Harvard Elects Jewish Atheist as Chaplain

 https://www.yahoo.com/news/chief-chaplain-harvard-atheist-152603005.html

The Puritan colonists who settled in New England in the 1630s had a nagging concern about the churches they were building: How would they ensure that the clergymen would be literate? Their answer was Harvard University, a school that was established to educate the ministry and adopted the motto “Truth for Christ and the Church.” It was named after a pastor, John Harvard, and it would be more than 70 years before the school had a president who was not a clergyman. 

Harvard’s organization of chaplains has elected as its next president an atheist named Greg Epstein, who takes on the job this week.

Epstein, 44, author of the book “Good Without God,” is a seemingly unusual choice for the role. He will coordinate the activities of more than 40 university chaplains, who lead the Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist and other religious communities on campus. Yet many Harvard students — some raised in families of faith, others never quite certain how to label their religious identities — attest to the influence that Epstein has had on their spiritual lives.

“There is a rising group of people who no longer identify with any religious tradition but still experience a real need for conversation and support around what it means to be a good human and live an ethical life,” said Epstein, who was raised in a Jewish household and has been Harvard’s humanist chaplain since 2005, teaching students about the progressive movement that centers people’s relationships with one another instead of with God.

To Epstein’s fellow campus chaplains, at least, the notion of being led by an atheist is not as counterintuitive as it might sound; his election was unanimous.

“Maybe in a more conservative university climate there might be a question like ‘What the heck are they doing at Harvard, having a humanist be the president of the chaplains?’” said Margit Hammerstrom, the Christian Science chaplain at Harvard. “But in this environment it works. Greg is known for wanting to keep lines of communication open between different faiths.” 

To Epstein, becoming the organization’s head, especially as it gains more recognition from the university, comes as affirmation of a yearslong effort, started by his predecessor, to teach a campus with traditional religious roots about humanism.

“We don’t look to a god for answers,” Epstein said. “We are each other’s answers.” 

Some of the students drawn to Epstein’s secular community are religious refugees, people raised in observant households who arrive at college seeking spiritual meaning in a less rigid form. 

This article is published in the New York Times (owned by Jews: Sulzberger), written by a Jewish journalist (Goldberg) about an atheist Jew (Epstein) who is now chief chaplain at one of America's most prestigious universities, that was ironically founded by Christians to ensure that their clergymen were literate, under the motto: "Truth for Christ and the Church"

And guess what? If you have anything negative to say about it, you'll be silenced as an anti-semite. That's the privilege you get when your tribe not only subverts the power structure within systemic institutions, but also controls the narrative, which therefore establishes social norms.

A wise man once said: if you want to know who has the power, find out who you can't criticize.

 

 

Russian Restaurant Apologizes to the Russian People for Anti-Russian Propaganda

Just trying to sell sushi to Russians

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/russian-restaurant-chain-apologizes-ad-offending-public-photo-black-man/

A Russian sushi delivery chain issued an apology on its social media accounts after posting an ad featuring a Black man. The restaurant's owner said he was bombarded by death threats from a nationalist hate group and forced to take down the advertisement. 

Yobidoyobi, which has stores in 65 Russian cities, posted its first ad featuring a Black model — a man surrounded by three women with Slavic features — on August 14. It followed up on the campaign two weeks later posting another picture of the same man easting sushi, and the chain's social media accounts were quickly flooded with hateful comments.

Look at that wholesome, hungry Russian 

 "Yobidoyobi is known for its provocative marketing, but this time we did not pursue these goals — we just made a very ordinary promo for social networks. Many brands use images of different models, which may differ in skin color, gender, and so on," Zimen told the Inc. Russia outlet. "There was no provocation in this — it is just the voice of the times. I am sorry that someone thinks that a photo of a Black man (especially next to supposedly "Slavic" girls) on the Internet is unacceptable."

Yobidoyobi took down the ads and posted an apology to its Instagram page: "On behalf of the entire company, we want to apologize for offending the public with our photos. We have removed all content that caused this hype."

On their Vkontakte page, the Russian Facebook-like social media network where the Male State rose to prominence, Yobidoyobi said it apologized "to the Russian nation" for having "hurt the Russian people" with the photographs.   

 

Are black Russians a thing? If a company were soliciting "models" for "advertisements" in Russia, how many applicants would be black men? If a Russian restaurant wanted to sell sushi to Russian people, wouldn't it make sense to appeal to the that demographic? Apparently, the owner of the company (Zimen) thought Russians would eat up his propaganda "ordinary promo" and sales would skyrocket. Because, who would even notice, right?

Speaking of Zimen: 

60% of Americans have already had COVID-19

 https://scitechdaily.com/1-in-3-americans-already-had-covid-19-by-the-end-of-2020/

A new study published in the journal Nature estimates that 103 million Americans, or 31 percent of the U.S. population, had been infected with SARS-CoV-2 by the end of 2020. Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health researchers modeled the spread of the coronavirus, finding that fewer than one-quarter of infections (22%) were accounted for in cases confirmed through public health reports based on testing.

The study is the first to comprehensively quantify the overall burden and characteristics of COVID-19 in the U.S. during 2020. The researchers simulated the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 within and between all 3,142 U.S. counties using population, mobility, and confirmed case data.

Infections were more widespread in some areas of the country. In areas of the upper Midwest and Mississippi valley, including the Dakotas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa, more than 60 percent of the population is estimated to have been infected by the end of 2020. In five metropolitan areas the researchers examined, 48 percent of residents of Chicago, 52 percent of Los Angeles, 42 percent of Miami, 44 percent of New York City, and 27 percent of people in Phoenix, had been infected in the same timeframe.

“The vast majority of infectious were not accounted for by the number of confirmed cases,” says Jeffrey Shaman, PhD, professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. “It is these undocumented cases, which are often mild or asymptomatic infectious, that allow the virus to spread quickly through the broader population.” 

The percentage of people with infections who died from COVID-19 fell from 0.8 percent during the spring wave to 0.3 percent by year’s end. Urban areas like New York City that peaked in the spring saw the worst numbers for reasons that include delays in testing availability and masking mandates, overwhelmed hospitals, and lack of effective treatments.

A new pandemic landscape for 2021. Looking ahead, the authors write that several factors will alter population susceptibility to infection. The virus will continue to spread to those who haven’t yet been infected. While vaccines protect against severe and fatal disease, breakthrough infections, including those that are mild or asymptomatic, will contribute to the spread of the virus. The current study does account for the possibility of reinfection, although there is evidence of waning antibodies and reinfection. New more contagious variants make reinfection and breakthrough infections more likely. 

In the US, there were roughly 20 million confirmed COVID-19 cases in 2020 (16% of population). However, according to this study, 31% of the population was actually infected by the virus. Through 8 months of 2021, there have been about 18 million additional cases. Just taking the 2020 data and applying it to 2021 would add another 30% of actual infections. Notably, testing has improved from early in the pandemic, likely catching more cases now. But, vaccinations have also increased the number of asymptomatic, undetected cases, too. Therefore, let's assume those figures cancel each other out, leaving 60% of the US population having already had COVID by the end of August 2021. 

Sunday Scripture:

 

 1 Timothy 1: 15-17 

15 Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst. 16 But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his immense patience as an example for those who would believe in him and receive eternal life. 17 Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen.

Clapton's COVID song: This has Gotta Stop

The Story of Ivermectin:

 

Why Nobody was Charged in the Death of Ashli Babbitt:

 

 

Arkansas Inmates with COVID Treated with Ivermectin

 https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ivermeticin-inmates-covid-19-arkansas-fda-warnings/

A detention center in Washington County, Arkansas, has been using the anti-parasite drug ivermectin to treat inmates who have COVID-19, local officials say, even though the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has specifically warned against it. The FDA says the drug, which is frequently used as a dewormer in animals, is not an approved or recommended treatment for COVID-19, and "can cause serious harm."

Eva Madison, a county elected official, raised the issue during a finance and budget committee meeting Tuesday night. Jail officials were presenting their 2022 budget, which included the jail's physician, Dr. Rob Karas, asking for a 10% increase in the medical services contract.

Madison informed committee members and the jail officials that a county employee, who has opted to stay anonymous to the public, told her that he had been sent to the jail's clinic to get tested for COVID-19. When the person tested negative, they were given a $76 prescription for ivermectin. He was concerned about the prescription and asked his primary care physician about it, and the the physician told him to "throw that in the trash," Madison said. 

Madison told CBS News on Wednesday that after learning of the prescription, she contacted the county sheriff, Tim Helder. 

"The sheriff defended it, said that Karas has been regularly prescribing ivermectin at the jail during the pandemic," Madison said.

"He's state licensed, board approved," one of the officials said.  

 CBS News has reached out to the Washington County Sheriff's Office and Karas Health Care for comment. 

Madison said that when she spoke to Karas, he confirmed he had been prescribing the medicine to detainees at the jail, and that he and his family members were also taking it. She said he cited the National Institutes of Health, which said in February that laboratory research suggests ivermectin may inhibit viruses in test-tubes. However, the NIH also said no clinical trials have reported a benefit for human patients with those viruses. The NIH says there is "insufficient evidence" to make a recommendation on ivermectin and that it is not approved to treat any viral infection.  

While researching this story I had an epiphany: what if journalists just reported the facts and left the moralizing to the reader? What if there was a collective set of ethics that forbade biased reporting? What if people didn't care about a narrative, and just wanted to read the facts? 

Anyway, I read every article I could find on this story and I couldn't find the answer to the most obvious question: what kind of results has the physician produced treating COVID patients with ivermectin? 

The sheriff defends the doctor's treatment. The "state licensed, board approved" doctor is treating himself and his family with ivermectin. The inmates aren't responsible for the complaint.

I'm not advocating for the use of ivermectin as a treatment for COVID, because I'm not a doctor. But, if I were a journalist and was I writing this story, I most certainly would have asked the doctor about the success rate he had treating his patients with ivermectin. Who wouldn't ask that question? 

Inquiring minds want to know! 

UPDATE: 

https://www.kark.com/news/health/coronavirus/ivermectin-being-given-to-inmates-at-washington-county-jail/?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_medium=referral

 

Sheriff Tim Helder said during the meeting that Karas Health has been an amazing partner for the jail during the pandemic.

“They are the ones who have been in the trenches in the middle of this COVID issue that we’re dealing with,” Sheriff Helder says. “Whatever a doctor prescribes, that is not in my bailiwick I haven’t been to medical school.”

The sheriff said during the meeting that only one person of over 500 positives have been admitted to the hospital.

Karas Health Care made a Facebook post on July 16 that stated in part, “if anybody you know test positive send them our way and we’ll get them started on doxy, singular, ivermectin, vitamin d, vitamin c and zinc and do our best to keep them out of the hospital.

A comment was made on the post and Karas Health Care responded with: “Yes we have been using ivermectin for prevention since January. I restarted for myself last week.”

Interestingly, the national media opted to omit the most relevant part of the story: the success rate of his treatment plan. The "news" that was relevant in their mind was "look, we have a dissenter!" This is how out of touch with reality these people are (and the reason nobody trusts them). The masses just want ethical, unbiased reporting. The reporters just want to enforce a narrative that chastises non-conformists. Why else would censorship exist? 

 

Potential Re-Purposed COVID-19 Therapeutics: Pepcid AC and Aspirin

 https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-08-heartburn-drug-doctors-covid-.html

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, doctors in Wuhan noticed something surprising. Many of the elderly patients who survived the virus were poor: not exactly the demographic you would expect to fare well in a health crisis.

A review of the survivors' medical records revealed that a significant number suffered from chronic heartburn and were taking an inexpensive drug called famotidine, the key ingredient in Pepcid. (Wealthier patients tended to take the more costly drug omeprazole, found in Prilosec.)

Was an over-the-counter acid suppressant helping people survive COVID-19?

The team's analysis, which appeared in the journal Signal Transduction & Targeted Therapy (from the Nature publishing group), showed that the data supported findings from other smaller-scale studies. When delivered at high doses (the equivalent of about 10 Pepcid tablets), famotidine appears to improve the odds of survival for COVID-19 patients, especially when it is combined with aspirin. It also seems to hinder the severity of disease progression, making patients less likely to reach the point where they require intubation or a ventilator.

One of the most dangerous phenomena COVID-19 can trigger in your body is something called a cytokine storm, which is a potentially fatal amplification of an immune response. When you become sick, your immune system releases inflammatory proteins called cytokines that tell your immune cells how to fight the infection. But in more severe illnesses, cytokine production can spiral out of control, becoming dysregulated.

"Basically, your immune system goes haywire and starts attacking things like your otherwise healthy lung tissue because it's so desperate to kill off the invading virus," Mura said. "Your own physiology essentially uses a sledgehammer against the pathogen when a fly swatter would suffice."

The team's theory is that famotidine suppresses that reaction. Although it was developed with a specific purpose in mind—blocking the histamine receptors that help produce acid in your stomach—famotidine, like all other medications, can cause side effects. Mura and his colleagues believe that interfering with cytokine storms might be one of them.

"It may well be a case of famotidine having a beneficial off-target effect," Mura said. We generally think of side effects as a bad thing, but in some cases, they can be harnessed to treat other conditions. In the future, it's possible that famotidine could be re-purposed in this way. 

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-06-widely-indigestion-drug-curb-covid-.html 

A widely available and inexpensive drug that is used to ease the symptoms of indigestion may prove a worthy contender for treating COVID-19 infection in those whose disease doesn't require admission to hospital, suggest the findings of a small case series, published online in the journal Gut.

The effects were felt within 24 to 48 hours of taking famotidine, and a rigorous clinical trial is now warranted to see if the drug could be an effective treatment for COVID-19, say the researchers.

Famotidine (Pepcid AC) belongs to a class of drugs known as histamine-2 receptor antagonists, which reduce the amount of stomach acid produced. Famotidine can be taken in doses of 20-160 mg, up to four times a day, for the treatment of acid reflux and heartburn.

The researchers report on 10 people (6 men; 4 women) who developed COVID-19 infection, all of whom happened to have been taking famotidine during their illness.

Their ages ranged from 23 to 71 and they had a diverse range of ethnic backgrounds and known risk factors for COVID-19 severity, including high blood pressure and obesity.

All started taking famotidine when they were feeling very poorly with COVID-19, the symptoms of which had been going on from 2 up to 26 days at that point.

The most frequently used dose was 80 mg taken three times a day, with the average treatment period lasting 11 days, but ranging from 5 to 21 days.

All 10 patients said that symptoms quickly improved within 24-48 hours of starting famotidine and had mostly cleared up after 14 days.

Improvement was evident across all symptom categories assessed, but respiratory symptoms, such as cough and shortness of breath, improved more rapidly than systemic symptoms, such as fatigue.

Seven of the patients didn't experience any side effects while on famotidine, and in the three who did, these were mild, and all but temporary forgetfulness were known side effects associated with taking the drug. 

https://hartfordhealthcare.org/about-us/news-press/news-detail?articleid=28305&publicId=395 

The over-the-counter heartburn medication Pepcid might be one of the oddest answers to the COVID-19 question, with a preliminary Hartford Hospital research study showing benefit for patients with the virus.

Dr. Raymond McKay, a cardiologist at the Hartford HealthCare (HHC) Heart & Vascular Institute, is the primary investigator of the “Famotidine (Pepcid) Study,” which recently released data based on research involving 900 hospitalized HHC patients.

“There are many, many medications currently being tested to see if they have any therapeutic benefit in patients infected with COVID-19. Surprisingly, one of the most interesting drugs is Pepcid,” Dr. McKay said. “Researchers became interested in Pepcid following a recent report out of New York City and Columbia University suggesting that it was associated with a lower in hospital mortality in their COVID population.

“Because of that report, we decided to look at what impact Pepcid may have had in patients hospitalized with COVID-19 at Hartford HealthCare.”

They found that 83 of the approximately 900 HHC patients were treated with Pepcid at some time during their hospitalization. In those, the researchers pinpointed two results Dr. McKay called “basic” and “surprising.”

The findings:

Patients taking Pepcid were 45 percent less likely to die in the hospital and less likely to have combined adverse outcomes leading to death. The patients were also 48 percent less likely to need help breathing from a ventilator.

Pepcid use led to lower levels of certain blood tests associated with poorer outcomes from COVID-19. 

As for aspirin:

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04365309

Brief Summary:

COVID-19 has a high infection rate and mortality, and serious complications such as heart injury cannot be ignored. Cardiac dysfunction occurred in COVID-19 patients, but the law and mechanism of cardiac dysfunction remains unclear. The occurrence of progressive inflammatory factor storm and coagulation dysfunction in severe and fatal cases of NCP points out a new direction for reducing the incidence of severe and critically ill patients, shortening the length of duration in severe and critically ill patients and reducing the incidence of complications of cardiovascular diseases. Aspirin has the triple effects of inhibiting virus replication, anticoagulant and anti-inflammatory, but it has not received attention in the treatment and prevention of NCP. Although Aspirin is not commonly used in the guidelines for the treatment of NCP, it was widely used in the treatment and prevention of a variety of human diseases after its first synthesis in 1898. Subsequently, aspirin has been confirmed to have antiviral effect on multiple levels. Moreover, one study has confirmed that aspirin can inhibit virus replication by inhibiting prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) in macrophages and upregulation of type I interferon production. Subsequently, pharmacological studies have found that aspirin as an anti-inflammatory and analgesic drug by inhibiting cox-oxidase (COX). Under certain conditions, the platelet is the main contributor of innate immune response, studies have found that in the lung injury model in dynamic neutrophil and platelet aggregation.

In summary, the early use of aspirin in covid-19 patients, which has the effects of inhibiting virus replication, anti-platelet aggregation, anti-inflammatory and anti-lung injury, is expected to reduce the incidence of severe and critical patients, shorten the length of hospital duration and reduce the incidence of cardiovascular complications.

I'm not a doctor, and I have no intention of pretending to be one on the internet. In other words, I'm not offering any medical advice. With that being said, Pepcid AC and Aspirin are both inexpensive and safe OTC medications that the above citations suggest could help aid in the recovery of COVID-19. The recommendations (Pepcid: 80mg 3 per day; Aspirin: 100mg per day) fall within the FDA guidelines of recommended use for their intended purposes, therefore there shouldn't be any issues with the safety profile of such a regimen. That is to say, worse case scenario appears to be that while you're recovering from COVID, you won't have heartburn or a headache. Best case, your symptoms improve. Win-Win.

 

 

 

 

 

Covid Censorship

 

The concept that only certain "experts" are permitted to have an opinion in a free society is truly fascinating. Knowledge should be formulated via the open exchange of ideas. Intellectual tyranny breeds dissent and conspiracies. Narratives enforced by systemic censorship come off looking a lot like propaganda. 

This isn't to say that COVID isn't real (it is, and it can be very serious). And it's not to say that vaccines are bad. But we should be able to have an open exchange of ideas on the subject (and all subjects, for that matter).  

How Many COVID-19 Cases are Asymptomatic?

 https://www.sciencealert.com/over-a-third-of-covid-infections-are-truly-asymptomatic-says-massive-new-analysis

Within months of SARS-CoV-2's emergence as a global catastrophe it was becoming clear that many who spread the disease did so unwittingly, experiencing not so much as a tickle in their throat to alert them of the danger within.

Distinguishing those who are truly asymptomatic from those who are simply yet to show signs of the virus has made it hard to calculate a precise figure on the risks of succumbing to the illness.

Now an analysis by a group of US medical researchers on more than 350 studies has found just over 35 percent of all COVID-19 infections don't proceed to a symptomatic phase.

Early estimates ranged from just 4 percent of infections being asymptomatic, all the way up to 81 percent. Even as the pandemic ensued, figures conservatively estimated fewer than 20 percent of people might be infectious without showing any signs.

Confidently nailing down a number is harder than it might seem. Without the fever, loss of smell, sore throat, aches, and cough to encourage a trip to a clinic, few people bother lining up for a test.

One of the simplest ways to capture the true spread of infection is to conduct a cross-sectional survey, randomly sampling a population to detect the presence of the virus regardless of the subject's health.

There's just one problem with this approach. Anybody who's feeling well on the day they're tested can potentially fall sick hours or days later, making 'no symptoms' look the same like 'no symptoms... yet'.

To make the challenge even harder, SARS-CoV-2 can produce a variety of symptoms, some of which we're still learning about late in the game. Going back through the literature to identify those who might have been symptomatic after all is no easy task.

It's not that scientists haven't tried. But according to the researchers who published this most recent effort, most either don't account for the bias of symptomatic individuals seeking tests more than people without symptoms, or didn't include enough longitudinal data to capture those who might have fallen ill later.

The result is likely to be an under-appreciation of the true extent of asymptomatic cases.

To address these limitations, the team systematically conducted two separate meta-analyses of existing COVID-19 studies that reported on laboratory-confirmed infections.

The first was limited to studies that included a substantial follow-up period to clear those who experienced some kind of effect from the virus later. The results of this particular analysis suggest 35.1 percent of people who might receive a positive laboratory result won't personally suffer any consequences of their infection.

The second included studies that both distinguished silent infections at the time of testing as well as conducting a follow-up analysis. The number here was 36.9 percent.

The figures are close enough to convince the researchers that their method has merit, reinforcing speculations that many of our best guesses have been too low. Even taking into account index cases that could be biasing calculations, their figures are at least one in every four cases being silent ones.

The Never-Ending Covid Variant Fear Parade