Health & Fitness

11/17/21

Serious question: can you eat the stickers on fruits and veggies?

NIH and EcoHealth Colluded to Evade Research Restrictions

The walls are closing in on Dr. Anthony Fauci as emails reveal the National Institutes of Health colluded with EcoHealth Alliance to circumvent federal restrictions on gain-of-function (GOF) research.

The damning revelations were published by The Intercept¹ and Daily Caller,² November 3, 2021. While the NIH has kept the grant correspondence secret, only allowing select congressional staff to review the documentation in a private session, The Intercept was given access to their personal notes.

Considering federal grants are of clear public interest, the NIH’s decision to not make the correspondence public is suspicious in and of itself. Are they hiding something? You bet. As reported by Intercept journalists Sharon Lerner and Mara Hvistendahl:³

“Emails show that NIH officials allowed EcoHealth Alliance to craft oversight language governing its own gain-of-function research ...

Detailed notes on NIH communications obtained by The Intercept show that beginning in May 2016, agency staff had an unusual exchange with Peter Daszak, the head of EcoHealth Alliance, about experiments his group was planning to conduct on coronaviruses under an NIH grant called ‘Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence’⁴ ...

EcoHealth was entering the third year of the five-year, $3.1 million grant that included research with the Wuhan Institute of Virology and other partners. In a 2016 progress report, the group described to NIH its plans to carry out two planned experiments infecting humanized mice with hybrid viruses, known as ‘chimeras.’

The plans triggered concerns at NIH. Two staff members — Jenny Greer, a grants management specialist, and Erik Stemmy, a program officer handling coronavirus research — wrote to EcoHealth Alliance to say that the experiments ‘appear to involve research covered under the pause,’ referring to a temporary moratorium⁵ on funding for gain-of-function research that would be reasonably anticipated to make MERS and SARS viruses more pathogenic or transmissible in mammals ...

Initially, NIH staff appeared intent on enforcing the funding pause ... But what happened next sets off alarm bells for biosafety advocates: Agency staff adopted language that EcoHealth Alliance crafted to govern its own work.

The agency inserted several sentences into grant materials describing immediate actions the group would take if the viruses they created proved to become more transmissible or disease-causing as the result of the experiments.”

NIH Tries to Evade Responsibility

The NIH is now trying to evade responsibility by shifting blame for the unlawful research onto EcoHealth Alliance. October 21, 2021, NIH principal deputy director Lawrence Tabak, Ph.D., sent a letter^6,^7,⁸ to James Comer, ranking member of the Committee on Oversight and Reform, “to provide additional information and documents regarding NIH's grant to EcoHealth Alliance Inc.”

In the letter, Tabak acknowledged that Fauci lied to Congress when he emphatically insisted the NIH/NIAID have never funded GOF research. However, when it comes to circumventing the research moratorium, Tabak lays the blame squarely at the feet of EcoHealth. According to Tabak:⁹

“The limited experiment described in the final progress report provided by EcoHealth Alliance was testing if spike proteins from naturally occurring bat coronaviruses circulating in China were capable of binding to the human ACE2 receptor in a mouse model ...

In this limited experiment, laboratory mice infected with the SHC014 WIV 1 bat coronavirus became sicker than those infected with the WIV1 bat coronavirus. As sometimes occurs in science, this was an unexpected result of the research, as opposed to something that the researchers set out to do ...

The research plan was reviewed by NIH in advance of funding, and NIH determined that it did not to fit the definition of research involving enhanced pathogens of pandemic potential (ePPP) because these bat coronaviruses had not been shown to infect humans. As such, the research was not subject to departmental review under the HHS P3CO Framework.

However, out of an abundance of caution and as an additional layer of oversight, language was included in the terms and conditions of the grant award to EcoHealth that outlined criteria for a secondary review, such as a requirement that the grantee report immediately a one log increase in growth.

These measures would prompt a secondary review to determine whether the research aims should be re-evaluated or new biosafety measures should be enacted. EcoHealth failed to report this finding right away, as was required by the terms of the grant.”

In other words, EcoHealth’s experiment “accidentally” turned into GOF. At that point, EcoHealth should have alerted the NIH, but allegedly didn’t. So, according to Tabak, NIH bears no responsibility as they relied on EcoHealth to follow the terms of the grant.

EcoHealth has denied this charge, saying “These data were reported as soon as we were made aware, in our year four report in April 2018 ... At no time did program staff indicate to us that this work required further clarification or secondary review.”^10,¹¹

As noted by The Intercept,¹² Tabak implies the NIH created that reporting rule “out of an abundance of caution,” but according to the correspondence The Intercept reviewed, “the language was inserted at Daszak’s suggestion,” and “the NIH and EcoHealth Alliance worked together to evade additional oversight.”

Illogical Justifications

How did they evade additional oversight? Through illogical and contradictory risk assessments. While Tabak claims the resulting virulence was unintentional, how could that be, since the experiment in question was supposed to test the “emergency potential” of bat coronaviruses in the human population?

The name of the grant itself tells us they’re going to assess the possibility of a bat coronavirus mutating into something that can affect humans, and to do that, they will likely try to manipulate the virus to see if it can gain that function.

EcoHealth president, zoologist Peter Daszak, suggested to the NIH that the experiment should not be categorized as restricted GOF because his proposed hybrid viruses were so different from the SARS virus (which is known to infect humans). The Intercept continues:¹³

“Daszak also pointed out that WIV1, the parent of the proposed chimeric SARS-like viruses, ‘has never been demonstrated to infect humans or cause human disease,’ according to the transcribed emails.

And he said that previous research ‘strongly suggests that the chimeric bat spike/bat backbone viruses should not have enhanced pathogenicity in animals.’ The NIH would go on to accept these arguments.

But the group’s argument that its viral research did not pose a risk of infection appears to contradict the justification for the work: that these pathogens could potentially cause a pandemic.

‘The entire rationale of EcoHealth’s grant renewal on SARS-related CoVs is that viruses with spikes substantially (10-25%) diverged from SARS-CoV-1 pose a pandemic risk,’ said [Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center virologist, Jesse] Bloom.

‘Given that this is the entire rationale for the work, how can they simultaneously argue these viruses should not be regulated as potential pandemic pathogens?’”

But Daszak’s justification makes no sense for yet another reason. Three months before Daszak wrote that determination for the NIH — where he suggests the WIV1 virus they were going to use as the backbone for the chimeras had “never been demonstrated to infect humans or cause human disease” — his collaborator, Ralph Baric, Ph.D., had published a paper¹⁴ showing WIV1 did indeed have the ability to infect humans.¹⁵

Baric, who works at UNC Chapel Hill, had found the WIV1 virus “readily replicated efficiently in human airway cultures and in vivo,” and posed an “ongoing threat” to the human population. This completely contradicts Daszak’s statement, and it’s doubtful that Daszak would not be aware of the paper published by Baric three months earlier. It’s doubtful the NIH would be ignorant of Baric’s finding as well.

NIH Accepted Daszak’s Escape Clause

As explained by The Intercept, Daszak came up with a solution that would allow his group and the NIH to perform research they all knew was prohibited at the time:¹⁶

“If the recombinant viruses grew more quickly than the original viruses on which they were based, [Daszak] suggested, EcoHealth Alliance and its collaborators would immediately stop its research and inform their NIAID program officer ...

In a July 7 letter to EcoHealth Alliance, NIH’s Greer and Stemmy formally accepted Daszak’s proposed rule. The chimeric viruses were ‘not reasonably anticipated’ to ‘have enhanced pathogenicity and/or transmissibility in mammals via the respiratory route,’ the administrators concluded ...

The language that the NIH later inserted into the grant was strikingly similar to what Daszak proposed: ‘Should any of the MERS-like or SARS-like chimeras generated under this grant show evidence of enhanced virus growth greater than 1 log over the parental backbone strain you must stop all experiments with these viruses.’”

In a July 2016 email to the NIH, Daszak expresses his satisfaction that the agency decided to accept his justifications for why the research should not be considered restricted GOF. “This is terrific!” he wrote. “We are very happy to hear that our Gain of Function research funding pause has been lifted.”¹⁷ Daszak even admits that what they’re REALLY doing is GOF right in that email.

Clear Regulatory Failure

When EcoHealth’s scientists performed the experiment, one of the chimeric viruses grew much faster than the others during the first week of the experiment, producing a viral load that was four logs greater than the parent virus.

As noted earlier, Tabak claims EcoHealth didn’t inform the NIH program officer about this gain of function, and EcoHealth claims it did, and was permitted by default to continue, as no one at the NIH objected.

Incidentally, Daszak was relying on Wuhan Institute of Virology researcher Shi Zhengli — known to have ties to the Chinese military — to notify him if any of the viruses in the experiment had enhanced replication. Daszak in turn informed the NIH about this chain of reporting, so they knew the legality of the research basically rested in the hands of a Chinese operative, who may or may not have incentive to downplay such findings.

Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University who has criticized the lack of oversight of gain-of-function research, told The Intercept that the correspondence between the NIH and EcoHealth points to clear regulatory failure. “The oversight process clearly failed,” he said. Ebright also spoke to the Daily Caller, stating:¹⁸

“The NIH, incredibly, accepted EcoHealth’s belief that this work would not be considered gain of function, and accepted EcoHealth’s rationale for this belief, and accepted EcoHealth’s policy-noncompliant proposal for a [10 times] allowance for increased viral growth before stopping work and reporting results.

The NIH, in effect, delegated to EcoHealth Alliance the authority to determine whether its research was, or was not gain of function research subject to the funding pause, the authority to set criteria for the determination, and the authority to over-ride federal policies implemented by the White House ...”

The same sentiment was expressed by House Energy and Commerce Committee ranking member Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers and several other Republican lawmakers in an October 27, 2021, letter^19,²⁰ to NIH director Dr. Francis Collins. As reported by Daily Caller:²¹

“’EcoHealth portrayed the risks of these experiments as if they were not of concern, and the NIH accepted EcoHealth’s assertions without a searching inquiry,’ the Republican lawmakers told Collins. ‘However, the assessment of the risks by both EcoHealth and the NIH do not seem to square with the understanding of the research risks at that time ...

Although the engineered viruses at the WIV were far from SARS CoV-2 on the coronavirus family tree, this research reflected a high tolerance for risk,’ the lawmakers said, adding that there is no evidence that EcoHealth took action to notify the NIH that it created viruses that exhibited enhanced growth in humanized cells.

‘If EcoHealth and NIH could not handle compliance and oversight of such a basic policy, it raises more concerns about the overall adequacy of the oversight of this research, which leaves the public vulnerable to a serious lab accident,’ the lawmakers wrote.”

CNN Grills NIH Director

In a rare attempt at real journalism, CNN’s Pamela Brown kept Collins strapped to the hot seat in a recent interview, repeatedly grilling him about why the NIH was funding dangerous GOF research.²² Even Josh Rogin from the liberal Washington Post picked up on Brown’s dogged demands for Collins to come clean on the issue in the face of Collins’ attempts to sidetrack her:

“Everyone should watch this interview with outgoing NIH director Francis Collins to see how Collins uses misleading talking points to avoid any acknowledgement NIH was caught completely unaware its grantee was doing risky bat coronavirus research in Wuhan ... Collins uses every rhetoric trick to dissemble and distract ...” Rogin tweeted.²³

To her credit, Brown repeatedly brought the interview back on track, pressing Collins for answers, demanding to know:

“Why should Americans trust you and the NIH on the issue of COVID origins, when you didn’t even know about the programs it was funding with taxpayer dollars in China?"

When Collins tried to circumvent the question by diving into semantics about the definition of GOF, Brown interrupted him, again asking how he can be so certain that NIH funding isn’t being used for GOF, when he claims the NIH only recently found out about how the money was used in 2016?

Collins also reiterated that while EcoHealth “did some things they should have told us about ... they did not do the kind of gain-of-function research that requires special, high-level oversight.” Really? As noted by ZeroHedge:²⁴

“... if EcoHealth HAD reported its research results, it WOULD HAVE triggered extra, high-level oversight. Why is Collins pretending he knows they would have been exempt from that?”

Despite Collins’ insistence that the NIH was above-board and honest in all its communications, Brown refused to let him off the hook, ending the interview with: “This is U.S. taxpayer dollars going to risky research and I believe every American deserves to know about it.”

On a sidenote, like Fauci’s, Collins’ halo is rapidly tarnishing as alternative media have started digging into their backgrounds. While appearing squeaky clean on the surface, a closer look reveals both men have supported all sorts of questionable research, including research on aborted fetuses.

For an overview of Collins’ alleged sins, see First Things’ article, “The Cautionary Tale of Francis Collins.”²⁵ Unlike Fauci, though, Collins seems to sense he won’t escape public judgment. In October 2021, he announced his retirement from the NIH. He’s reportedly planning to step down by the end of the year. Time will tell if Fauci will have the good sense to resign, or if our political leaders will finally boot him out and press charges.

We Must Ban GOF Research

The evidence of regulatory failure by the NIH further strengthens the call for a permanent ban on most kinds of GOF. As Bloom told The Intercept:²⁶

“We urgently need a broader discussion about whether it’s a good idea to be making novel chimeras of coronaviruses that are at this point universally acknowledged to pose a pandemic risk to humans.”

Indeed, it appears we got off easy this time. SARS-CoV-2 has a very low mortality rate, despite spreading quite easily. The next Frankenstein pathogen to escape from a lab might not be as benign.

Seeing how the people in charge of making decisions about what research is to be allowed cannot be trusted with making sensible decisions, the public really needs to step up and let our representatives know we will not tolerate federal funds — taxpayer money — being used for research that has the potential to wipe us all out.

from Articles https://ift.tt/3CrTgRP
via IFTTT

B Vitamins Might Help Prevent Worst COVID-19 Outcomes

This article was previously published October 2, 2020, and has been updated with new information.

I've written many articles reviewing how nutrients such as vitamins C and D can help prevent and even play a role in the treatment of COVID-19. Now, researchers have highlighted the value of yet another vitamin or, rather, complex of vitamins, namely B vitamins.

The paper,^1,² "Be Well: A Potential Role for Vitamin D in COVID-19," was published online August 15, 2020, in the journal Maturitas. The paper is the result of a joint collaboration between researchers at the University of Oxford, United Arab Emirates University and the University of Melbourne, Australia.

While no studies using B vitamins have been performed on COVID-19 patients, the researchers stress that, based on B vitamins' effects on your immune system, immune-competence and red blood cells (which help fight infection), supplementation may be a useful adjunct to other prevention and treatment strategies. They are not suggesting B vitamins might prevent or treat COVID-19 by themselves.

Why Well-Regulated Immune Function Is Essential

One of the factors that make COVID-19 so dangerous to those with underlying conditions or old age is its ability to overactivate your immune system, triggering cytokine and/or bradykinin storms.

By strengthening and modulating immune function, in other words, making it function more appropriately and effectively, nutrients such as vitamins B, C and D can play important roles in minimizing your risk of this deadly development. As explained by Dr. Uma Naidoo, a nutrition expert at Harvard Medical School, who was not involved in the paper:³

"You can think of the immune system as an army. Its job is to protect the body. But if the immune system army isn't well-regulated, it can overreact and actually cause more damage — this overreaction is what often happens in COVID-19 and is referred to as the cytokine storm.

Cytokines are inflammatory molecules released by immune cells. They are like the weapons of the immune system army. So, if immune cells are soldiers, cytokines are guns and grenades.

And in a poorly regulated immune system, the body's cytokine storm induced by COVID cause lots of inflammation in the body, just as if little grenades were being tossed around. This is what causes the worst outcomes and death in COVID.

It follows that anything that improves immune system function and decreases the chances that an infected person will have a catastrophic cytokine storm may improve the outcome of COVID-19 cases and decrease the overall death rate. Therefore, it's quite feasible that B-vitamin supplementation could contribute to preventing the worst COVID outcomes."

B Vitamins for Healthy Immune Function

As noted by the authors of "Be Well: A Potential Role for Vitamin D in COVID-19":⁴

"There is a need to highlight the importance of vitamin B because it plays a pivotal role in cell functioning, energy metabolism, and proper immune function.

Vitamin B assists in proper activation of both the innate and adaptive immune responses, reduces pro-inflammatory cytokine levels, improves respiratory function, maintains endothelial integrity, prevents hypercoagulability and can reduce the length of stay in hospital.

Therefore, vitamin B status should be assessed in COVID-19 patients and vitamin B could be used as a non-pharmaceutical adjunct to current treatments …

Vitamin B not only helps to build and maintain a healthy immune system, but it could potentially prevent or reduce COVID-19 symptoms or treat SARS-CoV-2 infection. Poor nutritional status predisposes people to infections more easily; therefore, a balanced diet is necessary for immuno-competence."

The graphic below illustrates the roles various B vitamins play in the COVID-19 disease process. As you can see, B vitamins are involved in several disease aspects, including viral replication and invasion, cytokine storm induction, adaptive immunity and hypercoagulability.

B Vitamins Play Many Roles in Disease Process

The paper goes on to detail how each B vitamin can be used to manage COVID-19 symptoms:

Vitamin B1 (thiamine) — Thiamine improves immune system function, protects cardiovascular health, inhibits inflammation and aids in healthy antibody responses. Vitamin B1 deficiency can result in an inadequate antibody response, thereby leading to more severe symptoms. There’s also evidence suggesting B1 may limit hypoxia.

Vitamin B2 (riboflavin) — Riboflavin in combination with ultraviolet light has been shown to inhibit replication of the MERS-CoV virus, and the combination has also been shown to decrease the infectious titer of SARS-CoV-2 below the detectable limit in human blood, plasma and platelet products.

Vitamin B3 (niacin/nicotinamide) — Niacin is a building block of NAD and NADP, which are vital when combating inflammation. As explained in "Be Well: A Potential Role for Vitamin D in COVID-19":⁵

"NAD+ is released during the early stages of inflammation and has immunomodulatory properties, known to decrease the pro-inflammatory cytokines, IL-1β, IL-6 and TNF-α.

Recent evidence indicates that targeting IL-6 could help control the inflammatory storm in patients with COVID-19. Moreover, niacin reduces neutrophil infiltration and exhibits an anti-inflammatory effect in patients with ventilator-induced lung injury …

In addition, nicotinamide reduces viral replication (vaccinia virus, human immunodeficiency virus, enteroviruses, hepatitis B virus) and strengthens the body's defense mechanisms. Taking into account the lung protective and immune strengthening roles of niacin, it could be used as an adjunct treatment for COVID-19 patients."

Vitamin B5 (pantothenic acid) — Vitamin B5 aids in wound healing and reduces inflammation.

Vitamin B6 (pyridoxal 5′-phosphate/pyridoxine) — Pyridoxal 5′-phosphate (PLP), the active form of vitamin B6, is a cofactor in several inflammatory pathways. Vitamin B6 deficiency is associated with dysregulated immune function. Inflammation increases the need for PLP, which can result in depletion.

According to the authors, in COVID-19 patients with high levels of inflammation, B6 deficiency may be a contributing factor. What's more, B6 may also play an important role in preventing the hypercoagulation seen in some COVID-19 patients:⁶

"In a recent preprint it is suggested that PLP supplementation mitigates COVID-19 symptoms by regulating immune responses, decreasing pro-inflammatory cytokines, maintaining endothelial integrity and preventing hypercoagulability. In fact, it was shown three decades ago that PLP levels reduce abnormalities in platelet aggregation and blood clot formation.

Recently researchers at Victoria University reported that vitamin B6 (as well as B2 and B9) upregulated IL-10, a powerful anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressive cytokine which can deactivate macrophages and monocytes and inhibit antigen-presenting cells and T cells.

COVID-19 patients often respond to the virus by mounting an excessive T cell response and secretion of pro-inflammatory cytokines. It may be that PLP is able to contribute to dampening the cytokine storm and inflammation suffered by some COVID-19 patients."

Vitamin B9 (folate/folic acid) — Folate, the natural form of B9 found in food, is required for the synthesis of DNA and protein in your adaptive immune response.

Folic acid, the synthetic form typically found in supplements, was recently found⁷ to inhibit furin, an enzyme associated with viral infections, thereby preventing the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein from binding to and gaining entry into your cells. The research⁸ suggests folic acid may therefore be helpful during the early stages of COVID-19.

Another recent paper⁹ found folic acid has a strong and stable binding affinity against SARS-CoV-2. This too suggests it may be a suitable therapeutic against COVID-19.

Vitamin B12 (cobalamin) — B12 is required for healthy synthesis of red blood cells and DNA. A deficiency in B12 increases inflammation and oxidative stress by raising homocysteine levels. Your body can eliminate homocysteine naturally, provided you're getting enough B9 (folate), B6 and B12.¹⁰

Hyperhomocysteinemia — a condition characterized by abnormally high levels of homocysteine — causes endothelial dysfunction, activates platelet and coagulation cascades and decreases immune responses.

B12 deficiency is also associated with certain respiratory disorders. Advancing age can diminish your body's ability to absorb B12 from food,¹¹ so the need for supplementation may increase as you get older. According to "Be Well: A Potential Role for Vitamin D in COVID-19":¹²

"A recent study showed that methylcobalamin supplements have the potential to reduce COVID-19-related organ damage and symptoms. A clinical study conducted in Singapore showed that COVID-19 patients who were given vitamin B12 supplements (500 μg), vitamin D (1000 IU) and magnesium had reduced COVID-19 symptom severity and supplements significantly reduced the need for oxygen and intensive care support."

How to Improve Your Vitamin B Status

As a general rule, I recommend getting most if not all of your nutrition from real food, ideally organic to avoid toxic pesticides, and locally grown. Depending on your situation and condition, however, you may need one or more supplements.

To start, review the following listing of foods that contain the B vitamins discussed in this article. If you find that you rarely or never eat foods rich in one or more of these nutrients, you may want to consider taking a high quality, ideally food-based supplement.

Also consider limiting sugar and eating fermented foods. The entire B group vitamin series is produced within your gut, assuming you have healthy gut flora. Eating real food, including plenty of leafy greens and fermented foods, will provide your microbiome with important fiber and beneficial bacteria to help optimize your internal vitamin B production.

Nutrient	Dietary Sources	Supplement Recommendations
Vitamin B1	Pork, fish, nuts and seeds, beans, green peas, brown rice, squash, asparagus and seafood.¹³	The recommended daily allowance for B1 is 1.2 mg/day for men and 1.1 mg/day for women.¹⁴
Vitamin B2	Eggs, organ meats, lean meats, green vegetables such as asparagus, broccoli and spinach.¹⁵	The RDA is 1.1 mg for adult women and 1.3 mg for men. Your body cannot absorb more than about 27 mg at a time, and some multivitamins or B-complex supplements may contain unnecessarily high amounts.¹⁶
Vitamin B3	Liver, chicken, veal, peanuts, chili powder, bacon and sun-dried tomatoes have some of the highest amounts of niacin per gram.¹⁷ Other niacin-rich foods include baker's yeast, paprika, espresso coffee, anchovies, spirulina, duck, shiitake mushrooms and soy sauce.¹⁸	The dietary reference intake established by the Food and Nutrition Board ranges from 14 to 18 mg per day for adults. Higher amounts are recommended depending on your condition. For a list of recommended dosages, see the Mayo Clinic's website.¹⁹
Vitamin B5	Beef, poultry, seafood, organ meats, eggs, milk, mushrooms, avocados, potatoes, broccoli, peanuts, sunflower seeds, chickpeas and brown rice.²⁰	The RDA is 5 mg for adults over the age of 19. Pantothenic acid in dietary supplements is often in the form of calcium pantothenate or pantethine.²¹
Vitamin B6	Turkey, beef, chicken, wild-caught salmon, sweet potatoes, potatoes, sunflower seeds, pistachios, avocado, spinach and banana.²²	Nutritional yeast is an excellent source of B vitamins, especially B6.²³ One serving (2 tablespoons) contains nearly 10 mg of vitamin B6. Not to be confused with Brewer's yeast or other active yeasts, nutritional yeast is made from an organism grown on molasses, which is then harvested and dried to deactivate the yeast. It has a pleasant cheesy flavor and can be added to a number of different dishes.
Vitamin B9	Fresh, raw, organic leafy green vegetables, especially broccoli, asparagus, spinach and turnip greens, and a wide variety of beans, especially lentils, but also pinto beans, garbanzo beans, kidney beans, navy and black beans.²⁴	Folic acid is a synthetic type of B vitamin used in supplements; folate is the natural form found in foods. (Think: Folate comes from foliage, edible leafy plants.) For folic acid to be of use, it must first be activated into its biologically active form (L-5-MTHF). Nearly half the population has difficulty converting folic acid into the bioactive form due to a genetic reduction in enzyme activity. For this reason, if you take a B-vitamin supplement, make sure it contains natural folate rather than synthetic folic acid. Nutritional yeast is an excellent source.²⁵ Research²⁶ also shows your dietary fiber intake has an impact on your folate status. For each gram of fiber consumed, folate levels increased by nearly 2%. The researchers hypothesize that this boost in folate level is due to the fact that fiber nourishes bacteria that synthesize folate in your large intestine.
Vitamin B12	Vitamin B12 is found almost exclusively in animal tissues, including foods like beef and beef liver, lamb, snapper, venison, salmon, shrimp, scallops, poultry, eggs and dairy products. The few plant foods that are sources of B12 are actually B12 analogs that block the uptake of true B12.	Nutritional yeast is high in B12, and is highly recommended for vegetarians and vegans. One serving (2 tablespoons) provides nearly 8 mcg of natural vitamin B12.²⁷ Sublingual (under-the-tongue) fine mist spray or vitamin B12 injections are also effective, as they allow the large B12 molecule to be absorbed directly into your bloodstream.

from Articles https://ift.tt/3CmBwHz
via IFTTT

Scottish Lockdowns Vs. Swedish Freedom — Who Won?

Whether or not lockdowns and other restrictive measures worked to reduce COVID-19 deaths is a topic of great debate, one that was recently explored by CAN Films. In a short documentary, they explore pandemic outcomes in Scotland, which began requiring vaccine passports October 1, 2021, with those of Sweden, which rejected forced lockdowns in favor of voluntary measures.

The numbers, they said, speak for themselves. "With half the population of Sweden, Scotland scored a higher excess death rate for 2020, having imposed all the draconian rules we'd had in England and even more. Now, they were the first in the U.K. to introduce vaccine passports."¹

Differences Between Scotland and Sweden's Pandemic Responses

CAN Films spoke with several people in Scotland, who believed their government's approach to the pandemic was sound — although they weren't aware of how Sweden had handled things, or the outcomes.

By March 2020, Scotland implemented strict lockdowns and closed schools, restaurants, gyms and other social venues, with people threatened with police fines if they went outside other than to buy food, exercise (once daily) or go to work if they couldn't work from home.²

March 23, 2021, Scotland's first minister Nicola Sturgeon said, "Let me blunt. The stringent restrictions on our normal day-to-day lives that I'm about to set out are difficult and they are unprecedented. They amount effectively to what has been described as a lockdown."³

Sweden handled the pandemic differently than most of the globe and has been chided for its looser restrictions and lack of severe lockdowns. In October 2020, TIME called the Swedish COVID-19 response a "disaster,"⁴ but data showed that the death rate in Sweden in 2020 was right in line with other years — nothing out of the ordinary.⁵

While most other European countries instituted lockdowns at the beginning of the pandemic, Sweden did not, and maintained few social distancing requirements through most of 2020. Later in the year, and in 2021, they did implement some restrictions on attendance numbers at public gatherings and events, however. Sweden described their pandemic response this way:⁶

"Sweden's response to the coronavirus pandemic has been about taking the right measures at the right time, because different measures are effective at different points in time. The country's response has been partly based on voluntary action.

For example, rather than enforce a nationwide lockdown, the authorities have given recommendations: to stay home if you've got symptoms, to keep a distance to others, to avoid public transport if possible, etc.

… Swedish preschools and schools for 6- to 16-year-olds have stayed open during the pandemic, with a few exceptions. The Public Health Agency of Sweden made the assessment that closing all schools in Sweden would not be a meaningful measure, based on an analysis of the situation in Sweden and possible consequences for the entire society."

Sweden: Fewer Excess Deaths With No Lockdowns

Below you can see a side-by-side comparison of the two countries' pandemic response results, based on data compiled by CAN Films:⁷

	Scotland	Sweden
Population	5.5 million	10.2 million
Excess deaths 2020	15%	7.5%
Lockdowns	3	0
Vaccine passports	Yes	Vaccination voluntary
School closure days	64	0
Weight gain due to boredom	54%	0%
Rise in alcohol-related deaths	17%	3%
Inflation rate	3.2%	1.5%
Depression increase	24%	6%
Economy shrinkage	10%	2.8%
Debt increase	28%	13%

Sweden has stood by their handling of the pandemic, despite heavy criticism. The country's state epidemiologist, Dr. Anders Tegnell, has been vocal about his anti-lockdown approach since early on in the pandemic, leading him to be described as Sweden's "anti-lockdown architect."⁸

In the beginning, Tegnell described the rest of the world's lockdowns as "madness," considering the steep side effects they ultimately cause. Stanford's Nobel-laureate Michael Levitt, Ph.D., who is among those in support of Sweden's lighter restrictions, suggested that not only did lockdowns not save lives but instead cost lives due to social damage, domestic abuse, divorces, alcoholism and other health conditions that were not treated.⁹ Bloomberg reported:¹⁰

"'It was as if the world had gone mad, and everything we had discussed was forgotten,' Tegnell said in a podcast with Swedish Radio … 'The cases became too many and the political pressure got too strong. And then Sweden stood there rather alone.'"

Tegnell stated that shutting down schools was also unnecessary during the pandemic, and scientists from the Institut Pasteur in France indeed found that there was no significant transmission of COVID-19 in primary schools, either among the students or from students to teachers.¹¹

"The study also confirmed that younger children infected by the novel coronavirus generally do not develop symptoms or present with minor symptoms that may result in a failure to diagnose the virus," study author Bruno Hoen added.¹²

Meanwhile, while Sweden has encouraged its citizens to engage in social distancing, mask usage is another story, and Tegnell has stated that there's little evidence for wearing face masks.¹³ The country did not mandate face masks at any point during the pandemic and, in July 2021, also dropped their "vague recommendation" to wear one at all.¹⁴

In a September 2021 interview with U.K. website Unherd, Tegnell continued to support Sweden's less restrictive pandemic response, stating that they "did not fare very badly at all" considering they had fewer excess deaths in 2020 than some European countries that imposed lockdowns.¹⁵ Regarding children, he said they "have definitely been affected by the pandemic, but to a lot lesser degree than children would have been if we had closed the schools."¹⁶

Herd Immunity 'Won't Cut It'

The official narrative has led many people to believe that herd immunity is unattainable naturally and, without an injection, "won't cut it." CAN Films spoke with one Scottish woman who believed just that, because it's what she had been told.

Herd immunity, which occurs when enough people acquire immunity to an infectious disease such that it can no longer spread widely in the community, is calculated using reproductive number, or R-naught (R0), which is the estimated number of new infections that may occur from one infected person.¹⁷

R0 of below 1 (with R1 meaning that one person who's infected is expected to infect one other person) indicates that cases are declining while R0 above 1 suggests cases are on the rise. It's far from an exact science, however, as a person's susceptibility to infection varies depending on many factors, including their health, age and contacts within a community.

The initial R0 calculations for COVID-19's HIT were based on assumptions that everyone has the same susceptibility and would be mixing randomly with others in the community. But a study published in Nature Reviews Immunology suggested that the herd immunity threshold for COVID-19 may need to be adjusted because children are less susceptible to the disease.¹⁸

Further, Dr. Robert Malone, the inventor of the mRNA and DNA vaccine core platform technology,¹⁹ described the notion that the only way to reach herd immunity against COVID-19 is through universal vaccination as a myth.²⁰ "Herd immunity is most often reached through natural infection … Vaccines will not get us to herd immunity," Malone said.²¹

Herd Mentality Vs. Herd Immunity

What's more, in a shocking reversal that's akin to redefining reality, the World Health Organization even changed their definition of herd immunity. In June 2020, WHO's definition of herd immunity, posted on one of their COVID-19 Q&A pages, was in line with the widely accepted concept that has been the standard for infectious diseases for decades. Here's what it originally said, courtesy of the Internet Archive's Wayback machine:²²

"Herd immunity is the indirect protection from an infectious disease that happens when a population is immune either through vaccination or immunity developed through previous infection."

In October 2020, however, WHO's updated definition of herd immunity described it as "a concept used for vaccination."²³ This perversion of science implies that the only way to achieve herd immunity is via vaccination, which is blatantly untrue:²⁴

"'Herd immunity', also known as 'population immunity', is a concept used for vaccination, in which a population can be protected from a certain virus if a threshold of vaccination is reached. Herd immunity is achieved by protecting people from a virus, not by exposing them to it.

Vaccines train our immune systems to create proteins that fight disease, known as 'antibodies', just as would happen when we are exposed to a disease but — crucially — vaccines work without making us sick. Vaccinated people are protected from getting the disease in question and passing it on, breaking any chains of transmission."

Meanwhile, CAN Films pointed out the irony of seeking herd immunity from an experimental jab — that still allows for viral transmission — while ignoring the risks of the herd mentality that's taken over much of the globe:²⁵

"Herd immunity. What about herd mentality? I mean, everyone follow the official narrative no matter what? State lockdown no matter what your health condition or age is? Behave as if you're contagious no matter whether you have symptoms or not? Get an experimental jab even if the risk-to-benefit ratio plays against you …? If this one-size-fits-all approach was not the dawn of totalitarianism, then people were definitely being treated as cattle."

Scotland's Vaccine Passport 'Disaster'

Scotland's vaccine passport scheme took effect October 1, 2021, but the government allowed a 17-day "grace period" to allow venues to get their procedures up and running. Strong backlash has ensued, with various groups referring to the passports as "discriminatory" and "shambolic, last-minute kneejerk decision-making."²⁶

Now that the measure has been enacted, however, anyone age 18 years and over must show proof of COVID-19 injections in order to enter:²⁷

Nightclubs
Adult entertainment venues
Unseated indoor events with more than 500 people
Unseated outdoor events with more than 4,000 people
Any event with more than 10,000 people in attendance

Already, during the first weekend of enforcement, the Scottish Hospitality Group, which opposes the passports, described the scheme as an "unmitigated disaster," with venues having to turn away people at the door and staff suffering abuses as a result.

Spokesperson Stephen Montgomery told BBC News, "The experience of this weekend shows that the result has been intolerable levels of abuse of our staff, and the creation of an atmosphere that will totally undermine anyone's enjoyment of our night-time venues."²⁸

And to what end? To date, data show that more restrictive measures haven't reduced excess COVID-19 deaths. And getting COVID-19 injections isn't effective for stopping spread since even those who have received two shots can still transmit the virus.²⁹ What vaccine passports will do is make this type of infringement on personal freedom "normal," paving the way for ever greater restrictions.

from Articles https://ift.tt/3DvNn7n
via IFTTT

When older couples are close together, their heart rates synchronize

As couples grow old together, their interdependence heightens. Often, they become each other's primary source of physical and emotional support. Long-term marriages have a profound impact on health and well-being, but benefits depend on relationship quality. A new study examines the dynamics of long-term relationships through spatial proximity. The researchers find that when partners are close to each other, their heart rates synchronize in complex patterns of interaction.

from Top Health News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/3FnK0zW

Brief 5:2 diet advice is as effective as traditional GP advice, but people like it better, according to new study

Researchers reveal structure of itch receptors on cells

Scientists have conducted research showing in precise detail how chemicals bind to mast cells to cause itch, and the scientists figured out the detailed structure of receptor proteins on the surface of these cells when a compound is bound to those proteins.

from Top Health News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/3Dvsx89

`Oh, snap!’ A record-breaking motion at our fingertips

Researchers studied the physics of a finger snap and determined how friction plays a critical role. Using an intermediate amount of friction, not too high and not too low, a snap of the finger produces the highest rotational accelerations observed in humans, even faster than the arm of a professional baseball pitcher.

from Top Health News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/3wZyeJi