“China eats weird animals disease”

I recall the newsroom conversations during the dark days of the pandemic only too well. They were upsetting at the time. Now, as we see a disturbing rise in excess deaths across the country, the thought of them fills me with horror and outrage.

‘You do realise these lockdowns and restrictions will end up killing people too, don’t you?’ I would say to senior editorial colleagues with something approaching desperation in my voice. ‘Sure, the virus is a serious threat to a small proportion of the population but the longer-term consequences of shutting the economy down and closing off the NHS will be deadly for huge numbers who were never at serious risk from the virus, people with years of life ahead of them. Shouldn’t we be reflecting that in our coverage? Shouldn’t we be considering the possibility that the government is going down the wrong path on this?’

These were not gentle measures.

Religious persecution is on the rise. In much of the world, believing in something other than politics, or believing in the wrong something, leads to discrimination and ostracism at best and prison and death at worst. A recent report by the Pew Research Center has detailed how COVID restrictions became another weapon to attack people of faith.

A physician who has taken a publicly critical stance to pandemic measures such as COVID-19 vaccination was suspended by his college on Jan. 5.

The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) suspended Dr. Chris Shoemaker through an interim order under the Regulated Health Professions Act.

Under the act and its Health Professions Procedural Code, the college can impose an interim suspension on a physician if it is “of the opinion the conduct of the member exposes or is likely to expose the member’s patients to harm or injury.”

h/t Mauser

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that a preliminary COVID-19 vaccine “safety signal” has been identified and is investigating whether the Bivalent Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine creates an increased risk of ischemic stroke in people 65 and older.

In the Friday statement, the CDC said that the preliminary signal hasn’t been identified with the Bivalent Moderna COVID-19 vaccine.

“Following the availability and use of the updated (bivalent) COVID-19 vaccines, CDC’s Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD), a near real-time surveillance system, met the statistical criteria to prompt additional investigation into whether there was a safety concern for ischemic stroke in people ages 65 and older who received the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine, Bivalent,” the CDC said.

WHERE did the lab leak theory come from? Who first promoted the idea and why? The answer to this question is surprising, and may be the key to unlocking the mystery of the origin of Covid-19.

The first known mention of the idea that the coronavirus might have originated in a Chinese lab appeared on January 9 2020 in a report by Radio Free Asia (RFA). This was only days after the virus had first entered public consciousness. At the time no deaths had been reported and few people were worrying about the virus – including, it seems, the Chinese, who were claiming it wasn’t even clear whether it was spreading between humans.

Debate over Ontario’s role in the COVID-19 deaths of more than 5,000 nursing-home residents appears headed to a legal showdown — and one lawyer says the case could have an impact throughout Canada.

A class-action lawsuit charges that the province was “grossly negligent” in failing to prevent waves of long-term-care deaths in the early stages of the pandemic.

My Mum died from Covid she contracted in an Ontario physio rehab facility thanks to the substandard care she received while locked down at a Toronto Charnel House that passes as a hospital.

Responding to an emergency bleep during yet another hectic night shift last month, Jade Walker, an anaesthetist, arrived at a patient’s bedside to find his heart had stopped.

“He had been in the waiting room for eight hours before collapsing. If the waiting time had been less, and he’d been seen a few hours sooner, he’d probably have survived. I’ve been worried someone would die in A&E for months.”

Walker, 34, is one of many NHS staff up and down the country who are seeing the reality of a winter crisis worse than any that has come before. “I feel like the NHS is collapsing and the government is ignoring it,” she said. “People are dying because of delays. It’s not acceptable. I’m scared that it’ll be one of my relatives stuck waiting for an ambulance and unable to get the help they need.”

Twitter users have been pressing new CEO Elon Musk about whether he will release for the promised “Fauci Files” on the platform.

“The week’s almost up. Where are they?” one person wrote on Twitter Saturday morning.