danger posed by this new variant. It is now important that all of us in Europe act very swiftly, decisively and united.'

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Archived Version

Sat, 27 Nov 2021 14:16

The Quebec Maple Syrup Producers are releasing 50 million pounds of maple syrup from its strategic reserves. Universal Images Group via GettyThe Biden administration is trying to reign in gas prices by releasing oil from the US strategic reserve '-- but a different sticky supply situation north of the border has spurred Canadians to tap their emergency stockpile of maple syrup amid a major shortage of the sweet stuff.

The Quebec Maple Syrup Producers is a government-sponsored cartel that controls some 70 percent of the world's maple syrup supply and is sometimes compared to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries' grip on oil.

The consortium of more than 11,000 Canadian maple syrup producers said this week that a warmer- and shorter-than-expected spring led to a 24 percent year-over-drop in production of the pancake topping.

Amid surging demand for syrup as more people cook at home amid the pandemic, the cartel has been forced to tap a whopping 50 million pounds of syrup from its strategic reserve.

That's the most the group has released from the reserve in a single season since 2008 and amounts to about half of the entire stockpile.

Helene Normandin, spokeswoman for the group, which sets bulk syrup prices, caps production and controls the stockpile, said the group will authorize more production of syrup next season in order to make up for the shortfall this year.

Maple syrup producers weren't able to meet demand this year. Qu(C)bec Maple Syrup Producers''That's why the reserve is made, to never miss maple syrup. And we won't miss maple syrup!'' she told NPR.

The French-speaking Canadian province produces more than 70 percent of the world's maple syrup supply.

''What we can figure at this moment is maybe the season here in Quebec will start a bit earlier in February, instead of March, and end earlier also,'' Normandin added.

Export sales reportedly rose to 113.5 million pounds between January and September of 2021 '-- up a whopping 21 percent from a year earlier, as people turned to the sugary topping to sweeten home-cooked meals during the pandemic.

Demand for maple syrup surged since the start of the pandemic. Xinhua News Agency via Getty ImaThe short and warm spring season hit maple syrup production particularly hard because tree sap is only able to be harvested during a small window when the temperature alternates between freezing and thawing.

The harvesting of sap and subsequent refining of it into syrup can be an intensive process that's heavily reliant on weather conditions, making year-to-year supply volatile.

This year marks the first time in three years, though, that the group has to tap its reserve.

In 2012 thieves stole over 3,000 tons of Maple Syrup that was worth millions of dollars. Qu(C)bec Maple Syrup ProducersIt's not the first time Quebec Maple Syrup Producers' strategic reserve has made headlines.

In 2012, thieves made off with more than 3,000 tons of maple syrup '-- worth some $19 million Canadian dollars '-- from the stockpile. The syrup was quietly syphoned off from the reserve over the course of months.

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Archived Version

Sat, 27 Nov 2021 14:14

First, a disclaimer. There is no evidence that the ''Nu Variant'' of Covid-19 which suddenly appeared in South Africa and seems to be spreading rapidly is not a serious concern. By no means do I want to dismiss all the fears that are popping up surrounding it. But here's the thing. We've been lied to throughout the entirety of this pandemic and based on the apparent agenda of the architects of The Great Reset, a fear-inducing new variant of Covid-19 would be exactly what they'd need to ramp up Pandemic Panic Theater to full strength again.

Is the ''Nu Variant'' a real killer? I don't know. But I know the fears surrounding the ''Delta Variant'' as well as the initial fears surrounding Covid-19 were extremely overblown. Yes, the disease seems to put the elderly at risk (though some say it's just old age and preexisting conditions inflating their mortality rates), but we have proven time and again that Covid-19 is not a major risk for people under the age of 50 and barely registers as a risk at all for children.

Nevertheless, panic is already spreading about Nu, so we have to address it. Here is a roundup of stories pertaining to the new variant so our readers can get caught up. Below, I'll offer some additional commentary.

New 'Horrific' Covid Variant Spreading in South Africa''This is the most significant variant we have encountered to date and urgent research is underway to learn more about its transmissibility, severity and vaccine-susceptibility,'' UKHSA Chief Executive Jenny Harries said.

All Four Botswana ''Nu'' Variant Patients Were Fully VaccinatedThe ''Nu'' variant of COVID arrived just in time to ruin Christmas. (Who didn't see this coming?) The variant with ''more mutations than you shake a spike protein at'' was first identified in Botswana and quickly became the most prevalent variant in South Africa. But before you succumb to ''pandemic of the unvaccinated'' nonsense, consider this:

From the President of Botswana, where the variant was first discovered: The preliminary report revealed all four [patients] had been previously vaccinated for COVID-19.

A Terrified Wall Street Reacts to the Nu VariantCiti '' Andrew Baum

Pfizer can make a new variant-specific jab within 100 days if we all still care about ''Nu'' three months from now.''In the event that vaccine-escape variant emerges, Pfizer and BioNTech expect to be able to develop and produce a tailor- made vaccine against that variant in approximately 100 days, subject to regulatory approval,'' Pfizer spokeswoman confirmed in an emailed statement to Bloomberg.As for Baum, he published a note to clients that by now has been seen across Wall Street and the corporate world: ''Novel oral anti-virals should retain activity against Nu but resistance may emerge with time,'' Baum said.''The next two weeks with be critical to determine whether Nu will displace delta in countries with high background rates such as U.K. and Germany,'' writes Baum.Barclays '' Emmanuel Cau

''With many equity markets at an all-time high, thin year-end liquidity and Covid cases up again, a pull-back seems logical,'' says strategist Emmanuel Cau''We have advised a more barbell sector allocation and downside hedges at these levels, but we believe resilient growth and patient central banks should continue to provide cushion on a medium-term horizon, while investors have dry powder to buy dips''''What is key is to find out whether current vaccines remain effective against the variants, or not. Covid uncertainty might force central banks to err on the side of caution.''Berenberg '' Holger Schmieding

''At this stage, it is too early to assess the potential economic consequences,'' says chief economist Holger Schmieding''Any new wave could cause serious economic damage. As one potentially mitigating factor, the world is now on high alert and has ramped up its capacity to develop, adjust and produce vaccines''E.U., U.K., Israel to Halt Air Travel to Southern Africa Over New COVID-19 VariantAlthough the World Health Organization (WHO) cautioned against hastily imposing travel restrictions linked to the B.1.1.529 variant, warning officials to avoid ''knee-jerk responses,'' the 27-nation European Union said it would propose stopping air travel from southern Africa. The E.U. joined Israel and the United Kingdom who are likewise imposing a travel ban.

Will the U.S. also impose a ban? Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN that it's a possibility but that scientists need to first determine whether the variant can evade antibodies created by vaccines and viral infection.

Oh Joy! Another Covid VariantI believe that new vaccines are in development that focus on a broader range of covid characteristics (if I am phrasing that correctly) and therefore may be more effective against the South African and other future variants.

All of this was 100% predictable. Viruses mutate. The history of vaccines against coronaviruses has not been a happy one. If there is one thing we should be thankful for this Thanksgiving weekend, it is that covid is not a more deadly disease. It seems obvious that we are going to be living with it indefinitely.

New COVID Virus Variant Identified in Africa Is ''Highly Transmissible and Vaccine-Resistant''A new variant of the COVID virus identified in Southern Africa is ''highly transmissible and vaccine-resistant''. The variant may have come from someone with AIDS.

New COVID Variant Considered 'Worse Than' Delta Is 'Spreading Rapidly' in South Africa and Worrying Health Experts Across the GlobeIt's unclear where exactly the new strain, formerly known as B.1.1.529, initially arose but it was first detected in South Africa and has since been detected among South African travelers in neighboring Botswana as well as Hong Kong, the Associated Press reported. On Friday, Israel also said it had detected cases.

South Africa's minister of health, Joe Phaahla, announced this week that the variant has been linked to a rapid increase in the number of cases in the country's Gauteng province over the last few days.

''Over the last four or five days, there has been more of an exponential rise,'' Phaahla said, according to Time. The magazine noted that South African scientists are presently working to determine the percentage of new cases that were caused by the new variant, but they suspect it to be high.

Over the past several weeks, COVID-19 transmission in the country had settled to a relatively low rate at just over 200 new confirmed cases per day. But in the past week, the daily new cases suddenly shot up to more than 1,200. And then on Thursday, the number of new cases skyrocketed to 2,465.

A Scared Nu World: Here's What We Know About the New COVID StrainBackground

Regarded as the most heavily mutated variant of the Coronavirus, thus far, as it has 32 mutations in the spike protein and 50 overall. More specifically, scientists have highlighted that there are 10 mutations vs 2 in the Delta variant regarding the receptor binding domain, which is the portion of the virus that makes initial contact with cells.The Nu variant was identified 5 days ago initially in Botswana with subsequent confirmation and sequencing in South Africa with about 100 confirmed cases. Cases have been detected in Israel and Hong Kong and as of this morning, in Belgium.Sequencing data suggests 8.1.1.529 has a different evolutionary pathway, but shares a few common mutations with the C.1.2, Beta and Delta variants.That said, as we cautioned last night, a significant number of mutations may not necessarily be a 'negative' as it is dependent on how these mutations function, which scientists are yet to establish. Then again, since it is the job of science to fearmonger so that Pfizer can buy an even bigger yacht, assume it will be ''very very horrifying'' until proven innocuous.

Is it more deadly

It is currently too early to determine if the new variant has higher mortality than previous variants. Reported cases only started rising in South Africa on 19 November, so any impact on hospitalizations and COVID-related deaths will not have yet emerged.Testing and Detectability

Tulio de Oliveria, the Director of the Centre for Epidemic Response & innovation (CERI), South Africa, has written that the variant can be detected by a normal PCR test and as such it will be ''easy for the world to track it''. It wasn't immediately clear if this is one of those ''excess false positive PCR tests'' but it's safe to assume for now that it is.According to Credit Suisse, ''one silver lining may come in the ease of identifying this variant via qPCR tests. B.1.1.529 has a deletion within the s-gene which can be identified easily via widely-used PCR tests. More complex sequencing analysis is needed to differentiate the delta variant. This will help track the spread of B.1.1.529, both within Southern Africa and across the globe.''How widespread is it

As of Thursday there were almost 100 cases detected in South Africa, where it's become the dominant strain among new infections. Early PCR test results showed that 90% of 1,100 new cases reported Wednesday in the South African province that includes Johannesburg were caused by the new variant, according to de Oliveira.In neighboring Botswana, officials recorded four cases on Monday in people who were fully vaccinated. In Hong Kong, a traveler from South Africa was found to have the variant, and another case was identified in a person quarantined in a hotel room across the hall. Israel has also identified one case in a man who recently traveled to Malawi. Belgium has also reported two new cases.According to de Oliveira, this new variant, B.1.1.529 ''seems to spread very quick! In less than 2 weeks now dominates all infections following a devastating Delta wave in South Africa (Blue new variant, now at 75% of last genomes and soon to reach 100%)''CommentaryWhether the ''Nu Variant'' is truly dangerous or not, the reaction to the disease is certain to be extreme. Like I noted in the opening, this variant and the sudden fear surrounding it adjusts the entirety of the Covid-19 narrative. For months, fear towards the disease has waned, which the powers-that-be desperately do not want to happen. Killer or not, the ''Nu Variant'' is going to change things for everyone once again.

It's conspicuous that Wall Street reacted so quickly. That tells us the people driving the agenda have already sent out notice for their minions to get everyone's attention. That means Anthony Fauci will be on every show over the weekend warning about the Nu Variant. It means business leaders and the globalist elites will be acting panicked to make the average person pay attention. And it means mainstream media will play this up with more fervor than they applied to their false Kyle Rittenhouse ''white supremacy'' narrative.

Most concerning of all is that this may represent a new phase in Pandemic Panic Theater to help drive their universal vaccination agenda, including new vaccines to handle Nu since it seems even more resistant to the current jabs than the old variants. It's noteworthy that they launched this new variant in Africa where only 6% of the population is vaxxed. They can kill two birds with one stone by injecting fear into the continent while also perpetuating fear across the globe.

Just as noteworthy is that the first four cases were all vaccinated. They're going to try to pin this variant as a mutation caused by the unvaccinated in Africa. We cannot allow that lie to stand.

Buckle up, folks. They're taking us on another bumpy ride. If the Nu Variant is a killer, then the agenda has taken a dark turn. If it's not a killer, it will be treated like a killer to fearmonger people into further submission. Stay frosty, folks. The war against humanity appears to be ramping up before our eyes.

Too Few Are Telling the TruthNot long ago, conservative media was not beholden to anyone. Today, most sites are stuck on the Big Tech gravy train.I'll keep this short. The rise of Pandemic Panic Theater, massive voter fraud, and other ''taboo'' topics have neutered a majority of conservative news sites. You'll notice they are very careful about what topics they tackle. Sure, they'll attack Critical Race Theory, Antifa, and the Biden-Harris regime, but you won't see them going after George Soros, Bill Gates, the World Economic Forum, or the Deep State, among others.

The reason is simple. They are beholden to Big Tech, and Big Tech doesn't allow certain topics to be discussed or they'll cut you off. Far too many conservative news outlets rely on Google, Facebook, and Twitter for the bulk of their traffic. They depend on big checks from Google ads to keep the sites running. I don't necessarily hold it against them. We all do what we need to do to survive. I just wish more would do like we have, which is to cut out Big Tech altogether.

We don't get Google checks. We don't have Facebook or Twitter buttons on our stories. We don't have a YouTube Channel (banned), and Instagram profile (never made one), or a TikTok (no thanks, CCO). We're not perfect, but we're doing everything we can to not owe anything to anyone'... other than our readers. We owe YOU the truth. We owe YOU the facts that others won't reveal about topics that others won't tackle. And we owe America, this great land that allows us to take hold of these opportunities.

Like I said, I don't hold other conservative sites under too much scrutiny over their choices. It's easy for people to point fingers when we're not the ones paying their bills or supporting their families. I just wish there were more who would break away. Today, only a handful of other major conservative news outlets have broken away from the Big Tech teat. Of course, we need help.

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MyPillow: Use promo code ''NOQ'' to get up to 66% off AND you'll be helping a patriotic, America First company.Freedom Phone: Use promo code ''MAGA'' and get $50 off AND you'll be helping a patriotic, America First company.OurGoldGuy: Tell them we sent you in your request to buy gold and it will help us'... AND (wait for it) you'll be helping a patriotic, America First company.We know we could make a lot more money if we sold out like so many ''conservative'' publications out there. You won't find Google ads on our site for a reason. Yes, they're lucrative, but I don't like getting paid by minions of Satan (I don't like Google very much if you couldn't tell).

Time is short. As the world spirals towards The Great Reset, the need for truthful journalism has never been greater. But in these times, we need as many conservative media voices as possible. Please help keep NOQ Report and the other sites in the network going. Our promise is this: We will never sell out America. If that means we're going to struggle for a while or even indefinitely, so be it. Integrity first. Truth first. America first.

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Sat, 27 Nov 2021 14:12

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The Notre Dame, which was burned down in a mysterious fire in 2019 is being rebuilt as a ''woke theme park.''

Instead of rebuilding the historical cathedral as a religious monument, the reconstruction of Notre Dame will be revamped with a ''discovery trail'' that will lead visitors through 14 themed chapels of varying woke quantities dedicated to social justice, designed to be accessible for non-Catholics.

Using the church arson as a means to ''Build Back Better,'' each of the chapels will be dedicated to social justice issues, including a chapel dedicated to the environment and others with African and Asian themes.

According to critics who have reviewed plans for the fire-ravaged cathedral, confessional boxes, alters, and classical sculptures are being replaced by trendy art murals, with sound and special lighting effects to create ''emotional spaces.''

In the African and Asian-themed chapels, scripture will be beamed onto the walls in various languages, including Mandarin.

Speaking to the Telegraph, Maurice Culot, described the Notre Dame revamp as ''It's as if Disney were entering Notre Dame.''

''What they are proposing to do to Notre Dame would never be done to Westminster Abbey or Saint Peter's in Rome,'' said Culot of the disgraceful revamp. ''It's a kind of theme park and very childish and trivial given the grandeur of the place.''

According to the Daily Mail, officials responsible for Notre Dame's reconstruction say that the intent is for the monument to be accessible to tourists with no understanding of Christianity, ''whether from China or Sweden.''

The politically correct Disney-fied version of Notre Dame is being slammed by senior sources close to its reconstruction. One source told the Telegraph that the plans to wokeify Notre Dame risked turning it into an ''experimental showroom,'' that would ''mutilate'' the space.

''Can you imagine the administration of the Holy See allowing something like this in the Sistine Chapel?,'' said the source. ''It would be unimaginable. We are not in an empty space here.''

''This is political correctness gone mad. They want to turn Notre Dame into an experimental liturgical showroom that exists nowhere else whereas it should be a landmark where the slightest change must be handled with great care,'' he added.

The Notre Dame was almost completely destroyed by a fire that ravaged from the inside out. Visceral footage of the scene was shared on social media, as some onlookers appeared to cheer on the conflagration.

The burning of the Notre Dame occurred amid a spate of church arsons across France. Hundreds of French churches have quietly burned or been damaged in deliberate attacks across France over the past few years.

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Sat, 27 Nov 2021 14:01

A number of the world's largest pharmaceutical firms have announced strategies to address the newly identified Covid-19 variant, dubbed Omicron, including plans to alter existing vaccines and develop new boosters.

With the World Health Organization (WHO) designating Omicron the latest ''variant of concern'' following an emergency meeting on Friday, warning that the highly mutated strain could be more infectious than those seen before, Big Pharma quickly launched into PR-mode, as several firms rushed to outline how they would combat the new variant.

Pfizer '' which has produced one of the world's most commonly used Covid immunizations alongside its German partner BioNTech '' told Fox Business that it is ''remaining vigilant'' and ''constantly'' monitoring new variants that could ''potentially escape protection'' from its vaccine.

''In the event that [a] vaccine-escape variant emerges, Pfizer and BioNTech expect to be able to develop and produce a tailor-made vaccine against that variant in approximately 100 days, subject to regulatory approval,'' the company added, though it did not say whether any specific research had been conducted into Omicron so far.

Read more

BioNTech, in a separate statement, noted that Omicron ''differs significantly from previously observed variants as it has additional mutations located in the spike protein,'' referring to the mechanism by which the coronavirus gains access to host cells and causes infection. The company also said that a so-called ''escape variant'' could ''require an adjustment of our vaccine if the variant spreads globally.''

Moderna and Johnson & Johnson, two other major Covid vaccine developers, issued similar missives on Friday, with the latter company stating that it's already testing a booster shot for healthy adults that contains twice the vaccine dosage than what is currently approved. Moderna also said that it is now studying two booster candidates specially designed to ''anticipate mutations such as those that have emerged in the Omicron variant.''

J&J, whose single-dose vaccine differs from the others on the market, also told Fox that it is testing its Janssen immunization efficacy against Omicron and ''closely monitoring'' mutations in the virus' spike protein.

''It's very important to investigate the new variant,'' acknowledged Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), which bankrolled the development of the Sputnik V vaccine, in an interview with RT on Friday. If it turns out that the strain is resistant to current vaccines, he voiced confidence that Russian scientists could ''really quickly adapt Sputnik V to the new variant.''

Following a meeting with Chinese researchers to discuss the possibility of combined immunizations, Dmitriev also called for deeper international cooperation in creating a diversified portfolio of vaccines for combating more dangerous strains.

The WHO's designation of Omicron, also known as the B.1.1.529 variant, triggered a near-global panic on Friday, including travel restrictions in countries across several continents and tanking stock markets around the world. Despite the alarm, however, little is yet known about the new strain '' nor whether it is more transmissible or deadly compared to other variants '' and the WHO has stated it may take several weeks of research to begin answering those questions.

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Sat, 27 Nov 2021 13:57

Several pharmacy chains, including Walmart, CVS, and Walgreens have been found partially responsible by a federal jury for two counties' opioid crises in Ohio.

''This decision was the first ever ruling against the retail pharmacy industry, and could set the tone for countless other lawsuits across the country that seek to hold pharmacies responsible for the flood of highly addictive opioid pills into communities,'' The Hill reported .

Reports indicate that opioid addiction has led to the deaths of about half a million Americans.

''For decades, pharmacy chains have watched as the pills flowing out of their doors cause harm and failed to take action as required by law. Instead, these companies responded by opening up more locations, flooding communities with pills, and facilitating the flow of opioids into an illegal, secondary market,'' said the plaintiffs who want a payout of about $1 billion to both Lake and Trumbell counties in Ohio.

District Judge Dan Polster will make the determination about what amount the companies will pay. The case he heard is a ''test case'' for similar suits and complaints in the region.

''The judgment today against Walmart, Walgreens and CVS represents the overdue reckoning for their complicity in creating a public nuisance,'' the plaintiffs added, although the companies disagreed.

''[T]he simple facts are that opioid prescriptions are written by doctors, not pharmacists; opioid medications are made and marketed by manufacturers, not pharmacists; and our health care system depends on pharmacists to fill legitimate prescriptions that doctors deem necessary for their patients,'' Mike DeAngelis of CVS said in a statement.

DeAngelis said that CVS would appeal the ruling and disagreed with the application of the public nuisance law.

Similarly, a Walmart spokesperson said the case was ''riddled with remarkable legal and factual mistakes.''

The decision comes after some large pharmaceutical companies, like Johnson and Johnson, have so far escaped legal consequences. Last month the Oklahoma Supreme Court overturned a decision that would have required Johnson and Johnson to pay $465 million for its role in the opium epidemic.

In that case, the court decided that public nuisance laws did not apply to those specific circumstances.

''The district court stepping into the shoes of the legislature by creating and funding government programs designed to address social and health issues goes too far,'' the majority wrote.

The Ohio case was significant as it was the first time retailers like CVS have been in court over the opioid case.

''It's the first opioid trial against these major household names,'' Adam Zimmerman of Loyola Law School told The New York Times. ''They have been the least willing group of defendants to settle, so this verdict is at least a small sign to them that these cases won't necessarily play out well in front of juries.''

J.D. Vance, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate from Ohio, has made the opioid crisis a focus of his campaign.

''Opioid addiction has devastated my family and my community. More and more Ohioans are falling victim to addiction, which means an entire generation of children orphaned, and another generation of grandparents forced to step up for our community's kids,'' Vance says on his website.

The Daily Wire is one of America's fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a member.

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Sat, 27 Nov 2021 13:55

This morning I was briefed by my chief medical advisor, Dr. Tony Fauci, and the members of our COVID response team, about the Omicron variant, which is spreading through Southern Africa. As a precautionary measure until we have more information, I am ordering additional air travel restrictions from South Africa and seven other countries. These new restrictions will take effect on November 29. As we move forward, we will continue to be guided by what the science and my medical team advises. For now, I have two important messages for the American people, and one for the world community. First, for those Americans who are fully vaccinated against severe COVID illness '' fortunately, for the vast majority of our adults '-- the best way to strengthen your protection is to get a booster shot, as soon as you are eligible. Boosters are approved for all adults over 18, six months past their vaccination and are available at 80,000 locations coast-to-coast. They are safe, free, and convenient. Get your booster shot now, so you can have this additional protection during the holiday season. Second, for those not yet fully vaccinated: get vaccinated today. This includes both children and adults. America is leading the world in vaccinating children ages 5-11, and has been vaccinating teens for many months now '' but we need more Americans in all age groups to get this life-saving protection. If you have not gotten vaccinated, or have not taken your children to get vaccinated, now is the time. Finally, for the world community: the news about this new variant should make clearer than ever why this pandemic will not end until we have global vaccinations. The United States has already donated more vaccines to other countries than every other country combined. It is time for other countries to match America's speed and generosity. In addition, I call on the nations gathering next week for the World Trade Organization ministerial meeting to meet the U.S. challenge to waive intellectual property protections for COVID vaccines, so these vaccines can be manufactured globally. I endorsed this position in April; this news today reiterates the importance of moving on this quickly.

###

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Sat, 27 Nov 2021 10:06

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) declared a state of emergency in response to a winter coronavirus spike and the threat of the newly detected omicron variant on Friday, making her state one of the first in the country to impose measures against the mutation that was recently sequenced in southern Africa.

As part of the emergency, the state's Health Department will be allowed to protect hospital capacity by limiting nonessential and non-urgent care until at least Jan. 15. Hospitals with less than 10 percent staffed bed capacity, or those designated by the state, will be authorized to screen patients and restrict admissions to keep beds open for the most urgent cases.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday that omicron had not yet been detected in the United States, though Hochul said of the variant: ''it's coming.''

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She also urged New Yorkers to mask up in indoor public venues, get tested when appropriate and to stay home when ill. She also reminded residents to get vaccinated or boosted against the coronavirus.

''This is a concerning development that we must watch extremely closely, and be prepared to address as a city, state and country,'' said New York City mayor-elect Eric Adams of omicron in a statement. ''Our health officials must '... have response options available should it prove to be significantly more virulent.''

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The nation's top infectious-disease experts, including Anthony S. Fauci, urged caution even as they acknowledged that there were many unknowns about omicron, which the World Health Organization designated a variant of concern on Friday. U.S. health officials are in touch with their South African counterparts to learn more about the emerging variant, Fauci said.

''We want to find out scientist to scientist what exactly is going on,'' Fauci said in an appearance on CNN's ''New Day.'' ''You want to find out if in fact it does evade the vaccines that we're doing.''

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Despite the CDC's announcement that omicron had not been detected in the United States, Fauci didn't rule out the possibility that the variant had already arrived in the nation. ''Of course, anything is possible,'' he said.

Dow records worst drop of 2021 as new coronavirus variant rattles global markets

Omicron has already been detected in Hong Kong, Belgium, and Israel. Eric Topol, the director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, told The Washington Post that omicron was the most concerning variant scientists had seen since delta. ''It's going to take a really high bar for something to take over for delta, and we don't know whether this is going to do it.''

U.S. health officials have already been on alert due to the rising number of infections, hospitalizations, and deaths sweeping through the country in recent weeks, triggered by the arrival of winter '-- a time when more people gather indoors. They also fear a surge in coronavirus cases during the holiday season as more people travel.

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Sat, 27 Nov 2021 10:01

Two planes carrying some 600 passengers from South Africa that landed in the Netherlands on Friday might have brought 85 people infected with covid to the country, Dutch health authorities said on the same day they halted flights from several southern African countries where the omicron variant is feared to have spread.

As of Friday evening, at least fifteen covid cases have been identified out of the 110 samples tested, according to a regional Dutch health agency. (Dutch public broadcaster NOS reported Saturday that 61 cases have been identified from the two flights.) The health body did not immediately return a request for comment early Saturday on whether omicron was detected among the positive samples, though it had previously said researchers were racing to make a determination.

Omicron, a mutation of the coronavirus that some scientists fear could be more transmissible than the delta variant, was labeled as a ''variant of concern'' by the World Health Organization Friday. It was first detected in the southern region of Africa, where cases have started rising again in recent days.

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Countries including the United States and Britain swiftly imposed travel restrictions on southern African countries such as Zimbabwe and Botswana, but the omicron variant has also been identified in Belgium, Hong Kong and Israel.

Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport saw over 71 million passengers in 2019, making it one of the busiest and most connected travel hubs in the world.

Despite a mask mandate by Dutch airline KLM, which operated the two flights from South Africa, many passengers did not wear face coverings, said New York Times reporter Stephanie Nolen, who was aboard one of the planes. Passengers were stuck on airport tarmac for about four hours before being sent to be swabbed, tweeted Nolen, who later said she tested negative.

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Travelers who test positive for the coronavirus will be isolated at a hotel for at least five days.

What to know about the omicron variant of the coronavirus

The worries around the variant come as the Dutch government announced stricter partial lockdown measures beginning this weekend. On Thursday, the country of some 17.5 million reported a seven-day rolling average of more than 20,000 infections.

Starting Sunday, many businesses have been ordered to shut between 5 p.m. to 5 a.m., in a move that Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said means the country will be ''effectively closed'' from the evening through the early morning.

The Dutch government was the first in Western Europe to return to partial lockdown when it announced restrictions on shops and restaurants earlier this month. Rutte said Friday his government is tightening measures now because there has been minimal change to behavior, citing traffic data.

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A dozen protesters demonstrated peacefully in The Hague following Friday's announcement, Agence France-Presse reported. But other recent anti-lockdown rallies in the Netherlands saw what the mayor of Rotterdam called an ''orgy of violence,'' with protesters throwing stones and police firing warning shots.

About 74 percent of the Dutch population has been fully vaccinated and booster shots are being offered to seniors, vulnerable people and care workers.

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Sat, 27 Nov 2021 10:00

A war is heating up between American Airlines and Southwest Airlines for dominance at Texas' fastest-growing airport, Austin-Bergstrom International '-- and the two carriers aren't waiting for the pandemic to subside.

No airport of its size in the country has bounced back from COVID-19 the way Austin-Bergstrom has, buoyed by a growing population in Central Texas and an influx of new companies such as Tesla, Oracle, and Samsung creating thousands of jobs in the region.

At an airport long dominated by Dallas-based Southwest, Fort Worth-based American has added 24 nonstop routes to Austin since November 2019, four times as many as it had before the pandemic. Two years ago, American only flew from Austin to its eight major hubs at airports including DFW International, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Miami.

Click here to read more on this report from our partners at The Dallas Morning Newes.

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Sat, 27 Nov 2021 09:57

Merck said on Friday a study of its experimental COVID-19 pill shows the drug was significantly less effective in cutting hospitalizations and deaths than previously reported. (Merck & Co Inc. via Reuters)

Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes

WASHINGTON '-- Merck & Co said on Friday updated data from its study of its experimental COVID-19 pill showed the drug was significantly less effective in cutting hospitalizations and deaths than previously reported.

The drugmaker said its pill showed a 30% reduction in hospitalizations and deaths, based on data from 1,433 patients. In October, its data showed a roughly 50% efficacy, based on data from 775 patients. The drug, molnupiravir, was developed with partner Ridgeback Biotherapeutics.

The lower efficacy of Merck's drug could have big implications in terms of whether countries continue to buy the pill. Interim data from 1,200 participants in Pfizer Inc's trial for its experimental pill, Paxlovid, showed an 89% reduction in hospitalizations and deaths.

Merck's shares fell 3.5% to $79.39 in morning trading.

Merck released the data before the U.S Food and Drug Administration published a set of documents on Friday intended to brief a panel of outside experts who will meet on Tuesday to discuss whether to recommend authorizing the pill.

The agency's staff did not make their own recommendation as to whether the pill should be authorized.

FDA staff asked the panel to discuss whether the benefits of the drug outweigh the risks and whether the population for whom the drug should be authorized should be limited.

They also asked the committee to weigh in on concerns over whether the drug could encourage the virus to mutate, and how those concerns could be mitigated.

Pills like molnupiravir and Paxlovid could be promising new weapons in the fight against the pandemic, as they can be taken as early at-home treatments to help prevent COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths. They could also become important tools in countries and areas with limited access to vaccines or low inoculation rates.

Easier treatmentThe Merck and Pfizer pills are cheaper to produce and easier to administer than existing treatment options such as antibody therapies from Regeneron and Eli Lilly, which are mostly administered as intravenous infusions.

The two experimental drugs have different mechanisms of action. Merck's is designed to introduce errors into the genetic code of the virus. Pfizer's drug, part of a class known as protease inhibitors, is designed to block an enzyme the coronavirus needs in order to multiply.

Merck filed for a U.S. authorization of molnupiravir on Oct. 11, following the interim data, and submitted the updated data to the FDA this week.

The molnupiravir arm of the study had a hospitalization and death rate of 6.8%, according to the updated data. The placebo group had a hospitalization and death rate of 9.7%.

One patient in the molnupiravir arm died, versus nine in the placebo group.

The United Kingdom conditionally approved molnupiravir, branded as Lagevrio, earlier this month.

Merck expects to produce 10 million courses of the treatment by the end of this year, with at least 20 million set to be manufactured in 2022. It has a contract with the U.S. government to supply as many as 5 million courses at a price of $700 per course. Several other countries have already secured millions of courses of the pill.

Merck has said data shows molnupiravir is not capable of inducing genetic changes in human cells, but men enrolled in its trials had to abstain from heterosexual intercourse or agree to use contraception. Women of child-bearing age also had to use birth control.

Still, the FDA said in its briefing document that there are safety concerns about potential birth defects from the drug and asked the panel to discuss whether the drug should be available to pregnant women.

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Sat, 27 Nov 2021 04:30

A vial of Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine.

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The world's major manufacturers of Covid-19 vaccines said Friday that they are working to quickly investigate and adapt their shots to a new and highly mutated strain of the virus.

The World Health Organization on Friday said the new strain, named omicron, is a "variant of concern" that may pose a higher risk of reinfection than past mutations of the virus.

Pfizer and BioNTech said they are investigating omicron, first labeled B.1.1.529, and can adapt their vaccine quickly if needed.

"We understand the concern of experts and have immediately initiated investigations on variant B.1.1.529," the companies said.

Pfizer and BioNTech said they expect more data from lab tests in two weeks at the latest.

"These data will provide more information about whether B.1.1.529 could be an escape variant that may require an adjustment of our vaccine if the variant spreads globally," the companies said.

Pfizer and BioNTech said they can adapt their mRNA vaccine within six weeks and start shipping batches within 100 days if an escape variant is identified.

Johnson & Johnson on Friday said they were already testing their vaccine against omicron.

"We are closely monitoring newly emerging COVID-19 virus strains with variations in the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein and are already testing the effectiveness of our vaccine against the new and rapidly spreading variant first detected in southern Africa," J&J said.

AstraZeneca said it is also investigating the variant. Its vaccine platform developed with Oxford University enables a quick response to new mutations as they emerge, the company said.

"AstraZeneca is also already conducting research in locations where the variant has been identified, namely in Botswana and Eswatini," the company said.

Moderna, in a statement Friday, said the combination of mutations in the variant "represents a significant potential risk to accelerate the waning of natural and vaccine-induced immunity."

"A booster dose of an authorized vaccine represents the only currently available strategy for boosting waning immunity," the company said.

Moderna said it will test three booster candidates against omicron, including at a higher dosage level. The company will also develop a booster dose specific to the variant.

"From the beginning, we have said that as we seek to defeat the pandemic, it is imperative that we are proactive as the virus evolves," said Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel in a statement. "The mutations in the Omicron variant are concerning and for several days, we have been moving as fast as possible to execute our strategy to address this variant."

The variant, which emerged in South Africa, has about 50 mutations, more than 30 of which are on the spike protein that allows the virus to bind to human cells. The spread of the new variant is still in its early stages, and it's not yet clear how severe an infection would be to a vaccinated person.

Several European and Asian nations have suspended flights from southern Africa in response to the variant. The United Kingdom suspended flights on Thursday from six countries in the region, and the European Commission '' the European Union's executive body '' told all 27 member states to halt travel from southern Africa.

White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci on Friday said the U.S. is working with South African scientists to obtain the molecular makeup of the variant so lab tests can be conducted. Those tests would help determine whether or not the variant can evade antibody protection provided by the vaccines.

Fauci said that data would help determine whether or not the U.S. should implement similar travel restrictions. The Biden administration confirmed later on Friday that the U.S. would restrict entry for non-citizens coming from eight southern African nations.

The strength of Covid vaccines against infection has declined over time, although they're still highly effective at preventing hospitalization and death. A study published in the journal Science this month found that the Pfizer vaccine's efficacy at preventing infection declined from 86% to 43% from February to October. Moderna's vaccine dropped from 89% to 58%, and J&J's vaccine fell from 86% to 13% efficacy against infection in the same study.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention authorized booster shots of Pfizer-BioNTech's and Moderna's vaccines for all adults last Friday. The Pfizer booster dose was 95% effective at preventing symptomatic infection in people who had no evidence of prior infection in a clinical trial of 10,000 participants ages 16 and older, according to the company. Moderna is still conducting a clinical trial on the efficacy of its booster dose.

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Sat, 27 Nov 2021 04:04

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In an article titled "Joe Rogan is Everyone Else's Problem," Vice's Anna Merlan called out platforms such as the UFC, Spotify, and other mainstream entities that make money off of Rogan and said that they are turning a blind eye to Rogan becoming an "increasingly prominent role in extremist spaces."

Joe Rogan is solidfying his ties with the far right, while at the same time returning to be one of the most prominent faces of the UFC and a linchpin of Spotify's podcast network. And no one making money from any of this seems to mind a bit: https://t.co/cZ5wxPNwLs

'-- Anna Merlan (@annamerlan) November 24, 2021"Joe Rogan is solidfying his ties with the far right, while at the same time returning to be one of the most prominent faces of the UFC and a linchpin of Spotify's podcast network. And no one making money from any of this seems to mind a bit," Merlan said in a Twitter post on Wednesday.

Journalist Glenn Greenwald slammed writer Anna Merlan for falsely labeling popular podcaster Joe Rogan "far-right" in an attempt to get him cancelled.

Greenwald fired back at Merlan's false claims and said that the liberal-left tries to find any way possible to cancel people they don't agree with.

The claim that Joe Rogan -- a supporter of Bernie Sanders, an anti-imperialist, a crusader against factory farms, etc. -- is of the "far right" is the kind of stupidity in which liberals specialize: "let's try to expel the most influential media figure and insist he's our enemy." https://t.co/bC6IaR41C6

'-- Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) November 25, 2021"The claim that Joe Rogan -- a supporter of Bernie Sanders, an anti-imperialist, a crusader against factory farms, etc. -- is of the 'far right' is the kind of stupidity in which liberals specialize: 'let's try to expel the most influential media figure and insist he's our enemy,'" Greenwald said in a tweet on Thursday.

"Rational political movements try to expand the range of those who identify with them. The liberal-left so often looks for ways to expel as many people as possible," Greenwald continued.

"Rogan has an audience of millions. You can't change that. The only choices you have: 1) engage with that huge audience to build common ground or 2) create a climate where nobody on the liberal-left can go there, ceding it all to the right. Those who want to lose choose (2)."

"Also, the only point of this @VICE article is to pressure corporate sponsors and Spotify to disassociate themselves with Rogan or force them to limit what he can say," Greenwald added. "Again, note how often the priority of liberals -- especially 'journalists'-- is to restrict the range of views."

"Let us give thanks today that this dreary, repressive sector of the media devoted to homogenized thought, coerced conformity and abolition of dissent is dying, while platforms devoted to free thought, editorial independence, and diversity of opinion are thriving," Greenwald concluded.

Greenwald wasn't the only one to take aim at Merlan's article. Matthew Yglesias said that the left-wing pushback against Rogan is "backfiring in an incredibly predictable way."

There was this extensive pressure campaign to get left of center people to refuse to go on Rogan, it was fairly successful, and it is now backfiring in an incredibly predictable way. https://t.co/NvSO3140CJ

'-- Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) November 24, 2021Journalist Michael Tracey said that the left should not be surprised that Rogan "chooses to hang out with guys who don't denounce him as evil."

AOC infamously threw a fit when the Bernie campaign promoted an endorsement from Joe Rogan. Left/liberals have tried to stigmatize appearing on Rogan as somehow tantamount to "bigotry." Then they feign shock when he chooses to hang out with guys who don't denounce him as evil https://t.co/y99BMkzHhf

'-- Michael Tracey (@mtracey) November 25, 2021Meanwhile, a recent poll showed that Americans would rather have Rogan over for Thanksgiving dinner than Biden's Covid chancellor Dr. Anthony Fauci, who the left has consistently praised despite his myriad flip-flops on guidance.

Rogan, who has said that there are venue in which he could not perform due to his vaccination status, has been at odds with the going narrative over Covid, as well as many other things.

When Rogan contracted Covid, and took medication Ivermectin to treat the virus, he was widely decried as having taken "horse dewormer." This despite the medication having been awarded a Nobel Prize for use in humans.

On a recent podcast with Tim Pool, Rogan blasted mainstream media, which he said is "cult sh*t."

"Bro, this is cult sh*t. We're in a cult," Rogan said. "This information is not based on reality, this is a left wing cult. They're pumping stuff out and then they're confirming this belief. They're all getting together, they're ignoring contrary evidence. They're ignoring any narrative that challenges their belief about what happened, and they're not looking at it realistically. They're only looking at you if you're a f*cking cult."

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Fri, 26 Nov 2021 20:01

Christmas Parade SUV This image provided by the Waukesha County Sheriff Office in Waukesha, Wis., shows Darrell Brooks, the suspect in a Christmas parade crash in suburban Milwaukee that killed five people. Brooks was due in court Tuesday, Nov. 23, 2021, where five homicide charges were expected to be filed, a crime that can carry the stiffest penalty possible under Wisconsin law '-- mandatory life in prison. (Waukesha County Sheriff Office/Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel via AP) (Uncredited)

November 26, 2021 at 4:41 p.m. UTC By WSBTV.com News StaffUNION CITY, Ga. '-- Police say the man accused of plowing into a Christmas parade in Wisconsin and killing 6 people was arrested in Union City earlier this year.

Police say Darrell E. Brooks, 39, drove his SUV through a parade in Waukesha last weekend. Five adults adults and an 8-year-old boy were killed and at least 60 other people were injured.

[DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks]

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Fri, 26 Nov 2021 20:00

Published Fri, Nov 26 2021 1:57 PM EST

The Biden administration on Friday proposed reforms to the country's oil and gas leasing program that would raise costs for energy companies to drill on public lands and water. The long-anticipated report stopped short of recommending an end to oil and gas leasing on public lands and did not indicate that the administration would take climate change impact into account when approving new leases. Drilling on public lands generates billions of dollars in revenue but contributes to roughly a quarter of the country's planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.An oil well pump jack operated by Chevron Corp. in San Ardo, California, U.S., on Tuesday, April 27, 2021.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

The Biden administration on Friday proposed reforms to the country's oil and gas leasing program that would raise costs for energy companies to drill on public lands and water, but stopped short of recommending an end to leasing on public lands.

The long-anticipated report, published by the Interior Department, recommended increasing royalty rates and rents for drillers, prioritizing leasing in areas with known resource potential and avoiding leasing in areas that can be developed to protect wildlife habitat,'¯recreation and cultural resources.

The report completes a review that President Joe Biden ordered in January. The president directed a halt to new federal oil and gas lease sales on public lands and waters, but a Louisiana federal judge blocked the administration's suspension in June.

Drilling on public lands generates billions of dollars in revenue but contributes to roughly a quarter of the country's planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions. The report did not indicate that the administration would take climate change impact into account when approving new leases.

The report said the federal oil and gas program, which is enshrined in law, fails to provide a fair return to taxpayers and inadequately accounts for its harmful impact on the environment. It called for new rules to hike royalty rates, bonding rates and other fees for drillers. The minimum royalty rate is currently 12.5% for oil and gas production on federal lands.

"Our nation faces a profound climate crisis that is impacting every American," Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement. "The Interior Department has an obligation to responsibly manage our public lands and waters '' providing a fair return to the taxpayer and mitigating worsening climate impacts '' while staying steadfast in the pursuit of environmental justice."

Environmentalists argue the report offers little on the climate impacts of drilling and contradicts Biden's vows to end drilling on public lands. Some groups note that the report was released during a long holiday weekend when fewer people would notice it.

"Releasing this completely inadequate report over a long holiday weekend is a shameful attempt to hide the fact that President Biden has no intention of fulfilling his promise to stop oil and gas drilling on our public lands," Mitch Jones, policy director at the environmental group Food & Water Watch, said in a statement.

"A minor increase in the royalties paid by climate polluters will have zero impact on combating the climate crisis, and will in effect make the federal government more dependent on fossil fuels as a source of revenue," Jones said.

The report comes after the president on Tuesday ordered the release of 50 million barrels of crude from the country's Strategic Petroleum Reserve as part of a global effort by energy-consuming nations to calm this year'²s rapid rise in fuel prices.

The Biden administration has approved 3,091 new drilling permits on public lands at a rate of 332 per month, a faster pace than the Trump administration's 300 permits per month. The administration recently opened more than 80 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico to auction for oil and gas drilling, a record offshore sale that will lock in years of greenhouse gas emissions.

The permit approvals for fossil fuel production are at odds with Biden's climate agenda, which involves a commitment to slash U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 and reach net-zero emissions by 2050.

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Fri, 26 Nov 2021 19:46

(C) Getty Images Heirs to Rockefeller fortune launch effort to slow oil and gas growth Rebecca Rockefeller Lambert and Peter Gill Case, two heirs to the Rockefeller family's oil fortune, have pledged a total of $30 million in support of an effort that aims to combat new fossil fuel development.

The 10-year funding initiative, the Equation Campaign, derived its name from what Lambert and Case called the "missing piece of the equation" in addition to supporting the transition to renewable energy. The other half, they wrote, involves actively working against natural gas and oil extraction on the ground by supporting local activist movements.

"This includes young people fighting for their future, indigenous people defending their land and water, farmers protecting their crop, black and brown communities living in the shadow of the industry's operations, and poor people who are not responsible for global warming but who bear the brunt of its effects," the campaign said in a statement on its website. "Yet the truth is that in the climate crisis, we are all on the frontline; none of us can escape the impacts of climate change. Together, we can avert the worst of it."

Specific funding targets of the initiative will include public relations, legal support for arrested activists and the funding of lawsuits.

In addition to Lambert and Case's $30 million, other organizations, including the David Rockefeller Fund, the Open Society Foundations and the 11th Hour Project of the Schmidt Family Foundation, are backing the project, according to The Associated Press.

Lambert told the AP the initiative was inspired by the success of local anti-pipeline activists.

"The industry has said that the number-one challenge to building new pipelines is local opposition," she said. "These groups have amazing results, but they are seriously under-resourced."

One recipient of the initiative's grants, the Center for Protest Law and Litigation, is currently providing legal support to protesters against an expansion of the "Line 3" oil pipeline in Minnesota.

"The Equation Campaign is uniquely positioned to identify emergent needs and act quickly," co-founder Mara Verheyden-Hilliard told the AP. "Time and momentum matter. Getting funds to a movement at a time when it will make the most difference is extraordinarily important."

Case previously co-founded Bank FWD, an initiative aimed at persuading major banks to withdraw their financing of the fossil fuel industry.

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Fri, 26 Nov 2021 17:27

Belgium's prime minister has warned that the coronavirus facing the world today is very different from the one that appeared in Wuhan two years ago, claiming it is three times more contagious than the original strain.

Speaking on Friday, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo told a press conference that the latest wave of coronavirus should be called Covid-21, as panic over the 'Nu' variant grips Europe.

You could say that this is Covid-21 instead of Covid-19: it is three times more infectious than the original virus.

De Croo was speaking as Belgian scientists investigated two samples of Covid-19 which were believed to be the new B.1.1.529. Shortly after De Croo's comments, virologist Marc Van Ranst confirmed that one of the samples was the variant first found in Botswana. The patient had returned from Egypt on Monday.

The strain, which is expected to be named after the Greek letter 'Nu', was first identified in samples taken in Botswana on November 11 and is believed to have spread widely across southern Africa.

The variant is known to have 32 mutations to the spike protein, which could allow the pathogen to evade vaccine-induced immunity. The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has described the variant as ''the worst one we've seen so far.''

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The Belgian prime minister also announced a new range of Covid-19 measures to tame the spread of a deadly fourth wave of the virus. The restrictions include the closure of nightclubs and dance halls for a period of three weeks, as well as the prohibition of private parties. Hospitality will be forced to close at 11pm, while restaurants will be limited to a maximum of six people per table.

''We are trying to make sure that everyone can continue to see each other. We can still go out to bars or restaurants, there can still be activities, but it has to be done safely,'' De Croo added.

To date, the fourth wave has been driven by the highly contagious Delta variant, which first emerged in India. Belgium has never had more infections than it does today, the prime minister noted.

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Fri, 26 Nov 2021 17:24

Image The emergency room at Mount Sinai South Nassau in Oceanside, N.Y., will have to handle patients from the Long Beach Emergency Department during the closure. Credit... Johnny Milano for The New York Times A Long Island emergency room was forced to close its doors on Monday because of a nursing staff shortage, as a New York state rule took effect that bars unvaccinated medical workers from their jobs.

The free-standing Emergency Department at Long Beach, which is part of Mount Sinai South Nassau, said in a statement that patients would be directed to the hospital's main campus in Oceanside, N.Y., about five miles north. An ambulance will be stationed at the shuttered facility, the statement said.

The hospital said the closure could last weeks or longer. But closing the Long Beach branch will allow the hospital to maintain adequate staffing at the Oceanside facility, the statement said.

''We regret having to take this step, but the safety of our patients is always our No. 1 priority,'' said Dr. Adhi Sharma, the president of the medical center. ''This closure should not be interpreted as anything beyond what it is '-- a temporary measure designed to relieve current staffing challenges in our emergency department. Our nurses, physicians and support staff have been on the front lines of the pandemic for more than 21 months. We will continue to be there for our patients.''

New York's statewide vaccination mandate for health workers does not allow for religious exemptions, which spurred legal challenges. A federal court upheld the policy late last month.

Mount Sinai South Nassau said it had notified the state Health Department on Friday of the need to close the facility, and had submitted a formal closure plan. In a statement on Monday night, the Health Department said it was reviewing the plan and working with Mount Sinai South Nassau to ''explore options.''

For now, Mount Sinai South Nassau is recruiting workers who can show proof of vaccination or valid medical exemptions in the hope of resuming full operations in mid-December.

Mount Sinai's Oceanside emergency room is a designated trauma facility and sees about 70,000 patients a year, according to the medical center. The Long Beach branch, which opened in 2015, handles about 10,000 patients a year, most of whom are treated and discharged without being transferred to the hospital.

'-- Karen Zraick

Image Bennett Walsh, right, the former superintendent at the Holyoke Soldiers' Home, during a hearing in Hampden County Superior Court in Springfield, Mass., in August. Credit... Don Treeger/The Republican, via Associated Press A Massachusetts state judge on Monday dismissed criminal charges against two former administrators at a state-run facility for veterans, the Soldiers' Home in Holyoke, where a coronavirus outbreak last year led to at least 76 deaths, reasoning that their actions did not lead to the infections.

The state's attorney general, Maura Healey, had sought charges of criminal neglect and permitting body injury to an older person against the two men, Bennett Walsh, the former superintendent at the Soldiers' Home in Holyoke, Mass., and David Clinton, the facility's former medical director. Ms. Healey cited their decision to combine two understaffed dementia units, crowding together infected and uninfected men.

The criminal charges against the two men, who resigned their positions last year, were believed to be the first in the country brought against nursing home employees, and they had faced years or even decades in prison if convicted.

But Judge Edward J. McDonough Jr., of Hampden County Superior Court, wrote in his dismissal that he believed the five veterans named in the case had been exposed to the virus before the two units were merged, so the administrators could not be held legally responsible.

''There was insufficiently reasonably trustworthy evidence presented to the grand jury that, had these two dementia units not been merged, the medical condition of any of these five veterans would have been materially different,'' he wrote.

Ms. Healey is weighing whether to appeal the decision, a spokeswoman said.

''We are very disappointed in today's ruling, especially on behalf of the innocent victims and families harmed by the defendants' actions,'' said Jillian Fennimore.

7''day average

2,873

Source: State and local health agencies. Daily cases are the number of new cases reported each day. The seven-day average is the average of the most recent seven days of data.

Because of staffing shortages, the facility consolidated the units, which had a total of 42 residents who had different Covid-19 statuses, and residents who were positive or symptomatic were placed six in a room that typically held four veterans. An independent investigation of the deaths quoted nurses who said they knew that the move to combine units would prove deadly to many of their patients.

Relatives of the veterans who died at the facility expressed frustration at the judge's decision on Monday.

''Absolutely disgusting, our veterans and their families apparently are a disposable commodity,'' wrote Susan Perez, whose father, James Miller, died at the home, adding, ''Apparently no one is responsible for the deaths of the veterans and trauma to their families.''

Correction:Nov. 22, 2021An earlier version of this briefing item misstated part of the name of the court where a Massachusetts state judge presides. It is Hampden County Superior Court, not Hampton.

'-- Ellen Barry

Image President Biden's mandate was part of an aggressive effort to respond to the Delta variant. Credit... Doug Mills/The New York Times More than 90 percent of federal employees will have had at least one coronavirus vaccine shot by the end of Monday, the deadline set by President Biden when he announced vaccine mandates earlier this fall, according to a senior administration official.

The vast majority of those employees are fully vaccinated, and an additional 5 percent of employees are seeking or already have an exception or an extension, the official said. The news was first reported by Reuters.

This means the Biden administration will have achieved 95 percent compliance with the president's requirement that federal employees have at least one shot or have an approved or pending exception or extension request by Nov. 22, according to the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preview an announcement that White House officials will make later in the day.

Mr. Biden's mandate for federal workers, announced in September, was part of an aggressive effort to combat the spread of the Delta variant, which has driven caseloads up to levels last recorded a year ago, before vaccines were widely available. The president also mandated vaccination for health care workers and ordered all companies with more than 100 workers to require vaccination or weekly testing for their employees.

''We've been patient,'' Mr. Biden said then, in a pointed message to people who refused to be vaccinated. ''But our patience is wearing thin. And your refusal has cost all of us.''

More than 3.5 million federal workers, both in the United States and around the world, are covered by Mr. Biden's mandate. Employees who have not complied, and do not have a pending or approved exception or extension request, will be expected to undergo education and counseling, the official said, followed by ''additional enforcement steps.''

On Wednesday morning, the Office of Management and Budget will release data on the percentage of employees at each agency who are in compliance with the requirement.

A personnel change in the White House's coronavirus team is expected next week. On Monday, Dr. Bechara Choucair, the former Chicago health commissioner whom Mr. Biden brought in to oversee the vaccination effort, will leave the administration, according to Jeff Zients, the White House coronavirus response coordinator.

Dr. Choucair was a senior executive at Kaiser Permanente before joining Mr. Biden's staff and is ''returning to the West Coast after staying longer than originally planned,'' Mr. Zients said.

'-- Sheryl Gay Stolberg

Image Dona Sutton, a nurse, worked with a Covid-19 patient in Alma, Mich. The state is experiencing its worst surge of the virus. Credit... Nic Antaya for The New York Times A month ago, new coronavirus cases in the United States were ticking steadily downward and the worst of a miserable summer surge fueled by the Delta variant appeared to be over. But as Americans travel this week to meet far-flung relatives for Thanksgiving dinner, new virus cases are rising once more, especially in the Upper Midwest and Northeast.

Federal medical teams have been dispatched to Minnesota to help at overwhelmed hospitals. Michigan is enduring its worst case surge yet, with daily caseloads doubling since the start of November. Even New England, where vaccination rates are high, is struggling, with Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire trying to contain major outbreaks.

Nationally, case levels remain well below those seen in early September, when summer infections peaked, and are below those seen last Thanksgiving. But conditions are worsening rapidly, and this will not be the post-pandemic Thanksgiving that Americans had hoped for. More than 90,000 cases are being reported each day, comparable to early August, and more than 30 states are seeing sustained upticks in infections. In the hardest-hit places, hospitalizations are already climbing.

''This thing is no longer just throwing curveballs at us '-- it's throwing 210-mile-an-hour curveballs at us,'' said Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota. He said that the virus had repeatedly defied predictions and continues to do so.

The new rise in cases comes at a complicated moment. Last Thanksgiving, before vaccines were available, federal and local officials had firmly urged Americans to forgo holiday gatherings. But in sharp contrast, public health officials, including Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation's leading infectious-disease expert, have mostly suggested this year that vaccinated people could gather in relative safety.

'-- Mitch Smith

Image A masked visitor to the Texas Capitol in August. Credit... Eric Gay/Associated Press The chief elected official in Dallas County celebrated a victory on Tuesday in his legal dispute over the governor's ban on mask mandates, after a state appeals court upheld an earlier injunction against the ban.

The ruling by Fifth Court of Appeals in Dallas affirmed an August ruling by a district judge that Gov. Greg Abbott's executive order banning mask mandates impeded the ability of Judge Clay Jenkins, the top elected official in Dallas County, to protect his constituents from Covid.

represent not just me but the interest of public health, I am forever grateful. I will continue to stand for your safety against any threat. The enemy should not be another elected official. This is Team Human vs the Virus and to protect life and our economy we should'....

'-- Clay Jenkins (@JudgeClayJ) November 23, 2021Partisan tensions are at a fever pitch over whether students, teachers and school employees should be required to wear masks. Some Republicans have cast mask rules as an infringement on parental rights, while many Democrats hold that they are a matter of public health.

Mr. Abbott has faced a series of legal challenges since he signed an executive order in July barring mandates for both masks and vaccinations.

Officials in Dallas and elsewhere in Texas have defied the governor by requiring people to wear masks in schools and other indoor public settings.

'-- Ron DePasquale

Image People take part in a 'No Green Pass' rally at the Circus Maximus in Rome, Italy, this past weekend. Credit... Massimo Percossi/EPA, via Shutterstock BRUSSELS '-- European governments are toughening their measures against Covid in the face of soaring infection rates and popular resistance, with violent protests over the weekend in numerous countries.

Austria went into lockdown on Monday to try to break the fourth wave of Covid spreading across Europe, while the German health minister, Jens Spahn, warned that by the end of this winter, ''just about everyone in Germany will probably be either vaccinated, recovered or dead.''

Tens of thousands of people protested official crackdowns and vaccine requirements in Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Italy, Switzerland and Croatia, with scattered violence and police use of tear gas and water cannons. Some protesters were organized by far-right parties, but many were simply fed up with almost two years of intermittent state controls over their lives in the name of public health.

Europe has accounted for more than half the world's reported Covid deaths this month, according to the World Health Organization. On Monday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised Americans not to travel to Germany or Denmark because of the rising case rates there.

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany told her Christian Democratic Party on Monday that the latest surge was worse than anything Germany had suffered so far. And neighboring Austria began its fourth lockdown, one of the few in Western Europe since vaccines became widely available.

Most stores, restaurants, sporting venues and cultural institutions shut down, leaving the streets cold and quiet in the weeks before Christmas. The lockdown, which allows people to leave home only to go to work or to procure groceries or medicines, will last at least 10 days and as many as 20.

Austria has also announced that vaccination will be compulsory as of Feb. 1 '-- the first Western country to take that step, and one of only a handful around the world. On Saturday, some 40,000 Austrians marched in Vienna to protest the new measures.

In France, President Emmanuel Macron has relied more on persuasion. Proof of vaccination or a recent negative test is required to patronize restaurants and cinemas, which has encouraged many reluctant French to get vaccinated without a national mandate. But anti-vaccination groups remain active in France, as well.

'-- Steven Erlanger

Global roundup

Image Prime Minister Jean Castex of France, left, tested positive for the virus after returning from an official trip to Belgium. Credit... Olivier Hoslet/EPA, via Shutterstock France's prime minister, Jean Castex, said on Tuesday that he had only ''mild symptoms'' after testing positive for the coronavirus, as the French news media criticized him for apparent past failures to follow the government's social-distancing recommendations.

''I am well and am continuing to carry out my duties in isolation, strictly following the health protocol,'' Mr. Castex said on Twitter.

On that same social network, however, many users shared videos of him appearing to flout distancing recommendations, including one from last week that showed a maskless Mr. Castex shaking hands with elected officials indoors.

The government itself has urged the French in recent weeks not to drop their guard and to continue observing distancing practices as much as possible, even when vaccinated.

‰lisabeth Borne, the labor minister, recently warned companies not to become complacent about health guidelines. ''Maybe we have lapsed a bit, barrier measures are being less respected,'' she told the news channel BFMTV this month.

On Monday, Mr. Castex had just returned from an official trip to Belgium, where he met with Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, when he learned that his 11-year-old daughter had tested positive, his office said in a statement. He immediately took a test, which turned out positive.

President Emmanuel Macron of France chose Mr. Castex, 56, as prime minister in July 2020. Mr. Castex had previously been the top official in charge of lifting the strict nationwide lockdown France imposed during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic.

Mr. Macron himself was sick with Covid-19 late last year.

7''day average

26,729

Source: Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University. The daily average is calculated with data that was reported in the last seven days.

The number of daily infections has shot up in France, which is one of several European countries experiencing a new wave of cases.

On Monday evening, Mr. Castex met virtually with elected officials from Guadeloupe, a Caribbean archipelago governed by France that has been rocked by violent unrest over the past few days because of protests against French vaccination mandates.

In a televised statement after the meeting, Mr. Castex condemned the violence and said the government would try to ''convince and assist, individually, humanely,'' health workers who are reluctant to get vaccinated.

''Vaccination is necessary for protection, most notably against serious forms of the illness,'' said Mr. Castex, who is fully vaccinated. ''There is no other way.''

In other news from around the world:

Officials in South Korea said on Tuesday that they had shut down a religious facility in the city of Cheonan after 210 of its 427 residents tested positive for the coronavirus this week, an outbreak that comes as the country's cases surge to record highs. At least 191 of those infected in Cheonan were unvaccinated, a health official said. Officials did not release the name of the religious organization, citing disease control laws meant to protect privacy.

Germany's military is set to require service members to be vaccinated after a committee of soldier-representatives and defense ministry staff approved such a step on Monday. The move still requires formal approval. German soldiers abroad have already been required to be vaccinated since the spring. On Tuesday, the defense ministry announced that it would send 6,000 soldiers to help districts dealing with a spike in coronavirus cases.

A court in Spain rejected a plan by the government of the Basque region to make it compulsory to show a vaccination passport to enter restaurants, concert halls and other public spaces. The judges ruled on Monday that the latest Covid numbers did not justify the blanket obligation. The regional government said it found the ruling incomprehensible, but that it would not appeal. At least three other regions of Spain had been preparing similar measures.

'-- Aurelien Breeden, Christopher F. Schuetze and Raphael Minder

Video The protests in France's Caribbean territory, fueled by longstanding social and economic frustrations, grew increasingly violent as protesters burned cars and looted businesses. Credit Credit... Ricardo Arduengo/Reuters Violent protests over vaccine mandates have rocked France's overseas department of Guadeloupe in the Caribbean over the past week, fueled by longstanding social and economic frustrations over inequality with the mainland and simmering anger at being overlooked by the French government.

Guadeloupe, an archipelago of islands, is one of several French overseas territories that have been hit hard by the pandemic over the past few months and where France's vaccination campaign has been met with the most suspicion and resistance.

A mix of old grievances and new distrust over Covid-19 rules has made the unrest particularly volatile.

Demonstrations that started peacefully with road blocks and pickets in front of the main hospital in Pointe- -Pitre, Guadeloupe's largest city, grew increasingly violent over the weekend, as protesters burned cars, looted businesses and clashed with riot police officers, who responded with tear gas.

More than 30 people accused of violence or looting have been arrested, and the local authorities imposed a nighttime curfew. The central government also announced over the weekend that it was sending over 200 police reinforcements.

On Monday, the remains of charred cars littered roads and schools remained closed as President Emmanuel Macron of France appealed for calm and order.

''Our priority is to continue convincing that vaccination is the best protection,'' Mr. Macron told reporters during a visit to Amiens, his hometown in northern France. ''And to yield nothing to lies, disinformation and the manipulation by some of this situation.''

''There is a very explosive situation, tied to a very local context, to historical tensions that we know of,'' Mr. Macron acknowledged, as he accused some of the government's critics of ''using this context and these anxieties'' to aggravate the situation.

Over 40 percent of the adult population in Guadeloupe is fully vaccinated, but that figure is nearly 90 percent for all of France including overseas regions, according to official statistics.

The unrest started last week with a strike by local unions that are opposed to France's vaccine mandate for health workers. Those unions say it was imposed by the central government with little consultation, and are particularly infuriated that unvaccinated health professionals are suspended without pay.

''That is an unheard level of violence against them and their families,'' Jean-Marie Nomertin, the secretary general of the Conf(C)d(C)ration G(C)n(C)rale du Travail de la Guadeloupe, one of the protesting unions, said in a statement last week.

Protesters have also rejected France's health pass, which is needed to gain access to restaurants, museums and other public places and can only be obtained through full vaccination, proof of Covid recovery, or a recent negative test '-- which must now be paid for out of pocket for those who are not vaccinated and do not have a prescription.

As in other overseas departments like R(C)union or French Guiana that are a legacy of France's colonial empire, Guadeloupe has long felt overlooked by policymakers in Paris, with decades-old anger over stagnant unemployment, high living costs and dysfunctional public utilities that have fueled protests in the past.

Suspicion of public health policies is especially high in the French Caribbean, where the government authorized the use of a highly toxic pesticide called chlordecone on banana plantations for decades, despite repeated health warnings.

''People are afraid, they have no trust,'' Harry Durimel, the mayor of Pointe- -Pitre, told Franceinfo on Monday, adding that local residents were ''ready for a confrontation'' over vaccine rules if they felt they were being forced ''to inject a product in their body.''

On the nearby island of Martinique, unions on Monday called for a general strike over similar concerns.

'-- Aurelien Breeden

Image Waiting to receive a shot of a vaccine in Nairobi, Kenya's capital, in July. Credit... Brian Inganga/Associated Press NAIROBI, Kenya '-- Kenya will require people to show proof of coronavirus vaccination to enter many businesses, restaurants and government offices starting next month, a major policy shift that has prompted outrage in a country where less than 5 percent of the total population is fully vaccinated.

Mutahi Kagwe, the cabinet secretary for health, said on Sunday that he was concerned about a slowdown in vaccinations and hoped the new rules would persuade more people to get their shots. With schools closing and the country heading into the festive season, he said there were concerns that people would become complacent about public health measures, including social distancing and wearing masks.

The new measure was swiftly criticized by lawyers, activists and the public, who cautioned against a stringent vaccine mandate just weeks after the lifting of a longstanding nationwide night curfew that dampened economic activity.

''It's clearly unconstitutional,'' Waikwa Wanyoike, a prominent constitutional lawyer, said of the mandate, adding that using ''threats'' to get more people to get inoculated will only create more apprehension about vaccines. ''The requirement may be right in terms of asking as many people to be vaccinated but the approach is wrong,'' he said in a phone interview.

Vaccination campaigns in Kenya have been hampered by a lack of funding. There have been few awareness campaigns. Nor are there widespread vaccination sites. The authorities at times have scrambled to access or purchase cold storage facilities needed to store the shots.

The new rules will also extend to those planning to visit hospitals, prisons, eateries, bars, national parks and any business serving 50 or more people daily. Drivers of public transportation, along with pilots and air hostesses, will be expected to always carry proof of vaccination. In addition, visitors from Europe will be required to be fully vaccinated to enter Kenya.

7''day average

46

Source: Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University. The daily average is calculated with data that was reported in the last seven days.

The new rules are the most expansive introduced in the continent yet, according to Dr. Githinji Gitahi, who serves on the governing board of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. Zimbabwe has mandated that civil servants get shots and requires congregants at places of worship to produce proof of vaccination. Uganda requires all teachers and health care workers to be vaccinated while Namibia has flouted the idea.

Kenya has recorded over 254,700 cases and 5,328 deaths from the coronavirus. While average case rates have dropped in recent weeks, the lag in vaccinations and the spread of the more contagious Delta variant had overwhelmed the country's health care system. Kenya hopes to vaccinate at least 30 million people before the end of 2022, but like many African countries, it has also struggled to gain access to vaccines.

The new restrictions were met with skepticism, with many lamenting its impracticality. Some pointed to the low vaccination rates among the adult population, with just 8.8 percent of them fully vaccinated. Others said the mandate could open the door to more corruption, bribery and the proliferation of fake vaccine certificates.

Critics said the government should not only make sure that vaccines are available to all but also should come up with better strategies to address misinformation and resistance to getting vaccinated.

Irungu Houghton, the executive director of Amnesty International Kenya, said the new mandate, in its current format, risked depriving people of their right to not only work but also access critical services like health and education.

''This proposal risks domesticating the global vaccine apartheid and creating those with rights and those without,'' Mr. Houghton said in a statement.

'-- Abdi Latif Dahir

Image A nurse prepared a dose of the Pfizer vaccine in Southfield, Mich., this month. Credit... Emily Elconin for The New York Times The American Medical Association voted last week to allow only licensed physicians to write requests for patients seeking medical exemptions from vaccine mandates.

But the association does not have the power to enforce what is, in effect, a symbolic action intended to show concern as tens of thousands of people seek exemptions. While some states prohibit alternative practitioners like homeopaths, chiropractors and naturopaths from writing medical exemptions for vaccines, other states allow it.

''Science supports a vaccine mandate,'' said Dr. Gerald E. Harmon, the president of the American Medical Association, ''and we do not need to offer routes to evade mandates and undermine public health by seeking out practitioners who are not licensed or medically trained.''

The A.M.A.'s stance reflects increasing frustration among doctors with the spread of misinformation about Covid-19 vaccines and the virus. The association says that alternative practitioners are less likely than licensed physicians to recommend vaccines, and that they may even advise people not be vaccinated.

But removing power from alternative practitioners would not stop patients from getting invalid medical exemption requests. Licensed medical doctors are also writing bogus requests, according to doctors who are being asked to rule on them.

Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease expert at the University of California, San Francisco, sees the problem with invalid exemptions firsthand. Although California prohibits alternative practitioners from writing vaccine exemptions, patients are finding licensed doctors who will write them.

Dr. Chin-Hong said the university often called on him to evaluate the requests.

''I have never seen one that passed muster,'' he said.

Some patients seeking a medical exemption will simply hop from one doctor to another if they are turned down, said Lawrence O. Gostin, a global health law professor at Georgetown University. If the university denies their request, he added, people often turn up again with a request for a religious exemption.

Correction:Nov. 23, 2021An earlier version of this article misstated which practitioners are prohibited by some states from writing medical exemptions for vaccines. Osteopaths can write exemptions, they are not among the alternative practitioners prohibited from doing so.

'-- Gina Kolata

Image Passengers of a Singapore Airlines flight arriving at Melbourne International Airport on Sunday. Credit... Joel Carrett/EPA, via Shutterstock Australia, 20 months after shutting its borders, will allow skilled workers and international students to enter the country next month, the government announced on Monday.

The move comes as the Australian government, faced with a severe labor shortage, turns its focus to economic recovery, with 72 percent of the country fully vaccinated.

The new rules go into effect on Dec. 1, the beginning of summer in Australia. Some categories of visa holders, including skilled workers, international students, and those on working holiday and prospective marriage visas, will be allowed to enter Australia for the first time since the start of the pandemic. Over 200,000 people will fall into those categories.

''The return of skilled workers and students to Australia is a major milestone in our pathway back,'' Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Monday at a news conference. ''The steps that we are taking today are about securing our economic recovery.''

7''day average

1,379

Source: Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University. The daily average is calculated with data that was reported in the last seven days.

At the start of the pandemic, Australia shut its borders to noncitizens, leaving hundreds of thousands of visa holders stranded outside the country and contributing to a significant worker shortage. Australia has relied on temporary workers for many industries, such as hospitality and agriculture. The travel restrictions also created a severe funding shortfall for universities.

Most tourists are still barred from traveling to Australia, except those from Singapore, South Korea and Japan, all countries that have established travel bubbles with Australia.

Visitors entering Australia will need to be fully vaccinated and return a negative PCR test within three days of boarding their flight. Upon arrival, they will need to follow some quarantine restrictions, depending on the state in which they arrive.

On Sunday, the first planes from Singapore arrived in Sydney and Melbourne under the new travel bubble arrangement, bringing the first tourists into the country since the start of the pandemic.

'-- Yan Zhuang

Image Waiting in line for a Statue City Cruises boat ride around the Statue of Liberty in Lower Manhattan on Thursday. Credit... Gabby Jones for The New York Times The lines are getting longer at the Halal Guys food cart in the heart of Manhattan. The number of international visitors buying Statue of Liberty tickets has jumped more than 50 percent. And a few thousand more people are walking through Times Square.

After more than 18 months, the United States reopened its borders on Nov. 8 to vaccinated foreign travelers. Early indications suggest that they have been trickling back to New York, the top American destination city for international tourists.

But many businesses that depend on international visitors, including hotel operators and restaurants, see signs that even more tourists could start streaming in as the year-end holiday season approaches, providing a badly needed boost as the city's labor force struggles to recover from the pandemic.

The tourism industry has increasingly become a pillar of New York's economy. A record 66.6 million travelers visited the city in 2019, and their spending supported hundreds of thousands of jobs, from restaurant workers to museum security guards to bus drivers.

Some airlines reported that their first flights carrying tourists to New York in 20 months were fully booked.

''It really seems like the city is happy to show itself to the world again,'' said Christiaan Vander Kuylen, who arrived recently from Brussels. ''The energy is amazing.''

'-- Nicole Hong, Patrick McGeehan and Chelsia Rose Marcius

Image A resident of a long-term care facility on Staten Island getting a Covid shot. A vaccine under development that is easier to store could give an immune boost to older recipients. Credit... Christopher Occhicone for The New York Times As a company in India tests a cheap and possibly highly effective Covid-19 vaccine, a large group of researchers, most of whom are at Harvard, made the same vaccine and figured out how and why it could work so well, especially in vulnerable older adults.

The Harvard group began with a crucial question about Covid: Which population is most important to protect?

The answer, of course, is older people who are most at risk for severe disease and death.

The Harvard group began testing the vaccine with old mice. Like older people, old mice are much more susceptible to the coronavirus and much more likely to die.

The researchers made a vaccine that included a fragment of the virus's spike protein, the part that latches onto cells, allowing the virus to enter. Vaccines like the ones made by Moderna and by Pfizer-BioNTech spur cells to make complete copies of the spike, prompting the immune system to make antibodies to block it if a coronavirus tried to infect the person.

But those vaccines are expensive to make and store. In contrast, a snippet of the spike is cheap and can be stored at room temperature. The problem was that it does not elicit much of an immune response.

The Harvard group, led by David Dowling, turned to adjuvants '-- chemicals that enhance the immune system's response to vaccines '-- trying one adjuvant combination after another until they found one that seemed spectacularly successful. With that adjuvant, the vaccine protected mice at least as well as the Pfizer vaccine, said Dr. Ofer Levy, the director of Harvard's Precision Vaccines Program.

But what about people? Dr. Levy recruited volunteers from his Cambridge synagogue '-- people in their 60s, 70s and 80s '-- to provide blood for lab tests to see if the adjuvant that was so good in mice also stimulated the immune system in older people.

It did.

Now the question is what will happen in the trial in India? If the vaccine works, the hope is that it could help solve one of the thorniest problems in stemming the pandemic '-- how to make vaccines accessible to everyone worldwide.

The Indian government seems to be betting on success. In June, while clinical trials were in their early stages the government preordered 300 million doses. Its maker, Biological E Limited, estimates it will cost $3 a dose.

In contrast, Pfizer's price is $19.50 a dose but is expected to rise after its pandemic pricing phase ends.

'-- Gina Kolata

Image A nurse prepared beds for new patients at a makeshift Covid-19 hospital in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, in October. Credit... Andrew Kutan/Agence France-Presse '-- Getty Images Papua New Guinea will have vaccinated only a third of its adult population by 2026 if it continues at its current rate, according to new research by an Australian think tank that predicts that some countries in the Pacific will take years to vaccinate their populations.

The research by the think tank, the Lowy Institute, using modeling based on existing vaccination rates and factors such as demography, vaccine acceptance rates and health sector capacity, found that while some countries in the Pacific are leading the world in vaccination rates, others are lagging far behind.

''The Pacific is divided when it comes to vaccinations,'' said Alexandre Dayant, the author of the study and a Lowy Institute research fellow, warning that the slow vaccination speed in some nations raised the risk of new variants emerging.

Palau has given 99 percent of residents at least one vaccine dose. Tonga and Samoa are set to vaccinate their adult populations before the end of the year, according to the modeling, which is subject to change.

However, the Solomon Islands are not expected to fully vaccinate their adult population until April 2026, while it is estimated to take Vanuatu until then to vaccinate 86 percent of its adult population. And Papua New Guinea, the slowest in the region, will have vaccinated only about 16 percent of its population by December 2022.

These countries have been hampered by overstretched health care systems and rampant vaccine misinformation, Mr. Dayant said.

Facebook is often people's primary source of information there, and unsubstantiated theories of Western plots to inoculate people with microchips and black magic circulate on social media, he said, adding: ''misinformation spreads much quicker than the virus in the Pacific.''

He said wealthy countries could do more, like bolstering local health care systems. ''It is in the interest of the world to vaccinate developing countries,'' he said.

'-- Yan Zhuang and Livia Albeck-Ripka

Image Activists rallying for increased global access to coronavirus vaccines outside the headquarters of Pfizer in Manhattan in July. Credit... Brendan Mcdermid/Reuters Seeking to increase the supplies of coronavirus vaccines, treatments and diagnostic tests needed to quell the pandemic around the globe, 15 human rights groups have asked President Biden to apply maximum pressure on the World Trade Organization to grant an intellectual property exemption for the vaccines.

The exemption would mean that any country or company that has the ability to produce a vaccine could do so without having to worry about running afoul of the world economic body's property right protections. Some public health experts see a W.T.O. exemption as key to bolstering the production of vaccine in developing countries, allowing drugmakers around the world access to closely guarded trade secrets on how viable vaccines have been made.

''The stakes could not be higher,'' the groups wrote in a letter to the White House dated Nov. 19. ''Failure to enact a waiver will prolong the pandemic leading to more death, illness, economic hardship, and social and political disruption.''

Only 5 percent of people in low-income countries have received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, according to the Our World in Data project at the University of Oxford, a figure that is dwarfed by rates in wealthier countries.

Public Citizen, Oxfam, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Doctors Without Borders and Partners in Health are among the organizations listed on the two-page letter.

''There are people talking about whether or not we should take boosters,'' Dr. Joia Mukherjee, chief medical officer of Partners In Health, a global public health nonprofit, said at a news conference on Tuesday. ''This, to me, is even a false argument because that plays into the narrative that this is a scarce commodity.''

''It is only a scarce commodity because Pharma wants it to be a scarce commodity so that they can maximize profit,'' she said, using shorthand for the pharmaceutical industry. ''And we just need to say enough is enough. This is the time for us to show leadership.''

The increase in pressure on the Biden administration comes one week before hundreds of officials converge on Geneva for the W.T.O.'s major ministerial conference on Nov. 30.

In May, the White House said that it supported waiving intellectual property protections for coronavirus vaccines, as it sought to bolster production amid concerns about vaccine access in developing nations.

But the rights groups said in their letter that they were disappointed that the administration had since ''been unwilling to take further leadership.'' They noted that more than 100 W.T.O. member nations supported a waiver.

Six times as many booster shots of coronavirus vaccine are being administered in wealthy countries around the world each day than primary doses are being given in low-income countries, according to the World Health Organization. The group's director general, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has called that disparity ''a scandal that must stop now.''

The Biden administration said last week that it planned to spend billions of dollars to expand vaccine manufacturing capacity, with the goal of producing at least one billion additional doses a year beginning in the second half of 2022.

'-- Adeel Hassan

Image Children waiting in the observation area after receiving their first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine at Southfield High School in Southfield, Mich., earlier this month. Credit... Emily Elconin for The New York Times Coronavirus cases in children in the United States have risen by 32 percent from about two weeks ago, a spike that comes as the country rushes to inoculate children ahead of the winter holiday season, pediatricians said.

More than 140,000 children tested positive for the coronavirus between Nov. 11 and Nov. 18, up from 107,000 in the week ending Nov. 4, according to a statement on Monday from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children's Hospital Association.

These cases accounted for about a quarter of the country's caseload for the week, the statement said. Children under 18 make up about 22 percent of the U.S. population.

''Is there cause for concern? Absolutely,'' Dr. Sean O'Leary, the vice chair of the academy's infectious diseases committee, said in an interview on Monday night. ''What's driving the increase in kids is there is an increase in cases overall.''

Children have accounted for a greater percentage of overall cases since the vaccines became widely available to adults, said Dr. O'Leary, who is also a professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and Children's Hospital Colorado.

Though children are less likely to develop severe illness from Covid than adults, they are still at risk, and can also spread the virus to adults. Experts have warned that children should be vaccinated to protect against possible long-Covid symptoms, Multi-system Inflammatory Syndrome and hospitalization.

At the end of October, about 8,300 American children ages 5 to 11 have been hospitalized with Covid and at least 172 have died, out of more than 3.2 million hospitalizations and 740,000 deaths overall, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

At a news conference on Friday, Dr. Janet Woodcock, the acting commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, said hospitalizations and deaths among 5- to 11-year-olds were ''really startling.''

Dr. O'Leary said it did not help that many schools had softened their safety protocols in the last few months.

''So any protection that might be happening in schools is not there,'' he said.

Vaccinations of younger children are likely to help keep schools open. Virus outbreaks forced about 2,300 schools to close between early August and October, affecting more than 1.2 million students, according to data presented at a C.D.C. meeting on Nov. 2.

Dr. O'Leary said that he was especially concerned about case increases in children during the holiday season.

With the pace of inoculations stagnating among U.S. adults, states are rushing to encourage vaccinations for children 5 through 11, who became eligible earlier this month after the C.D.C. authorized the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for that age group. In May, the federal government recommended making the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine available to children ages 12 to 15. Teenagers 16 and older became eligible in most states a month earlier.

The White House estimated on Nov. 10 that nearly a million young children had gotten vaccinated; 28 million are eligible. They receive one-third of the adult dose, with two injections three weeks apart.

All of the data so far indicates that the vaccines are far safer than a bout of Covid, even for children.

Still, about three in 10 parents say they will definitely not get the vaccine for their 5- to 11-year-old child, according to a recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Only about three in 10 parents said they would immunize their child ''right away.''

'-- Alyssa Lukpat

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Fri, 26 Nov 2021 17:21

Breaking NewsIn July 2021, The Expos(C) exclusively revealed how data had been manipulated by scientists carrying out a real world study for the CDC to show that Covid-19 vaccines were safe for use during pregnancy.

The authors claimed that the number of people to suffer a spontaneous abortion (miscarriage) during the study was 104 out of 827 completed pregnancies, equating the risk of miscarriage at 12.6%; 7 '' 12% lower than the risk of miscarriage in the general population.

However, our analysis proved that these numbers were extremely misleading due to the fact that of the 827 completed pregnancies, 700 / 86% of the women had received a dose of either the Pfizer or Moderna Covid-19 vaccine during the third trimester of pregnancy, meaning it was impossible for them to suffer a miscarriage due to the fact they can only occur prior to week 20 of a pregnancy.

This meant that just 127 women received either the Pfizer or Moderna Covid-19 vaccine during the first / second trimester, with 104 of the woman sadly losing their baby.

Therefore the rate of incidence of miscarriage was 82% , not 12.6% as presented in the findings of the study, and the authors of the study have since admitted that they made a mistake, issuing a correction six months too late, because the study has been used to justify Covid-19 vaccination of pregnant women and new mothers around the world.

But now two researchers from New Zealand have re-analysed the study and called for countries to halt the administration of Covid-19 vaccines to pregnant and breastfeeding women immediately due to extremely concerning findings.

The correction resolved some of the issues, but there are still more, according to Dr. Simon Thornley, a senior lecturer in the University of Auckland's Section of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, and Dr. Aleisha Brock, another researcher in New Zealand.

According to Dr Thronley ''The article's conclusions haven't changed substantially as we believe is warranted from our re-analysis of the association related to early exposure to the vaccine in pregnancy, which indicates a substantially increased risk from background.''

Thornley and Brock re-analysed the data and calculated the incidence of miscarriages in the first trimester was actually 82 percent ( as concluded previously by The Expos(C) ) to 91 percent in a paper (see here) published in Science, Public Health Policy, and the Law.

Of the 827 pregnancies reported through the V-Safe registry, operated by the CDC, 712 resulted in a live birth. Nearly all of them were among women who were vaccinated in the third trimester. Of the other pregnancies, 104 resulted in miscarriage. Most of those occurred before 13 weeks of gestation.

Using data from the study and several estimates, the New Zealand researchers calculated that spontaneous abortions occurred in 81.9 percent to 91.2 percent of the women who were vaccinated before 20 weeks of gestation.

Thornley and Brock conclude in their analysis that they 'question the conclusions of the Shimabukuro et al. study to support the use of the mRNA vaccine in early pregnancy, which has now been hastily incorporated into many international guidelines for vaccine use, including in New Zealand.'

'The assumption that exposure in the third trimester cohort is representative of the effect of exposure throughout pregnancy is questionable and ignores past experience with drugs such as thalidomide. Evidence of safety of the product when used in the first and second trimesters cannot be established until these cohorts have been followed to at least the perinatal period or long-term safety determined for any of the babies born to mothers inoculated during pregnancy,'' they added.

Pfizer, it was noted, says on its vaccine's label that the available data on the vaccine ''administered to pregnant women are insufficient to inform vaccine-associated risks in pregnancy.''

The CDC researchers concluded their findings didn't show any obvious safety signals among pregnant women who received the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines. They said their findings did not necessarily represent the position of the CDC, but the agency links to the study on its website and used it to promote vaccination in pregnant women.

Dr Brock and Dr Thornley strongly disagree and state that considering the evidence presented in their analysis , that they suggest the 'immediate withdrawal of mRNA vaccine use in pregnancy (Category X)[41] and those breastfeeding, alongside the withdrawal of mRNA vaccines to children or those of child-bearing age in the general population, until more convincing data relating to the safety and long-term impacts on fertility, pregnancy and reproduction are established in these groups.'

As per the latest MHRA Yellow Card data which includes reports of adverse reactions to the Covid-19 vaccines (estimated between 1 '' 10% of adverse reactions are actually reported) submitted up to October 28th 2021, a total of 623 women have reported suffering a miscarriage as an adverse reaction to a Covid-19 injection.

This includes 369 reports made against the Pfizer mRNA injection.

Two-hundred-and-fifteen reports made against the AstraZeneca viral vector injection.

Thirty-seven against the Moderna mRNA injection.

And 2 where the brand of Covid-19 vaccine was no specified in the report.

The question is, how many of these spontaneous abortions were suffered following the use of a study in which CDC scientists manipulated the data to justify the safety of administering a Covid-19 vaccine during pregnancy?

Categories: Breaking News, Did You Know?, Latest News, The Expose Blog, World News

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Fri, 26 Nov 2021 15:17

Ahmed Naser al-Raisi heeft er sinds donderdag een baantje bij. Met bijna zeventig procent van de stemmen werd de huidige inspecteur-generaal van het ministerie van interne zaken van de Verenigde Arabische Emiraten verkozen tot president van de internationale politieorganisatie Interpol.

Het is een aanstelling waar al-Raisi zelf erg verheugd over is '' ''een hele eer'', zo bedankte hij al zijn aanwezige politiecollega's '' maar mensenrechtenorganisaties zijn een stuk minder enthousiast. Zij beschuldigen al-Raisi ervan betrokken te zijn geweest bij martelingen, willekeurige opsluiting en verdwijningen in de Emiraten.

Zo wijst Human Rights Watch op zaken als die van Ahmed Mansoor, een activist die al jaren in verschrikkelijke omstandigheden zit opgesloten. Of die van de Britse PhD-student Matthew Hedges, die in 2018 werd beschuldigd van spionage en zeven maanden lang werd vastgehouden en gemarteld. De organisaties maken zich ook zorgen over de bredere invloed van de Emiraten in Interpol, volgens hen probeert het land via gulle donaties invloed te kopen.

Een website van prestaties Het zijn beschuldigingen waar al-Raisi zich tot dusver weinig van aantrekt, en de meerderheid van de politiecollega's die voor hem stemden ook niet. Al-Raisi zette zich de afgelopen maanden actief in om zoveel mogelijk stemmen te winnen: hij reisde de hele wereld rond om zijn kandidatuur aan de man te brengen.

Ook werd er een website opgezet waar iedereen de 'prestaties' van al-Raisi kan bekijken. Zo is daarop te lezen dat hij meerdere diploma's op zak heeft van universiteiten in Engeland en de Verenigde Staten, hij verantwoordelijk is voor het oprichten van het 'departement van blijdschap' '' dat het blijheidsniveau van de inwoners van de VAE moet opkrikken - en dat hij gezorgd heeft voor het invoeren van irisscans en gezichtsherkenningssystemen op alle vliegvelden in het land.

Surveillancestaat Al-Raisi wil ook presteren bij Interpol. Hij zegt de organisatie te gaan moderniseren. Het presidentschap is een grotendeels ceremonile functie '' het dagelijks bestuur ligt in handen van secretaris-generaal J¼rgen Stock '' maar de president kan wel enige richting geven aan de koers van de organisatie.

Hij wil vooral technisch innoveren, schrijft al-Raisi in een opiniestuk in de Emiratische krant The National, net zoals hij eerder bij de politie in de VAE heeft gedaan.''De VAE hebben Interpol, en de rest van de wereldwijde politiegemeenschap, de vruchten te bieden van onze investeringen in technologie.''

Die investeringen kregen de laatste jaren echter stevige kritiek. De Emiraten beschikken over een van de hoogste concentraties surveillance-camera's ter wereld; de politie kan bijna overal live meekijken, en de technologie registreert nummerborden en de gezichten van alle passerende auto's en burgers, die vervolgens weer gekoppeld kunnen worden aan een nationale gezichtsherkenningsdatabase waarin alle burgers geregistreerd staan. Volgens mensenrechtenorganisaties is er inmiddels een surveillancestaat opgebouwd waarmee iedereen constant in de gaten gehouden kan worden.

Op zijn hoede Of al-Raisi zijn gezicht zal laten zien in Lyon, waar het hoofdkwartier van Interpol staat, is nog de vraag. In vijf landen, waaronder Frankrijk, zijn rechtszaken tegen hem ingediend. Zijn presidentschap verleent al-Raisi geen diplomatieke immuniteit, waardoor hij gearresteerd kan worden zodra hij voet op Franse bodem zet. Volgens het principe van universele jurisdictie kan een land besluiten al-Raisi te berechten als de misdaad ingrijpend genoeg wordt geacht, ondanks het feit dat de misdaad zich daar niet heeft afgespeeld. Maar of landen bereid zijn dit middel in te zetten tegen het hoofd van Interpol, valt nog te bezien.

Lees ook: In Dubai kan je nu zonder paspoortcontrole op het vliegtuig, een irisscan voldoet Ingezetenen van de Emiraten kunnen met alleen een gezichts- en irisscan vertrekken vanaf het vliegveld in Dubai. Maar de toenemende surveillance in het stadstaatje baart ook zorgen.

Syri krijgt weer toegang tot de database van Interpol, dissidenten mogelijk in gevaar De keuze van Interpol om Syri weer toegang te geven tot het communicatienetwerk is omstreden. Mogelijk zal het land via deze weg dissidenten opsporen.

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Fri, 26 Nov 2021 15:16

Begrijpen wat je te doen staat, en er tegen opzien. Erkennen dat je niets weet, en toch moeten besluiten aan wie of wat je je vertrouwen geeft. Knarsetanden bij de inconsistenties van het Nederlandse beleid, zonder de inconsistenties in je eigen gedrag over het hoofd te zien.

Weten dat de dood bij het leven hoort, maar beseffen dat dit niet kan gelden als een diepzinnig of nuttig uitgangspunt bij de bestrijding van een pandemie. Overal de andere kant van zien, zonder te denken dat alle kanten altijd gelijkwaardig zijn. Kritiek hebben op Mark Rutte en Hugo de Jonge, wetend dat geen leider kan functioneren zonder fouten te maken. Liever andere leiders gehad, en erkennen dat die dan weer andere fouten gemaakt zouden hebben. Denken dat die minder ernstig waren geweest, maar niets kunnen bewijzen.

Chinese resultaten willen De vaccins beschouwen als een godsgeschenk, zonder te geloven dat ze onfeilbaar zijn. Lezen over de nood in de zorg, de werkdruk en het verdriet van het personeel aan de rand van sterfbed na sterfbed, en toch geen voorstander zijn van vaccinatieplicht. Vinden dat de booster, of liever: herhaalprik, veel sneller moet worden ingezet, maar ook dat dat onrechtvaardig is jegens de landen die nog nauwelijks aan vaccineren zijn toegekomen.

Gebombardeerd worden met voorbeelden van landen waar ze het beter doen, en weten dat het op enig moment altijd wel ergens beter gaat dan hier, en dat dit constant verschuift. Geen idee hebben waar we zijn op welke routekaart, en toegeven dat je die routekaarten nog nooit hebt bekeken. Zeggen dat de communicatie beter had gemoeten, zodat andere mensen zich anders hadden gedragen. Chinese resultaten willen hebben, maar geen Chinese maatregelen. Beseffen dat dat niet kan.

Toch blijven geloven dat je niet echt gek bent Het zoomen haten, maar dankbaar zijn voor wat er digitaal mogelijk is in contactarme tijden. Nooit naar de persconferenties kijken, en zeker weten dat ze onverdraaglijk zijn. Kwaad worden over beveiligers die de wappie-agressie in ziekenhuizen moeten beteugelen, en ook proberen de wanhoop van de wappies te begrijpen. Verbijsterd zijn over het fascisme in het parlement, zonder te denken dat de dagen van de democratie nu zijn geteld. Geloven dat stilzwijgen geen optie is, maar weinig illusies hebben over de kracht van het weerwoord. Begrijpen dat de QR-code een heel verleidelijk instrument is voor controle-zoekende overheden, zonder te menen dat Nederland op weg is naar een dictatuur.

Gek worden van de kakofonie van elkaar tegensprekende deskundigen, en toch blijven geloven dat je niet echt gek bent. Erkennen dat niemand de waarheid in pacht heeft, zonder achter leugens aan te lopen. Het nieuws blijven volgen, terwijl je beter een wandeling had kunnen maken. Afspraken in je agenda zetten en weten dat ze weinig kans maken. Verlangen naar een dag in de zon, warm, maar niet te heet, er klinken kinderstemmen vanuit een zwembad ergens verderop, je leest een boek en verheugt je op de avond, het concert in het park.

Beseffen: die dingen bestaan, maar je kunt ze niet bestellen.

Drie keer per week schrijft Stevo Akkerman een column waarin hij de 'keiharde nuance' en het 'onverbiddelijke enerzijds-anderzijds' preekt. Lees ze hier terug.

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Fri, 26 Nov 2021 14:20

Leading scientists have rejected speculation that the Covid vaccine is linked with recent on-field collapses of three footballers, as sporting pundits came under attack for fuelling hesitancy of the jab.

Wigan striker Charlie Wyke was admitted to hospital on Thursday after a week which had already seen John Fleck, of Sheffield United, and Sheriff Tiraspol's Adama Traore fall suddenly ill.

However, public health experts and epidemiologists expressed concern at knee-jerk responses from former players who suggested there may be a link with the vaccine.

TalkSport, for example, had to cut off Trevor Sinclair, 48, from a broadcast as he questioned whether Fleck, who collapsed during his side's win over Reading, had recently had the jab. ''I think everyone wants to know if he [Fleck] has had the Covid vaccine,'' he said.

'Totally irresponsible to make these unsubstantiated comments'With former professionals, such as Ramon Vega and Matthew Le Tissier, also wading in to demand investigations into links, scientists responded by reminding them of their ''public responsibility''. ''Given the track record of certain footballers in the field of anti-vaccine beliefs, it is totally irresponsible to make these unsubstantiated comments, as opposed to getting them properly dealt with,'' said Prof Keith Neal, who has 25 years of experience in the research of the epidemiology of infectious diseases at the University of Nottingham.

Prof Robert Dingwall, a public health specialist at Nottingham Trent's School of Social Sciences, said: ''There are many reasons why on-field collapses may occur, even in clusters. We should all be careful not to blame any particular cause until they have been properly investigated. It may be tempting to blame Covid vaccines but pundits do have a public responsibility not to fuel vaccine hesitancy without any real evidence that this is a common factor in widely separated events.''

All the evidence from the experts concludes that the risks associated with Covid-19 dramatically outweigh the chance of developing a blood clot after having received the vaccine. Misinformation was spread after Christian Eriksen suffered on-field cardiac arrest during Euro 2020 in the summer.

Inter Milan have since confirmed that he had not even had his first jab at the time of his collapse.

However, despite facing criticism online from TalkSport listeners, Sinclair, the former West Ham and England forward, had doubled down on his concerns, tweeting: ''Everyone I speak to about these heart problems suffered by footballers (which worryingly seem to be happening more regularly)... are they linked to Covid vaccines or not?''

Le Tissier, the former Southampton forward, had tweeted that Fifpro, the players' union, should be ''a little bit concerned about how many of your members are suffering heart problems during matches'', while Vega, formerly of Tottenham Hotspur, said: ''It needs to be looked into.''

Prof Jonathan Ball, a molecular virologist at the University of Nottingham, said: ''These are rare things, which happen sporadically. Studies have shown that Covid is more likely to cause myocarditis and pericarditis than the vaccines.

''People can collapse for a variety of reasons, so, whilst it might be tempting to link these events with vaccination you have to be sure the association is true. This is what the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency look out for '' instances of rare events that are seen more often in vaccinated people than you would expect normally.''

Wyke, 28, was treated by Wigan's medical staff at the club's Christopher Park training base before an ambulance took him to hospital. Wigan later confirmed he was in a stable condition and talking, but he would be not available for selection for the immediate future. It was confirmed that Wyke had not had the vaccine and all his tests for COVID had proved negative.

The incident came less than 48 hours after Fleck collapsed during the second half of Sheffield United's Championship game with Reading on Tuesday. He received treatment on the pitch before he was transported to hospital. Fleck, 30, was released on Wednesday morning.

In the Champions League on Wednesday night, Traore went down clutching his chest in the 77th minute of Sheriff's clash with Real Madrid. The Mali international, 26, was seen shaking his head in responses to questions from medics before being helped off the field. More details about Traore's condition have still to emerge.

Barcelona striker Sergio Aguero has also been diagnosed with cardiac arrhythmia after he was forced off with chest pains during a 1-1 draw against Alaves last month.

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UNN : ðŸ†BREAKING NEWS🆠Representatives of the Aboriginal Community in Australia issue International Plea for help over tyr'... https://t.co/kPOHWXcLCH

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Share on Pinterest Scientists have discovered that a form of vitamin D could help reduce lung inflammation in COVID-19. Zoonar RF/Getty ImagesA special form of Vitamin D '-- not found over the counter (OTC) '-- may be able to combat lung inflammation caused by immune cells, a new study suggests.The research shows vitamin D has a ''switch-off'' mechanism for inflammation, which could work in severe COVID-19.However, clinical trials are needed before vitamin D is adopted to treat COVID-19 or other respiratory diseases.The researchers warn against people taking more than the recommended amount of vitamin D in hopes of staving off COVID-19 infection. Scientists are sharing insight into how vitamin D could help in severe COVID-19 cases by revealing how the vitamin functions to reduce hyper-inflammation caused by immune cells.

A new joint study by Purdue University and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) demonstrates how an active metabolite of vitamin D '-- not a form sold OTC '-- is involved in ''switching off'' inflammation in the body during infections such as COVID-19.

''Since inflammation in severe cases of COVID-19 is a key reason for morbidity and mortality, we decided to take a closer look at lung cells from COVID-19 patients,'' said lead authors Dr. Behdad (Ben) Afzali, chief of the Immunoregulation Section of the NIH's National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, and Dr. Majid Kazemian, assistant professor of biochemistry and computer science at Purdue University.

The study appears in the journal Nature Immunology.

As part of the study, researchers analyzed individual lung cells from eight people with COVID-19.

They found that in these cells, part of the immune response to SARS-CoV-2 '-- the virus that causes COVID-19 '-- was going into overdrive and exacerbating inflammation in the lungs.

After administering vitamin D in test-tube experiments, they observed reduced lung cell inflammation.

They then dove further into how the vitamin achieved this.

They did this by turning to T helper cells '-- also known as CD4+ cells '-- which are a type of immune cell that stimulate the ''killer'' T cells and other white blood cells to mount an immune response.

T cells are known to play a role in severe and dangerous cases of COVID-19 by going into overdrive and leading to an often fatal phenomenon known as a cytokine storm.

Normal vs. COVID-19 infectionThe scientists found that in normal infections, Th1 cells, which are a subset of helper T cells that fights microbes within the cell, go through a pro-inflammatory phase. During this phase, the body clears the infection.

Shortly after, the system shuts down to move onto the anti-inflammatory phase.

The scientists discovered that vitamin D is key in speeding up this transition.

''We found that in healthy T cells, the activation of the inflammatory gene program coincided with the activation of a vitamin D system within these cells. We, therefore, investigated how this vitamin D system works and what it does for healthy T cells before we tried to relate it back to COVID-19,'' Dr. Afzali and Dr. Kazemian told Medical News Today.

Whereas in COVID-19 infections, the scientists saw that the pro-inflammatory phase of Th1 cells did not switch off. They attributed this to either a vitamin D deficiency or an abnormality in the cell's response to vitamin D.

''As expected, by studying which genes were 'switched on' in the immune cells from the lungs of eight patients, we found that their cells were in an inflammatory state,'' said the co-authors.

Dr. Afzali and Dr. Kazemian said they were somewhat surprised to identify the intracellular vitamin D system.

''[T]raditionally vitamin D has been thought of as depending on the kidneys to activate it before it becomes functional. We found that T cells had a self-contained system to both fully activate and respond to vitamin D, independently of the kidneys,'' they said.

The researchers hypothesized that adding a highly concentrated intravenous vitamin D metabolite to existing treatments could further help people recover from COVID-19. But they have not yet tested this theory in clinical trials.

Previous studies establish links between vitamin D's ability to reduce the inflammation caused by T cells and the severity of COVID-19.

But the authors stress that people should not take these results as a treatment recommendation, and much more work is needed.

''[I]t's crucially important to note that this study did not test vitamin D treatment in people but analyzed lung cells from eight people who had severe COVID-19,'' said Dr. Afzali and Dr. Kazemian.

''The results, although interesting, should not be taken to indicate that vitamin D is beneficial for either the prevention or treatment of COVID-19 or that it's a substitute for other preventive and effective means of COVID-19 prevention, including vaccines, masks, and social distancing.'''' Dr. Ben Afzali and Dr. Majid Kazemian

Dr. Donald J. Alcendor, associate professor of pathology, microbiology, and immunology at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, said the study offered clues to a possible mechanism that will need validation on a larger scale.

''There is widespread belief among the general public that taking megadoses of vitamin D can protect you prior to or following testing positive for COVID-19. The science supporting these claims is still evolving and will require a large-scale control clinical trial going forward. Even more, the mechanism for how vitamin D affects COVID-19 is still unknown,'' he said.

Dr. Alcendor said that even though vitamin D is known to have immune-modulatory functions, it does not justify its use as a protective measure against COVID-19 infection, especially if one ignores COVID-19 mitigation practices.

He warned that attempting to take higher doses of fat-soluble vitamins such as vitamin D could be problematic for some people.

''A normal diet with a daily generic multivitamin will provide you with the necessary vitamin D needed,'' he said.

The study suggests that vitamin D could be a therapeutic option for COVID-19 thanks to its role in hyper-inflammation.

''This study reveals a potentially unique role that vitamin D plays in the activation of T-cell functions that regulate inflammation in COVID-19, and understanding these regulatory pathways may provide information that will lead to the development of novel therapies for the treatment of acute COVID-19,'' said Dr. Alcendor.

''This key finding could lead to the development of novel therapies for multiple respiratory viruses. The potential for this study could be groundbreaking.'''' Dr. Donald Alcendor

Dr. Kazemian and Dr. Afzali maintain that we will have to wait for clinical trials for results.

''There are a number of clinical trials actively studying the potential of vitamin D as an adjunct therapy for the treatment of COVID-19. When these studies have reported in, we will have a much better idea of the therapeutic role that vitamin D could play in inflammation caused by COVID-19,'' they said.

However, Dr. Alcendor said future research would need to answer a slew of questions:

''[I]s this mechanism specific to COVID-19, or is it true for other respiratory infections? If this study was performed with specimens from influenza patients, would you get a similar result? Could this key finding provide information that would lead to novel therapies for multiple respiratory viruses?''

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Rumble '-- November 12th 2021 - Former employee of Pfizer, turned whistleblower of covid-19

***DOWNLOAD: The world must go to www.bit.ly/awcevidence and download all pdf's and videos.All the evidence the world needs to see to understand the COVID19 SARS-CoV-2 LIE will be found.

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Sat, 27 Nov 2021 20:45

Dennis Parker : Christine Lagarde talks about #Bitcoin https://t.co/QhkYM0W3r2

Sat Nov 27 19:12:08 +0000 2021

Michael O'Shea : @Xentagz And the man interviewing her is the man Biden is staying with over the Thanksgiving holiday

Sat Nov 27 20:45:02 +0000 2021

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Sat Nov 27 20:38:13 +0000 2021

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Sat Nov 27 20:35:30 +0000 2021

Morook2.0 : @Xentagz "Crypto is an energy consuming asset", forgetting that Fiat currencies consume a lot more energy.

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Sat Nov 27 20:32:24 +0000 2021

kn33bar : @Xentagz When someone ends a sentence with the word period it means they have no argument

Sat Nov 27 20:31:26 +0000 2021

David Bulltard : @Xentagz https://t.co/9Ye5lAY3Sx

Sat Nov 27 20:31:09 +0000 2021

acumulatoooor : @Xentagz They'll be dead soon

Sat Nov 27 20:30:42 +0000 2021

Leslie de Vormer : @Xentagz In short what she said.'We want to be Bitcoin but regulated'.Poor Lagarde.

Sat Nov 27 20:29:51 +0000 2021

Cryptohat : @Xentagz How incredibly arrogant

Sat Nov 27 20:26:21 +0000 2021

Ara'‚ianHODL 🌋 : @Xentagz https://t.co/LhK36j2vws

Sat Nov 27 20:25:17 +0000 2021

George Bitcoinian : @Xentagz I can't wait until this woman is irrelevant. She makes my skin crawl

Sat Nov 27 20:23:44 +0000 2021

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Sat Nov 27 20:21:36 +0000 2021

Huge Ackman : @Xentagz @ck_SNARKs Apparently her and Trump use the same self-tan

Sat Nov 27 20:20:19 +0000 2021

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Sat, 27 Nov 2021 16:40

(C) Youtube/Jeff Pearce Donald Yamamoto was one of a group of former ambassadors and current diplomats for the United States, Britain and EU who had a Zoom meeting on Sunday, November 21, to encourage and try to help the TPLF, and there's evidence to prove it: a secret phone-cam video of the two-hour meeting.

Video footage has emerged of several Western diplomats meeting with leaders of the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF),

showing them frankly discussing plans to overthrow Ethiopia's democratically-elected president, Abiy Ahmed. Abiy arrived at the front lines on Wednesday to take personal control over the effort to halt the TPLF's offensive.Top US, UK and European Union diplomats with longstanding connections to Ethiopia during its 27 years of TPLF rule met on Zoom on Sunday with a "chief representative" of the TPLF, trading ideas about the group's potential to seize power and the Ethiopian National Defense Force's (ENDF) ability to stop it.

The meeting comes as Western states continue to posture themselves as neutral in the conflict , and while the Biden administration puts heavy pressure on Abiy's government, applying economic sanctions to Addis Ababa and its Eritrean allies for supposedly exacerbating it.According to investigative journalist Jeff Pearce, the video was shot on a phone camera by an unnamed participant in the meeting and given to him. The source said the meeting was held under the auspices of the Peace and Development Center International, which they described as "TPLF and OLF-run masquerading as NGO," referring to the TPLF-allied Oromo Liberation Front.

On the center's website, it lists among its partners and donors the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which is part of the US State Department, and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a well-known and self-admitted CIA front, both of which have astroturfed opposition parties and funneled funds to pro-US groups from Hong Kong to Nicaragua and beyond.

Among those seen in the video are US Ambassador to Somalia Donald Yamamoto; Vicki Huddleston, former Charg(C) d'Affaires ad interim to Ethiopia; former US deputy assistant secretary of defense for African Affairs and US assistant secretary of state for Africa; and Berhane Gebre-christos, a longtime TPLF official who served as Ethiopia's ambassador to the United States for 10 years after it came to power in 1992 until 2002 and was later Ethiopia's ambassador to several European countries, the EU, and to China. Berhane was also foreign minister from 2010 until 2012. He was introduced in the meeting as a "chief representative of the TLF," an older name for the TPLF.

The meeting also included a host of former ambassadors to Addis Ababa from European countries, including former UK ambassador to Ethiopia and longtime representative of British affairs in Africa Robert Dewar; former EU ambassador to Ethiopia Tim Clarke; former French ambassador to Ethiopia St(C)phane Gompertz; former Spanish ambassador to Ethiopia Carmen de la Pe±a; and former Finnish ambassador to Ethiopia Kirsti Aarnio.

Hope for TPLF 'Military Success Fairly Soon'

During the two-hour meeting, Berhane sought to persuade the attending diplomats that there was wide support for the TPLF's program and that Abiy's intention from the very beginning of his 2018 election was to consolidate power around himself and use the Tigrayan people as a pariah with which to do it.

He also claimed that a number of foreign nations were selling Abiy's government "sophisticated technologies, including Iran, Turkey and Azerbaijan," along with "the traditional ones, Russia and China.""Abiy is not listening, he's not listening at all right now," Yamamoto, the US envoy to Mogadishu, asked Berkane. "And how are you going to reach him? A person who's really in a corner. And [African Union envoy Olusegun] Obasanjo has not been extraordinarily helpful or very active, and so are there any other opportunities that you see?"

"I hope that you'll have military success fairly soon , because it seems as if the situation is only becoming more drastic," Huddleston told Berhane. "Abiy should step down, there should be an all-inclusive transition government."

"Even if Abiy sticks to his guns, which unfortunately he seems to be doing, you either hope that people around him either in government or in the military realize that this is going nowhere and might force him to, well, accept the cessation of hostilities or force him to step down?" asked Gompertz, the retired French diplomat.

(C) AP Photo / Gemunu Amarasinghe Berhane Gebre Christos speaks during a signing ceremony of the United Front of Ethiopian Federalist and Confederalist Forces to establish a grand United Front to fight against the Abiy Ahmed regime in Ethiopia, in Washington, Friday, Nov. 5, 2021. Ethiopia's Tigray forces on Friday joined with other armed and opposition groups around the country in an alliance against Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to seek a political transition after a year of devastating war, and they left the possibility open for his exit by force.

Two weeks ago, Berhane gave his answer to reporters during a trip to Washington, DC: "There is no limit for us ... Definitely we will have a change in Ethiopia before Ethiopia implodes.""The next step will be to organize ourselves and totally dismantle the existing government, either by force or by negotiation ... then insert a transitional government," Mahamud Ugas Muhumed, of the Somali State Resistance, another TPLF-allied group from the eastern Somali region, said at the November 5 presser.

In other words, the diplomats' Sunday discussions are in lock-step with the TPLF's political program .

'We're Not Interested in Controlling Addis'

One particularly illuminating exchange happened between Berhane and Huddleston. The former Pentagon chief for Africa, while noting how well the TPLF has been fighting, said that it "probably would be a huge mistake" for the Tigrayans to seize control of the Ethiopian government outright.

"I assure you that we're not interested in controlling Addis and so on," Berhane replied.

Indeed, while the TPLF was the dominating force of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), the government that replaced the Marxist Derg military government in 1992, its 27 years of rule saw a sizeable part of Ethiopian industry and military power moved from other parts of the country into the northern Tigray state. This was in accordance with the group's manifesto drawn up in 1976, which rejected the notion that Tigrayans had any connection to other Ethiopians and called for creating a separate nation-state of "Greater Tigray."

Simon Tesfamariam, executive director of the New Africa Institute, told Radio Sputnik's By Any Means Necessary on Tuesday that in the manifesto, the TPLF said "their goal was to one day create this greater republic of Tigray, which would expand its territories to the sea, meaning compromising Eritrean sovereignty, and then also into the interior of Ethiopia, taking lands - ancestral lands - of other peoples."

"So the Ethiopian people and Eritrean people are naturally going to say 'no more' to this," Tesfamariam told hosts Sean Blackmon and Jacquie Luqman. "There's no way they're going to support something like this. But the United States, seeing that they had TPLF, a minority regime that doesn't even represent the people of Tigray - they looted the people of Tigray, exploited the people of Tigray; we're talking to the tune of $30 billion of the broader Ethiopia, 1.5 million Tigrayan people on food aid. They didn't care about the people of Tigray. So the US supported the TPLF against the wishes of the people of the Horn of Africa."

After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, by al-Qaeda*, the TPLF-led Ethiopian government became one of the US' most important partners in the War on Terror. At its height, this included the 2006 invasion of Somalia to depose the Islamic Courts Union, the country's first government in 15 years of civil war, which paved the way for the rise of al-Qaeda affiliate al-Shabaab.

Posturing for Peace?

Abiy was elected prime minister in 2018 after the TPLF chairman of the EPRDF, Hailemariam Desalegn, resigned amid massive nationwide protests. The coalition's other member parties, each of which hailed from a different Ethiopian ethnic group, rejected further TPLF rule and chose Abiy, an Oromo, as their new candidate. He was reelected in July by a large majority.

Abiy took the country in a new direction, rejecting the federalized structure used by the TPLF to keep Ethiopia's many ethnic groups separated and more easily controlled, and uniting their many parties into a single Prosperity Party. He also tried to withdraw ENDF forces from Tigray after signing a peace treaty with Eritrea. The TPLF rejected and resisted these moves, and in November 2020, tried to hold illegal elections in Tigray after Abiy's government postponed the vote due to the COVID-19 pandemic. ENDF forces in Tigray came under attack on November 4, 2020, and the war was on, with Eritrea soon siding with Abiy's government.

"On November 4 ... they started to use the hashtag #TigrayGenocide. Before you could even tally up who was dead and where the bodies were, right off the bat they were using the #TigrayGenocide hashtag. And it became a campaign, the media started to say there was a genocide going on in Tigray," Tesfemariam told Sputnik, noting that the UN Human Rights Office and Ethiopian Human Rights Commission found no evidence of such a genocide in Tigray, although it did document human rights abuses by all sides in the conflict.

(C) AP Photo / Mulugeta Ayene In this Wednesday, June 16, 2021 file photo, Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed speaks at a final campaign rally at a stadium in the town of Jimma in the southwestern Oromia Region of Ethiopia. Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has been sworn in Monday, Oct. 4, 2021 for a second five-year term.

During the first several months of the conflict, the US did not take particular note, but in May 2021, two weeks after the Ethiopian Council of Ministers declared the TPLF a terrorist organization, the US State Department imposed visa restrictions and restricted economic and security assistance to the country.

By September, after the TPLF launched a new offensive into the neighboring Afar and Amhara regions and Abiy declared a state of emergency, Biden issued an executive order authorizing more substantial measures, including sanctions on central Eritrean political and defense leaders for actions that "contributed to the crisis and conflict, which have undermined the stability and integrity of the Ethiopian state."

The very deep irony is that Sunday's secretive Zoom meeting planning the dissolution of Abiy's government was just nine days after the US Treasury announced the sanctions against Asmara.

On Tuesday, Abiy said he was taking personal control over the fight from the front, as the TPLF was rumored to have captured the town of Debre Sina, 190 kilometers from Addis Ababa. Meanwhile, US special operations forces in Djibouti, which borders Ethiopia to the east, were put on standby in case they were needed to help Americans in the embassy in Addis Ababa, according to CNN.

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Sat, 27 Nov 2021 14:37

BonginoReport Published November 26, 2021 23,266 Views 493 rumbles

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Sat, 27 Nov 2021 14:25

Another variant, another day. This one seems to be the new scare fest "they've" chosen to further destroy OUR world.

Please like, share, subscribe and click the "ðŸ----" icon for news updates of the strange, UFOs, weird and par'...

Another variant, another day. This one seems to be the new scare fest "they've" chosen to further destroy OUR world.

Please like, share, subscribe and click the "ðŸ----" icon for news updates of the strange, UFOs, weird and paranormal.

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Sat, 27 Nov 2021 14:20

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Sat, 27 Nov 2021 09:58

President Joe Biden on Friday warned that the new Omicron COVID variant "spreads rapidly" and called for fully vaccinated people in the U.S. to get the COVID vaccine booster for protection against the new strain that was first discovered in South Africa.

"We don't know a lot about the variant, except that it is of great concern. It seems to spread rapidly," Biden told reporters in Nantucket, Massachusetts, on Friday, according to CBS News.

After a briefing with his chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci and the COVID response team, Biden decided to restrict travel from South Africa and seven other countries starting November 29 to curb the spread of the new variant, according to a statement by the White House.

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The air travel restrictions apply to Eswatini, Mozambique, Malawi, Lesotho, Namibia, and Zimbabwe, and Botswana. Most non-U.S. citizens who were in those countries during the past 14 days will be banned from entering the U.S., Reuters reported on Friday.

No details were revealed about how long the bans will be in place.

Newsweek contacted the White House for comment, but didn't receive a response by the time of publication.

"Get your booster shot now, so you can have this additional protection during the holiday season," Biden urged fully vaccinated Americans. He also urged adults and children who didn't receive the COVID vaccine yet to "get vaccinated today."

On November 19, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) allowed all adults to get the COVID vaccine booster shot.

As of Thursday, only 1 in 10 eligible Americans have received a COVID booster shot, according to Our World in Data. About 37.5 million people in the U.S. have received the booster, the CDC said.

The president also pointed to the importance of global vaccinations as he urged countries worldwide to vaccinate their populations against the virus amid the spread of the new strain.

"The news about this new variant should make clearer than ever why this pandemic will not end until we have global vaccinations," he said in the statement. "The United States has already donated more vaccines to other countries than every other country combined. It is time for other countries to match America's speed and generosity."

The World Health Organization (WHO) met on Friday to discuss the new variant, which officials in South Africa first shared with the international organization on Wednesday.

"This variant has a large number of mutations, some of which are concerning," the WHO said in a statement on Friday.

President Joe Biden said on Friday that the new COVID variant "spreads rapidly" and urged nationwide and global vaccinations. Above, a sign outside of a hospital advertises the COVID-19 vaccine on November 19 in New York City. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesWHO said that the evidence gathered about Omicron so far "suggests an increased risk of reinfection." The organization also added that cases of the new variant are surging in "almost all provinces in South Africa."

Last month, WHO expressed its concern that most countries in Africa will be unable to vaccinate at least 40 percent of their populations by the end of 2021, a goal that the organization hoped that countries worldwide would achieve.

Only six countries in Africa had reached that goal by late November, according to figures compiled by Our World in Data. However, South Africa is not expected to reach that 40 percent threshold before the year ends.

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Fri, 26 Nov 2021 19:49

What if you could get what you need without spending a dime? More than 1 million people in more than 30 countries are doing just that by using the Buy Nothing Project.

Cherri Christiansen started a Buy Nothing Project in her San Diego, California, neighborhood back in 2014. When she launched it, there was just one member.

''We grew to over 1,000 members within the first couple of years,'' she said. ''We actually hit almost 2,000 and at that point, the group became so big, we split into smaller, more hyper local groups.''

Earrings, toys, tickets, you name it. They're all free. Anyone can ask for anything and give anything. There are some rules, though. Keep it legal. No strings attached. No trading, no bartering.

''If someone is offering a mug, there's no need to say I'll trade you a hairbrush or I'll give you this for that coffee mug, everything is gifted freely,'' said Christiansen.

Co-founders and Co-volunteers Rebecca Rockefeller and Liesl Clark started the project in 2013. They're good friends who met through a love of sharing and a desire to lessen our environmental impact.

''Most of us do have things we're regularly throwing away or passing it on, whether clothes kids have outgrown or we're an older couple and we want to downsize or simplifying and want to get rid of excess things or your dog dies and you have the materials and you're not getting another dog,'' said Clark.

And that is when you offer up all those things as a gift to your neighbor.

''Our mission is to foster local gift economies where everything is given freely without any expectation of reward or return and no limit on giving or requesting,'' said Rockefeller.

That one idea they had while trying to promote a share economy so many years ago has spread. They're now approaching 1.5 million members in more than 30 countries, with 6,000 groups and 7,000 volunteers.

They also wrote a book, a blueprint of how to rethink what you have, what you can give and what you can ask for.

''No one makes money, but we gain in the connections we make with each other within the communities,'' said Clark.

Clark and Rockefeller both say the pandemic has perhaps grown their project. People need things in a down economy, and people need each other. And that was Cherri Christiansen's biggest "score." She received a birthday gift that had nothing to do with "stuff."

''I came home from the airport hoping to find one or two surprises at my front door and my entire front porch was full of gift cards and cards, someone drew pictures, someone put together a bouquet of flowers," said Christiansen. "No one spent any money.''

''The more that we act from a place of generosity and wanting to care for each other and commodify and monetize that the stronger our communities are, the more we free cash up in families that are struggling financially,'' said Rockefeller.

Copyright 2020 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Fri, 26 Nov 2021 15:24

A new COVID-19 variant which appears more potent than earlier forms is behind a spike in new cases in South Africa, according to the country's health authorities.

Key points: The variant contains a different spike protein to the one vaccines were based on Scientists say its mutations could make it more infectious The UK has temporarily banned flights from South Africa and five other countriesIn an impromptu address late yesterday, South Africa's Health Minister and several experts warned mutations detected in the genetic code of the new COVID-19 variant could make the virus both more transmissible and better able to evade the immune system.

South Africa's National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) said it had detected 22 positive cases of the variant, currently known as B.1.1.529.

For the past few weeks, the country had been seeing a daily new case rate of several hundreds, but in the last few days it shot into the thousands and hit 2,465 yesterday.

Data collected by laboratories across the country point to the variant being mostly present in the densely populated province of Gauteng, which contains South Africa's largest city Johannesburg and administrative capital Pretoria. But the variant has also been found in other provinces.

The B.1.1.529 variant's mutations and transmissibility has concerned health officials. ( Reuters: Siphiwe Sibeko )The mutated virus has also been detected in Botswana and Hong Kong, where it was found in a traveller from South Africa.

In a statement, NICD acting executive director Adrian Puren said the goal now was to work out how the virus would behave.

"Our experts are working overtime with all the established surveillance systems to understand the new variant and what the potential implications could be," Professor Puren said.

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. New COVID-19 variant emerges in South AfricaVariant could be the 'worst one yet'The newly identified coronavirus variant is also worrying British health officials due to its high number of mutations and rapid spread among young people.

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) said B.1.1.529 had a spike protein that was dramatically different to the original coronavirus variant the vaccines were based on.

It said it had mutations that were likely to evade the immune response generated both by prior COVID-19 infection and vaccination.

Catch up on the main COVID-19 news from November 26 with a look back at our blog.It also had mutations associated with increased infectivity, the UKHSA said.

Officials characterised the variant, which has double the number of mutations as the currently dominant Delta variant, as the "worst one yet".

"What we do know is there's a significant number of mutations, perhaps double the number of mutations that we have seen in the Delta variant," Britain's Health Minister Sajid Javid said.

"And that would suggest that it may well be more transmissible and the current vaccines that we have may well be less effective."

The UK has temporarily banned incoming flights from South Africa and five neighbouring countries. ( Reuters: Andrew Boyers )Britain announced today it was temporarily banning flights from South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Lesotho and Eswatini.

British travellers returning from those destinations would have to quarantine, it said.

Lab studies were needed to assess the likelihood of the mutations resulting in greatly reduced vaccine efficacy, scientists said.

Officials advised the British government to act swiftly and pre-emptively in case concerns over the impact of the variant were borne out, even though it could take weeks to generate all the information needed about its characteristics.

Health Minister Greg Hunt said there would be no changes to Australia's border restrictions yet, but said health authorities were still learning about the new variant.

"If the medical advice is that we need to change [our border restrictions], we won't hesitate," he said.

"At this stage, the advice of the Chief Medical Officer '... is that there's no basis for change."

Some 'good news' despite concernsEarlier this week, South African scientists said they had detected the new COVID-19 variant in small numbers and were working to understand its potential implications.

The UKHSA said no cases of the variant had been detected in Britain and they were in contact with South African colleagues over their data.

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South Africa's Health Minister, Joe Phaahlahas, said the country had seen an "exponential rise" in new infections due to the B.1.1.529 variant.

Tulio de Oliveira, from South Africa's Network for Genomic Surveillance, said studies into the variant were ongoing.

The team has 100 whole genomes of the variant and expects to have many more in the next few days.

The "very high number of mutations is a concern for predicted immune evasion and transmissibility", he said.

"We are concerned by the jump in evolution in this variant. The one piece of good news is that it can be detected by a PCR test."

AP/Reuters

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. What COVID-19 travel insurance doesn't cover you for(Emilia Terzon)What you need to know about coronavirus: The symptoms The number of cases in Australia Tracking Australia's vaccine rollout Loading form...

Posted 16h ago16 hours agoThu 25 Nov 2021 at 10:48pm, updated 7h ago7 hours agoFri 26 Nov 2021 at 8:18am

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Fri, 26 Nov 2021 13:47

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Fri, 26 Nov 2021 13:40

Disclose.tv : NOW - Passengers from South Africa are currently not allowed to exit the plane in Amsterdam amid fears over the new'... https://t.co/PWD5ByXasv

Fri Nov 26 12:17:31 +0000 2021

Dana Wert : @disclosetv Keep us relevant, keep watching our news we'll inform you of scary deadly things. You need to watch TV'... https://t.co/4rwgyGWAYO

Fri Nov 26 13:40:00 +0000 2021