Paula White, the spiritual adviser to former President Donald Trump, says she doesn’t care that some Christians have criticized her work with Trump.
According to The Christian Post, in a Jan. 17 sermon at her City of Destiny Church in Florida, White said she is not a “heretic” or “prosperity preacher,” names which she says other Christians have used to describe her.
“They started by calling me a prosperity preacher. You know who that was? Christian magazine. Church. Then they called me a heretic. You know who that was? The head of ethics of one of the largest denominations. The church,” White said.
White was referring to a 2016 tweet from Russell Moore, the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission leader. In the tweet, Moore said “Paula White is a charlatan and recognized as a heretic by every orthodox Christian, of whatever tribe.”
She describes her ministry as “Charismatic Pentecostal.”
White served as the chairwoman of Trump’s evangelical advisory board. She also delivered the invocation at his inauguration in 2017.
White said her work with Trump was an “assignment” from God and wasn’t a political move.
“If your name’s not God, your opinion doesn’t matter and your acceptance is not needed,” she said. “If your name is not God, Jehovah, Yahweh, El Shaddai, Jesus Christ then your opinion doesn’t matter and your acceptance is not needed.”
In her sermon, she said Christians are divided and need to pray for unity.
“Don’t tell me we’re the party of unity with this and we’re going to unify, and every second we have, we’re just hurting people more and more and more, politicizing people’s lives. God didn’t call me to the world. I was sent on assignment to do things in the world, but I’m called to the church. And when the church is this polarized and this divided, God help us. How can we not mourn?” she said.
She also added that she has turned down invitations to speak recently because she believes the requests are “a bunch of hypocrisy.”
“I get a lot of invitations every single day. ‘Come on, bring healing to the nation. Bring everybody together.’ I’m like, you’re asking me to come on a show that I’m going to fight with people? ‘Cause I can’t in my good conscience,” she said.
US President Donald Trump and his son Eric Trump listen while campaign adviser Lara Trump speaks during a Make America Great Again rally at Kenosha Regional Airport November 2, 2020, in Kenosha, Wisconsin. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski / AFP) (Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)
Lara Trump, the daughter-in-law of former President Donald Trump, would instantly become the candidate to beat if she chose to run for the U.S. Senate to succeed retiring North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr, according to people in the Trump family’s political orbit.
“She would immediately galvanize conservative support, and not just because her last name is Trump,” a former Trump 2020 adviser with close ties to the Trump family told The Epoch Times. “Lara knows North Carolina and North Carolina knows her. If she decides to run, she’d bring an unmatched ability to connect with voters, while also being able to raise the money necessary to compete in a close election.”
Lara Trump is a native of Wilmington, North Carolina, who describes herself in her Twitter profile as an “NC girl in NYC.” She is married to Eric Trump, the middle son of former President Donald Trump; the couple has two children.
“If Lara decides to run, she will trample the competition in a Republican primary. It won’t be close,” a former Trump White House official told The Epoch Times. “And as far as the general goes, remember North Carolina is a state that former President Trump won twice, and Lara probably has room to grow that support with independents who value a softer tone.”
Reports about Lara Trump considering a Senate run in North Carolina surfaced as recently as November last year. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) reignited the conversation by flagging her as the biggest winner following the former president’s acquittal in the Senate impeachment trial.
“The biggest winner I think of this whole impeachment trial is Lara Trump,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told Fox News on Jan. 14. “My dear friend Richard Burr, who I like and have been friends with for a long time, just made Lara Trump almost the certain nominee for the Senate seat in North Carolina to replace him if she runs.
“Certainly I would be behind her because she represents the future of the Republican Party.”
Burr, who announced in 2016 that he wouldn’t be seeking reelection in 2022, was one of seven Senate Republicans who voted to convict Trump in the second impeachment trial. The state’s GOP swiftly condemned him for the vote.
“North Carolina Republicans sent Senator Burr to the United States Senate to uphold the Constitution and his vote today to convict in a trial that he declared unconstitutional is shocking and disappointing,” party Chairman Michael Whatley said in a statement.
During Trump’s first impeachment trial, Burr voted against convicting Trump of the two charges against him. He led the Senate Intelligence Committee during its years-long investigation of alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election, which found no evidence that either Trump or anyone on his campaign colluded with Moscow.
Jason Meister, who worked with Lara Trump on the advisory board to the Trump campaign, told The Epoch Times that the former president’s daughter-in-law would surely win if she decided to run.
“Lara Trump is an authentic leader of the America First movement, and she greatly understands the unique challenges our country faces with the Biden administration. The state of North Carolina would be lucky to have her serve,” Meister said.
“She was also an integral part of President Trump’s campaign both in 2016 and 2020. We’re in the midst of the gut renovation of the GOP, and we need to remove the deadwood. And that’s sort of how I see the impeachment vote.”
A survey last year by Big Data Poll that assessed Lara Trump’s image in North Carolina showed her “above water” in terms of favorability, with 11 percent more favorable views than unfavorable. Meanwhile, roughly 1 in 5 North Carolinians said they weren’t familiar enough with her to form an opinion, including a large number of independents, suggesting that she has “room to grow,” Richard Baris, the director of Big Data Poll, told The Epoch Times.
“I have told people before that I do think that she should run if she wants to be a U.S. senator, because she would be very strong,” Baris said. “Now that we have the election and we saw who voted for Donald Trump and how he kept the state of North Carolina in his column, I think, really, it would take someone like Lara Trump for the Republicans to hold it.”
Trump won the state by 1.3 points in 2020 against Joe Biden and by 3.6 points in 2016 against Hillary Clinton.
According to Baris, the growing political influence of the Research Triangle—an area in North Carolina anchored by three major research universities and dozens of large corporations—requires any viable Republican contender to draw votes from registered Democrats in the western part of the state who often vote Republican in federal elections.
“For the presidency and for the Senate, they can vote Republican and often do. But they have been less likely to do so over the last two years. Because these are working-class, old school, ancestral Democrats, and they don’t like traditional Republicans,” Baris said.
“So somebody like Lara Trump, especially if she had the same strong message as her father-in-law, I think would be a very strong candidate.
“Without those working-class people, the math just doesn’t add up.”
Baris said Lara Trump impressed him as a great retail politician while on the campaign trail.
“She could get up in front of a crowd, and then when she gets off the stage, she can mingle,” Baris said, noting that connecting with people face-to-face is key for Republicans because of the media’s left-leaning bias. “You really have to be able to do that if you’re going to run for the Senate, especially if you are a Republican.”
The impeachment trial and subsequent acquittal of the former president made Lara Trump an even stronger candidate because Republican primary voters overwhelmingly view the impeachment as a political maneuver by the Democrats, according to Jim McLaughlin, a Trump campaign pollster who has worked with more than 70 members of Congress, 14 U.S. senators, and 10 governors.
A recent survey of voters in battleground states by McLaughlin and Associates showed that 60 percent of all voters viewed the impeachment as a waste of time. Meanwhile, 80 percent of Trump voters and 76 percent of Republicans were less likely to vote for a member of Congress who voted to impeach Trump.
“That whole impeachment is why people hate Washington,” McLaughlin told The Epoch Times, pointing to the multiple crises facing the nation.
McLaughlin, who polled for the Trump campaign during the first impeachment trial, said the former president’s approval ratings were “as strong as they ever were” following the acquittal.
“I think it’s one of those things that makes them—Donald Trump, Lara Trump—makes them even stronger,” McLaughlin said. “Anybody with President Trump’s name would be a great candidate, let alone his daughter-in-law.”Follow Ivan on Twitter: @ivanpentchoukov
After former President Donald Trump threatened to ban the Chinese-owned video sharing app TikTok on national security grounds last year, its parent company ByteDance started to work out a deal for Oracle and Walmart to take over TikTok’s U.S. operations. But now, with Trump out of office, that deal appears to be dead.
“The deal was mainly designed to entertain demands from the Trump administration,” an unnamed source told the South China Morning Post. “But Trump is gone, and the raison d’être of the deal is gone with him.”
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said last week President Joe Biden’s administration has not taken a “new proactive step” against TikTok, which has over 100 million users in the U.S., according to Vanity Fair.
Trump and his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo were concerned that the app, which collects a large amount of user data, is required to share that information with the Chinese government if requested. Former TikTok CEO Kevin Mayer, however, claimed they were a Chinese company “in name only.”
The Wall Street Journal reported last week that the plan to force the sale of TikTok’s U.S. operations to a majority-U.S.-ownership group including Oracle and Walmart had been shelved as Biden undertook a review of Trump’s efforts to address the security risks posed by Chinese tech companies.
Discussions between representative of ByteDance and U.S. national security officials on data security and methods of preventing the Chinese government from accessing Americans’ data continue, the Journal reports.Related Stories:
WASHINGTON, DC – JUNE 29: A pro-life activist holds a sign during a demonstration in front of the U.S. Supreme Court June 29, 2020 in Washington, DC. The Supreme Court has ruled today, in a 5-4 decision, a Louisiana law that required abortion doctors need admitting privileges to nearby hospitals unconstitutional. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Two Tennessee lawmakers have proposed a bill that would permit a biological father to petition a court to halt a woman who is pregnant with his unborn child from getting an abortion, The Hill reported on Tuesday.
The bill, which was introduced by state Sen. Mark Pody and state Rep. Jerry Sexton, states that once the injunction is issued, the court must hold a hearing with both parties within 14 days. If a woman violates the injunction and obtains an abortion, “the court may hold the respondent in civil or criminal contempt and punish the respondent in accordance with the law.”
Fox32 Chicago reported that another stipulation of the bill is that the person who tries to stop the abortion does not need to provide DNA evidence to prove that he is the biological father.
Instead, the petitioner only needs “a voluntary acknowledgment of paternity that is not subject to being rescinded or challenged.”
The legislation does not specify if it also applies to instances of rape.
Pody said that the proposal is trying to bring both parents together on abortion decisions, according to One America News Network.
Stressing that the father is just as much of a parent as the mother, Pody said “it took two of them to create this human being and we believe that they should have that opportunity to raise that child.”
Children’s Health Defense has created a video of Dr. Liz Mumper’s presentation titled “How Will We Know That a COVID-19 Vaccine is Safe?” This presentation is the result of a collaborative effort between Dr. Mumper and the team of doctors, scientists, and researchers affiliated with CHD.
Dr. Mumper carefully provides detailed answers to two questions often asked by the public: “What does a safe and effective vaccine look like?” and “How will we know that a COVID-19 vaccine is safe?” She reviews many of the reasons why vaccines, as they are currently produced, are not safe, and explains that every year there are tens of thousands of adverse events, many of them resulting in serious conditions or even death.
Dr. Mumper reviews the scientific community’s numerous concerns about the safety of a COVID vaccine and its ingredients, providing information about each of the top COVID vaccine candidates. Lastly, she discusses the legality of mandatory vaccination in a free republic which proclaims to defend the rights of “we the people.”
Lawsuits filed by Children’s Health Defense and the Environmental Health Trust argue the FCC dismissed 1,700 filings of evidence showing radiation contributes to cell damage, DNA damage, infertility, carcinogenicity, cognitive deficits and cardiovascular disruption.
Two separate health advocacy organizations have sued the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) over its complete dismissal of evidence of serious health impacts from wireless technology devices and infrastructure, such as cell phones and cell towers.
The cases have been brought after the FCC completely dismissed all evidence presented to it during a six year public inquiry which the FCC opened itself. The FCC, which is “an independent agency of the U.S. government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States,” opened the inquiry in 2013, asking the public to submit comments to the inquiry’s docket as to whether or not the FCC should review its 1996 Radio Frequency (RF) radiation guidelines. The inquiry was closed in December 2019.
During that time tremendous amounts of scientific and human evidence of physical harm caused by radiation emitted from wireless technology such as Wi-Fi and cell towers, was submitted to the FCC in 1,700 filings. The filings contain peer-reviewed studies that show radiofrequency radiation contributes to cell damage, DNA damage, infertility, carcinogenicity, cognitive deficits, and cardiovascular disruption, among a wide array of negative health effects.
The scientific studies and testimony of the physical harm caused by RF radiation were requested by the FCC for the purposes of reassessing their “radiofrequency exposure limits and policies” after Congress’s Government Accountability Office recommended such a commission.
But the FCC summarily dismissed the evidence, without explanation.
The FCC declared that “the vast majority of filings were unscientific, and even the filings that sought to present scientific evidence failed to make a persuasive case for revisiting our existing RF limits,” the FCC stated in a resolution to close their inquiry.
The FCC also cited “sister” agencies such as the FDA, stating, “No evidence has moved our sister health and safety agencies to issue substantive policy recommendations for strengthening RF exposure regulation.”
“The Director of FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health advised the Commission, as recently as April 2019, that ‘no changes to the current standards are warranted at this time,’ the FCC continued.
“Upon review of the record, we find no appropriate basis for and thus decline to initiate a rulemaking to reevaluate the existing RF exposure limits,” the FCC concluded, referring to its 1996 RF radiation exposure guidelines.
Their unsupported dismissal of both scientific studies and firsthand experience testimony prompted both the Children’s Health Defense (CHD) and the Environmental Health Trust (EHT) to sue the FCC.
“Children’s Health Defense and the Environmental Health Trust filed separate cases against the FCC, but filed joint briefs,” report Children’s Health Defense. The cases were heard in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
That response as well as other remarks by the judges critical of the FCC’s continued adherence to the 1996 guidelines has sparked hope for what the advocacy organizations are calling a “landmark case.”
“I hear all the time from people whose lives are devastated, and they don’t know what to do, they don’t know where to go, and they need help. Some are driven to suicide. And as a society we owe them an answer,” said Scott McCollough, an attorney for CHD, during a press conference which the advocacy organisations held on the case’s oral arguments. McCullough presented the arguments on behalf of the CHD, the EHT, Consumers for Safe Cell Phones, and other petitioners.
“Hundreds of people wrote [to the FCC] with just horrible letters; It tears you up to read what these people told the Commission. They did nothing. They kicked everybody in the teeth. We described it as a gut punch in our brief and that’s exactly what it was,” said McCollough.
CHD and EHT argued in their jointly filed briefs that the FCC did not back up their decision with any evidence of their own. The groups are arguing that the dismissal “lacked evidence of reasoned decision-making” and therefore was “arbitrary.” It was furthermore, they said, a violation of the Administrative Procedures Act as well as the National Environmental Policy Act and the 1996 Telecommunications Act, “because it failed to consider the impact of its decision on public health and safety.”
‘We don’t deal with humans, only frequencies’
The FCC’s approach to claims of RF radiation harm is encapsulated by one phone call, said CHD attorney Scott McCollough while opening his oral argument in court.
“One of the petitioners recently contacted the FCC to seek redress for injuries she attributes to RF exposures. The commission representative said, ‘We don’t deal with humans, only frequencies,’ and hung up,” McCollough revealed.
“They [the FCC] don’t understand biological effects, and they don’t want to. It makes their head hurt,” McCollough later said during the press conference.
That is why, McCollough argues, that the FCC continues to insist there is no evidence that wireless technology causes harm, in the face of the 11,000 pages of scientific and human evidence showing “profound harmful effects and widespread sickness from wireless technology” filed by theCHD, the EHT, and their fellow petitioners in the case.
And these 11,000 pages are only “the tip of the iceberg” regarding the harmful effects of wireless technology, explained attorney Dafna Tachover, CHD’s 5G and Wireless Harms director. “In these kinds of cases, we have to rely on the evidence that was submitted to the docket,” Tachover said during the press conference.
Included in the 11,000-page “Joint Appendix” are “references to thousands of peer-reviewed scientific studies showing DNA damage, reproductive harm, neurological effects such as ADHD, and radiation sickness, which seems to be the most widespread manifestation of wireless harms,” reported CHD.
“The evidence shows effects on the brain, including impaired blood flow and damage to the blood-brain barrier, cognitive and memory problems and effects on sleep, melatonin production and mitochondrial damage,” the CHD report continues.
CHD also reported that the evidence found the “Causal mechanism of harm”: Oxidative Stress, which “was found in 203 out of 225 studies,” and “can lead to cancer, non-cancer conditions and DNA damage.”
Judges critical of the FCC
During a press conference on the oral arguments of the case, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., chairman of CHD, said that the organizations “were blessed with what we call a ‘hot bench.’”
“A lot of work on the argument was done by the judges who were clearly familiar with the case and were extremely skeptical of FCC’s position,” Kennedy said.
During the oral arguments for the case Judge Millet challenged the FCC attorney multiple times regarding the FCC’s reliance on the FDA, and the inadequacy of the FDA’s input.
“How was it reasonable for the FCC to rely so heavily on a response from the FDA that did not address the very things you asked for information on: devices [other than cell phones], the use of multiple devices and physical harms other than cancer?” Millet asked.
The FCC attorney admitted, “You’re right, that their statements spoke specifically about cell phones.”
The FCC attorney also admitted that even after the FCC “made very clear” that they rely upon “other agencies with expertise in this area,” they were met with silence.”
“We formally solicited the views of other agencies with expertise in this area, we made very clear that we wanted to rely on them. We relied on the views of expert agencies in adopting these limits in the first place,” the FCC attorney told the judges.
When asked by Judge Millet if the FCC relied on agencies besides the FDA, the FCC attorney said: “We formally seek the input of all expert bodies in this area, and we left the docket open for seven years giving ample opportunity to weigh in and not one of these bodies said you need to change your standards. And we’re not arguing that silence should be construed as endorsement, but it shouldn’t be construed as disapproval of the agency’s existing limits.”
Is the regulation of the FCC fit-for-purpose?
Reflecting on this silence of the “expert” agencies during the case press conference, McCullough suggested that the regulation system was no longer fit-for-purpose.
“Over all of this time it has become obvious that agencies that are charged with regulating entities almost inevitably become captured by them,” he said. “They are inculcated in how the industry [works] and they begin to develop some kind of Stockholm Syndrome by these agencies that they have to deal with. Quite frankly, that’s all they see most of the time.”
Tachover asked Kennedy during the case press conference what he thinks is “the most effective thing that our movement can do to create change.”
He replied, “I think we have to keep the pressure up on the agency. The ultimate issue is we’ve gotta get money out of politics, because as Scott pointed out, agency capture is not controversial. There are hundreds of articles that document the process. It occurs, as Scott says, directly and indirectly. In some [agencies] it’s innocent, but in most of them it does become corrupt. And it’s reinforced through budgeting.”
He went on to describe how the agency “capture” process can work.
“As highly visible and powerful regulators approach retirement age, they know that they can quintuple their salary by going to work for the agency that they regulated,” he said.
“And so usually in a year or two, before they approach retirement, they begin doing really extravagant favors, highly visible favors for the industry that they regulate. As it happens, those regulators are the people who chair the departments, and hire new people, and who set the example for their underlings. And gradually the entire agency becomes subsumed in the process,” Kennedy continued.
“The judges in this country, and really everywhere, will not give us victories in a vacuum. We have to lay the public groundwork. We have to show the judge that the public is out there and they want reform. That there are people like you who have been injured. We need to come in with those stories, those very powerful parables about how democracy is failing, it’s being held up to ridicule, and people are being harmed in terrible ways. And we need a grassroots movement to continually promote those stories,” Kennedy concluded.
News reports attributed Dr. Barton Williams’ death to multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-A) caused by asymptomatic COVID, though he never tested positive for the virus.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is investigating the death of a 36-year-old doctor in Tennessee who died Feb. 8, about a month after receiving the second dose of a COVID vaccination.
According to news reports, Dr. Barton Williams died from the adult form of multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-A), a condition caused when the immune system attacks the body resulting in multi-system organ failure. MIS-A is considered extremely rare.
The Daily Memphian and other news sources reported that those involved in the investigation believe Williams developed MIS-A in response to an asymptomatic case of COVID-19, not the vaccine.
Dr. Stephen Threlkeld, an infectious disease specialist who treated Williams and is working with the CDC to investigate the death, told a Memphis ABC News affiliate that Williams tested negative for COVID while in the hospital and that Williams had told him that to his knowledge, he had not the virus.
However, Threlkeld said testing revealed “two types of antibodies in [Williams’] system — one type of antibody that results from a natural COVID infection, and a second type of antibody from the vaccine.”
Asked whether the vaccine, rather than an asymptomatic case of COVID, could have caused Williams to develop MIS-A, Threlkeld said: “Everyone who has had [MIS-A], has had the infection. There has been no case published yet of someone who has been documented to have this problem, who has been vaccinated in the past.”
Threlkeld also said: “This is not a reason, not to get the vaccine. It’s a reason to get the vaccine, because only people who have had the infection have had this occur.”
But Lyn Redwood, RN, MSN, president emerita of Children’s Health Defense questioned the preliminary findings that ruled out the vaccine in favor of a rare reaction to an asymptomatic case of COVID.
Redwood pointed to research that described temporal associations between Kawasaki disease (KD), a disease that exhibits symptoms similar to MIS-C such as high fevers, rash and blood vessel inflammation, and a wide variety of vaccines, including hepatitis A and B, rotavirus, influenza, DPT or DTaP, pneumococcal vaccines and yellow fever.
“Scientists who have studied the “distinctive immune system characteristics” of children with Kawasaki disease, a disease which is very similar to MIS-C, acknowledge that the ‘antigenic stimulation’ set in motion by vaccines and other biologics has the capacity to create “immunologic interference,” Redwood said. “Is it possible that the MIS-C and MIS-A are the result of ‘pathogen priming,’ a mechanism that other researchers euphemistically describe as ‘immune enhancement’?”
“Pathogen priming can arise when the proteins in viral vaccines are so similar (‘homologous’) to proteins in humans that they subsequently trigger out-of-control autoimmunity or hypersensitivity reactions such as shock syndrome and delayed anaphylaxis,” Redwood said.
As Redwood reported earlier this week, research has found the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein alone — without the virus — to be a potent inductor of endothelial dysfunction, suggesting that “manifestations of COVID-19 shock syndrome in children can be at least partially attributed to its action.”
MIS-C, the childhood version of multisystem inflammatory syndrome, is also rare, but more common in children than adults. Children with MIS-C often exhibit symptoms similar to Kawasaki disease.
In her Feb. 10 article, Redwood referred to a public comment submitted in December to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration from Dr. J. Patrick Whelan, a pediatric rheumatologist, warning about the potential for mRNA vaccines designed to create immunity to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein to instead cause injuries.
Both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, the only two so far approved for emergency use in the U.S., use mRNA technology.
Whelan’s training (at Harvard, Texas Children’s Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine) includes degrees in biochemistry, medicine and rheumatology. For 20 years, he worked as a pediatric rheumatologist. He currently specializes in treating children with multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C), which has been associated with coronavirus infections.
In his comments to the FDA, Whelan wrote:
“I am concerned about the possibility that the new vaccines aimed at creating immunity against the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein have the potential to cause microvascular injury to the brain, heart, liver and kidneys in a way that does not currently appear to be assessed in safety trials of these potential drugs.”
Whelan was referring to the fact that mRNA vaccines work by incorporating the genetic blueprint for the key spike protein on the virus surface into a formula that — when injected into humans — instructs our own cells to make the spike protein.
In theory, the body then will make antibodies against the spike protein to protect against SARS-CoV-2 infection.
“The problem with this scenario,” said Redwood, “is that the spike protein alone — which the mRNA vaccines instruct the body to make — has been implicated as a key cause of injury and death in COVID-19 infections.”
Based on the research conducted to date, Redwood said, it is very likely that some recipients of the spike protein mRNA vaccines will experience the same symptoms and injuries associated with the virus.
Again according to Whelan, “the potential to cause microvascular injury (inflammation and small blood clots called microthrombi) to the brain, heart, liver and kidney … were not assessed in the safety trials.”
Last year, Canadian researchers identified Kawasaki disease as a “condition of interest” for pediatric vaccine safety surveillance, citing ongoing reports of KD to passive systems monitoring adverse events following immunization (AEFI).
Two studies — one conducted in Singapore and one in the U.S. — have highlighted an association between the 13-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV13) and Kawasaki disease:
The Singapore researchers looked at all young children (under age two) hospitalized for KD in their hospital from 2010 to 2014, considering children in whom KD onset took place within one month of PCV13 vaccination. Writing in Nature in 2019, the authors denied any overall increased risk but reported “an approximate two fold increased risk of Complete KD within the 28 day risk interval following receipt of the first dose of PCV13.” The researchers closed with an “urgent” plea to confirm their findings.
The U.S. study, a 2013 Vaccine Safety Datalink analysis by Kaiser Permanente researchers at eight managed care organizations, also looked at children two years and under, comparing those who received PCV13 from 2010-2012 to same-age children who received the Prevnar-7 vaccine (PCV7) in the mid-2000s. For the PCV13-vaccinated infants and toddlers, the likelihood of developing KD was 1.94 times higher than for those who received PCV7 — again representing a finding deserving of “further investigation.”
Providing high doses of vitamin D to patients admitted to hospitals after contracting the CCP virus could reduce deaths by 60 percent, according to a study by the Social Science Research Network.
As part of the research, 551 patients admitted to a hospital in Spain were given calcifediol, a prehormone generated from vitamin D3, resulting in 80 percent of the patients not requiring ICU treatment. The research stated that 36 of the patients treated with calcifediol died from the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, compared to 57 patients out of 379 in the control group.
World Needs Pandemic Treaty to Ensure Transparency: UK
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Monday that world powers should clinch a global treaty on pandemics to ensure proper transparency after China’s CCP virus outbreak, which causes the disease COVID-19.
Johnson said he would be keen to agree with a global treaty on pandemics where countries agreed to share data, amid British and U.S. concern over access given to a World Health Organization (WHO) mission to China.
Average US Cases Below 100,000 for 1st Time in Months
Average daily new COVID-19 cases in the United States dipped below 100,000 in recent days for the first time in months, but experts cautioned Sunday that infections remain high and precautions to slow the pandemic must remain in place.
The seven-day rolling average of new infections was well above 200,000 for much of December and went to roughly 250,000 in January, according to data kept by Johns Hopkins University. That average dropped below 100,000 on Friday for the first time since Nov. 4. It also stayed below 100,000 over the weekend.
Virus Was ‘Circulating Widely’ in Wuhan by Late 2019: WHO
An investigator with the World Health Organization (WHO) said the CCP virus was “circulating widely” in Wuhan, China, in late 2019.
Lead WHO investigator Peter Ben Embarek told CNN that his team found signs of a wider outbreak in the Hubei Province city in late 2019, noting that there were at least 13 strains of the CCP virus, or the novel coronavirus, around Wuhan by late 2019.
Variants-Wary Germany Turns Back 5,000 at Border
German authorities say police have turned back some 5,000 people at the country’s borders with the Czech Republic and Austria’s Tyrol region since tight controls were introduced on Sunday.
Germany imposed checks to slow the spread of the UK CCP virus variant from the Czech Republic and the South African variant from Tyrol. It is restricting entry to German citizens and residents, truck drivers, transport and health service workers, and a few others, including cross-border commuters working in “systemically relevant sectors.”
CDC Director Defends Changing School Distancing Recommendation
The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Sunday defended telling educators last year that social distancing in schools of three feet was “quite safe,” while her agency in new reopening guidance says six feet of distancing is recommended.
The CDC’s new guidance, published last week, repeatedly says six feet of distancing should be targeted when reopening schools. Dr. Rochelle Walensky told reporters in a call about the guidance that, along with masking, “physical distance of at least six feet” should be required “across the school environment.”
UK Starts Hotel Quarantine for Arrivals From High-Risk Countries
People arriving in the UK must quarantine in hotels starting Monday as the government tries to prevent new variants of the CCP virus from derailing the country’s vaccination drive.
People arriving in England from 33 high-risk countries must stay in quarantine hotels for 10 days at their own expense. In Scotland, the rule applies to arrivals from any country. Critics say the move comes too late, with the South African variant already circulating in the country.
Israeli Study Finds 94 Percent Drop in Symptomatic Cases
Israel’s largest health care provider on Sunday reported a 94 percent drop in symptomatic CCP virus infections among 600,000 people who received two doses of Pfizer’s vaccine in the country’s biggest study to date.
Health maintenance organization Clalit, which covers more than half of all Israelis, said the same group was also 92 percent less likely to develop severe illness from the virus. The comparison was against a group of the same size, with matching medical histories, who had not received the vaccine.
Stimulus Bill Must Be Passed For Schools to Safely Reopen: Fauci
Infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci said Sunday that in order for schools to safely reopen nationwide, a stimulus bill must first be passed to provide further resources.
Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, made the remarks in response to the Feb. 12 guidelines released by the CDC on the reopening of schools in the United States.
