After Covid Quotes

God, sir,' John couldn't help but add, 'after all we've been through since 2020, it's miraculous that people even dare to wake up every day!

Dear Public Health Officials: With 68% of the world’s population vaccinated and 13-billion doses administered, if the vaccines are safe and effective, how do you explain that the overwhelming number of COVID deaths –and all the highest peaks in deaths– occurred after commencement of mass vaccination?

If COVID-19 was named after the country where it wreaked the most havoc, it would be called the ‘American Virus’.

COVID-19 will pass after you go bankrupt, lose your home and car, and end up on the streets.

He was utterly unnerved by the crowd. They were shaking hands, which even after all of his cultural-sensitivity training seemed like a bizarre thing to do in flu season, and kissing one another on the cheek. These people have no direct experience of pandemics, he reminded himself. None of them were old enough to remember the winter of 1918–1919; Ebola was a few years out and would mostly be confined to the other side of the Atlantic; Covid-19 would not arrive for another thirteen years

The USA is likely to slip down the ranking of global superpowers after the COVID-19 pandemic has passed.

After my flu-like illness, I was telling the doctors my progressing sickness felt like Altitude Sickness!

Creating a PCR test for a new pathogen is a pretty easy task once you’ve sequenced its genome. Because you already know what its genes look like, you can create the special substances, dye, and other necessary products very quickly—which is why researchers were able to establish PCR tests for COVID just twelve days after the first genome sequences were published.

The naming of a virus is a controversial matter. In 1832, cholera advanced from British India toward Europe. It was called ‘Asiatic Cholera’. The French felt that since they were democratic, they would not succumb to a disease of authoritarianism; but France was ravaged by cholera, which was as much about the bacteria as it is about the state of hygiene inside Europe and North America. (When cholera struck the United States in 1848, the Public Bathing Movement was born.) The ‘Spanish Flu’ was only named after Spain because it came during World War I when journalism in most belligerent countries was censored. The media in Spain, not being in the war, widely reported the flu, and so that pandemic took the name of the country. In fact, evidence showed that the Spanish Flu began in the United States in a military base in Kansas where the chickens transmitted the virus to soldiers. It would then travel to British India, where 60 percent of the casualties of that pandemic took place. It was never named the ‘American Flu’ and no Indian government has ever sought to recover costs from the United States because of the animal-to-human transmission that happened there.

Social psychologists have likened the effects of COVID-19 to that of the great World Wars for the characteristics are all there down to the sirens and curfews; it is after all a life-altering event that has blanketed the world with uncertainty and an unfathomable restriction on personal freedoms.

This traumatic episode in history is proving to be one twisted psychological experiment on a massive scale, a testing whose effects on the mind will be studied for years to come for we know that after trauma comes the post-traumatic episodes and the world needs to be ready to help those of us who will need to be mentally supported once the worst is behind us.

So my words of positivity. Let me be blunt. It's gonna get really bad! I know what's coming and I wish I didn't. Why I have been advocating for people who just won't believe how bad it is gonna get. IT IS NOT POLITICAL! But I am here. YOU ARE TOO. I am looking at you in the eye. YOU WILL BE OKAY! Just STAY HOME! Put your affairs in order and ride this thing out. There IS a life after this for most of us. WE will all be a different person than we are today but that is okay! KNOW THAT! Experience changes us. Mold us. Make us who we are. YOU WILL BE FINE! WE are stronger together. What we need right now is LOVE. I'm that really liberal Cristian. I am ordained actually. ALL I say LOVE Thy Neighbor! Be kind after this and love and accept love back! Don't be proud. Accept help! There is a life after this!

We know from subsequent leaks that the president was indeed presented with information about the seriousness of the virus and its pandemic potential beginning at least in early January 2020. And yet, as documented by the Washington Post, he repeatedly stated that “it would go away.” On February 10, when there were 12 known cases, he said that he thought the virus would “go away” by April, “with the heat.” On February 25, when there were 53 known cases, he said, “I think that’s a problem that’s going to go away.” On February 27, when there were 60 cases, he said, famously, “We have done an incredible job. We’re going to continue. It’s going to disappear. One day—it’s like a miracle—it will disappear.” On March 6, when there were 278 cases and 14 deaths, again he said, “It’ll go away.” On March 10, when there were 959 cases and 28 deaths, he said, “We’re prepared, and we’re doing a great job with it. And it will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.” On March 12, with 1,663 cases and 40 deaths recorded, he said, “It’s going to go away.” On March 30, with 161,807 cases and 2,978 deaths, he was still saying, “It will go away. You know it—you know it is going away, and it will go away. And we’re going to have a great victory.” On April 3, with 275,586 cases and 7,087 deaths, he again said, “It is going to go away.” He continued, repeating himself: “It is going away.… I said it’s going away, and it is going away.” In remarks on June 23, when the United States had 126,060 deaths and roughly 2.5 million cases, he said, “We did so well before the plague, and we’re doing so well after the plague. It’s going away.” Such statements continued as both the cases and the deaths kept rising. Neither the virus nor Trump’s statements went away.

With all this hoarding, alarm, deceit, lack of information, plethora of disinformation, ambiguity, and confusion, I wonder whether it is time for us to start drafting a post-coronavirus manifesto? Perhaps it should contain all the things we don’t want the world to become after this pandemic is over. There are many alienating powers out there that thrived on keeping us quarantined, at distance, and distrustful of each other way before COVID-19. There are systems that thrive on our loneliness and fear. There are institutions dedicated to make sure that we don’t help each other so that we turn to them for help… Let’s not allow them to get their way once this pandemic is over! Let’s make sure that we create a world in which such blood suckers are not needed in the first place. Oh, my friends, let’s beware of the ways disaster capitalism is using the pandemic for its benefit.

Specific examples and anecdotes can oftentimes be too powerful, leading us to violate important rational principles. In 2020, for example, it was not uncommon to hear people say things like, “My grandfather tested positive for COVID-19, and he recovered in one week. COVID is just the flu, after all,” or “My friend never wears a mask, and he didn’t catch COVID.” For many people, one or two anecdotes from people they know are more persuasive than scientific evidence based on much larger samples.

Human history is a long saga of people learning to harness ever-increasing amounts of energy to maintain ever more complex, ordered systems, punctuated by periodic collapses—the Romans, the Maya—when civilizations became more complex than they could maintain, with the energy and technologies they had, in the face of changing conditions. At that point, small stresses sent overstretched social systems into a rapid downward spiral, which ended with major losses of people and social organization, as one stable complex system made a rapid nonlinear descent to a less complex one. But after a setback, humanity always innovated and rebuilt, a little bigger and more complex than before.

Qatar’s Akbar Al Baker, who retired as CEO without warning in October 2023 after twenty-seven years at the helm of the Gulf carrier, is in no doubt as to what happened: ‘It was Alan Joyce blocking us by his relationship with the prime minister.’ Al Baker accepts the Australian government’s desire to ‘look after the national carrier’ but insists that ‘the national carrier was not delivering’. ‘In COVID, we were your national carrier,’ he argues. ‘We lost over US$150 million flying to Australia, operating this long route with only fifteen passengers on board for nearly two years. We never told anybody to wait for weeks or months to get your refund, or that we won’t give you a refund. We showed our commitment was not to swindle people, not to sell tickets on cancelled

During the early stages of the Covid-19 lockdown, prominent newspaper columnists defended their right to have someone clean their homes, even at significant risk to their health, on dubiously feminist grounds. Their argument was that without outsourcing domestic work it would be women who had to do the bulk of it. We might wonder if their cleaners were not also women. When the journalist Owen Jones criticised the cavalier attitude that employers of cleaners were taking to workplace safety, he was accused of sexism. His accusers claimed to be fighting the idea that women have some natural duty or propensity to cleaning but the upshot of their argument was that it is fine for some other – i.e. poorer, usually migrant – women to pick up after them. Escaping the confines of the domestic feminine was their individual prerogative, not a shared horizon for all women.

I lot of you have reached out to me today actually. I also checked on people too. I am concerned. A lot of you are depressed. Feeling down. Want to be able to have a break from your kids or spouse. Some of you are solo right now and are lonely. Some of you have fear. Don't have fear. This too will pass. BUT do have some common sense. Stay home. Wash your hands. For the lonely, the safest sex you can have is no sex. BUT hey you meet someone after this you can have a topic of conversation. The apocalypse. For those needing a break from your kids. Take a walk around the block. Maybe a few blocks. Then come back. If you can't do that, make sure they are doing their homework and then watch stand up comedy or listen to some music. Do something fun! Look the whole world is having common experience. Just know you are healthy. Your love ones are too. Be creative. It may cheer you up I choose to have hope. Look I know you are down but we are all in this together.

To summarise, an outbreak of mysterious pneumonia in a copper mine, more than 1,800 kilometres by road from Wuhan, led to patient samples being sent to Wuhan for analysis. A 2013 medical thesis concluded, after incorporating results shared by the WIV, that these miners had likely been infected by a SARS-like coronavirus from bats in the mine. An expedition by Wuhan virologists to seek the viral cause brought back hundreds of samples from bats. Their repeated visits to the mine turned up a bat-borne coronavirus in 2013, which was recognised to be a novel SARS-like coronavirus. The WIV team partly sequenced this new virus in 2017 and then fully sequenced it in 2018. When its sequence was found to closely match the sequence of the virus causing Covid-19, the Wuhan scientists published it under a new name and failed to cite their own paper detailing its discovery or to reveal that they had been studying the virus over the past few years or to mention that it had come from a mine where there had been a fatal outbreak of pneumonia.

IN OCTOBER 2019, just a few months before the novel coronavirus swept the world, Johns Hopkins University released its first Global Heath Security Index, a comprehensive analysis of countries that were best prepared to handle an epidemic or pandemic. The United States ranked first overall, and first in four of the six categories—prevention, early detection and reporting, sufficient and robust health system, and compliance with international norms. That sounded right. America was, after all, the country with most of the world’s best pharmaceutical companies, research universities, laboratories, and health institutes. But by March 2020, these advantages seemed like a cruel joke, as Covid-19 tore across the United States and the federal government mounted a delayed, weak, and erratic response. By July, with less than 5% of the world’s population, the country had over 25% of the world’s cumulative confirmed cases. Per capita daily death rates in the United States were ten times higher than in Europe. Was this the new face of American exceptionalism?

All of us have Dragons from the Past influencing our present feelings and actions.”[1] Unless you recognize and tame them, and consciously calm and protect your amygdala from overfiring, these dragons will haunt your unconscious mind and drive emotional pain for the rest of your life. What blows from an ember, or a small action of another, can turn into a destructive fire of anxiety and rage. After learning from Dr. May, I started using this concept with my patients, including Jimmy. Over time I identified 13 Dragons from the Past, including their origins, triggers that make them overpowering, and how they cause us to react. All of us have more than one Dragon from the Past driving our behavior, and they are always interacting with the Dragons from the Past of others, causing both internal and external battles—a modern-day Game of Thrones. All of us have primary and secondary dragons driving our behavior. Primary ones are present most of the time, while secondary ones come out during times of stress, such as the COVID-19 pandemic that began in 2020. You’ll learn which ones apply to you. (You can also take the Hidden Dragons quiz at KnowYourDragons.com.)

Peter Navarro never hid his antagonism toward me. He stopped me one day in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, where we were tested routinely for COVID, and again blasted my failure to encourage people to take hydroxychloroquine, the lack of which he said was causing people to die. He would not let it go. Perhaps he just had a thing about me. To give him the benefit of the doubt, I arranged with Cliff Lane to have Navarro present via Zoom his case on hydroxychloroquine’s effectiveness to the entire NIH guidelines panel cochaired by Cliff in early August. This group was thirty-five of the top experts in infectious disease, public health, and epidemiology from all over the country. Navarro made his presentation, and uniformly they politely said, “Mr. Navarro, there’s nothing there. These are anecdotes, and all the evidence indicates hydroxychloroquine doesn’t work and can even cause harm.” Navarro’s answer was that he valued his reading of the existing medical literature on hydroxychloroquine as much as or more than theirs. “If I am wrong, no one is harmed. If you are wrong, thousands of people die.” The truth was the exact opposite. By that time, the FDA, which had given hydroxychloroquine emergency approval early in the pandemic, had revoked it on June 15, after it was found to cause heart problems and even death, not to mention proving ineffective against COVID. I had given Navarro one last chance, but he still could not accept reality.

In the face of the calamity, the Modi government froze. In the seven months from March to September 2020, Modi made 82 public appearances—physical as well as virtual. In the next four months, he made 111 such appearances. From February to 25 April 2021, he clocked 92 public appearances. From 25 April, after he called off the Kumbh and his Bengal rallies, Modi disappeared. He made no public appearance for 20 days.147 The prime minister of India fled the field when his people needed the government most. Through all of April and much of May, upper class Indians flooded Twitter with calls for help to find hospital beds, oxygen cylinders, drugs like Remdesivir and ventilators.148 The Union did not think to set up a helpline to guide those who needed this help. Into this space strode the youth Congress leader B.V. Srinivas (@srinivasiyc) who, with a team of volunteers, began to help people reaching out for aid on Twitter. He was so effective in the absence of the State and any government presence that even the embassies of New Zealand and the Philippines contacted him for help when staffers fell ill with Covid.149 Focussed on the government’s image, Jaishankar tweeted: ‘This was an unsolicited supply as they had no Covid cases. Clearly for cheap publicity by you know who. Giving away cylinders like this when there are people in desperate need of oxygen is simply appalling.’ The New Zealand embassy staffer who had received oxygen from Srinivas on 2 May died 18 days later.

It is possible that we are already living through the twilight of democracy; that our civilization may already be heading for anarchy or tyranny, as the ancient philosophers and America's founders once feared; that a new generation of clercs, the advocates of illiberal or authoritarian ideas, will come to power in the twenty-first century, just as they did in the twentieth; that their visions of the world, born of resentment, anger, or deep, messianic dreams, could triumph. Maybe new information technology will continue to undermine consensus, divide people further, and increase polarization until only violence can determine who rules. Maybe fear of disease will create fear of freedom. Or maybe the coronavirus will inspire a new sense of global solidarity. Maybe we will renew and modernize our institutions. Maybe international cooperation will expand after the entire world has had the same set of experiences at the same time: lockdown, quarantine, fear of infection, fear of death. Maybe scientists around the world will find new ways to collaborate, above and beyond politics. Maybe the reality of illness and death will teach people to be suspicious of hucksters, liars, and purveyors of disinformation. Maddeningly, we have to accept that both futures are possible. No political victory is ever permanent, no definition of "the nation" is guaranteed to last, and no elite of any kind, whether so-called "populist" or so-called "liberal" or so called "aristocratic," rules forever.

Under Dr. Fauci’s leadership, the allergic, autoimmune, and chronic illnesses which Congress specifically charged NIAID to investigate and prevent, have mushroomed to afflict 54 percent of children, up from 12.8 percent when he took over NIAID in 1984.59 Dr. Fauci has offered no explanation as to why allergic diseases like asthma, eczema, food allergies, allergic rhinitis, and anaphylaxis suddenly exploded beginning in 1989, five years after he came to power. On its website, NIAID boasts that autoimmune disease is one of the agency’s top priorities. Some 80 autoimmune diseases, including juvenile diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis, Graves’ disease, and Crohn’s disease, which were practically unknown prior to 1984, suddenly became epidemic under his watch.60,61,62 Autism, which many scientists now consider an autoimmune disease,63,64,65 exploded from between 2/10,000 and 4/10,000 Americans66 when Tony Fauci joined NIAID, to one in thirty-four today. Neurological diseases like ADD/ADHD, speech and sleep disorders, narcolepsy, facial tics, and Tourette’s syndrome have become commonplace in American children.67 The human, health, and economic costs of chronic disease dwarf the costs of all infectious diseases in the United States. By this decade’s end, obesity, diabetes, and pre-diabetes are on track to debilitate 85 percent of America’s citizens.68 America is among the ten most over-weight countries on Earth. The health impacts of these epidemics—which fall mainly on the young—eclipse even the most exaggerated health impacts of COVID-19.

I stepped somewhat apprehensively into 2020, unaware of what was to happen, of course, thinking little about the newly-emerged coronavirus, but knowing myself to be at a tipping point in my life. I had come so very far over the years, the decades, from my birthplace in the United Kingdom, to Thailand, Japan and then back to Thailand to arrive at an age—how had I clocked up so many turns under the sun?—at which most people ask for nothing more than comfort, security and love, or at least loving kindness. Instead, I was slowly extricating myself, physically and emotionally, from a marriage that had, over the course of more than a decade, slowly, almost imperceptibly, deteriorated from complacency to conflict, from apathy to antagonism, from diversity to divergence as our respective outlooks on life first shifted and then conflicted. Instrumental in exacerbating this had been my decision to travel as and where I could after witnessing my mother’s devastating and terminal descent into dementia. For reasons which even now I cannot recall with any accuracy, the first destination for this reborn, more daring me was Tibet, thus initiating a new love affair, this time with the culture and majesty of the Himalayan swathe, and the awakening within me of a quest for the spiritual. I had, over the years, been a teacher, a lecturer, a consultant and an advisor, but I now wanted to inspire and release my verbal and photographic creativity, to capture the places I visited and the experiences I had in words and images—and if possible to have the wherewithal of sharing them with like-minded people.

In March, at HHS’s request, several large pharmaceutical companies—Novartis, Bayer, Sanofi, and others—donated their inventory, a total of 63 million doses of hydroxychloroquine and 2 million of chloroquine, to the Strategic National Stockpile, managed by BARDA, an agency under the DHHS Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response.56 BARDA’s Director, Dr. Rick Bright, later claimed the chloroquine drugs were deadly, and he needed to protect the American public from them.57 Bright colluded with FDA to restrict use of the donated pills to hospitalized patients. FDA publicized the authorization using language that led most physicians to believe that prescribing the drug for any purpose was off-limits. But at the beginning of June, based on clinical trials that intentionally gave unreasonably high doses to hospitalized patients and failed to start the drug until too late, FDA took the unprecedented step of revoking HCQ’s emergency authorization,58 rendering that enormous stockpile of valuable pills off limits to Americans while conveniently indemnifying the pharmaceutical companies for their inventory losses by allowing them a tax break for the donations. After widespread use of the drug for 65 years, without warning, FDA somehow felt the need to send out an alert on June 15, 2020 that HCQ is dangerous, and that it required a level of monitoring only available at hospitals.59 In a bit of twisted logic, Federal officials continued to encourage doctors to use the suddenly-dangerous drug without restriction for lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, Lyme and malaria. Just not for COVID. With the encouragement of Dr. Fauci and other HHS officials, many states simultaneously imposed restrictions on HCQ’s use.

By collecting data from the vast network of doctors across the globe, they added dozens of new compounds to the arsenal—all proven effective against COVID-19. Dr. Kory told me that he was deeply troubled that the extremely successful efforts by scores of front-line doctors to develop repurposed medicines to treat COVID received no support from any government in the entire world—only hostility—much of it orchestrated by Dr. Fauci and the US health agencies. The large universities that rely on hundreds of millions in annual funding from NIH were also antagonistic. “We didn’t have a single academic institution come up with a single protocol,” said Dr. McCullough. “They didn’t even try. Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Duke, you name it. Not a single medical center set up even a tent to try to treat patients and prevent hospitalization and death. There wasn’t an ounce of original research coming out of America available to fight COVID—other than vaccines.” All of these universities are deeply dependent on billions of dollars that they receive from NIH. As we shall see, these institutions live in terror of offending Anthony Fauci, and that fear paralyzed them in the midst of the pandemic. “Dr. Fauci refused to promote any of these interventions,” says Kory. “It’s not just that he made no effort to find effective off-the-shelf cures—he aggressively suppressed them.” Instead of supporting McCullough’s work, NIH and the other federal regulators began actively censoring information on this range of effective remedies. Doctors who attempted merely to open discussion about the potential benefits of early treatments for COVID found themselves heavily and inexplicably censored. Dr. Fauci worked with Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and other social media sites to muzzle discussion of any remedies. FDA sent a letter of warning that N-acetyle-L-cysteine (NAC) cannot be lawfully marketed as a dietary supplement, after decades of free access on health food shelves, and suppressed IV vitamin C, which the Chinese were using with extreme effectiveness.

By now your realize how much of your identity was tied into your job. I get it! I was an actor, comedian and child entertainer. You know what, I am still all those things. I know you lost your job and I know it is tough. I get it. BUT you will have a job and you are so much more than just your job. You are you. No one else is you. You are unique! So think about what else you are. Maybe a parent, a sibling, or a horrible singer or maybe you are an aunt or uncle, maybe a good cook or maybe a horrible cook. A karaoke all star. I say think about who you are not what you did to make money. Also have a routine! Routine is key. It helps with depression. We will get though this. There is life after this apocalypse!

Covid is a lesson to all those fools who plan to retire into leisure only after retirement; saving up to enjoy only in the remnants of their life - knowing the fact that such a time may never arrive.

We were excited to see you, but soon after you arrived, nations shut down, order saver inside.

As we are beginning to restart our world after being hit by a horrific global health crisis, our actions hold the key to a fast recovery for the entire humankind - therefore, wear a mask whenever you are in public, avoid gatherings and wash your hands frequently - these are by far the most effective way to make sure we keep our friends and family as well as ourselves safe.

It can be stated that the post-pandemic future for innovation and entrepreneurship will be different. Whatever entrepreneurial and innovation activities that are happening during the pandemic outbreak, are likely to have a lasting impact on society. The current indication of entrepreneurship initiatives and the benevolence gives us a clear cause of adapted business environment even in the post-Covid-19 world.

Prof. Lawrence Krauss writes: “The declaration of a First Cause still leaves open the question, ‘Who created the creator?’ After all, what is the difference between arguing in favour of an eternally existing creator versus an eternally existing universe without one?” Big Bang has proved that this universe had a beginning 13.7 billion years ago. It is not an eternally existing universe. The lifeless matter cannot be conceived as creating itself independently. We use matter and reshape it into different forms to make aeroplanes, rockets, spaceships, skyscrapers and expansive gardens. We, humans, having the power to form and deform matter through construction and destruction can also not be our own creators and this universe. We have barely come to exist since few hundred thousand years ago on this planet. We know and recognize by experience and observation our physical limits and fallibility. Our behavioural contradictions and fallacies are so much well documented that the busiest field in economics these days is behavioural economics.

If a religious text is transmitted generations after generations with perfect historical accuracy and consistency and whose descriptive statements about history and future are verified perfectly and whose descriptive statements about what we see across nature and within ourselves is accurate and verified by established discoveries of modern science, then it is certainly a very serious candidate for us to consult in exploring the question of why life and for what purpose? As a matter of fact, Qur’an is such a book which comes true on all the above mentioned characteristics.

Prof. Stephen Hawking once said: “I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look around carefully before they cross the road.” Religious faith does not mean that after accepting faith, one can walk on water, fly in the air or defy physical limits in any other sense. Religion concerns with moral content in choices made with free will. Repeatedly, Qur’an asks people to strive for knowledge, discovery, exploration and virtuous livelihood. Nowhere there is a restriction on planning or in using material resources bestowed by the Creator.

In fact, we have only speeded up extinction in the last 50 years when the science has been on its peak. Morals do not come from evolutionary biology. Towards that end, it is the depressing story of survival upon survival through destruction upon destruction. No wonder we are now seeing tremendous loss to ecology, environment, bio-diversity and forests after setting aside values and morals.

We have an ability to recognise our consciousness and conscience. Using our senses and rational faculties of inference, we come to know that the lifeless matter and living beings owe their existence to someone else due to their inability to explain their existence by self-creation. Matter has not created itself. Life in its complex and intelligent form in humans can also not be explained by self- creation. Matter is malleable in our hands and we can convert it into different ways to make aero planes, skyscrapers and pyramids. Using geo-engineering, we are striving to even transform climate of entire planet. We, having this ability or potential have also only come into existence in this world few hundred years ago. Thus, even after gaining tremendous advances in artificial intelligence, we cannot claim to explain our existence through self-creation and creation of consciousness from unconsciousness. In a mindless universe, we find ourselves as sentient beings in search of the origin and meaning of life.

When we play video games, through experience, we learn the rules of the game and make progress to the advanced stages. We do not infer from this experience that the game was not developed by someone. We know that someone will have made the rules. If we come across a computer software or application, then after observation and careful thinking, we can decipher how it was made. By having grasp of computer programming, we can identify the recipe – the code and algorithm – which is behind that computer application. However, it does not mean that discovering the programming code and algorithm of an existing computer program proves its self-existence without any developer.

In our conscious experience, we do not find ourselves like other inanimate objects in the universe. Our bodies might be having the same inanimate matter that is also part of non-living objects, but we have consciousness. Other life-forms also have consciousness. We know that we are not our creators. If we had the power to create ourselves, why would we be not able to avoid pain, illness and death? Another alternate conjecture is that we have come to exist in this universe by accident. But, science has shown that it is next to impossible to have life by accident in its most sophisticated manifestation as we see it, experience it and then die after at most few million breaths under the sun. Life exists on a knife’s edge. Other life-forms and inanimate objects are also composed of the elements that exist in the universe and their existence cannot be explained through self-creation.

Religion is not just concerned with psychological and spiritual medication and meditation. It is concerned essentially with the question of why life and for what purpose. The religious answer based on historically transmitted knowledge is that we are created by the Creator and Who will reward us justly in the afterlife. The afterlife will actualize the cause and effect in ethical matters and establish absolute justice which we desire for every action and intention. Qur’an repeatedly reminds of the blessings of Allah in the form of matter and intelligence which we use for our comforts and cures. After using the matter and intelligence which exists not because of our efforts, how rational and ethical it is that we remain not only thankless, but negate the one Who is to be thanked altogether.

Religion explains that this universe had a beginning and it was created. After a long period of time, humans inhabited the planet earth in this universe. Humans were created and given this life by the Creator in order to test who among them live a virtuous and ethical life. During this life, there will be temptations to achieve short term material benefit, but unethical conduct will make humans deserve punishment in life hereafter. In contrast, virtuous actions of justice, fairness, generosity, kindness, cooperation and sacrifice will deserve deterministic rewards in life hereafter. Since this life is a trial, one cannot get deterministic rewards in this life. But, every intentional act will get deterministic justice in life hereafter. That is the basic essence and message of religion. It does not matter whether life on this earth came to exist by whichever material process. Religion informs about the ‘will’, the source and the purpose behind creation of humans.

Some people suggest that being not religious does not mean that we are or will become immoral. However, faith does not argue that moral values originate solely from scriptures. There is an innate ability in our consciousness to differentiate right from wrong actions. The different approaches to life and its meaning can result in different ways of responding to moral calling. Faith not only compels and elicits pro-social behaviour, but it provides meaningful consequences for good and bad actions. Else, altruism while in poverty, anonymous charitable giving, and sacrificing one’s life in the service of humanity would seem irrational if we are just going to die after some moments in the cosmos without any absolute justice. Inaction to not help change matters is also immoral, even if not illegal. If one possesses the means and finds an opportunity to help causes by way of spending wealth, volunteering and engaging in socio-political and democratic struggle, then one should undertake every feasible effort to contribute in social well-being by looking beyond one’s self-interest.

Religion gives meaning to actions and moral choices. Else, both mass murderers and honest go through the same biological decay of their skulls after they die. One can decide to do an act morally as an end in itself and not merely as a means to a material end with the knowledge that there are deterministic rewards beyond the interpersonal relations in the world. If one believes in this life only; then that person will be more selfish to get everything in this life. If we restrict our existence confined to this world alone with no accountability in the afterlife; then, I am "just" as long as I am "just" in front of the society even though there could be crimes that the society could never have seen me doing. Contrarily, I could be regarded as "unjust" by the society if it convicts me based on evidence which could have been untrue. Life hereafter gives meaning to all our actions by promising each and every soul a just reward.

There are only a handful of monotheistic divine religions in the world. Muslims believe that there was a single monotheistic religion. It was the same religion which was preached by Adam (pbuh), Noah (pbuh), Ibrahim (pbuh), Moses (pbuh), Jesus (pbuh) and Muhammad (pbuh) and all the other Prophets (pbut) in between Adam (pbuh) and Muhammad (pbuh). Christians defined their distinct faith as Christianity by believing in Jesus (pbuh) and denying Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) despite Bible giving clear signs of His arrival and characteristics. Jews defined their distinct faith by believing in Prophets before Jesus (pbuh), but denying Jesus (pbuh) and Muhammad (pbuh) despite Torah giving clear signs of the arrival of last Prophet (pbuh) and His (pbuh) characteristics101. The denial of the last Prophet (pbuh) is not supported by the religious scriptures which clearly foretold the last messenger by name, characteristics and traits. Muslims believe in all Prophets (pbut) including Jesus (pbuh) and Moses (pbuh). Muslims believe in all Holy Books. Since these Holy Books were not kept in their original form, Muslims pay more heed towards the last Holy Book, i.e. Qur’an which was revealed in the daylight of history and which encapsulates the true teachings and foundational beliefs of the original monotheistic religion. Quran’s every word has been transmitted from generations to generations through i) the verbal transmission of thousands of people in every age who had learnt it by heart and through ii) written transmission soon after Prophet Muhammad’s (pbuh) time. Qur’an is the God’s last words transmitted to humans on earth because it was ensured that these final verses will be preserved in the daylight of history.

How to protect yourself and others from COVID-19? According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “The best way to prevent illness is to avoid being exposed to this virus.” As the vaccines continue their roll out. And follow advices to the world health orgranization (WHO), "Stay aware of the latest COVID-19 information by regularly checking updates from WHO and your national and local public health authorities." What to do to keep yourself and others safe from COVID-19 by WHO 1. Maintain at least a 1-metre distance between yourself and others to reduce your risk of infection when they cough, sneeze or speak. 2. Maintain an even greater distance between yourself and others when indoors. The further away, the better. 3. Make wearing a mask a normal part of being around other people. How to protect yourself and others from COVID-19 by WHO If COVID-19 is spreading in your community, stay safe by taking some simple precautions, such as physical distancing, wearing a mask, keeping rooms well ventilated, avoiding crowds, cleaning your hands, and coughing into a bent elbow or tissue. Check local advice where you live and work. Do it all! A. Wash your hands by CDC Practicing good hygiene is an important habit that helps prevent the spread of COVID-19. Make these CDC recommendations part of your routine: Wash your hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds, especially after you have been in a public place, or after blowing your nose, coughing, or sneezing. Read more on my website

I do even understand the value of Indian traditional food items only after the Covid-19 pandemic.

The majority of the people in this current era understand after Covid-19 pandemic that life is unpredictable.

Can you imagine the governments telling the men of the world ‘COVID-19 damages testosterone levels and they tend to be lower during and after having the virus’?

After a few years of fearing a COVID-19 infection, I was eventually infected and it was the mildest flu-like sickness I have experienced! I was taking the nutritional supplements in the book ‘COVID Supplements’ at the time.

Can people really change? Leave a Comment / By GhulamNabi7 / 7 October, 2023 Over the last four episodes, Rashida and I have explored questions that are fundamentally about change: Will things be different after Covid-19? Can society become more equal? Can (and should) people stop lying? Will we make the changes needed to stop a climate disaster?Over the last four episodes, Rashida and I have explored questions that are fundamentally about change: Will things be different after Covid-19? Can society become more equal? Can (and should) people stop lying? Will we make the changes needed to stop a climate disaster?Over the last four episodes, Rashida and I have explored questions that are fundamentally about change: Will things be different after Covid-19? Can society become more equal? Can (and should) people stop lying? Will we make the changes needed to stop a climate disaster?Over the last four episodes, Rashida and I have explored questions that are fundamentally about change

After taking a walk and seeing how people forgot that Covid is still lurking I can only think of one thing ... Thanos was right. Después de dar una vuelta y ver la forma en que la gente se olvidó de que el Covid sigue acechando solo puedo pensar en una cosa... Thanos tenía razón.

happening with smaller towns in rural India. All hospitals have limited capacity in mortuaries, and bodies are spread everywhere on the stretchers, on the ground, near the gates. These can be found near the active living patients of covid-19, leaving them thinking as if they will also die. With no imminent solution, city hospitals tied up with a private company to shift bodies from mortuaries to crematoriums and burial grounds. Since the pandemic intensified, the number of dead bodies increased manifold. After the employees took charge of moving dead bodies, they also got scared.

When my husband died, the only reason I could be with him was that he wanted to die at home. Home hospice is no picnic, I’ll tell you. But, at the hospital, COVID meant I couldn’t come visit him. We couldn’t bear that. But when will I get to have a funeral? His ashes are in an urn on my mantel, and there’s been no way to get my family here.

Based on the number of reports received, people are more than 150 times as likely to die after receiving a Covid shot than the flu vaccine. But that difference underestimates the real ratio of death reports per vaccination, because people must receive two shots of the mRNA vaccines to be fully vaccinated. Fewer than 40 million people had received two doses in mid-March, meaning that death reports were roughly 500 times as likely to come in following Covid vaccinations.

Corona Virus will never end. As long there are people who are making lot money out it. You think it is a coincident that all this variants started after the vaccine was introduced and approved. Before Vaccine there was only one Corona virus, after the Vaccine now there Is a new variant every day. My theory is everyone now is creating their own corona virus in their lab to cash in.

Some people live their whole life, as we are living in these lockdowns. Empower those parts of the society, because now we realise it ain’t so easy after all.

The only thing that ever gets us through anything like this, and ever has whether it's war, hurricanes or typhoons, epidemics, or anything else - love. Everything comes down to love. Find all the love that you can. Express it. Feel it. Be it. In every possible way. If you have COVID, love the COVID. You may not understand why this had to happen - why this virus came into existence. You don't have too. Just trust that there's something much greater than you. You don't have to believe in a god as such to recognize that there's this huge unfolding taking place that we're all a part of. When you look at the history of it -- out of nothing but pure energy came galaxies, and suns, and planets. Planets that life could develop on. And life is developed - the whole totality of everything is moving in a particular direction. If you examine what is the most common underlying feature of all of that - it's going to come down to something as simple as love. When the first particles formed after the big bang, they fell in love with each other and electrons and protons joined together, and we had hydrogen atoms! And they were doing the dance of love. And the hydrogen atoms got together with oxygen atoms and you had water molecules, doing the dance of love. This has lead to absolutely everything else. Just find the love, and live in the space of love, die in the space of love. That is the one single thing that is the essence of absolutely everything. That's what fifty years of spiritual practice has taught me.

Nurses spent a year battling a largely unknown assailant. Running low on gear. Fearing we might bring something deadly home. Getting coughed on by people who pretended that our fights were imaginary, that our struggles—watching people die, day after day, no matter what we did—were literally fake.

Barna Group looked at Millennials before and after the pandemic, they discovered three distinct groups: •​Holders—61% were attending the same church as before Covid shutdowns. •​Hoppers—23% are attending a different church.

After Manchin returned from recess, Schumer planned on sticking close to him so he could cajole him and ward off legislative saboteurs. But these were still pandemic times. Just as he was about to fly back from New York, Schumer tested positive for COVID. Instead of giving Manchin the LBJ treatment, Schumer was stuck in his Brooklyn apartment.

That left one last task before they could tell the world about their deal. Manchin, who now had his own case of COVID, needed Biden’s formal endorsement of their agreement. All along, Manchin was convinced that the White House was going to hate provisions in the deal expanding oil and gas leases. But many in the White House, like Brian Deese, were perfectly comfortable with what Manchin wanted. Given the conflict in Ukraine and the spike in energy prices, they were happy to expand domestic production of energy. It was politically expedient, at the very least—and might help lower prices in the middle of a crisis. When Biden came on the line and greeted Manchin, he purred, “Joe-Joe!” After nine months of emotionally exhausting back-and-forth, they were done.

This table only counts physical health effects due to disruptions that took place in the Illusion of Control phase. It considers both short-run and long-run effects. Each of the claimed effects is based on a published study about that effect. First on the list is the disruption to vaccination programs for measles, diphtheria, cholera, and polio, which were either cancelled or reduced in scope in some 70 countries. That disruption was caused by travel restrictions. Western experts could not travel, and within many poor countries travel and general activity were also halted in the early days of the Illusion of Control phase. This depressive effect on vaccination programs for the poor is expected to lead to large loss of life in the coming years. The poor countries paying this cost are most countries in Africa, the poorer nations in Asia, such as India, Indonesia and Myanmar, and the poorer countries in Latin America. The second listed effect in the table relates to schooling. An estimated 90% of the world’s children have had their schooling disrupted, often for months, which reduces their lifetime opportunities and social development through numerous direct and indirect pathways. The UN children’s organisation, UNICEF, has released several reports on just how bad the consequences of this will be in the coming decades.116 The third element in Joffe’s table refers to reports of economic and social primitivisation in poor countries. Primitivisation, also seen after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, is just what it sounds like: a regression away from specialisation, trade and economic advancement through markets to more isolated and ‘primitive’ choices, including attempted economic self-sufficiency and higher fertility. Due to diminished labour market prospects, curtailed educational activities and decreased access to reproductive health services, populations in the Illusion of Control phase began reverting to having more children precisely in those countries where there is already huge pressure on resources. The fourth and fifth elements listed in the table reflect the biggest disaster of this period, namely the increase in extreme poverty and expected famines in poor countries. Over the 20 years leading up to 2020, gradual improvements in economic conditions around the world had significantly eased poverty and famines. Now, international organisations are signalling rapid deterioration in both. The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) now expects the world to have approximately an additional 100 million extremely poor people facing starvation as a result of Covid policies. That will translate into civil wars, waves of refugees and huge loss of life. The last two items in Joffe’s table relate to the effect of lower perinatal and infant care and impoverishment. Millions of preventable deaths are now expected due to infections and weakness in new mothers and young infants, and neglect of other health problems like malaria and tuberculosis that affect people in all walks of life. The whole of the poor world has suffered fewer than one million deaths from Covid. The price to be paid in human losses in these countries through hunger and health neglect caused by lockdowns and other restrictions is much, much larger. All in the name of stopping Covid.

I am not a predictor It's not been long since I told some people, "I see no difference in value between any of the world's richest people and a poor child with a round-the-clock danger." Their disagreement / objection were all lying on wealth, advocates, friends, political influence, authorities, what they eat, and the place they settle, and all such worldly desires. But the testimony to my belief is three simple things: same oxygen, same sky, and same ignorance about planet's tomorrow's morning, which are our commonalities. Come on ... this is so raw, poetic, and spiritual view which works only for a literature / art book, not reality, they said. After several months of exposing to covid 19 and its unprecedented death tool everywhere beyond all the human being's differences, they got back to me with somehow regretfully letters saying " I would stand on your side, you're a predictor ". Here is the case: Our differences are embedded in a far much bigger circle, which is our commonalities. Our differences may be easy to be seen but what govern them are our similarities. Simply speaking, the first key helps you walk is not the skill how to walk, nor even how strong your feet are, but having a surface as earth underneath your feet. I am not a predictor then, only familiar with the forecast report of look.

After widespread use of the drug for 65 years, without warning, FDA somehow felt the need to send out an alert on June 15, 2020 that HCQ is dangerous, and that it required a level of monitoring only available at hospitals.59 In a bit of twisted logic, Federal officials continued to encourage doctors to use the suddenly-dangerous drug without restriction for lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, Lyme and malaria. Just not for COVID.

On August 3, 2020, a day before the United States surpassed 150,000 deaths from COVID, Donald’s interview with Axios reporter Jonathan Swan aired on HBO. “It is what it is,” he said after Swan pointed out that a thousand Americans were dying every day. That was a popular expression in my family, and hearing it sent a chill down my spine. Whenever my grandfather, my aunt, or one of my uncles had said it, it was always with a cruel indifference to somebody else in despair.

But a good vaccine maximizes its ability to kindle all of our immune system’s machinery, not only stimulating the production of antibodies but also spurring the activity of T cells and B cells that have memory, and are able to churn out new antibodies and other mediators of our immune response after they come into contact with a virus months or years later.

Modeling suggested that timing matters: the interventions had their greatest impact if schools were closed before 1 percent of a local population was infected.41 More systematic studies had found that in the setting of flu epidemics, closing schools for long stretches of time reduced the total number of community cases.42 These steps could also reduce peak attack rates by up to 45 percent among a community, according to the research (and by as much as about 50 percent among children).43 Real-world studies, including surveys done after the 2009 pandemic that analyzed the influence of school closure on transmission, supported these conclusions.

the lab’s essential public health functions could be compromised during the move and if the lab had fewer employees. The lab, now at a former Devon Energy Corp. field office building next to a cow pasture in Stillwater, has struggled to keep its top director and other key employees. Delays to get test results for basic public health surveillance for salmonella outbreaks and sexually transmitted infections have shaken the confidence of lab partners and local public health officials. As a new coronavirus emerges going into winter, the lab ranks last in the nation for COVID-19 variant testing. Many employees, who found out about the lab’s move from an October 2020 press conference, didn’t want to relocate to Stillwater. Those who did make the move in the first few months of 2021 found expensive lab equipment in their new workplace but not enough electrical outlets for them. The lab’s internet connection was slower than expected and not part of the ultra-fast fiber network used across town by Oklahoma State University. A fridge containing reagents, among the basic supplies for any lab, had to be thrown out after a power outage. Meanwhile, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services finalized a correction plan after federal inspectors, prompted by an anonymous complaint, showed up unannounced at the lab in late September. “Although some aspects of the original report were not as favorable as we would have liked, the path of correction is clear and more than attainable,” Secretary of Health and Mental Health Kevin Corbett said Tuesday in a statement about the inspection. “We are well on our way to fully implementing our plan. (The Centers For Medicare and Medicaid Services) has confirmed we’ve met the requirements of being in compliance. We are looking forward to their follow-up visit.” In an earlier statement, the health department said the Stillwater lab now “has sufficient power outlets to perform testing with the new equipment, and has fiber connection that exceeds what is necessary to properly run genetic sequencing and other lab functions.” The department denied the lab had to throw out the reagents after a power outage.

An October 3, 2021 study in the peer-reviewed journal BioRxiv by Stanford and Emory University scientists suggests that antibody levels generated by the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine can suffer a ten-fold decrease seven months after the second vaccination.93 The scientists warn that the precipitous drop in antibody levels will compromise the body’s ability to defend itself against COVID-19 if the individual is exposed to COVID.

BA2 and BA3 the latest Omicron variants to hit the streets. We shouldn't panic yet, but it appears that they are more transmissible than the original Omicron virus. Time will tell what we are looking at, but deaths are still happening at a slower rate so we all need to be careful. We still need to wear masks and be responsible for looking after family, friends, loved ones and strangers because if we let our guard down, then it will get out of control once more.

As it happens, he and Raphael are both very much focused on the future. Raphael recently created a nonprofit network of successful Black men and women—some white, too—that he named the Lantern Network, after the lanterns people once used to indicate safe houses along the Underground Railroad. His goal is to provide a resource for talented Black professionals who lack the high-powered social networks white men take for granted—the family friends and relatives and neighbors one can turn to for mentorship, financial counsel, introductions, and access to capital. As of summer 2020, the future looked more promising. The COVID crisis had left economic inequality nowhere to hide. Then came the police lynching that broke the camel’s back. An exceedingly bitter election season contributed a third element to what was shaping up to be a perfect storm. The pandemic and “the high-resolution video of the George Floyd murder by someone who was confident that he would NOT be brought to justice” were the catalysts we needed, Raphael said in an email. Overt racism has crawled out of its hole these past four years, but “there are even more nonracists and a growing number of anti-racists who will actively engage in the fight.

I turn off the notification app for good, no longer needing to know exactly how many gone. After all, clinging to life is what we have always done best. We are still trying to hide from the truth of things and who can blame us.

So, how did Pfizer transform its unimpressive record of eliminating a single COVID fatality among 22,000 vaccinated subjects into a $5 billion/year success story? By gulling the public with a deceptive measure called “relative risk,” instead of the presumptive and far more useful measure of “absolute risk.” The table shows that during the six-month trial, two people in the placebo group numbering approximately 22,000 and only one in the similarly sized vaccine group died from COVID. Believe it or not, this data point is the source of Pfizer’s claim that the vaccine is 100 percent efficacious against death. Since only one person died from COVID in the vaccine group and two died in the placebo group, Pfizer can technically represent that the vaccine is a 100 percent improvement over the placebo. After all, the number “2” is 100 percent greater than the number “1,” right?

Other states also reoriented their telling of regional and national history. In Maharashtra, in the rewriting of history textbooks, a drastic cut was made in the book for class 7: the chapter on the Mughal Empire under Akbar was cut down to three lines.78 Uttar Pradesh simply deleted the Mughal Empire from some of its history textbooks,79 while the University of Delhi drastically reduced the study of this period in its history curriculum.80 In the syllabus of Nagpur University, a chapter that discussed the roles of the RSS, the Hindu Mahasabha, and the Muslim League in the making of communalism has been replaced by another one titled “Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) Role in Nation Building.”81 Alongside official examinations in Uttar Pradesh, the Sangh Parivar organized a test of general culture open to all schools in the state. According to the brochure designed to help students prepare for this test, which Amit Shah released in Lucknow in August 2017, India was a Hindu Rashtra, and Swami Vivekananda had defended Hindutva in Chicago in 1893.82 In Karnataka, after canceling Tipu Sultan Jayanti, the festival that the state used to organize to celebrate the birth of this eighteenth-century Muslim ruler, the BJP government also dropped the chapter dealing with this historical figure from the class 7 textbook in 2019.83 This decision was made in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic that had led the government of India to ask all states to reduce syllabi for students in classes 1 through 10 by 30 percent, in light of the learning challenges brought about by the lockdown.84 The decision of the Karnataka government, in fact, fit in with a larger picture. Under cover of the pandemic, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), India’s largest education board, decided that all over India “government-run schools no longer have to teach chapters on democratic rights, secularism, federalism, and citizenship, among other topics.”85 To foster assimilation of knowledge that amounted to propaganda, final exams have increasingly focused on the heroic deeds of Hindu icons and reforms initiated by the Modi government, even on the person of the prime minister.

The United States is on the precipice of losing its cherished freedoms, with censorship and cancellation of all those who bring views forward that differ from the “accepted mainstream.” It is not clear if our democracy, with its defining freedoms, will fully recover, even after we survive the pandemic itself. But it is clear that people must step up—meaning speak up, as we are allowed, as we are expected to do in free societies—or it has no chance. In 1841, Charles Mackay presciently spoke about the herd mentality: “Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one

We just had a body picked up by an inappropriately hot mortician. Apparently lifting dead bodies is a good workout, yo. It wasn’t just me, all four of my coworkers in viewing range were all, “Whaaaaa????” And then after he left, one muttered, “who else can we kill?” Don’t judge, we’ve got to blow off steam somehow

we can confidently assert that the pandemic (a high probability, high consequences white-swan event) will provoke many black-swan events through second-, third-, fourth- and more-order effects. It is hard, if not impossible, to foresee what might happen at the end of the chain when multiple-order effects and their ensuing cascades of consequences have occurred after unemployment spikes, companies go bust and some countries are teetering on the verge of collapse. None of these are unpredictable per se, but it is their propensity to create perfect storms when they conflate with other risks that will take us by surprise. To sum up, the pandemic is not a black-swan event, but some of its consequences will be.

History shows that epidemics have been the great resetter of countries’ economy and social fabric. Why should it be different with COVID-19? A seminal paper on the long-term economic consequences of major pandemics throughout history shows that significant macroeconomic after-effects can persist for as long as 40 years, substantially depressing real rates of return.[18] This is in contrast to wars that have the opposite effect: they destroy capital while pandemics do not – wars trigger higher real interest rates, implying greater economic activity, while pandemics trigger lower real rates, implying sluggish economic activity. In addition, consumers tend to react to the shock by increasing their savings, either because of new precautionary concerns, or simply to replace the wealth lost during the epidemic. On the labour side, there will be gains at the expense of capital since real wages tend to rise after pandemics. As far back as the Black Death that ravaged Europe from 1347 to 1351 (and that suppressed 40% of Europe’s population in just a few years), workers discovered for the first time in their life that the power to change things was in their hands. Barely a year after the epidemic had subsided, textile workers in Saint-Omer (a small city in northern France) demanded and received successive wage rises. Two years later, many workers’ guilds negotiated shorter hours and higher pay, sometimes as much as a third more than their pre-plague level. Similar but less extreme examples of other pandemics point to the same conclusion: labour gains in power to the detriment of capital. Nowadays, this phenomenon may be exacerbated by the ageing of much of the population around the world (Africa and India are notable exceptions), but such a scenario today risks being radically altered by the rise of automation,

For example, in England, prior to the introduction of mandatory vaccinations in 1953, there were two smallpox deaths per 10,000 inhabitants per year. But at the beginning of the 1970s, nearly 20 years after the introduction of mandatory vaccinations, which had led to a 98 percent vaccination rate,195 England suffered 10 smallpox deaths per 10,000 inhabitants annually; five times as many as before. “The smallpox epidemic reached its peak after vaccinations had been introduced,“ summarizes William Farr, who was responsible for compiling statistics in London.

And yet the CDC wasn’t the right agency to take ownership of anticipating and developing strategies to counter national security threats, because it possesses a retrospective mind-set. The CDC doesn’t generally focus on actionable assessments of future risks; it produces academically oriented after-action reports in an effort to define new scientific principles.

South Korea reformed its CDC after MERS and gave it responsibility for creating a testing market in a crisis. In the US, HHS turned to the CDC, and the CDC didn’t have the policy orientation, operational experience, or industrial expertise to pull off an effort on this scale. As a consequence, we never had enough testing to keep up with the initial spread, and we lost control of the pandemic at its very outset.

After it emerged that COVID-19 was predominantly killing the elderly, I decided to maintain the body chemistry of younger person to protect myself.

There’s a feeling after a year of restrictions that people will do anything to ‘get back to normal’. But declaring your health status to use businesses and services has never been normal. The introduction of a health status ID to access products and services will cross a rubicon.

The virus leaves behind tiny pieces of itself after the body breaks it down. These pieces, similar to fragments of the virus’s outer shell, can clump together into structures that trick the body into thinking there’s a bigger threat. This triggers an intense immune response, like sounding a massive alarm over a few leftover virus bits, which can contribute to severe inflammation and symptoms seen in serious COVID-19 cases. It's like the virus has a ghostly afterlife, continuing to affect the body even after the majority of it has been destroyed. In the battle against the virus, our body initiates a defense mechanism that, while protective, also causes inflammation in critical areas, particularly where our stem cells are nurtured including the bone marrow, gut, and brain. For instance, the mitochondria in our blood cells—often referred to as the cellular powerhouses responsible for energy production — are compromised. Their functionality is impaired; they either push themselves too hard or don’t work as efficiently as they should, leading to a notable decrease in the body's energy levels. This energy deficit is more than just feeling tired; it's a systemic issue affecting the body's ability to fight off the virus effectively. The T cells, which are supposed to eliminate any remaining virus, find themselves restrained rendering their arsenal less effective and their capacity to multiply weakened. Despite these limitations, they release copious amounts of interferon-gamma (IFN-γ), a signaling molecule that rallies the body's defenses to fight vigorously. This intense response may play a role in the virus's stubborn persistence and ongoing immune response. Meanwhile, the B cells are on overdrive, producing an excessive amount of antibodies in this heightened state of alert. This heightened immune response complicates the path to recovery, posing challenges for individuals striving to reclaim their sense of health and wellness.

After BlackRock created its Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, the firm quietly secured its status as the main financial administrator of the economic stimulus package during the COVID-19 pandemic, effectively playing the role of the government—and probably made a pretty penny for doing it. In January 2020, pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca announced to much fanfare at (of course) the World Economic Forum in Davos a new investment commitment of $1 billion over ten years into environmental sustainability initiatives to fight climate change.

After BlackRock created its Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, the firm quietly secured its status as the main financial administrator of the economic stimulus package during the COVID-19 pandemic, effectively playing the role of the government—and probably made a pretty penny for doing it. In January 2020, pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca announced to much fanfare at (of course) the World Economic Forum in Davos a new investment commitment of $1 billion over ten years into environmental sustainability initiatives to fight climate change. Just a couple of months later, it received a $1.2 billion grant—not a loan, but a grant—from US taxpayers to subsidize its development of for-profit vaccines.

The table shows that during the six-month trial, two people in the placebo group numbering approximately 22,000 and only one in the similarly sized vaccine group died from COVID. Believe it or not, this data point is the source of Pfizer’s claim that the vaccine is 100 percent efficacious against death. Since only one person died from COVID in the vaccine group and two died in the placebo group, Pfizer can technically represent that the vaccine is a 100 percent improvement over the placebo. After all, the number “2” is 100 percent greater than the number “1,” right? The media winked at this canard, obligingly reporting Pfizer’s extraordinary 100 percent efficacy claim.

The Johns Hopkins data, nevertheless, clearly demonstrate that COVID deaths typically spike sharply in many country after country immediately after mass vaccination.

Yamini felt a parched dryness in her throat and reached for her water bottle to quench her thirst. Just as she was about to remove her mask, a loud shout pierced the air. A figure in a fully protective suit came rushing toward her, intercepting the bottle just in time. "Do not remove the mask; you are not allowed," the person said firmly. Yamini looked up, startled, but the urgency in the voice left no room for debate. "You can drink water only after going to the ward," the person continued.

The lies are of a scale and of a nature that in modern political life I think you can only compare to Donald Trump. I don't think anybody has lied or can lie as casually and as cooly and as completely as Boris Johnson does - except Boris Johnson. We have learned over the last few weeks that his closest colleagues thought he was diabolical. The cabinet secretary that Boris Johnson appointed because he would prove to be, or he was believed to be, a soft touch has described Boris Johnson as being utterly unfit for the job. The advisor that he brought in as a sort of mastermind - having overseen Brexit - Dominick Cummings has described Johnson in terms that you would reserve for your worst enemies. These are the people working closest by him. The only person who's had anything vaguely warm to say about him is Matt Hancock and let me tell you why. They've shaken hands on it. I'd bet my house on some sort of gentleman's... let's rephrase that... I'd bet my house on some sort of charlatan’s agreement behind the scenes that they won't slag each other off because everybody else is telling the truth about them - about Johnson and about Hancock. Hancock's uselessness facilitated and enabled by Johnson's uselessness, by Johnson's moral corruption effectively. And now the lies begin. 5,000 WhatsApp messages. ‘No idea. No, no, no, no idea. Don't know. Don't know technical people. Uh... factory reset. Don't know. Bleep, bleep.’ And then the classic: the flooding of the Zone. With so much manure that it's hard to know where to start. ‘We may have made mistakes’ is one of the latest statements to come out. Turns up 3 hours early so that he doesn't have to walk the gamut of people congregating to remember their lost loved ones and to share their feelings with the man that they consider to be partly responsible for their death. Absolutely extraordinary scenes, truly extraordinary scenes. How does he get away with it? Hugo Keith is a much tougher inquisitor than Lindsay flipping Hoyle, the Speaker of the House of Commons. He's a much tougher inquisitor than any of the interviewers that Boris Johnson deigns to have his toes tickled by on a regular basis. He's a much tougher interviewer or scrutineer than the newspaper editors who have given him half a million pounds a year to write columns or already published articles about why he's the real victim in this story. Philip Johnston in the Daily Telegraph today writing an article before Boris Johnson has given a single syllable of evidence, claiming that Boris Johnson is the real victim of this. I'd love him to go and read that out to the Covid families assembled outside the inquiry. And remember it was Daily Telegraph columnists and former editors that convened at the Club with Jacob Rees-Mogg and others to launch the Save Owen Paterson Society after another one of these charlatans was found to have breached parliamentary standards. Their response of course was not to advise their ally to accept the punishment that was coming his way but to attempt to get him off the hook and rip up the rule book under which he'd been found to be guilty.

And of course, [Boris Johnson will] never get questioned like this over at the BBC while the political editor remains a fully paid-up member of the Boris Johnson Admiration Society. So how does he get away with it? Andrew points out that factory resets obviously weren't covered in the technology lessons that Boris Johnson received from Jennifer Arcuri. Again, it's a funny joke. It's a good line, but he was the Prime Minister, and everyone knew he was a liar. Is it all about that guy that rang in when Donald Trump was here. That I always remember saying ‘but you must know he's lying’. Donald Trump was giving a speech in London about the size of the crowds outside the building he was in. And we had a camera outside the building he was in. We were looking at no crowds. And that simple juxtaposition of rhetorical claim by a politician with observable reality was chilling. It was spine tingling. I can claim that there are huge crowds, huge crowds, the biggest crowds, the greatest crowds outside this building. And I said, ‘how does it work? How does that happen?’ And someone rang me and said, ‘I know he's a liar, but it really upsets people like you and Sadiq Khan.’ And at the time I laughed but maybe that's all there is. Maybe your life - and sorry this is going to sound quite rude - but maybe your life is so weird, and your personality is so twisted that you find the frustration of people who care about the truth the closest you ever get to feeling joy. Is that it? Nadine Dorries watches Boris Johnson lie and claims that he's the most trustworthy person on the planet. What is wrong with her? It's not really a question about what's wrong with him; what's wrong with her? Whatever transpires at this inquiry or whatever emerges during these hours of evidence, I can tell you this: there will be a significant number of people who think that Boris Johnson has done nothing wrong or that he is somehow the victim of another witch hunt. You remember? It was a witch hunt when he was caught banged to rights by a parliamentary committee containing a majority of conservatives after even Chris Bryant had stepped down to avoid any accusations or allegations - false allegations – really, of impartiality. And they still called it a witch hunt. It would have been a witch unless the committee consisted entirely of 14 Nadine Dorries clones. That's the only circumstances in which those people would have claimed that he could receive a fair trial. Where do you even begin today? Do you begin with the 5,000 WhatsApp messages that a man who was in charge of the nuclear code somehow doesn't understand and can't find? I don't know. So, what is your theory now because I don't think I've got one any more. I watch him now, and I feel something very new, very different to what I thought when he was in power because when he was in power there is an urgency to the situation. There is a desperate need to share with the population the awfulness that they apparently can't see. Just now that he's not in power any more, it's almost as if I've allowed the full horror of what he represents to bubble to the surface. It’s now that he can't actually break anything, it's a retrospective reflection upon the abject awfulness of him. I mean the unbelievable awfulness of this man, the things that he's done. You can begin with Brexit. The lies that he's told, the damage that he's done. The contempt in which he holds all the things we're raised to believe are important: rules, obligations, standards, behaviours, fidelity, honesty, kindness, friendship, loyalty, all of these things we teach our children matter. And Boris Johnson teaches us that you can become the most powerful person in the country by treating all of those things with absolute contempt.

A recent cross-sectional study in two states, Ohio and Florida,37 showed that the rate of death in those states was strongly associated with political party affiliation—after May 2021, when vaccines were freely available to all adults, the death rate for Republican voters was 43 percent higher than for Democratic voters. The long echo of the negative public response to COVID-19 has led to greater resistance to all forms of vaccination, putting children at risk for diseases like measles and polio that had almost been eradicated in the developed world. This may be the most consequential example of distrust of science in modern history.

A recent cross-sectional study in two states, Ohio and Florida,37 showed that the rate of death in those states was strongly associated with political party affiliation—after May 2021, when vaccines were freely available to all adults, the death rate for Republican voters was 43 percent higher than for Democratic voters. The long echo of the negative public response to COVID-19 has led to greater resistance to all forms of vaccination, putting children at risk for diseases like measles and polio that had almost been eradicated in the developed world. This may be the most consequential example of distrust of science in modern history. This circumstance is utterly contrary to the way a person or a nation should respond to a threatening pandemic: political party should be set aside in favor of clearheaded and objective assessment of the facts. But with our current separation into divisive tribal communities, the opportunity for thoughtful considerations of options—for achieving wisdom—has mostly been lost. The consequences have been truly tragic.

Yet now, weirdly, in state after state, policies and media messages were promoting precisely the opposite. The message was not “Go to the park, go to the beach! Exercise! Open the windows! Get sun! Take Vitamin D!” but rather, “Stay Home! Bring the adult children home into crowded multigenerational households! Stay indoors, continually stressed with fear! Put a piece of fabric on your face!

If they want me to work remotely,' Molly had said after just one week of the new system, 'they damn well better come up with a remote location. Like, maybe, the roof? And send over a homework fairy while they’re at it.

In 1976, US regulators pulled the swine flu vaccine after it was linked to 25 deaths.62 In contrast, between December 14, 2020 and October 1, 2021, American doctors and bereaved families have reported more than 16,000 deaths and a total of 778,685 injuries to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) following COVID vaccination.63,64 The Europeans’ surveillance sites tallied 40,000 deaths and 2.2 million adverse reactions. Due to chronic undercounting by VAERS and its European sister system, those numbers are almost certainly only a fraction of the true injuries.

Amal regarded him with that steady adult expression, the new one that had come after the former administration had destroyed everybody’s innocence and COVID had taken their hope. “Just tell me where to apply,” he said.

Consider a person who is asked to review a novel authored by some other person. The reviewer knows that he himself has not authored the novel. He reads most of the pages of the novel meticulously. He goes through the dialogues of characters carefully. Now, the reviewer can summarize most scenes of the plot in a generic way. In the story line, the author does not come explicitly as a character. In describing different scenes, the reviewer refers to characters in the novel. Each character gives way to the next character through a physical process that is explained in the novel. What if the reviewer describes characters and the scenic details, but eventually ignores the author and claims the piece of writing as author-less because the author is not an explicit character in the novel and each character emanates from another character through a physical process described in the novel. What if he says that the novel has characters and their emotions, physical attributes and personality can be understood from the words in the novel and hence there is no need of attributing the novel to an author? What if this claim is made after finding few more intermediate pages of the novel and some more characters? If we would be puzzled to see this conclusion about a novel, imagine if this conclusion of ‘no author’ is reached about real characters in real existing life which runs into billions of species in a gigantic scenic environment which has immaculate details and complexity. One can describe how the author brought it about without reference to author, but it cannot negate the existence of the author altogether.