BC HEALTH
Saved by @Mollyycolllinss

I think @SamAdlerBell in his quest to be the contrarian on Fauci gets several things wrong here. 1/

 First, the failure last year actually was driven by the White House, the #Trump inner circle. Watch what's happening now, the US' scientific and public health infrastructure is creaking back to life. 2/
I think Sam underestimates the decimation of many of our health agencies over the past four years and the establishment of ideological control over them during the pandemic. 3/
I also am puzzled why Tony gets the blame for not speaking up, etc. Robert Redfield, Brett Giroir, Deb Birx, Jerome Adams, Alex Azar all could have done the same. 4/
Several of these people Bob Redfield, Brett Giroir, Alex Azar were led by craven ambition, Jerome Adams by cowardice, but I do think Deb Birx and Tony tried as institutionalists, insiders to make a difference. 5/
I wrote to them privately and spoke publicly about the need to do more, but Sam misunderstands how long-time civil servants operate. The entire CDC staff could have resigned in protest, other agencies could have had everyone fall on their swords in protest as well. 6/
This isn't to excuse their behavior. It's just to say expecting people who have devoted their careers to places like CDC or NIH to resign in protest, speak out and get fired, is unrealistic. 7/
Lots can be said about the institutional failures--outside of Trump's influence--that happened last year. The testing debacle, the failure to real screen for new compounds against SARSCOV2 instead of just putting everything in the vaccine basket...8/
We were slow on masks. Yes. I agree. But there were also shortages of supplies even for healthcare settings in March. Remember the bandanas and panty-shields being worn by some on the wards, recycling N-95s? There was some worry about run on PPE by general public. 9/
Not an excuse, but context. The statement on herd immunity that Tony made. Dumb. Yeah. I get it. 10/
And Trump's obsession with loyalty twisted some of them to the breaking point. Redfield collapsed almost reflexively at the beginning. Birx thought she could control the situation. Tony though he could thread the needle, keep silent mostly, try to squeeze in some facts. 11/
No one came out of last year looking good and even if Fauci got accolades from some, those in public health saw what was happening. Shit was flying everywhere, everyone got soiled. 12/
But the biggest problem about @SamAdlerBell piece is not that it's slightly obsessive on Fauci (and I won't even start on the ACT UP sections, since I was there for many of these events), but gets the politics wrong in a big way. How so? 13/
At the end of the article Sam suggests that Tony should have resigned to lead the resistance. I mean, please. And then a bureaucrat arose to lead us. Really? The director of NIAID was going to be at the barricades? 14/
The big political question was NOT where was Dr. Fauci last year, but where were WE? Why didn't those not in government service rise up when the stakes were so much lower for resistance for us? Why didn't all the major non-governmental institutions mobilize on the pandemic? 15/
Many of us in public health were writing furiously about the failures of what was happening, as were others, but no one was doing the mobilization work to tip the scales from op-eds to direct action. 16/
Yes, those in government service do have to answer for their silence last year, but so do we. I am not holding up Fauci as a hero, but flipping him into the anti-hero of the story doesn't work either. 17/
I just posted a report from Brazil, about how Bolsanaro's policies drove the pandemic in Brazil. A fish rots from the head down. Trump and his circle hold the vast majority of blame for 2020 and our predicament today. It's just true. 18/
Bolsanaro's health ministers resigned and he just got other ones. This was also Trump's MO for 4 years, anyone who left, got replaced with people increasingly more loyal. The late arrival of Scott Atlas is a case in point here. 19/
So as a political history this piece fails. That's my main point. I've said terrible things about Fauci in the past in the press during the height of the AIDS epidemic, trashed Obama on global health/HIV in the 2000s. "Heroes" shouldn't be immune from criticism. 20/
Would it have been great if one by one federal scientists got to the mic and denounced Trump in 2020? Yeah, sure. And I want to be 35 again. Not gonna happen. 21/
The most startling thing to me and which no one has written about yet is why the rest of us were frozen like deer-in-the-headlights? 400,000 dead and "the resistance" to it all from outside the Administration was mostly in strongly worded op-eds. 22/
The press played the both sides game early on--kept saying "experts disagree" when Trump's policies were patently insane. This is the @NYTimes political desk's lingering shame, which they will never admit. 23/
Members of Congress sat on their hands. Mayors, governors just tried to keep their own cities and states from going under, but many aided and abetted the President. 24/
But political advocacy organizations, non-governmental actors could have mobilized. We did for the Women's March, after the Parkland shootings, for the March for Science. Yeah. big in-person events were a no-no, still are, but big not-in-person-events didn't happen either. 25/
In the aftermath of all of this, this is what's worry. Tony will retire soon. Take him off the playing field. Now what? We have to rebuild public health, not because of its failures last year, but because it was in shambles before 2020. 26/
We made our beds long before Trump. No national healthcare, a weak social safety net, a desperately under-funded and under-resourced public health infrastructure coast to coast under Republicans and Democrats. 27/
If Tony had spoken out all these structural issues would remain and frankly, it's the structures that outlast us, pave the way for crises out years into the future. 28/
And what are we going to do about that? end/

More from Gregg Gonsalves

Gregg Gonsalves
Gregg Gonsalves
@gregggonsalves
Eight years ago, Spencer Cox died of #AIDS. He had access to #antiretroviral therapy, but in his own struggles with #depression and substance use, he stopped taking them. 1/

Spencer left college, dropped out like me in the 80s, and we both found ourselves in @actupny where we joined the Treatment and Data Committee, doing battle with drug companies, the @US_FDA, the @NIH on a quest to save ourselves and our friends from near-certain death. 2/

Now everyone knows what those dark days before the advent of antiretroviral therapy were like. Waves upon waves of dying friends. A government who couldn't care less for the sick and dying. 3/

All this has happened before, and all this will happen again. AIDS. #COVID19. The next pandemic. The fire next time. 4/

And it changes you. Seeing so much death so young. Seeing those in power turn away from the catastrophe, even joke about it (find, listen to the tape of Larry Speakes in Oval Office w Reagan laughing about AIDS). 5/
HEALTH
Gregg Gonsalves
Gregg Gonsalves
@gregggonsalves
Important tweet from @jaketapper. One amendment: mainstream media will try to change the subject too. It's not a new criticism, the deferential spirit among the political press corps has been noted since Didion wrote about it in the 1990s.


"Those who talk to Mr. Woodward, in other words, can be confident that he will be civil (“I too was growing tired, and it seemed time to stand up and thank him”), that he will not feel impelled to make connections between..." 1/

"what he is told and what is already known that he will treat even the most patently self-serving account as if untainted by hindsight..." 2/

"In this business of running the story, in fact in the business of news itself, certain conventions are seen as beyond debate. “Opinion” will be so labeled, and confined to the op-ed page or the Sunday-morning shows." 3/

"'News analysis' will be so labeled, and will appear in a subordinate position to the 'news' story it accompanies. In the rest of the paper as on the evening news, the story will be reported “'impartially,' the story will be 'even-handed,' the story will be 'fair.'” 4/
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Gregg Gonsalves
Gregg Gonsalves
@gregggonsalves
Here @playbookplus goes again: ‘HOW MUCH IS BIPARTISANSHIP WORTH?’ I don't know @politico, how many more months would you like the pandemic to drag on for? How many more dead? How many more people, businesses ruined economically? I'm sorry but this is garbage framing in a crisis.

Oh but this is what powerful people are talking about in DC! Might that point itself be examined with more seriousness than taking this BS at face value? Don't you understand, we just reflect back what people are saying? We are mirrors on the world, we offer no commentary.

If "very serious people" are talking about what "nice number" would be $1.3T, 1.2T and not what we need to get out of this mess, might it be worth saying, perhaps, this conversation w/o reference to epidemiologic or economic reality is just a failure of leadership, governance?
ECONOMY
Gregg Gonsalves
Gregg Gonsalves
@gregggonsalves
One thing I will never understand. In 2020, we let ~340,000 Americans die, sometimes in the thousands per day. And we watched. There were no protests, no daily banner headlines befitting a national tragedy on this scale. It's as if we watched 9/11 in a loop for 300+ days. 1/

It was the non-chalance of all of it, the sangfroid. Yes, of course, there were stories in the media, some great ones, but we were shoving bodies into makeshift morgues in America in 2020, and it all became background noise. 2/

And no one rose up. Punctuated outrage from some. But no one on the streets in any substantial numbers asking for, demanding answers, action. 3/

If it weren't for the #BlackLivesMatter protests you'd think most of America was already dead. 4/

You don't have to ask what would I have done if I was present at one of history's great tragedies where people made choices to let barbarism flourish. We've done it now. 5/
SOCIETY
Gregg Gonsalves
Gregg Gonsalves
@gregggonsalves
I've spent the past year as angry as I've been since the early days of the AIDS epidemic when I had to bury friends in their 20s, 30s because our government didn't care if gay men lived or died from a new virus among us. 1/


Some were put off by my anger, some thought scientists shouldn't be political or if they were tone it down a bit. 2/


I work in public health. I am not a basic scientist or a theoretician. I work in a field that is hemmed in by history and politics on every side. 3/


From the 19th century onwards, we've known that who lives and who dies isn't just a function of biology. The data support this thesis, we call them the social determinants of health. 4/


My friend and colleague Paul Farmer calls out these determinants in more direct terms as pathologies of power, structural violence. 5/
LIFE

More from Health

Ary Serpa Neto
Ary Serpa Neto
@a_serpaneto
The #RELAx trial has been published today in @JAMA. It was coordinated by Anna Algera. This thread is to explain the rationale, what we did, the findings and the meaning.
The rationale of #RELAx is based on the following

First, there is NO adequate evidence on the level of PEEP in non-ARDS patients. Most of the studies are old, conducted in post-surgical patients (short-term ventilation), and were not powered to detect differences in patient-centered

Second, despite the absence of evidence, the levels of PEEP used in non-ARDS patients increased over years, from 5 to 7/8 cmH2O, probably as a reflection of studies and practice in ARDS

Third, one IPDM showed that higher levels of PEEP could benefit more severe ARDS patients. However, opposite trends (higher mortality and longer ventilation) were found in mild ARDS with higher PEEP (despite not powered to be statistically

Fourth, most of the weaning protocols include PEEP ≤ 5 cmH2O as a criterion for readiness to wean. Theoretically, a standardized liberal strategy of higher PEEP could delay weaning in some
HEALTH
Marina Amaral
Marina Amaral
@marinamaral2
[Thread]: Old school "medicine" ads obviously created by aliens.

Let's begin with cocaine toothache drops, for only 15 cents.


Dr. Batty’s asthma cigarettes were not recommended for "children under 6.”


Best prescription for malaria, chills and fever: Grove's tasteless Chill Tonic, obviously.

"It is simply iron and Quinine in a tasteless form".


The cheapest specific for the relief of cough: heroin.


There's also Dr Williams' Pink Pills for Pale People.
HEALTH
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Anosognosiogenesis
Anosognosiogenesis
@pookleblinky
Fun fact: the standard advice for if a dog, cat, or human bites your hand, is to feed the bite. Push your hand further into their mouth, forcing the jaw open.

Nurses, EMTs, veterinarians, etc are taught to respond this

The advice for a human biting you is to jam your hand or arm deeper into their mouth, and rub the spot under their nose back and forth.

If you attempt to remove your hand, or forearm, the teeth do what they're supposed to and gouge out a chunk.

This vicious wolf attack illustrates proper technique.


So: every EMT and nurse who gets bitten by a human, is trained to jam their hand or forearm deeper into the mouth, feeding the bite so the jaw widens enough to remove the limb

Also, every redneck learns this along with the advice of "never run from an angry dog"
HEALTH
Adam Wagner
Adam Wagner
@AdamWagner1
🚨Important changes to lockdown/self-isolation regulations from 5pm

The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (All Tiers and Self-Isolation) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2021

£800 'house party' FPN & police can now access track & trace data

https://t.co/k9XCpVsXhC


“Large gathering offence”

As trailed by Home Secretary last week there is now a fixed penalty notice of £800 (or £400 if you pay within 14 days) for participating in an gathering of over 15 people in a private residence


Fixed Penalty Notices double for each subsequent “large gathering offence” up to £6,400

Compare:
- Ordinary fixed penalty notice is £200 or £100 if paid in 14 days
- Holding or being involved in the holding of a gathering of over 30 people is £10,000


Second big change:

Since September has been a legal requirement to sell-isolate if you test positive/notified by Track & Trace of exposure to someone else who tested positive

Police can now be given access to NHS Track & Trace data if for the purpose of enforcement/prosecution


This will make it easier for police to enforce people breaking self-isolation rules. Currently there has been practically no enforcement.

Data says only a small proportion of people meant to be self-isolating are fully doing so.
HEALTH
Gilles Demaneuf
Gilles Demaneuf
@gdemaneuf
This is the $1mln question still without an answer: why were these workers cleaning bat guano from that abandoned mine?

Surprisingly we simply don't know.

China would have all interest in clarifying that point if for instance they were prospecting or selling guano. It did not.


What we know is that EcoHealth + WIV were sampling bat sites in the vicinity at the exact time of the workers being in that mine.

#DRASTIC wrote about this and about other oddities in the official story:

Maybe it's just one of these coincidences.

Then it gets interesting: about a year after the miners death, Olival & Epstein from EcoHealth Alliance co-authored a paper about the coronavirus risk infection from bat guano collection.

No mention of the

That paper oddly used some old bat samples collected by DARPA in 2006/7 at the famous Thai bat cave.

It never mentioned that the Thai monks have been doing this every Sunday for many many years without infection.

But most interestingly it never mentioned the Mojiang mine accident, even if the perfect timing and recycling of old DARPA bat samples seem to point to a likely knowledge of it.

Anyway, the idea was to ask for more money, as you correctly
HEALTH

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Vibhu Vashisth \U0001f1ee\U0001f1f3
Vibhu Vashisth 🇮🇳...
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Did you know?

Rani Bhabani was the Queen of Natore, Bengal or 'Natorer Rani' as she was famously called. She made great contributions in Tarapith & renovated Benaras.

In Varanasi, Durga Kund Mandir was constructed by Rani Bhabani in the 18th century.


Born in Chhatimgram village, Bogra District,Her father's name was Atmaram Choudhury.Bhabani was married off to Raja Ramkanta Moitra,the then zamindar of Rajshahi.After his death, Bhabani became the zamindar, and started being referred to as Rani.She was known as Ardhabangeshwari.

A woman as a zamindar was extremely rare in those days, but Rani Bhabani managed the vast Rajshahi zamindari most efficiently and effectively for over four decades.
Maharani Bhavani was very pious in her personal life. She passed her life in a strict disciplined way.


She conducted the administrative work skillfully. As a Maharani she was an impartial judge. Rani Bhavani had a very hard time during the fag end of her life. The Zamindari (estate) incurred serious loss due to the change of the revenue policy of the company.

In spite of being the owner of a large Zamindari (estate), she had to depend on the stipend of the government in the later part of her life. The amount of this stipend gradually decreased and became Rs. 1000/- only in the end.
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Damodar Hegde
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MUST READ TILL END:
FB POST BY MR PRABEER BASU,
IAS-1976(BIHAR)
" Received a hurtful post from an old friend and colleague. He was on my daily Broadcast list of WhatsApp. He requested that I do not send him any of my posts on 'political' issues. I gave him a long explaination
>2

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on why I write and what I write. But he was not convinced.

Being alerted by him thus, I felt I should clarify to all who read my posts on what exactly I think and do.

The charge against me is that I wrongly support our current Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi..
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and that it establishes I am not rational and impartial anymore.
Let me try and explain.First and foremost,I do not write on 'political' issues. I write on 'national' issues. For example, I have no opinion on whether Rahul Gandhi should be President of his party or not.
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Similarly, I have no views whether BJP is a better party than Congress or vice versa.
Even after 36 years in the IAS I have no MLA, MP or anyone involved in politics whom I can classify as my friend or even acquaintance.
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So, naturally I don't care which party wins or loses as long as the winning party runs an honest government doing good to my nation.
Now, why I speak in favour of Shri Modi:

1. Ever since the beginning of my service I realised that Planning Commission was not serving..

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Billy Bostickson \U0001f3f4\U0001f441&\U0001f441 \U0001f193
Billy Bostickson 🏴👁&👁 ...
@BillyBostickson
Keep dwelling on this:
Further Examination of the Motif near PRRA Reveals Close Structural Similarity to the SEB Superantigen as well as Sequence Similarities to Neurotoxins and a Viral SAg.

The insertion PRRA together with 7 sequentially preceding residues & succeeding R685 (conserved in β-CoVs) form a motif, Y674QTQTNSPRRAR685, homologous to those of neurotoxins from Ophiophagus (cobra) and Bungarus genera, as well as neurotoxin-like regions from three RABV strains

(20) (Fig. 2D). We further noticed that the same segment bears close similarity to the HIV-1 glycoprotein gp120 SAg motif F164 to V174.
https://t.co/EwwJOSa8RK


In (B), the segment S680PPRAR685 including the PRRA insert and highly conserved cleavage site *R685* is shown in van der Waals representation (black labels) and nearby CDR residues of the TCRVβ domain are labeled in blue/white
https://t.co/BsY8BAIzDa


Sequence Identity %
https://t.co/BsY8BAIzDa
Y674 - QTQTNSPRRA - R685
Similar to neurotoxins from Ophiophagus (cobra) & Bungarus genera & neurotoxin-like regions from three RABV strains
T678 - NSPRRA- R685
Superantigenic core, consistently aligned against bacterial or viral SAgs
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Seth Abramson
Seth Abramson
@SethAbramson
(THREAD) Pre-election Russia collusion may take down Trump. It's equally possible the Trumps' pre- and post-election collusion with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Israel will do it—a course of collusion also connected to the Kremlin. I explain here. I hope you'll read on and retweet.


1/ I must stress how unbelievably complex the "Grand Bargain" theory of the Trump-Russia case is—a different thing from saying it's not substantiated. It's substantiated in *almost every single particular*—it just *also* happens to be very confusing. Not byzantine—just confusing.

2/ The basics: Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the UAE all view Iran as their chief regional enemy. Iran is propped up by Russia. Therefore the Saudis, Israelis, and Emiratis all need a US government willing to find a way to get the Kremlin to *stop* supporting Iran in the Middle East.

3/ The best way to get Russia to stop supporting Iran—or reduce support—was/is to drop all sanctions on Russia over its 2014 annexation of Crimea, as that'd be worth *trillions* to the Kremlin over the next decade. Everyone knew that Clinton wouldn't do this—and that Trump would.

4/ Per the NYT, on August 3, 2016, Donald Trump Jr. met secretly at Trump Tower with a Saudi and Emirati emissary, George Nader, as well as an Israeli intelligence expert, Joel Zamel, with *significant* ties to both Israeli intelligence *and* Russian oligarchs allied with Putin.
POLITICS
Jaya_Upadhyaya
Jaya_Upadhyaya
@Jayalko1
SRI BANKEY BIHARI JI, VRINDAVAN (UP)

Very famous Krishna Mandir where Bankey Bihari Ji is worshipped and looked after as a child.
Bankey means “Bent at three places”.
Thakur Ji was worshipped in Nidhivan till 1863. This mandir was constructed in 1864 by Goswamis.
@LostTemple7


Legend says that Swami Haridas used to worship Krishna in Nidhivan.
Once, his curious disciples entered the forest but they were almost blinded by bright, intense light. Upon knowing this, Swamiji himself went there and after his requests, Krishna appeared with his consort.


Krishna, then, left back this black charming murti,which we see now, before disappearing.
A curtain is drawn before the murti after every 15-30 second. It is said that if one stares long enough into the eyes of Shri Banke Bihari, the person would lose his self consciousness.


Bankey Bihari Ji sports a flute only once a year on the eve of Sharad Purnima.
Darshan of His lotus feet can be done only on Akshay Tritiya every year.
There are no loud bells here and
no early morning Darshan can be done so that child Krishna’s sleep is not disturbed.
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