Podcasts about coronaviruses

Relevant links:Jim Haslam on X: https://x.com/jhas5Jim's Substack: https://jimhaslam.substack.com/Jim's book, "COVID-19: Mystery Solved," on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/COVID-19-Mystery-Solved-leaked-Chinese-ebook/dp/B0DPVT9LWV?ref_=ast_author_cp_dpChapters:(00:00) - A quick note on my interview with Jim Haslam (03:40) - Introducing Jim Haslam, author of "COVID-19: Mystery Solved" (04:51) - The DARPA DEFUSE Grant Proposal (08:52) - Ralph Baric and Genetic Engineering of Coronaviruses (20:10) - Danielle Anderson and the Wuhan BSL-4 Lab (24:38) - The Role of EcoHealth Alliance and Peter Daszak (29:28) - The Furin Cleavage Site Controversy (36:43) - NIAID Funding and the Wuhan Connection (40:53) - Capabilities and Limitations of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Baric's Lab (44:41) - The DEFUSE Grant and Wuhan Institute of Virology (48:22) - RaTG13 Genome and Its Implications (50:34) - Kristian Anderson's Alarming Discovery (01:00:42) - Feb. 1 Teleconference with Fauci & Baric; Feb. 3 NAS Meeting (01:19:41) - Unintentional vs. Intentional Engineering (01:21:28) - Tracing the Virus to Wuhan, Patient Zero, and the Role of Danielle Anderson (01:29:38) - Rocky Mountain Lab and Virus Processing (01:36:32) - Animal Models, Engineering Aerosol Transmission (01:42:23) - The Smoking Gun Email

TWiV discusses an outbreak of influenza H5N1 that killed over half of the great cats at a Washington sanctuary, origin and cross-species transmission of bat coronaviruses in China, and the diverse and abundant phages that enter cells via receptors encoded on conjugative plasmids. Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Rich Condit, and Jolene Ramsey Subscribe (free): Apple Podcasts, RSS, email Become a patron of TWiV! Links for this episode Support science education at MicrobeTV ASV 2025 H5N1 virus kills great cats at Washington sanctuary (CNN) Macroevolution of bat coronaviruses in China (Nat Comm) EcoHealth Alliance funding suspended (Science) Conjugative plasmids support diverse and abundant phages (Nat Comm) Letters read on TWiV 1181 Timestamps by Jolene. Thanks! Weekly Picks Rich – Pareidolia (wiki) Jolene – Pathways to Science database Vincent – Wendy Carlos and Switched-On Bach Listener Picks Arjan – Gutsick Gibbon's YouTube channel Alan – 2024 Nobel Prize Lectures in Chemistry Intro music is by Ronald Jenkees Send your virology questions and comments to twiv@microbe.tv Content in this podcast should not be construed as medical advice.

Dr. Amir Kol, DVM, PhD, Dipl. ACVP is an Associate Professor in the Department of Pathology, Microbiology, and Immunology at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. He earned his veterinary degree from the Koret School of Veterinary Medicine in Israel in 2006. Following this, he completed a residency in clinical pathology and a PhD in integrative pathobiology at UC Davis, focusing on stem cell biology and regenerative medicine. We deep dive into FIP as a disease in cats and how cats can help figure out human coronaviruses.

Many coronaviruses exist in nature that we don't know much about. We don't even know how and whether most of them might bind to human cells. Research published in Nature, by scientists at Wuhan and Washington Universities, describes a new way of designing novel receptor sites on cell cultures so that many types of coronavirus may now be cultured and studied to ascertain their risk to humans. Cambridge virologist Ravindra Gupta, who is not one of the authors, gives Science in Action his take on the risks versus the reward.Dotted around the remains of Pompeii, visitors are often struck by the plaster casts of some of the victims' dying moments. During recent restoration of several of these casts, scientists were able to extract DNA samples from bones which had previously been enveloped by plaster since their initial discovery. As Alissa Mittnik of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology describes, some of the findings confound our previous narratives about their lives, relationships, and even their genders.Rozenn Pineau, a plant evolutionary geneticist at the University of Chicago in Illinois, has been investigating the unique evolutionary history of the world's oldest (and biggest) tree - "Pando".And finally, the oldest known tadpole is described from a 160 million year old Argentinian fossil by biologist Mariana Chuliver.Presented by Roland Pease Produced by Alex Mansfield, with Eliane Glaser Production Coordination by Jana Bennett-Holesworth (Image: Illustration of Covid-19 coronavirus binding to human cell. Credit: Kateryna Kon via Getty Images)

My guest on this episode is Dan Werb. Dan is an author, epidemiologist and policy analyst whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Salon, and elsewhere. His first book, City of Omens: A Search for the Missing Women of the Borderlands, was published by Bloomsbury Publishing in 2019 and was a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award for nonfiction. He holds faculty appointments at the University of California San Diego and the University of Toronto, and was the inaugural winner of the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse Avenir Award. He is also the recipient of a Traiblazer Award from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. In addition to that, Dan is a musician and composer who has performed and recorded as part of various groups and has written music for film.  Dan's most recent book The Invisible Siege: The Rise of Coronaviruses and the Search for a Cure, was published by Crown Publishing in 2022. That book won the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize. In its starred review of the book, Publishers Weekly called The Invisible Siege “a page-turning and unsettling look at the history of coronaviruses” and a “unique and valuable addition to the expanding body of work on COVID-19.” Dan and I talk about how his musical career does, and doesn't, connect with his scientific one, about the accelerating threat from strange and destructive new viruses, and about why the joy of winning a major non-fiction book award lasted... about a day and a half. This podcast is produced and hosted by Nathan Whitlock, in partnership with The Walrus. Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission.

Dr. Freeman is a Fellow at UPMC specializing in Infectious Diseases. Learn about her Coronavirus research.

Carl Zimmer investigates one of the biggest questions of all: What is life? The answer seems obvious until you try to seriously answer it. Is the apple sitting on your kitchen counter alive, or is only the apple tree it came from deserving of the word? If we can't answer that question here on Earth, how will we know when and if we discover alien life on other worlds? The question hangs over some of society's most charged conflicts - whether a fertilized egg is a living person, for example, and when we ought to declare a person legally dead. Life's Edge: The Search For What it Means to be Alive (Dutton, 2022) is an utterly fascinating investigation that no one but one of the most celebrated science writers of our generation could craft. Zimmer journeys through the strange experiments that have attempted to recreate life. Literally hundreds of definitions of what that should look like now exist, but none has yet emerged as an obvious winner. Lists of what living things have in common do not add up to a theory of life. It's never clear why some items on the list are essential and others not. Coronaviruses have altered the course of history, and yet many scientists maintain they are not alive. Chemists are creating droplets that can swarm, sense their environment, and multiply. Have they made life in the lab? Whether he is handling pythons in Alabama or searching for hibernating bats in the Adirondacks, Zimmer revels in astounding examples of life at its most bizarre. He tries his own hand at evolving life in a test tube with unnerving results. Charting the obsession with Dr. Frankenstein's monster and how Coleridge came to believe the whole universe was alive, Zimmer leads us all the way into the labs and minds of researchers working on engineering life from the ground up. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Carl Zimmer investigates one of the biggest questions of all: What is life? The answer seems obvious until you try to seriously answer it. Is the apple sitting on your kitchen counter alive, or is only the apple tree it came from deserving of the word? If we can't answer that question here on Earth, how will we know when and if we discover alien life on other worlds? The question hangs over some of society's most charged conflicts - whether a fertilized egg is a living person, for example, and when we ought to declare a person legally dead. Life's Edge: The Search For What it Means to be Alive (Dutton, 2022) is an utterly fascinating investigation that no one but one of the most celebrated science writers of our generation could craft. Zimmer journeys through the strange experiments that have attempted to recreate life. Literally hundreds of definitions of what that should look like now exist, but none has yet emerged as an obvious winner. Lists of what living things have in common do not add up to a theory of life. It's never clear why some items on the list are essential and others not. Coronaviruses have altered the course of history, and yet many scientists maintain they are not alive. Chemists are creating droplets that can swarm, sense their environment, and multiply. Have they made life in the lab? Whether he is handling pythons in Alabama or searching for hibernating bats in the Adirondacks, Zimmer revels in astounding examples of life at its most bizarre. He tries his own hand at evolving life in a test tube with unnerving results. Charting the obsession with Dr. Frankenstein's monster and how Coleridge came to believe the whole universe was alive, Zimmer leads us all the way into the labs and minds of researchers working on engineering life from the ground up. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

Carl Zimmer investigates one of the biggest questions of all: What is life? The answer seems obvious until you try to seriously answer it. Is the apple sitting on your kitchen counter alive, or is only the apple tree it came from deserving of the word? If we can't answer that question here on Earth, how will we know when and if we discover alien life on other worlds? The question hangs over some of society's most charged conflicts - whether a fertilized egg is a living person, for example, and when we ought to declare a person legally dead. Life's Edge: The Search For What it Means to be Alive (Dutton, 2022) is an utterly fascinating investigation that no one but one of the most celebrated science writers of our generation could craft. Zimmer journeys through the strange experiments that have attempted to recreate life. Literally hundreds of definitions of what that should look like now exist, but none has yet emerged as an obvious winner. Lists of what living things have in common do not add up to a theory of life. It's never clear why some items on the list are essential and others not. Coronaviruses have altered the course of history, and yet many scientists maintain they are not alive. Chemists are creating droplets that can swarm, sense their environment, and multiply. Have they made life in the lab? Whether he is handling pythons in Alabama or searching for hibernating bats in the Adirondacks, Zimmer revels in astounding examples of life at its most bizarre. He tries his own hand at evolving life in a test tube with unnerving results. Charting the obsession with Dr. Frankenstein's monster and how Coleridge came to believe the whole universe was alive, Zimmer leads us all the way into the labs and minds of researchers working on engineering life from the ground up. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

Carl Zimmer investigates one of the biggest questions of all: What is life? The answer seems obvious until you try to seriously answer it. Is the apple sitting on your kitchen counter alive, or is only the apple tree it came from deserving of the word? If we can't answer that question here on Earth, how will we know when and if we discover alien life on other worlds? The question hangs over some of society's most charged conflicts - whether a fertilized egg is a living person, for example, and when we ought to declare a person legally dead. Life's Edge: The Search For What it Means to be Alive (Dutton, 2022) is an utterly fascinating investigation that no one but one of the most celebrated science writers of our generation could craft. Zimmer journeys through the strange experiments that have attempted to recreate life. Literally hundreds of definitions of what that should look like now exist, but none has yet emerged as an obvious winner. Lists of what living things have in common do not add up to a theory of life. It's never clear why some items on the list are essential and others not. Coronaviruses have altered the course of history, and yet many scientists maintain they are not alive. Chemists are creating droplets that can swarm, sense their environment, and multiply. Have they made life in the lab? Whether he is handling pythons in Alabama or searching for hibernating bats in the Adirondacks, Zimmer revels in astounding examples of life at its most bizarre. He tries his own hand at evolving life in a test tube with unnerving results. Charting the obsession with Dr. Frankenstein's monster and how Coleridge came to believe the whole universe was alive, Zimmer leads us all the way into the labs and minds of researchers working on engineering life from the ground up. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Carl Zimmer investigates one of the biggest questions of all: What is life? The answer seems obvious until you try to seriously answer it. Is the apple sitting on your kitchen counter alive, or is only the apple tree it came from deserving of the word? If we can't answer that question here on Earth, how will we know when and if we discover alien life on other worlds? The question hangs over some of society's most charged conflicts - whether a fertilized egg is a living person, for example, and when we ought to declare a person legally dead. Life's Edge: The Search For What it Means to be Alive (Dutton, 2022) is an utterly fascinating investigation that no one but one of the most celebrated science writers of our generation could craft. Zimmer journeys through the strange experiments that have attempted to recreate life. Literally hundreds of definitions of what that should look like now exist, but none has yet emerged as an obvious winner. Lists of what living things have in common do not add up to a theory of life. It's never clear why some items on the list are essential and others not. Coronaviruses have altered the course of history, and yet many scientists maintain they are not alive. Chemists are creating droplets that can swarm, sense their environment, and multiply. Have they made life in the lab? Whether he is handling pythons in Alabama or searching for hibernating bats in the Adirondacks, Zimmer revels in astounding examples of life at its most bizarre. He tries his own hand at evolving life in a test tube with unnerving results. Charting the obsession with Dr. Frankenstein's monster and how Coleridge came to believe the whole universe was alive, Zimmer leads us all the way into the labs and minds of researchers working on engineering life from the ground up. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/van-leer-institute

Carl Zimmer investigates one of the biggest questions of all: What is life? The answer seems obvious until you try to seriously answer it. Is the apple sitting on your kitchen counter alive, or is only the apple tree it came from deserving of the word? If we can't answer that question here on Earth, how will we know when and if we discover alien life on other worlds? The question hangs over some of society's most charged conflicts - whether a fertilized egg is a living person, for example, and when we ought to declare a person legally dead. Life's Edge: The Search For What it Means to be Alive (Dutton, 2022) is an utterly fascinating investigation that no one but one of the most celebrated science writers of our generation could craft. Zimmer journeys through the strange experiments that have attempted to recreate life. Literally hundreds of definitions of what that should look like now exist, but none has yet emerged as an obvious winner. Lists of what living things have in common do not add up to a theory of life. It's never clear why some items on the list are essential and others not. Coronaviruses have altered the course of history, and yet many scientists maintain they are not alive. Chemists are creating droplets that can swarm, sense their environment, and multiply. Have they made life in the lab? Whether he is handling pythons in Alabama or searching for hibernating bats in the Adirondacks, Zimmer revels in astounding examples of life at its most bizarre. He tries his own hand at evolving life in a test tube with unnerving results. Charting the obsession with Dr. Frankenstein's monster and how Coleridge came to believe the whole universe was alive, Zimmer leads us all the way into the labs and minds of researchers working on engineering life from the ground up. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day

Carl Zimmer investigates one of the biggest questions of all: What is life? The answer seems obvious until you try to seriously answer it. Is the apple sitting on your kitchen counter alive, or is only the apple tree it came from deserving of the word? If we can't answer that question here on Earth, how will we know when and if we discover alien life on other worlds? The question hangs over some of society's most charged conflicts - whether a fertilized egg is a living person, for example, and when we ought to declare a person legally dead. Life's Edge: The Search For What it Means to be Alive (Dutton, 2022) is an utterly fascinating investigation that no one but one of the most celebrated science writers of our generation could craft. Zimmer journeys through the strange experiments that have attempted to recreate life. Literally hundreds of definitions of what that should look like now exist, but none has yet emerged as an obvious winner. Lists of what living things have in common do not add up to a theory of life. It's never clear why some items on the list are essential and others not. Coronaviruses have altered the course of history, and yet many scientists maintain they are not alive. Chemists are creating droplets that can swarm, sense their environment, and multiply. Have they made life in the lab? Whether he is handling pythons in Alabama or searching for hibernating bats in the Adirondacks, Zimmer revels in astounding examples of life at its most bizarre. He tries his own hand at evolving life in a test tube with unnerving results. Charting the obsession with Dr. Frankenstein's monster and how Coleridge came to believe the whole universe was alive, Zimmer leads us all the way into the labs and minds of researchers working on engineering life from the ground up. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/animal-studies

On Wednesday's show: Nancy Sims joins us to discuss local, state, and national politics. Also this hour: It's been four years since the COVID pandemic started--we talk with Dr. Peter Hotez about where we are today and what's in store for the future. Then, Troy Schulze talks with some of the folks behind this year's FotoFest Biennial festival.

CDC's own data shows they have decided to injure and kill more children Last week, the FDA recommended a booster of the modified mRNA injection. They have decided to do this despite the fact that their own data shows these injections will cause 100,000-200,000 adverse effects with the possibility that it might save 0-1 lives. They do this in the same week that we hear about a 7 year old who died after experiencing cardiac arrest 30 hours post injection. We discuss these events in today's show as well as a young woman who was conned by the University of Nebraska Medical Center into believing she was a boy. She is now joining a huge team of people suing those who mutilated her.What does God's Word say? Leviticus 20 Punishment for Child Sacrifice20 The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 2 “Say to the people of Israel, Any one of the people of Israel or of the strangers who sojourn in Israel who gives any of his children to Molech shall surely be put to death. The people of the land shall stone him with stones. 3 I myself will set my face against that man and will cut him off from among his people, because he has given one of his children to Molech, to make my sanctuary unclean and to profane my holy name. 4 And if the people of the land do at all close their eyes to that man when he gives one of his children to Molech, and do not put him to death, 5 then I will set my face against that man and against his clan and will cut them off from among their people, him and all who follow him in whoring after Molech.6 “If a person turns to mediums and necromancers, whoring after them, I will set my face against that person and will cut him off from among his people. 7 Consecrate yourselves, therefore, and be holy, for I am the Lord your God. 8 Keep my statutes and do them; I am the Lord who sanctifies you. 9 For anyone who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death; he has cursed his father or his mother; his blood is upon him.Episode Links:The FDA and CDC are recommending a “booster” the CDC's own data shows will do more harm than good "If this doesn't p*ss off every American, then you are asleep at the wheel...this is horrifying...we have this as the state of our FDA. God help us." No FDA follow up after a seven-year-old dies following Pfizer vaccine.Dr. Paul Offit on How Public Health Communications Requires a 'Unified' NarrativeNew York Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul: "Tell everybody - don't rely on the fact that you had a Vaccine in the past, it will not help you this time around."Dr. William Makis Unveils Alarming Numbers on Vaccine Injuries, Disabilities, and DeathTrump tells Megyn Kelly he has no idea who gave Fauci the Presidential Commendation at the end of his presidency, which Trump personally signed: “I don't know who gave him the Commendation, I really don't know.Biden State Department Spokesman Matt Miller REFUSES to answer how much funding from USAID went "to make Coronaviruses that are weaponized" in Wuhan. His reaction tells you everything you need to know..FDA Panel Says a Common Cold Medicines' Decongestant Does Not Work, Here's WhyDetransitioner Luka Hein takes legal action against the University of Nebraska Medical Center for manipulating her into a double mastectomy at age 16. She joins Chloe Cole and Layla Jane in the fight to hold radical doctors at gender clinics accountable for the bodily mutilation young people suffer at their hands.Dad arrested at school board meeting after daughter's sexual assault rips ‘politicized' DOJSenator John Kennedy: “You can't play this on national television, but radicals want it in our children's schools.”4Patriots https://4patriots.com Protect your family with Food kits, solar generators and more at 4Patriots. Use code TODD for 10% off your first purchase. Alan's Soaps https://alanssoaps.com/TODD Use coupon code ‘TODD' to save an additional 10% off the bundle price. BiOptimizers https://bioptimizers.com/todd Use promo code TODD for 10% off your order. Bonefrog https://bonefrog.us Enter promo code TODD at checkout to receive 10% off your subscription. Bulwark Capital http://KnowYourRiskRadio.com Find out how Bulwark Capital Actively Manages risk. Call 866-779-RISK or visit KnowYourRiskRadio.com Patriot Mobile https://patriotmobile.com/herman Get free activation today with offer code HERMAN. Visit or call 878-PATRIOT. RuffGreens https://ruffgreens.com/todd Get your FREE Jumpstart Trial Bag of Ruff Greens, simply cover shipping. Visit or call 877-MYDOG-64. SOTA Weight Loss https://sotaweightloss.com SOTA Weight Loss is, say it with me now, STATE OF THE ART! Sound of Freedom https://angel.com/freedom Join the two million and see Sound of Freedom in theaters July 4th. GreenHaven Interactive https://greenhaveninteractive.com Digital Marketing including search engine optimization and website design.

Dr. Jaraad Dattadeen, Infectious Diseases Senior Fellow at the Division of Infectious Diseases at the USF College of Medicine, discusses coronaviruses other than SARS-CoV2. Dr. Dattadeen begins by discussing the general classification of Coronaviruses as well as their microbiology. The speaker covers SARS CoV-1, MERS, as well as HCoV-OC43, HCoV-229, HCoV-NL63, and HCoV-HKU1. Each virus subtype is compared with SARS-CoV2. The intermediate hosts and reservoirs of select coronaviruses are also discussed.

Try Cue Streaming for just $2 / day and help support the good guys https://justinbarclay.com/cueGet the links to each show here: http://JustinBarclay.com Up to 80% OFF! Use promo code JUSTIN http://MyPillow.com/Justin Patriots are making the Switch! What if we could start voting with our dollars too? http://SwitchWithJustin.com Grab gear in Justin's store http://JustinBarclay.com/store No matter what's coming, you can be ready for your family and others. http://PrepareWithJustin.com #ad Find Justin.. Podcast: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/53-westmichiganlivewith-28276509/?keyid%5B0%5D=West%20Michigan%20Live%20with%20Justin%20Barclay&pname=podcast_profile&sc=widget_share Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/JustinBarclay LOCALS: https://justinbarclay.locals.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MrJustinBarclay Twitter: https://twitter.com/mrjustinbarclay Gettr: https://gettr.com/user/mrjustinbarclay Truth: https://truthsocial.com/@mrjustinbarclay Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mrjustinbarclay Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/mrjustinbarclay Gab: https://gab.com/MrJustinBarclay Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mrjustinbarclay Bitchute: https://www.bitchute.com/channel/OvxYfTftZdRk/ Brighteon: https://www.brighteon.com/channels/mrjustinbarclay Clouthub: https://app.clouthub.com/#/onboarding/?redirect=%2Fusers%2Fu%2Fmrjustinbarclay%2Fposts Substack: https://substack.com/profile/41993224-justin-barclay

The Mockingbird Media and rest of The Party has “moved on” from the Covid plan. We will not “move on”, because the Covid Program is still killing people. Excess, non-Covid deaths in the U.K. are at about 21%; to put that in perspective, some 4,000 more people dying every two weeks in the U.K. since the forced injection program is akin to a 9/11 terrorist attack every two weeks. The Mockingbirds refuse to report it. I will not move on from Covid. The International Covid Summit III in the European Parliament just occurred with a stunning series of revelations. For instance, when did the Medical Technocrats start playing around with Coronaviruses? The late 60's. When did Big Pharma patent their first “vaccine” for them? 1990. When did Big Pharma know coronaviruses will evade all attempted vaccines? In that same time-frame. How many randomized trials proved Ivermectin works as an early treatment? It's well into the hundreds. How did Big Pharma rig the “big-6” Ivermectin studies? They changed the target date DURING the trial. How are the mRNA injections causing turbo-cancers? This was all covered with source material, studies, cross tabs, methodologies disclosed and . . . the Mockingbird Media did not cover it. We will. What does God's Word say? The silence of the Mockingbirds and The Party is a tactic. It's a massive lie . . . “You shall not lie.”It's a deadly lie . . . “You shall not kill.” And God told us there would be times such as these.2 Timothy 3:2 For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy,Episode 848 Links:· Media Silent as UK Data Show Sharp Increase in Excess Deaths; John Campbell, Ph.D., a retired accident and emergency nurse, nurse teacher and author of two nursing textbooks, analyzed the latest U.K. data showing a sharp increase in excess deaths. Campbell said if this was a terrorist attack “it would be a state of war.”· They want MORE nano-lipid-particles: Scientists have developed a new way to fight a nearly untreatable brain cancer; Crossing the blood-brain barrier may be crucial to provide glioblastoma therapy.· mRNA & Breastfeeding: COVID-19 vaccinated mothers who breastfeed - babies have serious reactions including death, decreased breast milk production, milk discoloration, bleeding - 16 cases. NOT SAFE!· Videos: The International Covid Summit III in the European Parliament, Brussels; The full video as well as the speaker list with presentation titles (time stamped)

Welcome to the Adams Archive. Hosted by Austin Adams, we explore the wild, bizarre, and often unsettling events happening across the country and around the world. In today's episode, we expose the shocking belief that the FBI conducted a false flag on its own people on January 6th. With evidence that even the left is starting to acknowledge, we uncover the implications of this belief on society as a whole. We also explore historical parallels and eerie similarities to other events, including the Governor Whitmer situation and events dating back to the 60s. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. We also discuss a disturbing new patent filed by Ford, which would allow them to take control of your car and even drive it to an impound lot if you fall behind on your payments. And if you thought things couldn't get any crazier, we delve into Spain's recent legalization of bestiality and the legislation behind it. But the most shocking revelation of all is about Disney. Something darker than anything we've discussed before. We'll reveal the details of this disturbing discovery and its implications for our culture and society. Don't miss this episode. Hit that subscribe button now to join us as we navigate these compelling and thought-provoking topics. If you enjoy the show, please leave a five-star review and help us climb the ranks. Let's jump into it. Join our Substack and follow us: https://linktr.ee/theaustinjadams   Transcription:        hello, you beautiful people and welcome to the Adams Archive. My name is Austin Adams, and thank you so much for listening today. We are going to be touching on some wild  wildness going on across the country right now, including 61% of all voters, not just Republican, but all voters believe that the FBI conducted a false flag against its own people on January 6th by using Agent Provocateurs. Crazy. I, I, I did not expect the left to agree with that, but apparently they're starting to come around and, and so we'll go through some evidence of that. We'll talk about the implications of society as a whole, agreeing with that point as, as a, as a majority at this point, and then we'll go into some historical. Historical, uh, coincidences, I guess not coincidence, but parallels, , of other events which kind of look eerily similar to that, including the governor Whitmer situation, if you haven't heard about that one. And then some all the way dating back to the sixties. , we're also going to talk about a new patent, which was filed this week by Ford, which would allow them to basically take over your car, shut down your air conditioning, eliminate your ability to roll down your windows, and actually drive itself to an impound lot if you find yourself behind on your payment. So we'll talk about that, which is pretty crazy in and of itself. We are also going to dive into the recent situation, uh, regarding Spain. Basically legalizing beast. I didn't expect that to be out in today's episode, did you? ? So we will talk about that. The actual law in legislation that was passed as a result, to make that happen. And then last but not least, our final topic of today, and the one that we'll touch on the longest is going to be a revelation that actually was passed to me by my wife regarding Disney now.  It's pretty dark. It, it's probably darker than the other situations that we've heard of combined. It's, it's pretty crazy and I don't think it's anything that anybody has touched on at this point. And, uh, we'll talk about all of it. All right now, in the meantime, Go ahead and hit that subscribe button. It would make me feel all fuzzy inside. It would make me feel so good. Hit that subscribe button. You know, I'm gonna hit it in about halfway through this episode and ask you to do the same. So you might as well get away from that feeling that you have in the pit of your stomach. When you know that, I'm going to ask you again, get it outta the way. Hit that subscribe button. If you're new here. If you are not new here, and even if you are, leave a five star review. All right? I would appreciate it. From the bottom of my heart, those five star reviews completely help get us up in the rankings, and Lord knows we need it to have these types of conversations surrounding these terrible tragedies that are going on in our country and around the world. All right, so leave a five star review. If you would write something nice. I don't know. Whatever it is. Whether it's about my, you know, I don't know, my silly hair or my crazy, I don't know. Whatever it is, write it down. Talk about your favorite topic. I don't know. But write something and leave a five star view. All right. Thank you so much. , and let's jump into it.   All right. All right, let's get into it. But first, head over to the CK Adams, not adams, austin adams.ck.com, and you can get our podcast companion free of cost for now. Um, sign up now. I would appreciate it. You'll get all the clips, articles, links, videos, all of it directly to your email every single week. And, you'll be able to get all the articles that I wrote up surrounding these topics for you. So Austin Adams dot.com, that's all I got. The very first article that we're gonna be talking on today is going to be that 61% of all American voters believe that the FBI conducted a false flag against its own people on January 6th by using Agent Provocateurs. You heard that right? 61% of American voters. Now, that's not 61% of Republican voters. That's 61% of all voters, liberal conservative. Middle of the road, libertarian, uh, what were those, uh, people who, I don't know, green party, whatever the hell you, you believe in whichever of these religious sex you find yourselves in 61%. A majority, a vast majority. It's not 51%. It's an astonishing 10% more than being split down the middle. Believe that the FBI in the American government set up the American people to cause this coup like situation at the Capitol right now. There's some things that we saw originally that led us to believe this. I think if you've been following me for a while, you know, I've done whole sections of this show in, in portions of this on Ray. And maybe I'll talk about him a little bit later, but Ray Eps is at the epicenter of all of this. And then you go all the way back to Ted Cruz questioning the fbi. And I believe it was like the head of the department or one of one of those higher up people. This woman who sat there without answering a single question about this would not give a straight answer at all. But now we have the majority of the country believing that our own government is willing to set us up to cause a violent reaction, just to get, I don't know, some, some pushback or belief surrounding Joe Biden or against President Trump. And this should tell you everything that you need to know about the Trump presidency. You saw all of the mainstream media just going after him, going after him, and now we know, or at least 61% of the American populists believe that our own government, our own government, put people in harm's way and had Ashley Babbitt killed in the Capitol building as a result. of their own Provo Pro Provocation. Is that a word? Provocation? Provocate Provo. Provocation . And you go back to all the clips. They still will not release the video footage. Still will not release the video footage. How many, how many years? January, 2021. January 6th. We are now two years past this event, and they have 80,000 hours of footage and they won't release it. I wonder why. Maybe because it shows police officers letting people in with waving arms, removing barricades, unlocking doors. Maybe because it shows the tragic death of Ashley Babbitt in a way that isn't helpful to the FBI's agenda or Biden's agenda. Maybe. So here's the evidence, or, well, maybe not the evidence, but here's the article. Explosive new polling data has just been released and it has the potential to shake the very foundations of the American democracy. According to the latest Rasmus employee, stunning, 61% of likely voters, including 50 per 57% of Democrats believe that federal agents play a role in inciting the Capitol riot of January 6th and 2021. This means that a majority of Americans believe that their own government may have had a hand in one of the most traumatic events in recent American history, and maybe not traumatic, but dramatic might be the more P likely of terms. The poll respondents, how likely it is it that undercover government agents helped provoke the Capitol riot, and the results are shocking. Of those surveyed, 39% said very likely, 22% said somewhat likely. That means a grand total of 61% of likely voters believe that federal agents played a role. The poll also revealed that 59% of men and 63% of women believed that federal agents had helped provoke the capital riot. This majority of voters who believed the capital riot was not simply a natural occurrence breaks down among political party affiliations as well. 57% of Democrats said it is either very likely 34%, well, 34% total. 57% of Democrats said it is either very likely or somewhat likely, very likely being 34%, somewhat likely being 23%. While Republicans, the numbers are 51% said very likely, 19% said somewhat likely. Wow, that's pretty crazy. Many across the media have already questioned the idea that Trump supporters watching then President Donald Trump had taken it upon themselves with no provocation. Hey, provocation, this award to walk from the ellipse of the capitol and demand entry. Tucker Carlson is one of the many who stated his belief based on photos and eyewitness accounts that federal agents have been encouraging Trump supporters to enter the Capitol building. Going back to Ray Abs, it's, we're going into the Capitol. You remember that video into the Capitol. Tomorrow we're going into the capitol. Him sitting there inciting these people while everybody around him points their finger and mocks him going, fed, fed, fed, fed, fed, pointing at him, calling out in the moment. We didn't need two years to decide this. The people that were there and saw this man saying we're gonna go into the capitol, knew immediately, knew immediately that he was a federal agent, trying to provoke them into some sort of riot. They were priming the public, priming the people that were around there the day before this happened to cause this to happen. And again, we have an American veteran, Ashley Babin, who died as a result of this provocation. Goes on to say that this idea that the government may have initiated the false flag against itself is dangerous to the overall belief in American democracy. History has shown that when the public loses face in their government institutions, it can lead to destabilize, destabilization, and unrest. The Rassmuson Poll also asked likely voters whether they thought that the hours of surveillance footage captured on the day should be released to the public. An overwhelming majority of American likely voters, 80% total believe it's important that the footage be released while majority of both parties weighing in that the public has the right to see the footage. Now, what does that other 20% even mean at this point, if you're a 20% saying that we shouldn't release the videos, you're literally just showing your cards that you are somebody who is on the side of Big Daddy government and big brother wanting to like just completely. Like what is it? Ossify yourself like completely. Uh, like put yourself in this cocoon of like against the general world saying that I don't care what the facts are, I don't care what the reality is. My reality is Trump bad man, everybody else, good man. And everything that he does is bad and everything. And it doesn't matter whether he did it or not. It doesn't matter whether our government set him up or not. I don't care. Right? That's what that 20% shows me. The latest polling data adds to a long list of historic examples where the government has used agent provocateurs to incite events from the 10 of 12 F B I agents. We recall this with Governor Whitmer who were involved in the kidnapping of Governor Whitmer to the infamous. COINTEL Pro program run by the FBI in the 1960s and seventies, which we'll get into in a second. There are plenty of instances where the government has used underhanded tactics to achieve its goals. The American people have a right to know what really happened on January 6th, whether the government was involved in any way. Now, that brings up a big issue, right when, when majority of the country, majority of the country believes that our own government inside today riot into our most, like one of the most protected government institutions in the world, one of the most symbolic buildings we have as an American institution. Our own government could have potentially staged this. At least 61% of people believe that. Now, again, what does that mean for our nation when you no longer believe in election? When you no longer believe that our own government has our best interest in mind, when you believe that they will actively incite political unrest in riots, open doors for you to make it happen, and uncaring murder an American veteran, for the sake of your own agenda, the American people are going to start to not believe in this government institution anymore. And what happens? What do we know that happens when, when places like Afghanistan, places like Iraq, places like Mexico, when we have these, these ideas that the, the system no longer works, right? It's rotten from the core, rotten for the structural foundation of our nation is rotten down to its structure, down to down to the, the studs that are holding up the walls riddled with corruption. If you can no longer have a vote or a say in who goes into office, and now all of a sudden we find yourselves with an, I don't know, what is he, 85 years old, blubbering, dementia ridden man who's embarrassing our country at every single turn. When you no longer believe in the fabric of democracy, when you no longer believe that your vote has a a meaning, and no matter what you do, how many people you talk to, how many people actually vote that it will never go the way that you want it to. It'll go the way that the elites want it to. We will find ourselves in historically very violent, unsettled public discourse, which is absolutely not where I wanna see this nation go. But historically, that's what happens, right? When you can no longer vote to use your voice, that's where it. Right, and that's where this will go. Unfortunately, as we thi see things progress, right? If these things continue this way, and the American people can no longer have any, any belief in the people who are running this country, the people behind the curtain, or at least they, we, they pull back the curtain like they have already. And we see that companies and organizations like BlackRock, like Vanguard are actually running the show. People like the World Economic Forum in Clause Schwab, when we know now for sure that the only people that matter, the only people that have a vote are the ones who have a corporation or a wealth management fund large enough to put candidates in place like George Soros, like Klaus Schwab. Those are the people who have a real vote. Now you have the, the organizations that are being ran by those types of people that are being funded by those types of people that are being put in positions of power or, or at least running and managing those people like the puppeteers of the world. Who are operating these FBIs, these three letter organizations, when we know that that's what's going on. We have things that happen like assassinations of presidents, which we are fairly positive at this point. Otherwise, why wouldn't you release the records that they conducted those types of operations? Why should we believe in their government right now? Let's go into the COINTELPRO program or counterintelligence program, which was a secret and illegal program ran by the Federal Bureau of Investigation from the fifties to the seventies. Its primary aim was to disrupt and dismantle political organizations that the government considered a threat to national security, particularly those associated with civil rights, anti-war in radical leftist movements. The PRO program was launched in 1956 under F FBI director J Igar Hoover, and operated in secrecy for many years. The F B I used a variety of tactics to target groups and individuals, including wiretapping mail fraud. Harassment. The Bureau also used infiltrators and agent provocateurs to create divisions within groups and incite violent confrontations. The Conor Intelligent Program's primary targets were civil rights and anti-war activists, as well as groups that advocated for racial equality in the rights of marginalized communities. The program worked to disrupt and discredit these groups by spreading false information, infiltrating their organizations, and using informants to sow distrust and create divisions. So now we want to think that that was so long ago, right? Oh, it's the sixties and the seventies, right? Oh, they would never do that now, would they? How wild. How wild is it that that's where we found ourselves today is that we, we just think the government has all the sudden changed. Right? And, and we see this with people like, you know, is, is it any coincidence that people like John Lennon, people like Bob Marley, people like Jimmy Hendrix, people like the list goes on and on and on of people who randomly died at a young age. And generally it was people who were speaking out against the government, right? John Lennon, anti-war, Bob Marley, anti-war. Right. Speaking out against the, the, um, you know, accreditation or of, or, or for racial equality. Right. People like, uh, people like Martin Luther King. Hmm. Right. All along the same time. You think all those people just suddenly. From natural causes. Right. You think our government didn't have a hand in assassinating some of the single largest and, and biggest opponents and, and dissidents of the public narrative during a time of war that was for the military industrial complex. Do you think that there's not enough money involved in the military industrial complex that they wouldn't do something like that? One of the most infamous pro examples of this was its targeting of the Black Panther Party. The FBI's efforts to disrupt the Panthers included the use of informants, wiretaps, and smear campaigns. The bureau also used undercover agents to incite violent confrontations between the panthers and other groups, including police. The FBI's actions were illegal and violated the civil rights of countless individuals and groups. The program was eventually exposed in the 1970s, and many of its tactics were officially deemed unconstitutional. However, the damage has already been done and many civil rights and anti-war activists were subjected to harassment. And persecution by the government, not to mention potentially assassinations. It was a dark chapter in the American history that serves as a reminder of the dangers of unchecked government power. The program's tactics were illegal and violated. The civil rights of countless individuals and its legacy still resonates today and the ongoing struggle for social justice and political freedom. This should spark complete outrage from the entire country. All right, so that's to me, the fact that 61% of people all agree. That's one of the only things that we're gonna get a majority agreement on from the country right now. 61% of poli people believe the FBI set up January 6th. All right, now let's move on. Okay, so the next topic that we're gonna touch on is going to be that for. Motor company has now put a patent in to be able to surveil you. Shut down your vehicle, turn off your air conditioning, everything in between. If you get behind on the on the car payment, big Brother is watching you and now he can take your car too. Ford Motor Company has applied for a patent on a new technology. It says that would allow them to remotely repossess your car if you failed to make a payment. Just, just a payment. The proposed system would give owners a warning about a mis payment before disabling certain features such as gps, air conditioning and the radio. But if you continue to neglect your payments, the car can then lock you out of it and drive itself autonomously to an impound. What  that is the craziest, do you remember the movie? It was a Disney movie called, uh, what was it, like Smart Home or, uh, gosh, what was it? Pretty sure it was something like Smart Home. It was like this exact scenario. It didn't have to do with payments, but it was like basically the, this ai uh, you know, hologram of a woman was the, uh, was the manifestation of the house's technology and the, the house saw these people doing things that it didn't like. So it locked, it went into lockdown mode and they couldn't even leave their own house. Right. It it. So we'll go into that analogy a little bit further in a minute cause I think that's an interesting one. Um, but Ford's patent application states that the lockdown feature could be lifted momentarily in case of an emergency to allow the vehicle to travel to a medical facility. But it also proposes a possible caveat where delinquent owners working toward clearing their balance would have their car locked only on weekends to allow them to go to work and earning income to make payments toward their vehicles. Could you imagine your daddy, corporate daddy is now going to take your keys on the weekend and not allow you to drive your car, which you purchased it, and own , at least I'll own the loan on. Um, if you miss a payment, this life is getting crazy, this type of surveillance. Base lending, it says, is an infringement on personal privacy and raises serious concerns about the growing trends toward connected vehicles in electric cars. As cars become increasingly digital and reliant on technology, there is a greater risk that our personal information and rights will be compromised. According to Ford, the system is designed to solve the issue of uncooperative owners who attempt to impede the repossession operation and can lead to confrontations. But this type of technology could also be used to target vulnerable individuals who may be struggling to make payments in face losing their cars, which is often a critical lifeline for Americans. The patent application filed in August of 2021 was formally published last week for public review. A company spokesperson said the patent submitted as a normal course of business. They said, but they aren't necessarily an indication of new business or product plans. Yeah, okay. We believe you Ford. Regardless of Ford's intentions, this type of technology is a clear example of how movement towards connected vehicles and electric cars is going to inherently mean more technology that only infringes further on personal rights. We must remain vigilant and advocate for stronger privacy protections to ensure that our personal information and freedom are not compromised by these new technologies. Okay, so think of it like this. Compare it to your house like we talked earlier, right? Imagine coming home after a long day and find that your fridge, TV, and air conditioning have all been disabled. , because you're behind on a house payment, right? Imagine sweating being in 90 degree heat in Arizona, 110 degrees outside, and they're just. Making you lose weight every minute because you can't make your payment. Like is it not enough that you're behind the payment anymore? Is it not enough that you have the shame of, of creditors calling you or getting the potential of your car, getting repossessed or feeling like you, that it is so wild to me that they want to shame you to the point where they will lock your windows, turn, not allow you to listen to the radio and disable your car on weekends because you can't make a payment. Shame on you. So if we apply the same logic to homes, we can see that a future where our appliances, electronics, and even doors could be locked, right? Your ba, let's say you have a patio, they no longer want your patio door to work. So you gotta walk out the front door and walk all the way around to your back patio. right? You can no longer use the second bathroom. You all gotta use the first bathroom. Oh, and by the way, we're gonna lock the other three rooms in your house and just allow you access to one room. You can all sleep on the floor there. We're not letting you in. Right? All the amenities that come with that home that you purchased right now, think of who this is targeting, right? This is targeting low income. This is targeting ar areas of people who are, you know, going to get into these types of loans unknowingly or without the ability to make these payments. This is gonna target a, a majority of, of minority communities, which are historically in these communities where they're having more difficulties financially, right? Statistically and factually. That's true. And so this is going to be targeting them specifically to do things like this, right? It's not just being limited to cars in the future, right? You can limit this to everything. You can limit this to your cell phone, right? Imagine having everything on your phone, disabled, all of the apps, all of your social media, all all of the stuff besides phone calls to Verizon, to, to your, you know, mom and your dad into 9 1 1 because you're behind on, on a payment. I guess Verizon kind of already does that, right? If you miss a payment for long enough, they only allow you to make a phone call, but you can still connect to wifi, right? So you still have access to all those things, right? They're just not gonna pay for you to go do. It's like if they, I don't know, some analogy with gas  or like charging, I don't know. Um, but yeah, just, just think of all the applications. Right there. There's so many ways that this smart technologies, this surveillance big brother technology can be utilized in the future and, and that is a future that I don't want to be a part of. I want to get in a car and press down the gas, and I want gas to be siphoned and I want it to do whatever freaking magic that happens in an engine. There's probably some mechanics listening to this that just want to shake me for not knowing exactly how that works. I want a combustion engine bitch, and I want to be able to put gas in it from the earth that was mined in Saudi Arabia or from some foreign land, or from Canada or Alaska. I want to put liquid into it, and I want to drive by a government building with my middle finger up. That's what I wanna do because there's nothing you can do to stop me from moving. To stop me from driving my vehicle from, from freedom of transportation. And that's what you're gonna find. And we did our last episode on smart cities, right? 15 minute cities is what they're called. And this is another piece of that, right? They don't want you to have vehicles. They want you to own nothing and be happy about it, right? They don't want you to have the freedom of transportation. They don't even want you to be able to drive 15 minutes away. Well, 16, right? They don't want you to have that freedom. They don't want you to have any freedom. Not unless daddy government or daddy corporation, which is truly what daddy government is, has a say so in it, right? And, and, and what we're finding now is like all the people that you know, I am, I am absolutely for capitalism. What we are now is not capitalism. What we are now is corporatism, right? Our government, our institutions, our colleges, our voting processes, our candidates, our. education systems are media, corporations. Our news, the, the shows that your children watch are all owned by corporations who have corporate interests, right? And I've talked about this before. When it comes to corporations, a corporation is a living, breathing entity, right? At least once it gets shareholders, when it's a business, once it, once, it's a, a small business and it goes to a PORs, a, a, a position where it's publicly traded, where there's board members and the CEO who only acts out the po the the needs of the board members. And when they don't, they get removed and kicked out and the new CEO comes in. When you get to a point where a business goes away from having a leader who is truly at the helm, where it is ran by board members, it loses its humanity. It no longer has a moral compass. The only compass it has is off of profitability. , right? So when you have a corporation that has to determine whether or not it should, I don't know, release some type of hmm. Virus so that it can make billions in profits, that doesn't seem like a bad business model to the board members who are just trying to make a profit whose CEO has to enact those decisions or fear being removed from their multimillion dollar position, right? That the entity only thrives off of profitability. It doesn't thrive off of helping humanity. It doesn't thrive off of giving, giving to the needy. It doesn't thrive off of educating the public. It doesn't thrive off of any of these things. It, it thrives off of profitability, right? And profitability is off of the, generally, off of the detriment in, in many cases when it comes from a corporation. To society, right? When we look at things like the, the tactics that were used by cigarette companies back in the eighties and seventies and even early nineties, right? Like when we look at the ways that they lobbied physicians to use their name and say that this is the doctor recommended cigarette, try Merl Burrow Red. Recommended by two out three doctors. Little did you know, they surveyed three doctors, two of which they paid $5 million for that advertisement, right? When you have all these black hat little marketing tactics that drive profitability ran by the ceo, who trickles down to the to, to everybody in between, that's all based off profitability that that loses its moral compass, right? There's no longer somebody there to go, I don't like where this is going, and if they feel that way, they can't say it because the second they say it, in an organization where it's ran by board members and not a leader with a moral compass, it loses all of that humanity to it. It has to continue to thrive off of more profitability. Now, the other thing is growth, right? A company has to continually grow no matter what. When you have a company like Pfizer who made billions of dollars off of their vaccine, . You think next year they're gonna have a 30% drop in revenue and their board members and shareholders are gonna be okay with that? No. The bar has been set and now it has to be exceeded every single year. Or it's a loss or else their share, their stock price goes down and they can't have that. So what do they do? Again? Record year record numbers, record profits for everybody involved in the company, you know, except the employees, the people who did the work, and also humanity, who so happens to die when we profit so much money. But you know, let's forget that, you know, not to mention the Project Veritas video, where they actually said that they were actively working on messing with Coronaviruses intentionally to potentially put out vaccines preemptively. Hmm. It doesn't stop at Ford Motor Company folks. Does not stop there. All right. Now the next thing that we're gonna talk about is going to be that  Spain. I can't even get this one out. I, this is so bizarre to me. I, it's, it's so bizarre to me that this is a conversation that I'm having to have in the bizarre move. The Spanish Parliament has approved a new animal welfare law that essentially legalizes bestiality in Spain. They pass legislation that legalizes bestiality, but there's a caveat as long as the animal doesn't get hurt too badly. Yeah, yeah, I heard that. Right. It's now perfectly legal to have sex with an animal in Spain. As long as you don't. To bring them to the vet afterwards. , according to a new law, if you're caught in the act of sexually exploiting an animal, they don't req that and they don't require veterinary treatment. You won't face any criminal charges, right? Who needs consent when you got a nice legal loophole to screw your dog? Now, it's not just the fact that bestiality is now technically legal, that's so shocking. In this case, it's the fact that the law was supported by Spain's Minister of Social Rights and 23 Agenda. That's their title, supporter, Spain's Minister of Social Rights, and 2030 Agenda. That's the title of this person. So if that tells you anything about where this is going, and this person's name is Ian Valara Ortega. I don't know if I pronounce that right, but it's probably better than you would've done . Let's be honest. I. Let's, like seriously, what kind of world are we living in? Were our government actively, not our government, but the Spain government, maybe they're a little freakier over there, but actively advocates for animal abuse. Now, of course, like almost every other country, bestiality was previously illegal in Spain with hefty penalties for anybody caught in engaging in this disgusting act. But the new welfare law reforms the penal code and deletes the sexual exploitation of animals language from the code. So imagine that they had a vote on this. They sat down as a group and decided that they wanted to be able to have sex with animals . So they actively removed exploitation. It deleted the sexual exploitation language from the code. Right. In the year 2023, we are actively having to fight for the basic rights of animals, not to be raped by its owners, not even its owners. You could probably, I mean, I wonder if we're gonna see a very large uptake in uptick in Spain, farmers, . Like all of a sudden people are just having a tremendous amount of livestock and donkeys, . Now, um, this a, you know, it, it's so crazy. A animal cannot consent to a sexual act. I don't know why I have to say that. Right? But an animal cannot consent, right? They don't speak English right now. How, how, how soon until we start seeing brothels full of horses and dogs and whatever else is good dolphins aren't dolphins like supposed to be? I'm pretty sure there's like, Some accounts were dolphins were like raping people in, in the ocean where they would like, that's a highly reported thing where like women are in the ocean and, uh, dolphins, like, I'm pretty sure there was a woman who actually like, had a dolphin boyfriend that was like a trainer or something that got fired for having sex with this dolphin so often So maybe there's something to this. Maybe we're gonna find that Spain just is such a happier country. Maybe we'll find that, I don't know hu human rape statistics go down, but that I highly doubt it. Right? We're gonna see a whole market that's surrounding which, which horses? The prettiest. They're gonna start putting lipstick on horses at, at auctions. Right. How, how, how, how weird that we're even having this discussion right now. And here's the better answer to this, is there's absolutely nobody who's going to have something happen to the animal that they did this to, and then actively go seek out a vet to correct the issue. Like, Hey, sorry, I was. Having sex with my cat now it has this weird kink in its neck and it only meow is backwards. Uh, , I don't know. Right? And you're gonna have some weirdo sicko specifically just having a farm in the back of his house so he can have his way with all of these animals in Spain. Now you don't think that that's gonna be a thing, but this somebody somewhere in Spain is gonna, he's gonna be that guy Okay? Now I don't know what else to talk about on that, other than the fact that I am utterly shocked. Utterly, get it. didn't even have that one written down, folks. All right. Now the last and final topic for the day is going to be.  probably one of the darker things that we've talked about here, right? This is dark Disney is grooming our children, and the is far worse than you could have ever imagined. We're not talking about Baymax and tampons. We're not talking about like Luna Moon, the superhero and pronouns. We're not talking about the pride family pushing critical race theory. All right. Are you, are you ready to have your childhood ruined? Because this doesn't just encompass the new and up and coming shows. This isn't the new liberal woke Disney. This is a theme that has woven through the fabric of almost every TV show and movie that has come out of Disney since we were kids and even before that. All right, are you ready? Now my wife came to me with this realization on one of our children's shows that they were watching, which they will never watch again. All right. My wife came to me and she said something weird that I didn't realize before is it seems like Disney has an overwhelming amount of TV shows where the child keeps a secret from their parent and confides in their uncle. All right? So I took that information and ran with it. After running a comprehensive analysis of all Disney shows, popular AI Chatbot chat, G P t concluded, concluded that 40. Of TV shows on Disney feature, a storyline where the child keeps a secret from their parents and tells it to their uncle. Let me be clear. This is not just some lame plot theme. This is a sinister grooming tactic that every single parent and human should be outraged about. This is absolutely disgusting. Okay, I have 28 examples of this in front of me, and I will read them all off for you. Okay. I'll read them quickly and then I'll go into the details. Lizzie McGuire, Kim. Possible Austin and Allie. Shake it up. Good luck, Charlie. The sweet life of Zach and Cody. Wizards of Waverly Place, gravity Falls, Finns and Ferb Big City Gardens, the proud family, the Emperor's New School. Lilo and Stitch. The series Tangled. The series, Casey Undercover, stuck in the middle. Sydnee to the Max Bunked, the Sweet Life of Zach and Cody. Girl Meets World. Raven's Home Live in Madie. Jesse, good luck, Charlie, Austin and Allian. Those are just some of the shows that were pointed out by chat, G B T, just some of them. There was almost a hundred TV shows that I got to point this common theme out for, and it equaled, according to this AI technology, 30 to 40% of the TV shows had a theme to it, including this. Now, I'll walk you through this. I'll just give you some really, really brief overviews of these TV shows. Um, It's quite alarming. All right, here's Lizzie McGuire. Lizzie McGuire confides in her uncle David Gordon about her struggles in school and her crush on the classmate Ethan. Instead of her parents, Kim possible keeps her secret life as a teenage spy, a secret from her parents and confides in her uncle, who is also a former spy Austin thee. Allie Dawson confides in her uncle Barry about her stage fright and her dreams of becoming a songwriter. Rocky Blue from Shake It Up Confides in her uncle Louis about her dance career. Good luck Charlie. Um, Teddy Duncan confides in her uncle Mel about her desire to become a writer and a secret video diary project, the Sweet Life of Zach and Cody. Cody Martin confides in his uncle Aristotle about his fear of performing despite being an aspiring magician, wizards of Waverly place. Alex often confides in her uncle, who is a wizard and often own. Erin owns a magic shop. Finns and Ferb keep their invention secret from their parents, but occasionally confide in their Uncle Lawrence. Big city Greens. Cricket green often keeps secrets from his parents and confides in his laid back and adventurous. Uncle Bill, the Proud Family, proud Penny Proud keeps secrets from her parents and confides in her uncle, her uncle Bobby, the Emperor's New School. Cusco keeps his status as an emperor secret from his parents and confides in his cool and adventurous Uncle Pacha. Lilo and Stitch keep their experiment secret from her older sister and confide in their alien Uncle Jamba Rapunzel from Tangled. The series often keeps her secrets from her parents and confides in their adventurers and supportive father-in-law. The captain of the Guards, Casey Undercover Teenage Spy, who keeps her secrets from other parent or from her parents, and confides in her uncle, who of also happens to be her handle. Uh, stuck in the middle, Sidney to the max. All of these are the same story. All of them. They keep something from their parents and they tell their uncle, right? Jesse, Emma Ross keeps a secret from her parents and confides in her uncle Caleb. Good luck. Charlie Teddy Duncan keeps a secret from her parents and confides in her uncle Mel Austin and Allie. Allie Dawson keeps a secret from her parents and confides in her uncle Barry. All of these shows are grooming your child to hold a secret from you and to confide in a male figure in your family. Now, I wish this was a world where this wasn't a problem. I wish this was a world we're statistically speaking that those individuals, that they're grooming your child to confide in, to hold secrets actively from you isn't the individual who's most likely to assault your child sexually. I wish that was not the case. I wish Disney could have shows about confiding in your uncle and holding secrets from your parents. Make it not a bad thing, but I also want to highlight the fact that there is virtually zero shows where the same exact scenario is happening with ant. You cannot 0.1 out, cannot find one. What kind of message does this send young girls? What kind of message does this tell young boys? Right? Does it, it tells them that it's okay to have a secret with your uncle and to keep it from your parents. It tells them that being groomed is a normal part of growing up. Now, this isn't to take away from the agenda of pushing transgenderism onto your children. This isn't to take away from the agenda of sexualizing, hyper sexualizing your children. This isn't going to take away from the agenda where there was a show recently that I haven't heard anybody talk about this one from Disney. Haven't heard this yet. There's a show called like Luna Moon or something like that, some moon TV show where this girl is sitting in front of a chess, uh, chess robot on the floor, like doing this cool scene where she's playing chess with this robot. And the robot goes, my name is something robot, and my pronouns are she, her pronouns like, no bitch, you're a robot. You don't get pronouns, but they're grooming your child to believe that these things are okay. You go back to the, the, the head of Disney in their internal meetings who came out on a Zoom call and said, I am pushing this LGBTQ qia a plus element o p agenda on an every single PO way that I can, right? You see it in Turning Red. You see it in the Baymax series. You see it in like this Luna show. You see it all across the new Disney movies, almost every single one of 'em, stranger Worlds. You see it in all of them and she's gloating about it, gloating about it. Now these are not mistakes, right? This is not a fun little plot twist, right? This is a concerted effort to groom our children concerted effort. This is intentional programming that leads to extremely dangerous positions for your child to find themselves in, to believe that it's normalized, to believe that it's okay to keep a secret from you because they didn't think of that before, until they get programmed by Disney. To think that it's cool to keep a secret from your parents, and it gets even darker when we get into the statistics of this one in nine young girls, one in nine girls experience sexual abuse at the hands of an adult. One in 53 boys experienced sexual abuse at the hands of an adult, more than 10. Of the young girls who watch these Disney shows will have been sexually assaulted in their lifetime, more than 10%. One out of every 10 girls who watches this Disney show where they make it seem okay to keep a secret from your parents and confide in your cool uncle will have been groomed to believe that that's acceptable, groomed to believe that it's acceptable to hide something from your parents and confide in your uncle more than 10%. In more than 40% of the show. 30 to 40% of the shows has a similar theme. The N S V R C reports that 93% of child sexual abuse victims know their abuser. 93% of abuse, abuse children know their abuser. Almost a hundred percent, 34% of the perpetrators being family members and 60% being acquaintances or other trusted individuals. 34% out of the one out of nine girls are assaulted by their family member, and Disney thinks it's cute to groom them to keep secrets from their parents and confide in their uncle. Now, here's my question to you. Do we really want to give these predators a helping hand by normalizing secrets, keeping secrets from your parents, confiding in your uncle, right? This is a global issue. This is not just in the United States, right? And, and, and there's been calls for boycotts and I even, I am guilty. Of keeping Disney Plus for my children, even through Turning Red, even through Baymax, all the shit that I talked about, that even I am guilty of maintaining my Disney plus subscription. Until today, I will never in my house have a Disney plus subscription again. Now that I know that my children were actively being groomed by Disney to hold a secret from me as her dad and to confide in some other random male counterpart as a result, and I ask you to join me, I hope that hashtag boycott Disney goes like wildfire around the internet. Once this is found out, I cannot imagine that it. How else if, if this is not where you draw the line, where do you draw it? If it's not where they groom your child into believing that being assaulted and holding a secret from you is the norm, then what is it? What the fuck is it? If it's not that, what is it? How does that not cause you to cancel your subscription? Right? I don't care. Stream it. I'll give you five websites to do it with. Stream it, but don't give 'em your money. We need to send a clear, clear picture to corporations like Disney that we are absolutely not going to continue to allow you to program our children. For your disgustingly dark purposes. Protect your children. Get them away from these programs that are actively grooming them, right? It is your job as a parent to mitigate risk if nothing else, right? Protect them, house them, feed them. Mitigate risk. If you have children and you decide to maintain a Disney plus subscription after finding this out, you got some soul search and to do, or you're just a complete optimist who, who does not live in a real world where more than 10% of young girls, 10% of girls in their lifetime will be assaulted. And 94% of the time they will know the person that did it. That is a disgusting reality, and again, I wish they could have this theme and I wish they could push this all they want and not have it have a negative outcome and not have it be based in the fact that there's a very high like.  that your child will go through something and now think that it is acceptable to maintain that secrecy from you. Right? And that's what you have to understand about programming, right? That's what you have to understand about the, the, the way that you, if it is nothing else, you take a young baby and that baby goes from having a blank slate, right? Just think of it like a, if you think of it from like a programming perspective, I don't know how to program, so maybe I'm talking outta my ass, but, but if you look at it from that perspective, you have to teach that child how to operate in this world, right? You gotta put all of the, all of the zeros and the ones in there so that they know not to touch a hot fire, right? And some of that programming's built in, but some of it can be manipulated.  and it's not the ones that are completely built in that they're trying to manipulate. It's the ones that are susceptible to impression. It's the ones that are like, Hey, they're family. Right? They're cool, they're hip. It's your uncle, not your dad or your mom. Right? Tell them your secrets about the boy you like. Tell them the secrets about the, the clothes your parents don't like you to wear. Tell them like, and again, this is not with the aunts, it's not even even playing field, it's not even like this was stumbled upon, and that's how you know that is how you know that this was intentional, is that it's not a consistent theme for men and women. It is specifically uncles, specifically male mentor type figures that are being called out and utilized as a way to groom your children within these TV shows. Right? And I can look at, uh, several of those and know that some of them were something that my daughter was consuming and something that I consumed when I was growing up. right? Something that probably you consumed when you were growing up. And this is not even getting into the movies. Not even getting into the movies, right? And we already have a very long list, right? And when you continue that out, you find more and more and more, right, like chat, G P T said 32, 40% of them. So what are you gonna do with that information? Are you gonna leave here? Forget about it. Allow your child to watch some stupid ass show that's going to program them. Program them to keep secrets from you to believe that pronouns are a real thing. To think that men can have periods as long as they're wearing a trans shirt. Like in Baymax. Is that what you want for your child? Or are you gonna take the, I don't know, three steps right now? To do so. Right? And let's see. Maybe I can do it right here. Let's, let's see if I can do it. Um, I'm going to log into Disney right now. It's gonna take me a sec. Gimme a sec here. Let's get this computer over here. My daughter's gonna be happy about this. Let's log into Disney right now. I'll walk you through the steps. We're gonna go to disney plus.com, all right, Disney plus.com. All you gotta do, may I follow me along here? Disney plus.com if you have children, let's make this fun. Log in. I'm gonna put in my username. Let's see how we do it. How hard do they make it? We're gonna go to, I assume, Go and click on your profile. Go to account, and at the very bottom there is a delete account button. Two steps log into Disney Press account. Third step press delete account. If you wanna delete your Disney Plus account, you must cancel your subscription first, or you will continue to be charged. Deleting your Disney Plus account will delete your email address, first and last name and profile. It will also anonymize all other Disney plus account information so it is no longer associated with your email. You'll also be unsubscribed from all marketing campaigns. Uh, if your Disney Plus subscription is bill by a third party, you proceed through the requested Disney plus account deletion. Then you immediately lose access. Look at this. They sent something to my email. They will give me a three digit. Go log into my email. Let's get that one time code. There it is, 6 0 5 16, and then some other number. Not sure why. I wouldn't care to tell you that. I'm not sure. You're trying to get into my Disney Plus subscription. And even if you are, have fun. Um, 6 0 5, 1 6 and delete. Just like that folks, three steps. Log into your account, click account, press delete. That's it, and you're done. I hope you followed me along there. All right. Now, on that note, do what's right for you. Do what's right for your family and damn it, do what is right for your children because nobody else is going to, in fact, almost everybody who is on the other side of that has your best, the best interest of your child, not in mind. Whether it's a corporation, whether it's the government, whether it's a corporate entity, a, whatever it is, you are the only person who's gonna take that seriously, and your child's gonna either grow from it or suffer from it. So on that note, Whew, man. I gotta take a breath after that one. That pisses me off. Thank you guys for listening. I appreciate it so much. I hope, I hope, hope, hope that you got something from that today. Going to be starting our first round of interviews over the next couple weeks and I am excited if you know somebody, uh, that should be interviewed, be happy to hear from him. Um, please connect us if it is you, yourself, you have a great story. Whatever it is, reach out, , reach out on social media. , it's the Austin J. Adams basically everywhere on Instagram, on truth social, on my, just started new Twitter, which I got like nobody that follows me on yet. . So add over to Twitter, follow me. The Austin J. Adams, um, backup account and the podcast account is the Adams. Uh, go head over to Austin adams.ck.com, sign up for the ck you'll get all of the articles, links, videos, podcast, video, podcast, all of it to your email, along with weekly emails about the topics that we're discussing in full length detail. And that's what I got. All right, hit subscribe. Leave a five star review and to love you. Have a great week.    

Jonathan R Latham PhD is a “card-carrying” virologist, the co-founder and Executive Director of the Bioscience Resource Project, and the Editor of Independent Science News. In the first half of today's interview, we discuss several theories of the origin of COVID-19, Fauci's COVID Origin SWAT Team, the significance of RaTG-13 and those Mojang Miners, accelerated viral evolution in immunocompromised hosts, and much more. In the second half, we discuss the many unusual features of the 2014 Ebola Outbreak in West Africa that point to an “unnatural” origin, and the many similarities to the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan.

This is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.Part I (00:13 - 07:28) ‘A Domain Awareness Gap': U.S. Military Acknowledges Chinese Spy Airships Have Previously Gone Undetected Over U.S. AirspaceDomain Awareness Superiority Is the Future of Military Intelligence by Army University Press (Chief Warrant Officer 4 Robert M. Ryder, U.S. Army Reserve)Part II (07:28 - 12:15) A Direct Assault on the Cause of Life: Minnesota Passes the “Protect Reproduction Options Act,” Which is Both Radical and DeadlyPart III (12:15 - 18:00) Vaccine Skepticism Is Growing?: Some Background to the Controversy Rethinking Next-generation Vaccines for Coronaviruses, Influenzaviruses, and Other Respiratory Viruses by Cell (Anthony Fauci, David M. Morens, and Jeffery K. Taubenberger)Part IV (18:00 - 22:03) So Who Decides? California Elites Fail Attempt to Outlaw “Misinformation”California Loses on Medical Censorship by Wall Street Journal (The Editorial Board)Part V (22:03 - 24:16) Monogamy Isn't For Everyone?: USA Today–Once Again–Reveals How Our Culture's Moral Universe Has Been Flipped Upside DownAsk These Questions Before Your Relationship Becomes Exclusive by USA Today (Sara Kuburic)Sign up to receive The Briefing in your inbox every weekday morning.Follow Dr. Mohler:Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | YouTubeFor more information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu.For more information on Boyce College, just go to BoyceCollege.com.To write Dr. Mohler or submit a question for The Mailbox, go here.

Why Are Gas Stoves Under Fire? If you were online at all last week, you probably encountered conversations about gas stoves. The sudden stove discourse was sparked by a comment made by a commissioner on the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) to a Bloomberg reporter, in which the commissioner discussed plans to regulate gas stoves. Those comments morphed via repetition into inaccurate rumors of an impending ban on stoves fueled by ‘natural gas,' or methane, currently used in around 38% of US homes. The CPSC later clarified that the agency was “researching gas emissions in stoves and exploring new ways to address health risks,” but was not looking to ban gas stove use. That said, studies have found that gas stoves are a major source of indoor air pollution, and can emit nitrogen oxides that have been found to exacerbate asthma symptoms. Last summer, the American Medical Association adopted a resolution informing physicians of the stoves' link to asthma. A report published in December estimates that over 12% of childhood asthma cases may be attributable to gas stove emissions. The stove debate flares beyond asthma, however. Some municipalities, including New York City, are moving to phase out the use of natural gas in new construction for reasons related to climate change. And Washington state has put in place rules mandating the use of electric heat (with fossil fuel-derived heating allowed as a backup option) in new construction this year. Rebecca Leber, senior reporter covering climate at Vox, joins Ira to explain the heated words over gas stove use, and how they fit into a larger battle over fossil fuel usage and climate change. What Will The Next Generation Of COVID-19 Vaccines Look Like? The first COVID-19 vaccine was approved just over two years ago. Since then, the virus continues to mutate. With each new variant, the virus seems to evade our current vaccines more effectively, faster than we can make effective new mRNA boosters. Coronaviruses frequently spill over from animals to humans, like the original SARS and MERS viruses, which are both types of coronaviruses. Researchers are working on the next generation of coronavirus vaccines that aim to protect us against multiple emerging variants—and even prevent future pandemics. Ira talks with Dr. Pamela Bjorkman, professor of biology and bioengineering at the California Institute of Technology, about her work to develop a vaccine that would protect against several types of coronaviruses. And later, Ira talks with Dr. Akiko Iwasaki, professor of immunobiology and molecular, cellular, and developmental biology at Yale University, about the nasal vaccine she's researching and the hurdles in bringing it to market.     The Sweet Song Of The $7 Violin Stringed instruments can be a joy to the ears and the eyes. They're handcrafted, made of beautiful wood, and the very best ones are centuries old, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, or sometimes even millions. But there's a new violin in the works—one that's 3D-printed. It costs just a few bucks to print, making it an affordable and accessible option for young learners and classrooms. Dr. Mary-Elizabeth Brown is a concert violinist and the founder and director of the AVIVA Young Artists Program in Montreal, Quebec, and she's been tinkering with the design of 3D-printed violins for years. She talks with Ira about the science behind violins, the design process, and how she manages to turn $7 worth of plastic into a beautiful sounding instrument. Learn more about the project, as well as its progress, beta testing, and release date at www.printaviolin.com. Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

Reviewing the article “New Banana-Derived Therapy Is Effective Against All Known Coronaviruses and Flu Strains.”

On Episode 22 of the Stroke Alert Podcast, host Dr. Negar Asdaghi highlights two articles from the November 2022 issue of Stroke: “Estimating Perfusion Deficits in Acute Stroke Patients Without Perfusion Imaging” and “Five-Year Results of Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting With or Without Carotid Endarterectomy in Patients With Asymptomatic Carotid Artery Stenosis.” She also interviews Dr. George Ntaios about his article “Incidence of Stroke in Randomized Trials of COVID-19 Therapeutics.” Dr. Negar Asdaghi:         Let's start with some questions. 1) What is the actual incidence of stroke after COVID-19? 2) In the setting of acute ischemic stroke, can the volume of ischemic penumbra be estimated with just a regular MRI study of the brain without any vascular or perfusion imaging? 3) And finally, can a patient with significant carotid stenosis go through coronary artery bypass graft surgery? We're back here to answer these questions and bring us up to date with the latest in the world of cerebrovascular disorders. You're listening to the Stroke Alert Podcast, and this is the best in Stroke. Stay with us. Welcome back to another issue of the Stroke Alert Podcast. My name is Negar Asdaghi. I'm an Associate Professor of Neurology at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and your host for the monthly Stroke Alert Podcast. The November issue of Stroke is packed with a range of really exciting and exceedingly timely articles. As part of our Original Contributions in this issue of the journal, we have a post hoc analysis of the Treat Stroke to Target, or the TST, randomized trial by Dr. Pierre Amarenco and colleagues. We've talked about this trial in our past podcast, and the main study results that were published in New England Journal of Medicine in January of 2020. TST randomized patients with a recent stroke or TIA to either a low target of LDL cholesterol of less than 70 milligram per deciliter or a target LDL of 90 to 110. The main study showed that the low LDL target group had a significantly lower risk of subsequent cardiovascular events without increasing the risk of hemorrhagic stroke. So, from this, we know that achieving a low target LDL is possible and is actually better than the LDL target of 90 to 110 post-stroke. But in the new paper, in this issue of the journal, in a post hoc analysis of the trial, the TST investigators showed that it's not just achieving that magic low target LDL of less than 70 that's important in a reduction of cerebrovascular disorders, but it's also how we achieve it that determines the future of vascular outcomes. So, in this analysis that compared patients on monostatin therapy to those treated with dual cholesterol-lowering agents, that would be a combination of statin and ezetimibe, and showed that in the low LDL target group, only those patients treated with dual therapy had a significant reduction of subsequent vascular events as compared to those in the higher LDL category. But the same was not true for patients on statin monotherapy, even though they had all achieved a low target LDL. Think about this for a moment. Both groups, whether on statin monotherapy or on dual anti-cholesterol treatments, achieved the same low target of LDL, but only those on dual therapy had a lower risk of subsequent vascular events as compared to those that were in the higher LDL target group. Very thought-provoking study. In a separate paper by Dr. Shin and colleagues out of Korea, we learned that survivors of tuberculosis, or TB, are at a significantly higher risk of ischemic stroke than their age- and risk factors–matched non-TB counterparts. The authors used data from the Korean National Health Insurance Services and studied over 200,000 cases diagnosed with TB between 2010 and 2017 and compared them to a pool of over one million non-TB cases for matching. And they found that the risk of ischemic stroke was 1.2 times greater among TB survivors compared to matched non-TB cases after adjusting for the usual confounders, health behavioral factors, and other comorbidities. Now, why would TB increase the risk of stroke? The authors talk about the pro-inflammatory state of this condition, thrombocytosis, that is a known complication of chronic TB amongst other putative and less clear mechanisms. But what is clear is that findings from a large-scale population-based cohort such as the current study support an independent association between TB and ischemic stroke. As always, I encourage you to review these papers in addition to listening to our podcast today. My guest on the podcast today, Dr. George Ntaios, joins me all the way from Greece to talk to us about the much discussed topic of the risk of stroke in the setting of COVID-19. Dr. Ntaios is the President of the Hellenic Stroke Organization and an experienced internist who has been fighting this pandemic in the front lines since the beginning. In an interview, he talks about his recently published paper, his experience, and the lessons learned on balancing scientific rigor against the urgency of COVID-19. But first, with these two articles. In the setting of a target vessel occlusion in patients presenting with an acute ischemic stroke, distinguishing the ischemic core from the ischemic penumbra is of outmost importance. The success of all of our reperfusion therapies heavily lies on our ability to differentiate between the tissue that is already dead, which would be the ischemic core, from the tissue that is not dead yet but is going to die unless revascularization is achieved. That is the ischemic penumbra. Over the past two to three decades, there's been lots of debate over how these entities of dead tissue versus going-to-die tissue are best defined, especially when we're making these distinctions under the pressure of time. We don't even agree on the best imaging modality to define them. Should we rely on CT-based imaging? Do we stop at CT, CT angiogram? Should we do single-phase CTA or multiphase CTA? When do we perform CT perfusion, and what perfusion parameters best define core and penumbra, or should we rely on MRI-based modalities altogether? These questions have all been asked and extensively studied, which is why, as a field, I think, we have at least some agreements today on the basics of core and penumbra definitions. And I also think that overall we are becoming better at doing less imaging to be able to predict tissue outcomes in real time. And there's definitely a growing interest in trying to estimate tissue fate based on a single-imaging modality. So, I think you're going to find an Original Contribution in this issue of the journal, titled "Estimating Perfusion Deficits in Acute Stroke Patients Without Perfusion Imaging," really interesting. In this paper, Dr. Richard Leigh from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health, in Bethesda and colleagues evaluated patients with acute ischemic stroke enrolled between 2013 to 2014 in the NINDS Natural History of Stroke study. A little bit about the study: It enrolled stroke patients presenting to three hospitals in Washington, DC, and Maryland with serial MRI scans during the acute and subacute time period after ischemic stroke. For this particular paper, they included patients who received MRI and perfusion-weighted imaging and included only those who were thrombolized. That was their way of ensuring that all patients in their study were in the hyperacute stage of stroke. They then looked at their MR imaging, specifically the fluid-attenuated inversion recovery, or FLAIR, images, for a presence of something called hyperintense vessels in the ischemic territory. Now, this is an audio-only podcast, so unless you're Googling FLAIR hyperintense vessels on MRI, to follow along, I have to take a bit of time explaining this entity. What do we mean by FLAIR hyperintense vessels? We are not just talking about the T2 hyperintense signal that's sometimes noticeable at the site of proximal occlusion. For example, in the setting of an M1 occlusion, we may be able to detect a T2 hyperintense signal at the site of M1 on FLAIR. That's not the point of this paper. The point is to look throughout the area supplied by that said target occlusion, in this case all of the MCA, and see whether there is hyperintense signal in all arteries in that potentially ischemic tissue and how the area delineated by these FLAIR hyperintense vessels could potentially correspond to the area of perfusion deficit on conventional perfusion imaging. It turns out that these hyperintense vessels actually map a pretty large area. So, this is the point of this study. The investigators developed a FLAIR hyperintense vessel scoring system and called it NIH, obviously, because this was a National Institutes of Health study, FHV, which stands for FLAIR hyperintense vessel, scoring system. And the score is based on presence of these hyperintense vessels in three vascular territories: ACA, MCA, or PCA. Now, seeing that MCA is a larger territory, they had to further divide it into four sub-regions: frontal, insular, temporal, and parietal. So, in total, we have six regions now. Each of them would get a score of zero if there were no hyperintense vessels in them, and a score of two if there were three or more FLAIR hyperintense vessels in a single slice, or if there were three or more slices that contained FLAIR hyperintense vessels. And, of course, a score of one would be anything in between. So, we have six regions in total, each maximum getting two points, to give us a composite score of maximum 12 for this scoring system. So, they wanted to see whether there's a correlation between the FLAIR hyperintense vessel score and the volume of perfusion deficits that is detected by conventional perfusion imaging, which is their main study result. But before we go there, it does seem like a lot of work to learn all these regions and count all these hyperintense vessels in these six regions and come up with an actual score. So, they had to do an interrater reliability to see how easy it is to score and how reliable are these scores. So, they had two independent reviewers for their study. On average, the scores of these two independent reviewers differed by one point for a κ of 0.31, which is quite a low interrater reliability. But when they looked at a more liberal way of assessing interrater reliability, where partial credit was given, when the raters were at least close in their scoring, the κ improved to 0.65 for a moderate degree of agreement. So, what that means is that it's not easy to learn the score, and potentially I can give a score and another colleague can give a different score. So, we have to keep that in mind. But I want to emphasize that in the field of stroke neurology, we are kind of used to these poor interrater reliability agreements in general. For example, the interrater reliability of the ASPECTS score, a score that is commonly used in our day-to-day practice, and especially in the acute phase, we communicate the extent of early ischemic changes by using the ASPECTS score, has a pretty poor interrater reliability, especially in the first few hours after the ischemic stroke. So, we can make due with a κ of 0.65. Now on to the results of this study. They had a total of 101 patients. Their median age was 73. The median FHV, which is that FLAIR hyperintense vessel score, in their entire cohort was four. And close to 80% of patients enrolled in their study had some perfusion abnormalities on their concurrent perfusion-weighted imaging. Now, briefly, they defined perfusion deficits as areas with delay in the relative time to peak map, or TTP maps, after applying a six-second threshold to these TTP maps. Of note, half of those patients with a perfusion deficit had a significant perfusion deficit, which meant that they had 15 cc or more of perfusion deficit. OK, now on to the main study results. Number one, the score obtained by NIH FLAIR hyperintense score highly correlated with the volume of perfusion deficit. In fact, every one point increase on the NIH-FHV score was approximately equal to 12 cc of perfusion deficit. That's a really useful way of thinking about this score. Each score translated in 12 cc of perfusion deficit. Number two, when they looked at the predictive ability of this score in predicting the presence of significant perfusion deficit, that is 15 cc or more of perfusion delay, the area under the curve was 0.9, which is quite high. This is quite reassuring that the FHV score was sensitive and specific in predicting the presence of significant perfusion deficit. Next finding, how does this score do in predicting a significant mismatch? They calculated mismatch ratio by dividing the perfusion volume to that of ischemic core as measured by diffusion volume as it's done conventionally, and then did the same for the score with the exception that instead of using the perfusion volume, they actually used this score and divided it by diffusion volume. And it turns out that FLAIR hyperintense mismatch ratio had a strong predictive capability in predicting the mismatch ratio of 1.8. So, in summary, if this score is validated in larger studies, it can potentially be used as a quick and dirty way of calculating the amount of perfusion deficit in the setting of target vessel occlusion. And, of course, it can also be used as a predictive way of presence of significant perfusion deficit, which is perfusion deficit of over 15 cc. This is all without the need to do actual perfusion imaging. Now, all we've got to do is to get comfortable with this scoring system and, of course, be able to multiply it by 12 to give us a quick guesstimate of the perfusion volume. And one final word on this is that I think the future of stroke imaging is not in doing more images, but to be able to extract more information from less imaging in the acute setting. Stroke physicians were frequently consulted to see patients that are scheduled to undergo coronary artery bypass graft surgery, or CABG. The stroke consult would be for the optimal perioperative management of an often incidentally found carotid disease. Now, why do I say we were frequently consulted? Because at least anecdotally in my own practice, I feel that over the past decade, the number of these consults has substantially reduced. Why is that? Well, let's dive into this topic and review some of the literature. First off, around 40% of patients who have active coronary artery disease and are scheduled to undergo CABG have concurrent carotid disease, and about 10% of CABG patients have evidence of hemodynamically significant carotid disease. And seeing that the risk factors for coronary artery disease are similar to those causing carotid disease, these high percentages are not surprising at all. But the question to ask is, can we put a patient with significant carotid disease through cardiac surgery? What is the perioperative risk of stroke in this situation? And importantly, should the carotid disease be surgically treated during carotid surgery? This is referred to as synchronous carotid endarterectomy, or CEA plus CABG. Or the carotid disease should be treated either surgically or endovascularly before CABG? We refer to this as staged carotid surgery or post-CABG. This is known as reverse staged carotid surgery. All of these questions are asked from the stroke physicians in that consult, and, like many of you, I have struggled to find the evidence to answer some of them. So, let's briefly review some of the current literature on this topic. The CABACS trial, the acronym stands for the Coronary Artery Bypass Graft Surgery in Patients With Asymptomatic Carotid Stenosis, was a randomized controlled trial that included patients undergoing CABG who are found, exactly like that consult, to have an asymptomatic carotid disease of equal or greater than 70% stenosis. The carotid disease for this trial had to be amenable to carotid endarterectomy, or CEA, and the patients were randomized to either receive synchronous CEA plus CABG or just go through with the CABG alone. The trial started in 2010 and planned to enroll over a thousand patients, but was stopped, unfortunately, prematurely in 2014 due to slow recruitment and withdrawal of funding after only 129 patients were enrolled from 17 centers in Germany and Czech Republic. The original study was published in this journal in 2017. So, what did it find? In their intention-to-treat analysis, the primary outcome of any stroke or death at 30 days was 18% in patients receiving synchronous CEA plus CABG as compared to only 9% in patients receiving isolated CABG. Ouch, a double risk of stroke in those who had concurrent surgical treatment of their carotid disease in addition to CABG. Now, this was an underpowered study, and the results should be understood in that context, but it really didn't appear that synchronous CEA plus CABG would decrease the rate of stroke in the first 30 days. Now, how about the long-term outcomes of these patients? We know that asymptomatic carotid disease carries a cumulative annual risk of stroke, and it's important to see if the risk of subsequent stroke was lower downstream if the carotid was already fixed early on. So, in the current issue of the journal, the CABACS trial investigators, led by Dr. Stephan Knipp from the Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery in Essen, Germany, and colleagues are back with the five-year results of this trial. How did synchronous CABG plus CEA do as compared to CABG alone? Well, by five years, the rate of stroke or death was 40% in the combined group and 35% in the CABG-only group. This was not a statistically significant difference. Now, when they broke down the primary outcomes, the rate of death from any cause was similar in the two groups. By five years, the mortality rate was 25% in the combined group and 23% in the CABG-only group. And the same was true for the rate of nonfatal strokes. And also the cumulative rate of nonfatal strokes from year one to year five was similar between the two groups, which meant that the higher stroke risk early on in the CABG plus CEA group was not counterbalanced by decreased rate of stroke later on during the long-term follow-up. And finally, they looked at the rate of disability-producing stroke. First of all, after the first year, no new disabling strokes were observed in either group. That's great news. However, in the early period, unfortunately, close to half of strokes that had happened after the combined CEA and CABG were disability-producing, and about a third of strokes that happened after CABG alone were also disability-producing. So, in summary, even though this study is quite underpowered, it appears that performing synchronous CEA plus CABG increases the preoperative morbidity and mortality in patients with asymptomatic carotid disease without providing any long-term benefits to these patients. Coronaviruses are important human and animal pathogens. By now, I think it's safe to say that most of the population of the world has heard of at least one of the members of the coronavirus's family, which was first identified in late 2019 as the cause of a cluster of cases of pneumonia in Wuhan, China. In the early months of 2020, COVID-19, the disease caused by this novel coronavirus, would rapidly spread to involve much of the world. And on March 11 of the same year, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. Today, over two and a half years have passed since that day, and an avalanche of scientific papers have since been published about COVID-19, not just in medicine, but in each and every imaginable field of life. Neurology's, of course, no exception. The clinical presentation of COVID-19 largely depends on the severity of the disease and may range from a simple asymptomatic infection to a severe, lethal, multi-organ disease. In the world of neurology, a myriad of neurological symptoms, from loss of sense of taste and smell to headache, all the way to encephalopathy and seizures, have been reported in association with this disease. Early in the pandemic, some studies suggested that COVID-19 is indeed a risk factor for stroke. Like many severe infections, COVID-19 can potentially cause a prothrombotic state and can be associated with thromboembolic events. But most of these earlier studies were smaller observational studies that were completed in an inpatient setting, including those with severe COVID. In fact, to date, we still don't have an accurate and reliable estimate of stroke incidence among patients with COVID-19. On the other hand, stroke is the second leading cause of death globally and the fifth cause of death in the US. In the United States, every 40 seconds, someone has a stroke, and every four minutes, someone dies of a stroke. So, I think the question that everyone should be asking is, has COVID-19 changed this statistic? In this issue of the journal, in the study titled "Incidence of Stroke in Randomized Trials of COVID-19 Therapeutics: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis," Dr. Ntaios and colleagues aim to get us a step closer to answering this very important question. Dr. Ntaios is an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Thessaly in central Greece, and he's the current President of the Hellenic Stroke Organization. It is my great honor to have Dr. Ntaios today in our podcast to discuss this paper and all things stroke-related COVID-19. Good afternoon, George, and welcome to our podcast. Dr. George Ntaios:          Thank you for the invitation, Negar, and for highlighting our work. It's a pleasure to be here with you today. Dr. Negar Asdaghi:         Thank you for being here, and congrats on the paper. George, can you start us off by discussing the pathophysiological mechanisms through which COVID can potentially cause a stroke? Dr. George Ntaios:          Well, one of the most attractive things about stroke, which makes it fascinating for all of us, is its complexity. So many different pathologies can cause stroke, and, quite frequently, identifying the actual cause of stroke can be really challenging. And in a similar way, the pathophysiological association between COVID and stroke seems to be, again, complex. Different pathways have been proposed. Internal, we talk about two broad mechanisms. One is the vascular inflammation and thrombosis, and the other is cardioembolism. And there are several pathways which are involved in vascular inflammation and thrombosis: activation of the complement, activation of the inflammasome, activation of thrombin, increased production of [inaudible 00:24:47] constriction, state of stress, platelet aggregation, vascular thrombosis. So, collectively, this thromboinflammation could lead to damage of the neurovascular unit and consequently to stroke. And in a similar way, there are several cardiac pathologies which can cause stroke in a COVID patient, like acute left ventricular dysfunction, which can be caused, again, by several mechanisms, like coronary ischemia, stress-induced takotsubo cardiomyopathy, myocarditis inflammation, or also as a result of direct effect of the coronavirus at the myocardial cell. And, of course, we should not forget about atrial fibrillation, which seems to be more frequent in COVID patients. So, we see that the proposed mechanisms behind the association between COVID and stroke, that is, vascular thromboinflammation on one hand, or cardioembolism on the other hand, are complex, but whether these derangements they have a clinically relevant effect or they are just biochemical derangements without any clinical effect is a debate. For example, the incidence of myocarditis in COVID is about 0.2%. That is, in every 500 COVID patients, you have one patient with myocarditis. But myocarditis has a very wide clinical spectrum ranging from subclinical elevation of myocardial enzymes to full and life-threatening disease. So, obviously, the incidence of severe myocarditis is even lower than 0.2%. And the same is true also for the incidence of myocarditis after COVID vaccination. The CDC estimates that one case of myocarditis occurs every 200,000 vaccinations, with the number being slightly higher in young men after the second dose. And this is extremely rare, and the huge majority of these myocarditis cases, they're mild. So, this is about ischemic stroke. Now, with regard to hemorrhagic stroke and its association with COVID, again, it seems to be, again, very rare. The best estimate that we have comes from the Get With The Guidelines – Stroke Registry and is about 0.2% and involves mainly patients who are already on anticoagulants. So, they had already a risk factor for ICH. So, again, whether all these pathophysiologic derangements in COVID patients, they have a clinical meaningful association with stroke risk or not, I think it's a matter of debate. Dr. Negar Asdaghi:         Wow, George, it was a simple question, but it seems like the answer was not that straightforward. Let me just recap some of the things you mentioned. So, first of all, the answer is not straightforward and depends on whether we're talking about ischemic stroke or hemorrhagic stroke. There seems to be a lot of connecting points, at least, so to speak, between COVID and either forms of stroke. But you touched on two major sort of broad mechanisms. One is the idea of vascular thromboinflammation that goes along the lines of many sort of hyperacute, hyperinflammatory processes that can occur, especially in the setting of severe COVID. You touched on activation of thrombin, complement activation, platelet aggregation, sort of an activation of that microvascular or vascular unit in a sense. And then a second mechanism you touched on is the impact of COVID on the myocardium on sort of many different pathways. Again, you talked about acute left ventricular dysfunction, stress-induced myocarditis, and the impact of COVID on perhaps increasing the rate of atrial fibrillation. Again, these are all very complex associations, and some could be already present in a patient who is perhaps of an older age, and COVID is just a modifier of that risk factor that was already present in that particular person. And you also touched on how COVID can potentially increase the risk of hemorrhagic stroke, but the study seems to suggest that those patients already had risk factors for the same. And perhaps, again, COVID is a modifier of that risk factor. All right, so with that information, a number of studies early on, especially, in the pandemic and later, some meta-analyses, have aimed to estimate the incident rate of stroke post-COVID. Can you please briefly tell us what were their findings, and how is your current paper and current meta-analysis different in terms of methodology from those earlier studies? Dr. George Ntaios:          Yes. Well, it all started from this letter to the editor at the New England Journal of Medicine. It was published very early in the pandemic during the outbreak in New York. And in this letter, the authors had reported that within a period of two weeks, they had five young patients with COVID and large artery stroke, which they commented that it was much higher than their typical, actually their average, of 0.7 cases during a two-weeks period within the last year. And remember that back then, we knew literally nothing about COVID. So, this letter was really a huge, loud alert that something is going on here and that perhaps our hospitals would be flooded with COVID patients with stroke. So, subsequently, several reports were published aiming to estimate the incidence of stroke in COVID. Rather contradictory with the incidence, estimates are ranging from as low as 0.5% to even 5%. However, these estimates could well be inaccurate. They were observational studies. Most of them were limited to the inpatient setting. Most of them were single-center studies. Most of them, if not all, were retrospective studies. So, there was really a high risk of registration and assessment bias, as well as reporting bias. And also remember that back then during the outbreak, people were really reluctant to visit the hospital, even if they had a serious condition like stroke, an urgent condition, which means that the real incidences could be even higher. So, it was our feeling that these estimates were perhaps inaccurate. And there are also some meta-analyses of these studies which estimate that the incidence of stroke in COVID is about 1.5%. But, of course, any meta-analysis is as good as the studies it includes. So, we tried to find a way to have a more accurate estimate than these estimates. And we followed a different methodology. We studied randomized trials of COVID therapeutics, and we looked for strokes reported as adverse events or as outcome events. And the good thing about randomized trials is the rigorous assessment and reporting of outcomes in adverse events. So, we think, we believe, that this methodology provides a more reliable and a more robust estimate of stroke incidence in COVID patients. Dr. Negar Asdaghi:         OK. George, it's very important what you just mentioned, so I wanted to recap for our listeners some of the things you mentioned. It all started with a letter to the editor of New England Journal of Medicine on a report of five young patients that had large vessel occlusion in the setting of COVID. And then, basically, the floodgates opened in terms of all these observational studies that basically reported the same. And subsequent to that, meta-analyses that were completed containing those observational studies predominantly gave us an incident rate of 0.5 to 5%. That's much, much higher than basically the non-COVID–associated incidence rate of stroke in the population-based studies, and basically suggested that COVID-19 is indeed a major risk factor for all types of stroke. So, that's where it all started. And, as you alluded to, these numbers had to be reverified in bigger settings, more controlled setting. And you already answered my next question, which is the difference between those studies and prior meta-analyses to the current meta-analysis is that you basically took the simple question and started looking at it in a controlled setting of randomized trials. And you already answered this question of the methodology, but I want to recap. You took basically patients included in randomized trials of therapeutics for COVID-19, various therapies for COVID-19, and you did a meta-analysis to see what were the incident rate of stroke as an outcome in these trials. So, with that, could you please tell us a little more about the population that you had in this meta-analysis in terms of their age, the types of therapies that these randomized trials had looked at, and the duration of the follow-up, please? Dr. George Ntaios:          The follow-up included 77 randomized trials, which corresponds to more than 38,000 COVID patients. The mean age of these patients was about 55 years of age, and they were followed for an average of 23 days after study enrollment. With regard to the set strategy, I think it was not strict at all. I would rather say it was very liberal. We allowed trials of any drug in COVID patients of any age, of any severity, coming from any setting: outpatient, inpatient, either general ward or intensive care unit. And from any country. I don't think that we could achieve a wider inclusion than this strategy did. And the huge majority of patients, more than 95%, they were hospitalized patients. So, by definition, they had severe COVID disease. And the drugs studied in these trials included everything that was actually tried in COVID, including tocilizumab, IL-6R inhibitors, steroids, remdesivir, chloroquine, azithromycin, ritonavir, interferon, ivermectin, and many other drugs. So, I think we tried to include as many trials as possible. Dr. Negar Asdaghi:         OK. So, let me see if I got it. You basically included 77 randomized trials. It is a younger population of patients in these trials, median aged 55. You had a total of over 38,000 patients. It's a great sample size for this meta-analysis. And importantly, the duration of follow-up is median of 23 days. And it's just about any treatments we've heard that have been tried for COVID, from dexamethasone to remdesivir and ivermectin. And a rigorous methodology. So, I think we're ready to hear the primary results of this meta-analysis. How many strokes happened in these patients? Dr. George Ntaios:          In the overall population, that is both in the hospital and in the outpatient setting, there were totally 65 strokes in these 38,000 COVID patients, which corresponds to one stroke every 600 COVID patients or else an incident of only 0.16%, 0.16%. This is very low, much lower than the previous estimates. And, of note, all strokes occurred in hospitalized patients. There were no strokes at all in the ambulatory COVID patients. So, just to repeat the result, we just found that only one patient will have a stroke every 600 COVID patients who are either hospitalized or are ambulatory. Dr. Negar Asdaghi:         OK. So, I need to have these numbers, I think, committed to memory, especially when we speak to family members and patients in the hospital. Ninety-five percent of the patient population of this meta-analysis were inpatient COVID. So, by definition, they must be sicker in terms of the severity of their COVID disease. Out of 38,000 patients, you had 65 events of stroke. So, these are very, very important numbers, a lot basically lower than the incidence rate reported from prior studies. So, I wanted to ask you about the sensitivity analysis that was done in the meta-analysis. Dr. George Ntaios:          Yes. When we designed the analysis, we were expecting that we would find numbers was similar to those reported before. So, we thought that perhaps a sensitivity analysis would be able to increase the confidence and the robustness of the results. That's why we did this sensitivity analysis. However, it proved that the number of strokes, the number of outcome events was much lower than what expected. So, the power for those sensitivity analysis to show a meaningful conclusion was low. So, actually, that's why we don't comment at all on those sensitivity analysis because there were so few strokes to support such an analysis. Dr. Negar Asdaghi:         OK. So, basically, you had a priori design the meta-analysis based on the assumption that the incidence rate of stroke would be a lot higher, but then later on, when the incidence rates was lower, then the sensitivity analysis didn't really give any meaningful data to us. So, I mean, I think we already talked about this, but I want to ask you, why do you think that the incidence rates were so much lower in your analysis than the prior meta-analysis? Dr. George Ntaios:          I believe that our estimate is quite accurate. I think that the reports of stroke incidence published during the pandemic possibly overestimated the association. I think that the early concern that we all had in the beginning, that we would be flooded with strokes during the pandemic, was not confirmed. I think that we can support with decent confidence that stroke is a rare or perhaps very rare complication of COVID. Dr. Negar Asdaghi:         Right. That's great news. That really is great news, and we take every bit of good news in these trying times. George, something that was not touched on in the paper, but I want to ask you and basically get your opinion on this matter, is a much talked about concept in the COVID literature of how COVID could potentially modify certain risk factors. There are much talk about how people with pre-existing diabetes or obesity can potentially develop more severe COVID and, hence, have more complications of COVID, including stroke. What is your clinical experience on this matter, and do you think there are certain predictors of development of COVID-associated stroke? Dr. George Ntaios:          That's a very good point. For the last two years, I was involved in the hospitalization management of COVID patients. So, what we see is what is also described in the literature, that there are certain patient characteristics that predispose them to severe COVID. For example, obesity, for example, older age, pregnancy. Perhaps our analysis was not designed to respond to this question. The data available on the studies that were included, they could not support such an analysis. So, I cannot provide information from our study. But the fact that all strokes in our study, they occurred in hospitalized patients and none of them occurred in ambulatory patients, confirms what is known, that those strokes occurred in patients who, by definition, they have severe COVID disease. So, they confirm this putative association that perhaps severe COVID is associated with stroke rather than just mild COVID. Dr. Negar Asdaghi:         All right. Thank you. And I just want to end with this simple question that I get asked often, and I want to see how you respond to patients or their loved ones when you're asked this question: "Doctor, did COVID give me a stroke?" How should we answer that question? Dr. George Ntaios:          Yes. As we discussed, I think that stroke is a rather rare or perhaps very rare complication of stroke and certainly less frequent than we initially thought. And in those stroke patients who had already other pathologies which can cause stroke, I would be rather reluctant to attribute it to COVID. I would be perhaps more willing to do so in younger patients, but again, only after exhaustively looking for another cause, like PFO, dissection, etc. I mean, the concern is that if we as the treating stroke physicians assume that the stroke is caused by COVID, then we might discourage patients from doing the necessary diagnostic workup to find the actual cause of stroke. And if it happens, then perhaps an underlying pathology may be missed, which means that the patient will remain vulnerable to stroke recurrence. So, in general, I'm rather very reluctant to say that the stroke is caused by COVID unless a really thorough diagnostic workup shows nothing else at all. Dr. Negar Asdaghi:         All right. Very important message now to all practicing clinicians is don't stop at COVID. Don't just say simply, "Oh, this is COVID. COVID gave you a stroke." Keep looking for potential causes of stroke. Still do put that patient in the category of potentially ESUS or cryptogenic stroke if no other causes are found. And keep in mind that stroke is rare or, as George said, a very rare complication of COVID. Dr. George Ntaios, this is an exceedingly timely topic and a very important contribution to the field. Congratulations again on your paper, and thanks for taking the time to chatting with us today. Dr. George Ntaios:          Thank you for the wonderful discussion, Negar, and for the focus of our work. Dr. Negar Asdaghi:         Thank you. And this concludes our podcast for the November 2022 issue of Stroke. As always, please be sure to check out the table of contents for the full list of publications, as we can only cover a fraction of the incredible science published in this journal each month. And don't forget to check our fantastic Literature Synopsis. In this month's issue, we read a short summary of the ACST-2 trial published in Lancet on the results of a randomized comparison of stenting versus endarterectomy in asymptomatic carotid disease patients with over 60% of carotid stenosis. We also have the results of the CASSISS randomized trial, which was published in JAMA earlier this year, and it studied the effect of stenting plus maximal medical therapy versus maximum medical therapy alone on the risk of subsequent stroke and death in patients with symptomatic intracranial stenosis, either in the anterior or in the posterior circulation. CASSISS did not show that stenting was superior to maximum medical therapy, and sadly, these patients remain at a substantial risk of recurrent stroke despite being on best medical therapy. But I wouldn't be too despondent about the future of interventional therapy for intracranial atherosclerotic disease. After all, we've come a long way since Dr. Charles Thomas Stent, an English dentist, started experimenting with products to advance the field of denture making around 1865. The work that Dr. Stent had started would be continued by his two sons, both dentists, to eventually make its way to products to create surgical tools. But it would be another 100 years before the first percutaneous coronary procedure was completed in 1964. And in honor of Dr. Stent's pioneering work, the device used to keep the coronaries open was named, you guessed it, stents. Today's stroke care cannot be imagined without the use of various stents, and there's no doubt the future is promising for ways in which we will be able to safely treat intracranial atherosclerotic disease amongst all other vascular disorders. And what better way to keep our enthusiasm than staying alert with Stroke Alert. This program is copyright of the American Heart Association, 2022. The opinions expressed by speakers in this podcast are their own and not necessarily those of the editors or of the American Heart Association. For more, visit AHAjournals.org.

Dr. Ana Velez, Associate Professor with the University of South Florida Division of Infectious Diseases, presents an overview of clinically significant respiratory viruses. Dr. Velez mentions several agents including parainfluenza, RSV, Human Metapneumovirus, Influenza A and B, Rhinoviruses, and the non-COVID-19 Coronaviruses. The speaker touches on the seasonality of respiratory viruses, reviews clinical manifestations, epidemiology, prevention and treatment options.

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Dr. Melisa Shah, an infectious disease physician and a recent graduate of CDC's Epidemic Intelligence Service, and Sarah Gregory discuss the seasonality of common human coronaviruses in the United States.

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Enantiodromia, published by ChristianKl on August 31, 2022 on LessWrong. Oxford Languages defines enantiodromia as “the tendency of things to change into their opposites, especially as a supposed governing principle of natural cycles and of psychological development”. While Plato's works are so influential that the project of Western philosophy is sometimes described as footnotes to Plato, his discussion of enantiodromia is not part of our standard Western worldview. To the extent that the principle of enantiodromia exists, it matters individually, it matters for choosing the right public policy and it matters for AI safety. Enantiodromia in Jewish college admissions One practical example of enantiodromia is a public policy with the goal of creating racial equality. In the 20th century, elite universities found that they admitted a higher proportion of Jewish people than people of other backgrounds. They were admitting more Jewish people because Jewish people scored on average higher than non-Jewish people. To cut down the number of Jewish admissions they thought up a clever way where they added subjective character judgments as an admission criterion which allowed them to cut down the percentage of Jewish admission. In a world where the performance of a lawyer or doctor correlates with their SAT score if the SAT score is the only thing that matters for admissions, whether or not a lawyer or doctor is Jewish is not going to correlate strongly with their SAT scores. Once you have a policy, where Jewish people need a higher SAT score to be accepted, the Jewish lawyers and doctors will on average have a higher SAT score and thus higher competency. This competency difference in turn reinforces stereotypes. In a world, where the admission criteria result in Jewish lawyers being on average more competent than non-Jewish lawyers the stereotype of Jewish lawyers being more competent is justified. A smart person who seeks a competent lawyer has an easier time determining whether the last name of the lawyer sounds Jewish than determining the SAT score of the lawyer. In the end, the policy to create equality between Jewish people and non-Jewish created stereotypes about how Jewish people are unequal. This is enantiodromia. Given that the dynamic of enantiodromia does not exist in the public consciousness it's very hard to talk about enantiodromia plays out with modern social justice policies, so it's left as an exercise for the reader to think through the details. Examples in society Celibacy as a means to reduce sexually driven misbehavior provided fertile ground for an environment of sexual abuse scandals. Over in Buddism which has its own celibacy expectations for ordained monks we see an abundance of sex scandals as well even when they are of a different nature than the scandals of the catholic church. Research driven by the desire for pandemic preparedness led to Chinese researchers doing gain-of-function experiments on Coronaviruses under biosafety level II (not suitable for protecting researchers against airborne viruses) in Wuhan. Shortly afterward we see an airborne Coronavirus emerging from Wuhan which a genome that looks at first glace inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory which causes a global pandemic. In my native country of Germany, our population cares very deeply about climate change. While you might expect that this leads to lower CO2 output as other European countries like Great Britain or France where environmentalism is weaker, the opposite is the case. German environmentalism managed to shut down nuclear power plants which in turn led to higher CO2 emissions. While unsuccessful German environmentalists even fought the newly created Tesla plant near Berlin. Enantiodromia clashes with enlightenment values. In the protest work ethic, hard wo...

Dan Werb, PhD, is a writer and epidemiologist, with faculty positions in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Global Public Health at the University of California San Diego and at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. Werb is the author of, most recently, The Invisible Siege: The Rise of Coronaviruses and the Search for a Cure, and has authored over one hundred epidemiological studies investigating the link between the spread of disease and social conditions. In this episode, Ryan and Dad talk about the power of story, how to take complicated ideas and make them palatable, and much more. You can find Dan Werb on Twitter @dmwerb. Mentioned on the Show: Dan's Book: The Invisible Seige Subscribe to the Newsletter: https://www.ryanjpelton.com/hints-of-hope-newsletter/ Free creativity tools: https://www.ryanjpelton.com/tools/ Leave a rating or review on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-prolific-creator/id1185387038

For most of history, coronavirus knowledge was limited to a couple of types that caused the common cold. For the past couple of years, the world has dealt with a much different variation.

God Warns of Worse Pestilence (2)  (Audio) David Eells - 4/6/22 Pestilence Food and Energy Many things promised are happening now but dont expect to hear about it on MSM. Although they are having to report on the Biden laptop to avoid the expense of losing all credibility. It appears DS is throwing the Biden crime family under the bus.   What we are hearing from various sources is that very soon we will see a (planned) global economic collapse. This will be a world wide shutdown to change over from the worthless dollar to asset backed currencies and the new QFS economic system of the Alliance.   Solar storms may be blamed for the electrical and internet collapse.  Back up your computers and anything online. Also food and fuel and industrial supplies lines will likely collapse. A large portion of this is due to China's actions of which include price controls which could well tip us over the edge bringing down many companies around the world and shipping. Almost the whole world depends on China for food, industrial supplies, electronics, chips, computer parts, etc.  Many banks could shut down at least for a few days to switch over to QFS. Get some cash out as even ATM's may go down. Insiders from early on have warned to have at least 2-3 weeks worth of food, cash, water, fuel, and essentials. Tell your friends who dont know God to be their Jehovah Jireh provider. The military will be standing by to help also. The rest of you trust in Jesus who said in Mat 6:25-26  Therefore I say unto you, Be not anxious for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than the food, and the body than the raiment?  26  Behold the birds of the heaven, that they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; and your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are not ye of much more value than they? Mat 6:30-34  But if God doth so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?  31  Be not therefore anxious, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?  32  For after all these things do the Gentiles seek; for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.  33  But seek ye first his kingdom, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.  34  Be not therefore anxious for the morrow: for the morrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Mat 7:7-12  Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:  8  for every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.  9  Or what man is there of you, who, if his son shall ask him for a loaf, will give him a stone;  10  or if he shall ask for a fish, will give him a serpent?  11  If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father who is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?  12  All things therefore whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do ye also unto them: for this is the law and the prophets. The Emergency Broadcast System with its declass of D.S. crimes, and the Starlink Quantum Internet are said to be very near along with Project Odin. The switchover will include Tesla Free Energy which has been tested and is still running in some areas of the US.  The wild card of course is the D.S. who desperately wants all of this to stop. We are told that soon there will be only military intelligence which would cut out a lot of crime but could eventually phase into world crime since neither beast knows God.  Dr Sherry Tenpenny has said that every fully death jabbed (vaccinated) person over 30 years of age will have Aids by the end of this year. How is that for a plague for those who trust in man and not God? Also China is in lockdown with a more deadly man made strain of Covid. Pfizer Documents prove that inhalation and skin contact with vaccinated people can infect the unvaccinated with the vaccine. https://thetruedefender.com/bomb-stay-away-from-the-vaccinated/   It is time for everyone to heed the warnings in God's Vaccine Book the 7 simple steps to be immune from plagues/pestilences.   Famine in “Food City" Marie Kelton - 3/26/22 (David's notes in red)   The Lord gave me an open vision, while I was at work in Food City. (Representing the larger food supply system.) I was cutting cheese on the cheese slicer and I looked up at where we keep the menu for the food. It was all gray (Representing a spirit of death from starvation.); there were no lights on (Representing energy and electricity shortages.) and the sun light was shining through the windows but it was gray too. I looked around me and saw that everything looked gray. No one was in the store and I saw that weeds and grass had grown up all in Food City. (This is a warning that without prayer and faith we will see a desperate situation. I asked the Lord if this was something that can be changed by prayer and faith and got a Yes. But He told me He would only change it in measure.)   Then today on 3/29/22, I was cutting meat for a customer, and I was facing the area where we keep bread and pies etc. I had an open vision of it being gray again and desolate and weeds and vines had grown in Food City. There were no lights on and no food on the shelves. Then I heard the Lord say, “Your house is left unto you desolate”. I wasn't sure if I was hearing correctly so he spoke it again, “Your house left unto you desolate."  That was the end of the vision. Mat 23:37-39 O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that killeth the prophets, and stoneth them that are sent unto her! How often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! 38 Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. 39 For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. (The Lord is coming again in His Man-child corporate body in the midst of desolation to save His elect and gather together all the members of the Body of Christ.) Beast Engineered Energy and Food Shortages Vanessa Weeks - 9/29/21 (David's notes in red) I dreamed I was standing on the sidewalk in front of an Atlantic and Pacific (A&P) grocery store . (Representing that this dream is occurring all over the U.S. from the Atlantic to the Pacific.) In the dream I was thinking about Kathy, (meaning pure) Lakesha's mom, telling me she used to work at an A&P in Texas (meaning: friends). (This is signifying a pure message given to the friends of God.) The outside of the store was box shaped like Kentucky Fried Chicken, (The fast food stores are going down too.) and it was all orange and brown except for the white letters of A&P and a white picture of Colonel Sanders on the sign. (Orange and brown are fall colors.) (Fall is a play on words, we are watching the FALL of the D.S. now. Factions are falling along with the Economy, the rigged election, Forced Va/cc/inat/ions, News Media, Internet, DS Satellites, Electricity. God is giving us a short time to prepare the Church for the Great Tribulation when liberal communists will once again gain control to bring the Church to her cross. All the great things coming now will ultimately be given over to the last Beast.) I wondered if the store was open, and I looked into a front window and saw small tables and chairs like a restaurant. All the lights were out. It was the middle of the day and I realized it was closed.  (They are being closed from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The DS has been destroying all the food sources to break the supply chain. The restaurant being closed represents the shut down of the economy and the food shortage. All of this evil is being realized, even by the liberals and will fall. Communism, Liberalism, the Democratic Party, are falling for a short time to give us time to rebuild the Kingdom.)  But I opened the front door and went in anyway. It was very dim there and I saw cobwebs everywhere.(Cobwebs represent that the supply chain is currently breaking down.) Then I knew that this store had gone out of business because they could not pay their debts. (This is what actually happened to A&P, but I did not know that till after I had this dream.) (The easy money printing policies of the Federal Reserve has caused a massive debt bubble that will eventually bankrupt the world and cause a global reset. Many small businesses and individuals will be the hardest hit casualties of the planned financial collapse. The GCR will infuse tons of money to turn this around as Trump goes back officially in office. (But the truth is that he's not coming back because he never left.) There were stairs in the middle of the restaurant and I walked up the stairs and saw empty cardboard boxes, like this was their supply room. (This represents shipping and receiving failed and supply lines failed. The supply chain shortages are breaking the backs of business and industry all over the world.) As I walked back down the stairs I saw many cobwebs. (The warning is they were not brought back quickly as suspected and that there could be a delay. We are being shown to pray against this delay.) Back at the lower level, which looked like a restaurant, I saw that people had left things behind, very suddenly. (Representing that these events are taking place very quickly and suddenly before most people, who are not awake, have time to prepare.)  I also saw a few original Edison light bulbs hanging from the ceiling, and knew that this store was only getting electricity 2 or 3 hours a day. (Many countries around the world are experiencing an engineered energy crisis and are having to ration electricity which will soon fail.)  (After I woke up, I thought that maybe this has to do with the electric energy being switched over to Tesla energy.) (The stores closed when electricity was failing and before it was changed to Tesla Free Energy. The system failed for lack of electricity and supply lines. Vehicles need the gas and diesel electric pumps at the stations to run. I asked the Lord if we should pray that the electrical switchover and supply lines would be restored quickly and got a YES. This dream is a warning that if Christians do not pray, this switch over to the new economy will fail.) I asked Him about the Edison light bulb and received by faith at random Zep. 3:10. (In context 7-13)  I said, 'Surely you will fear me; you will accept correction. Then your dwelling would not be cut off according to all that I have appointed against you.' (Christians must repent of their wandering from the Word and cling to the ancient light given to the Apostolic forefathers.) But all the more they were eager to make all their deeds corrupt. (They turn against the Word to be taken into beast captivity)  8 "Therefore wait for me," declares the LORD, "for the day when I rise up to seize the prey. (Judgment shall fall also upon the global community.) For my decision is to gather nations, to assemble kingdoms, to pour out upon them my indignation, all my burning anger; for in the fire of my jealousy all the earth shall be consumed. 9 "For at that time I will change the speech of the peoples to a pure speech, (i.e. many will come to repentance through these judgments.) that all of them may call upon the name of the LORD and serve him with one accord.  10 From beyond the rivers of Cush my worshipers, the daughter of my dispersed ones, shall bring my offering. (Christians must confess their sins and claim the blood of the Lamb for their sacrifice; calling upon the Lord.) 11 "On that day you shall not be put to shame because of the deeds by which you have rebelled against me; for then I will remove from your midst your proudly exultant ones, and you shall no longer be haughty in my holy mountain. 12 But I will leave in your midst a people humble and lowly. They shall seek refuge in the name of the LORD, 13 those who are left in Israel; they shall do no injustice and speak no lies, nor shall there be found in their mouth a deceitful tongue. For they shall graze and lie down, and none shall make them afraid.” (Let us cast down the delays by the DS and push them to the Red Sea so that the people can have revival on the other side and be ready for the wilderness tribulation.) Faith Tested for Provision  Eve Brast - 2/10/22 (David's notes in red) I dreamed that I was in a small room with David and Michael and several other local UBM brethren. This room had white walls and blue indoor/outdoor carpet. (The white walls represent sanctification from the world. Blue on the floor represents a heavenly walk.) I and another sister each brought a package of 8 flour tortillas, totaling 16, to distribute to the brethren in the room. Everyone in the dream was hungry and these 2 packages of tortillas was all we had to feed everyone with. I knew in the dream that there was extreme lack and shortages of food all around the country. (Aside from the obvious, literal problem we can see that spiritually speaking, there is a famine of the Word also. Tortillas are unleavened bread meaning the pure Word and 8 is the number of Jesus who is the bread of life.)  We started to pass them out but realized that there wasn't going to physically be enough to go around, because the young men and the older men would need more to keep up their strength. (The evangelists and teachers should be the first to receive the message so they can distribute it. Literally, Christians are going to be tested as to whether they can believe the Word of God. Mat. 6:26  Behold the birds of the heaven, that they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; and your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are not ye of much more value than they?) So we gave the men a larger portion and the women and children got a little; just enough to sustain them. (We should remember that Jesus multiplied the fishes and the loaves and He is the same yesterday, today, and forever, so He will do it in our day as we have seen.) David and I realized that there wouldn't even be enough this way, so we decided to fast and give our portions to the men and just pray that the Lord would supernaturally multiply the food for us all. (Many will wake up in this desperate situation to learn from Jesus to multiply the food.)  Then I woke up. Psa. 132:13-15, For Jehovah hath chosen Zion; He hath desired it for his habitation. 14 This is my resting-place for ever: Here will I dwell; for I have desired it. 15 I will abundantly bless her provision: I will satisfy her poor with bread.  And 2 Co. 9:7-13  Let each man do according as he hath purposed in his heart: not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver. 8 And God is able to make all grace abound unto you; that ye, having always all sufficiency in everything, may abound unto every good work: 9 as it is written, He hath scattered abroad, he hath given to the poor; His righteousness abideth for ever. (Those who give will receive. Those who hoard will not.) 10 And he that supplieth seed to the sower and bread for food, shall supply and multiply your seed for sowing, and increase the fruits of your righteousness: 11 ye being enriched in everything unto all liberality, which worketh through us thanksgiving to God. 12 For the ministration of this service not only filleth up the measure of the wants of the saints, but aboundeth also through many thanksgivings unto God; 13 seeing that through the proving of you by this ministration they glorify God for the obedience of your confession unto the gospel of Christ, and for the liberality of your contribution unto them and unto all. (In the natural, One of the testimonies for provision for my family after we ran out of all our food and were tested with a fast for one day was, my wife asked, “What will we do?” And I said, “Set the table." Then the 7 of us sat down and I prayed a simple prayer, “Father, you sent us here so we ask you to fill these plates or fill our stomachs.” Then my children, one by one, said, “Dad my stomach is full.” Then they began to get up from the table. Then I realized my stomach was full also. Php. 4:19, And my God shall supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. And this fits the natural and the spiritual. Another time, we ran out of food except for one pot of spaghetti. We blessed it and ate half of it and then put the rest in the refrigerator. In the morning, we took it out and the pot was full again. Like the Israelites you can't get anywhere in your wilderness where God can't supply your needs, physical and spiritual.)   Another Pestilence is Coming   Mena Lee Jones - Faithful Walk Healing Ministries - 3/29/22 (David's notes in red)   I would like to share a vision the Lord gave me in the wee hours of this morning... I saw a list appear in front of me. The list was held up and it looked as if it was on a scroll. There were numbers listed; from one to four. However, they were in descending order, like a countdown. (4,3,2,1) The numbers four through two each had a single word written next to them, however I could only make out what the word next to number four was: Cooperation. (There is a cooperation between all the countries to usher in a new world order. The D.S. plans to accomplish this is through famine and human suffering. If they control the food and access to healthcare then you control the people.) As my eyes scanned to number one, I noticed there wasn't a word next to it.  All of a sudden, I saw a creature begin to emerge out of the paper next to the number one. It was pitch black with long claws and it had a wing that resembled...a Raven's. (Ravens often symbolize harbingers of doom and death. They're associated with the occult and psychic powers, and are frequently portrayed as the companions of witches and wizards.) I turned my head before it completely emerged, but I quickly asked the Lord, “What it was He was showing me." The Lord answered swiftly. "Another pandemic is coming,”.  My vision then ended. (Famine and pestilence go together. Jer. 32:24  Behold, the mounds, they are come unto the city to take it; and the city is given into the hand of the Chaldeans that fight against it, because of the sword, and of the famine, and of the pestilence; and what thou hast spoken is come to pass; and, behold, thou seest it.) As many of you know, I was shown the current pandemic first in June 2016. Then I was told again in August 2017, and finally in July 2018 that a pestilence would sweep across the planet.  I found myself a little distraught this morning and sort of dazed, but the Lord had already told me two months prior that we would have a small window to get things done. (This meaning ministry.) He had spoken this to me as far as making plans for conferences and travel this year. The Lord said we "would have a small window where it would be safe to travel, but soon that door will close again." At the time, He didn't reference as to why, or what was going to take place that would close that window.  Saints, we are in the birth pangs. And if you understand labor, as the time for birth draws nigh, the contractions become stronger and closer together. I remember when I was in labor with my firstborn, it got to the point where my contractions were only sixty-five seconds apart. This is how things that are unfolding on earth are starting to feel, and yet, there are so many in the church that have been lulled to sleep by a satanic lullaby because they believe things are going to get better. (The New Agers are trying to convince everyone that the book of Revelation is wrong and our thousand years of peace has come.) As with all things, take this to prayer.  Covid Mutates  Isaac Payne - 2/6/22 (David's notes in red) In this dream I saw a glimpse of a news reporter on the TV. I couldn't hear the news reporter as there was no audio on the TV. It was basically a brief picture that I witnessed in this dream.    The reporter was a man in a buisness suit. The headline that appeared on the news said "Covid Mutates; 1 Million People Die." I knew in this dream that this mutation killed 1 million people within days. Then I woke up. (I repeat, Dr Sherry Tenpenny has said that every fully death jabbed (vaccinated) person over 30 years of age will have Aids by the end of this year. How is that for a plague for those who trust in man and not God? Aids is a destruction of your immune system so that anything can take you down.)   D.S. Releases a Worse Plague William Steenland - 7/6/20 (David's notes in red)   Prepare for a second Plague not like the first. I told you that Covid 19 did not fulfill all that the Lord told us three years ago that He would do with the plague to bring down the factions and apostates and that I expected more plague. Then we received this: On Jul 6, 2020, William Steenland had this dream. He said, In this dream the Lord allowed me to follow these satanists into a very rich high rise private apartment condo in NY. I knew that they had infiltrated the CDC and WHO and were executing a plan for their satanic New World Order.  The dream changed and I was still in the same condo at a small medical facility where people were dropping like flies from some unknown pathogen or contagion. There were three women and two men who were so sick they were unable to function. I tried to grab the one woman closest to me while she was falling. In the dream I knew the elite were experimenting with the next Plandemic. I said, “Ma'am! Ma'am what's wrong? Get up!" again and again, but she was dead.  I went over to the nurse who was in a back room. I could tell she knew something and was divided about it. She was very sad and on her knees. I knew it was partially because she was totally helpless to assist or medicate the sick that were there. I picked her up off the ground and somewhat screamed at her, ”What is happening to these people?” She told me, “Don't ask me that question” as she cried in fear and sadness. I yelled again for her to tell me everything you know,  what's happening to these people?! She again told me not to ask that question. She knew they were victims of a trial run for the next pandemic. In the dream I just knew it. That's the info that kept coming to me in the dream, next plandemic and trial run experiment.  Clips from Operation Disclosure:   Chinese scientists have developed a deadly Coronavirus called “NeoCoV” capable of giving a mortality rate of 34% compared to 1.6% for Covid-19. It was described in a scientific article dated January 25, 2022, published by Chinese scientists from Wuhan University. https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellness/coronavirus/article-694885   So, NeoCoV is a member of a group of Coronaviruses, one of which caused an outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) in 2012, which killed 34% of the approximately 2,500 people infected with it. According to the Chinese authors, NeoCoV binds not only to the bat DPP4 receptor found in most MERS Coronaviruses, but also weakly binds to ACE2, which is a human receptor for the highly transmissive Covid-19 virus. Similar to the laboratory creation of Covid-19, Chinese scientists have again taken a Coronavirus found in nature and artificially manipulated its structure to infect people, but now with a virus capable of giving a mortality rate of 34% compared to 1.6% for Covid-19. It is becoming obvious that China is using the threat of new viral diseases as a cover for its biological warfare program. The recent (January 2021) is alarming and indicative for the development of biological weapons the interest shown by Chinese scientists in the furin cleavage site NeoCoV…. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1873506120304165 (If you are in fear and driven toward the next vaccine suicide, try God instead. Jesus is still the same and heals all who come to him by repentance and faith. Heb 13:8  Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and to-day, (yea) and for ever. If you do not believe this you are an apostate and are in danger. Read Revelations; a large portion of the earth will die from these things. Rom 1:17  For therein is revealed a righteousness of God from faith unto faith: as it is written, But the righteous shall live by faith. Jesus bore your sin and its curse. 1Pe 2:24  who his own self bare our sins in his body upon the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto righteousness; by whose stripes ye were healed. Don't be an apostate, Learn of your Biblical provision for health in God's Vaccine Book.)  

The invasion of Ukraine by Russia - and the ensuing war - has brought food prices back into the news. This is happening on the back of the Covid-19 global pandemic that also disrupted the food supply chain, causing shortages and rising prices in many countries. So how should countries set national food policies in the face of risks and uncertainties? This is the subject of my conversation with agricultural economist Fabien Tondel. He is a researcher and Policy Officer with the European Centre for Development Policy Management - an independent think tank with a focus on making development policy work in Europe and Africa.Fabien's work encompasses research on agri-food value chain development, rural development and food security in Africa, and building sustainable food systems. The background to our conversation is this report (which Fabien co-wrote) on the rice value chain in West Africa. Rice is a staple in the region, it’s a commodity that has been at the heart of diverse food policy approaches (see this essay on the politics of rice policy in Ghana and Nigeria) from Nigeria to Ghana and Senegal. Fabien and I covered many of the subtle but familiar themes in food policy - like the difference between food security and self-sufficiency, whether there is a dilemma in using policy to protect producers or consumers, and the ever-present threat of food inflation.The transcript for the conversation is available below, and you can listen to this and many of our episodes on all popular podcast vendors.TRANSCRIPTTobi; I mean, like you and I were discussing earlier, a lot of the issues we tried to talk about last year, particularly in the report that was released by your institution back then on rice and the rice value chain. But not just that, food policy and production, particularly in Africa, West Africa, generally, are even more relevant today, because a lot has happened, some of the effects from the pandemic policies are really feeding into the system. We are seeing the rise in prices, we are seeing a lot of shortages, we are seeing a lot of supply chain problems. So, I think it's even more relevant to be having this conversation right now. I would like to start by asking you...it might sound a bit trivial, but in your reports released last year, why rice? I'm asking this against the background of Nigeria. Currently, the government is also talking about rice, I mean, it is towards the end of the year, there is a lot of anti-importation reaction from the policy circles. So, I guess, out of sheer curiosity, why Rice, rice is a bit of a political... we call it a political crop here in Nigeria. So why focus on rice, if you can answer that for me briefly?Fabien; Yes, Tobi. Rice is a highly politically charged product in many countries, in African countries, as well as in other parts of the world. Rice is an increasingly important part of the diet of African country populations, particularly in urban centers, where consumers enjoy this product because of its quality in terms of food, its taste, and also the ease of preparation, households find it very practical. And we've seen the consumption of rice increasing rapidly in African countries over the past decades, including in Nigeria. So, this is not a new phenomenon. We have seen it coming now for several decades, and at the same time, the policymakers have put a lot of emphasis on increasing rice production with the idea of satisfying the needs of their populations, with the idea of attaining self-sufficiency. Because up until now, imports of rice coming largely from Asian producers, but also from other countries have played a big role in satisfying the needs of these populations. And so, policymakers have found themselves in a difficult spot to satisfy the needs of the important critical needs of the population, but at the same time to deliver on the promises to boost domestic rice production as part of agricultural development strategies. So yes, it's a very important product politically. And we see that these issues, a bit, come to the surface in times of crisis. We saw it in 2008, during the global economic, financial, and food price crisis. And to a certain extent, we've also seen it during the COVID crisis, with uncertainties in international markets, disruptions in international supply chains, but also domestic food supply chains in many parts of the world that have raised concerns among policymakers, but also, in practical terms, made the life of many people more difficult by lifting food prices. So yes, I think it's still a very good time to talk about this.Tobi; And again, this is the background I'm coming from here. Because I mean, I'm going to be substituting rice policies with agriculture policies a lot. So, Nigeria typically promotes agricultural development as part of pursuing food security. Usually, the go-to policy is to ban importation. But we know it raises food inflation, which has been the experience of Nigerian consumers, and I think even in the region to a certain extent. So, it raises food inflation, food prices go up, either generally or even for that particular product. And then secondly, we don't see much increase in domestic production capacity for that particular product or for food generally. So, I guess my first question on that area would be, what other policy choices do you think exist for policymakers other than this policy of banning the importation, which does not really increase output, and at the same time raises domestic prices for food, which makes even the poorer household more vulnerable?Fabien; To answer your question, we have to consider the specificities of Nigeria. And also, the more general situation in West Africa and beyond Nigeria is significantly dependent on the importation of a number of processed goods, including processed food. So, I think it's good to say that the importation of rice from the point of view of certain policymakers also concerns other products - cooking oil, processed foods, etc. But again, because of the importance of rice for the typical households, including low-income households, I think there's a particular issue of rice. At the same time, the government of Nigeria has been very active over the years in promoting the production of rice. And it's still good to know also that there's a large part of the rice consumed in Nigeria comes from Nigeria. [Rice] is produced in different parts of the country, in particular, in the north and central parts of the country. And there's been progress in production. The question is, how far to go in promoting rice production? Is it economically efficient? Does it benefit rural households and farmers? What is the opportunity cost also of investing in rice production? In the end, you know, what is the best approach to support food security? I think just to go back also, I think to your first question about the study that we conducted, I should say that it all comes from the 2008 food price crisis. And sorry to go back to the past, but I think we should remind the auditors that this crisis caused serious concerns for policymakers, particularly in Western Africa, with the high prices and the protests in some places that it led to. And following these events, policymakers invested a lot of effort in improving rice production in African countries and in pursuing self-sufficiency. And we'll come back to it but there's a number of tools that are relevant for promoting agricultural development. But this situation of high import dependency raises the question of the role of trade policies. And not to conclude before analyzing the problems that trade is the main problem or too liberal policies; not protectionist enough is the problem or that, on the contrary, we should rely even more on trade. But our work really aimed to understand the role of trade policy amongst many factors in ensuring food security and Agricultural and Rural Development, and how this factor - this trade factor - played out in different contexts in the region, and then what policy implication we can draw from that. Now allow me to come back quickly to the case of Nigeria, which I find fascinating. I think we should say also that rice importation also takes place in a particular context, I think the Nigerian government has always been somewhat protective of its domestic market. And there's a rationale for that. And provided that at the same time there's a strong commitment and also an economic rationale for protecting the investments of farmers and industrial actors in this sector. But while Nigeria was more protective than its neighboring countries, this has also had the effect of diverting trade flows with certain quantities of rice still entering the country perhaps in more informal ways. I think we know that in West Africa, borders are largely porous. There's a lot of informal trade, which is, of course, a fact it's not good or bad. But this reality also has played a role in the Nigerian reactions in the trade policy area. We know that other countries in Western Africa have quite different policies than the Nigerian government. And again, this is not necessarily good or bad, it's a fact. But this raises the question of the policy coordination amongst Western African countries to attain food security and rural development objectives. Now, the import ban imposed by the Nigerian governments perhaps two years ago, which has lasted for some time has led to some disruption in the Nigerian market, in the rice market in particular. And as you were hinting, there's been a rise in rice prices [and] also in the context of a general inflation trend.And these rising prices, of course, have undermined the purchasing power of urban households. At the same time, the Nigerian government has been very active in supporting rice farmers, and the central bank has played an important role in making available money to access fertilizer and other inputs, and also to help farmers sell their rice. So, a lot of public support may also have contributed to some extent to inflation trends. And indeed, we see that this policy has had some impacts, some different impacts on different segments of the population. With farmers, at least, in some areas being relatively happy. But of course, urban households [are] suffering from the price increases and general inflation. So, I think it's in this context, also, that we should discuss the role of trade policies. Which again, I think should be a nuanced discussion looking at the different aspects of it.Tobi; So, talking about trade policies and around agricultural development of food policy generally, one thing that usually comes up in my conversation with people, and I've also read or heard so many people argue this point is the issue of domestic producers versus consumers, you know, like some kind of dilemmas that countries face on whose interests you should protect.As you pointed out, through the CBN and various other schemes here in Nigeria, there has been a lot of support for domestic production, in terms of credit facilities, in terms of access to fertilizers, and all that. But sometimes you hear retailers and so many people who are involved in rice particularly will tell you that the market price for rice is double what the price of rice is at the border. So, it is from the border to Nigeria that over half of the price of rice gets added. And now, my thinking is that we really don't see the government do enough domestically in other areas beyond simply supporting cultivation, other supply issues like storage and transportation, which raises domestic prices, which they do not make domestic producers’ price competitive with importers, we don't see a lot of emphasis on this issue.So, I want to ask you, why is that? Is it because these are big problems to solve generally, or because policymakers do not realize that these are problems? Right. So, I guess, ultimately, my point would be that, should domestic consumers pay higher prices to support producers? Because I know that urban consumers particularly are a good source of income for a lot of farmers. So, is this a policy that should be sustained or even actively maintained? Or is there a way to make this a not so difficult adjustment for all involved, including producers and consumers? That's a bit of a long question so don't mind me.Fabien; It's a long question, but it's a complex problem, also. So, I think it's normal to ask it in this way. I think you're talking about a dilemma for policymakers that is seen almost everywhere. Consumers would like to have low food prices, because it's such an important part of their budget, while farmers like to have high prices for agricultural and food products, because it's their revenue, and they need to compensate for their cost. So, there are two things. I think there can be in the short run, perhaps, some imbalance provided that these high prices entice farmers to invest more to increase the supply which should lead then to a decrease in prices which will also be beneficial to consumers. But the problem is not as simple because as you said, between the farmer and the household, there are a lot of steps to aggregate, process, and distribute the food products. And what I am talking [about] here is what we call the value chain. And so, we see that to actually expand the supply of the products, but also to ensure that the quality of these products satisfies the needs and the preferences of the consumer, there is a need for investments in enterprises that will move the products from the farms to the markets, that will process, package and distribute the products. For this to happen, public investment is needed in infrastructure, in roads, in rural areas, in physical markets, in skills, also, to ensure that the sanitary and phytosanitary standards are followed to ensure certain quality norms. And of course, all of these are important for the quality and the safety of the food. And all these different steps in the value chain often depend on multiple different policy areas that need to be coordinated for this value chain to develop. And that's perhaps a bit the technical side of things. In the reality, there are also [the] political and business interests that play a role in the planning and the implementation of these investments. So, it's a complex problem that requires coordination of policies, but also different actors with sometimes diverging business and political interests to work together to develop the whole value chain. And this is not just a problem from Nigeria, because for every country at every stage of development, the context, the technology, trade relations, the market, the preferences of consumers evolve, and it requires adapting the supply chains to these changes. So, in this case, and I can't, you know, talk too much about how well or not Nigerian policies are doing to support the development of these value chains. But yes, perhaps, we could say that a lot of attention has been given to supporting rice farmers, and also in investing in processing units. But it's probably not been enough to develop strong linkages between farmers, processors, and distributors, and in the end with urban markets, for various reasons.And also because of some limitations, a processor needs paddy of a certain quality at a certain time, fulfilling certain criteria to process it efficiently and to break even with its investment cost. A distributor, a trader, also has some constraints. If it's going to distribute local rice to sell it to supermarkets or to street markets, it needs to fulfill certain deals in certain quantities, which he might not be able to do if the linkages higher up in the supply chains are not solid enough. If he does not receive enough rice of a certain quality to fulfil his own contracts. If not, he might actually prefer to import and distribute rice produced in Asia that has a certain quality and for which also the shipments can come quickly and surely. So, we see also how the incentives of all these actors across the value chain play a role. And so, like other sectors, I think the government has a difficult task to do to develop these value chains, and also some choices to be made about to what extent to rely on imported rice versus domestically produced rice.Tobi; Okay, I'll get to my second dilemma in a bit. But to focus more on your last point is, how can countries better increase output? Should they focus more on these linkages in the value chain that you speak of? Because what we see in terms of policy responses is a lot of policy support goes into farming and land cultivation itself. And we have seen the limitations of that in terms of increasing output because, of course, it's a complex problem and there are other areas that are not fulfilling their promise in terms of linkages. On the other hand, policy support can be limited because of the balance of payment crisis that we know that some of these countries like Nigeria suffer. Public resources are not infinite. So, my question essentially is, if the government has to prioritize public support for agricultural development for domestic production, where is it better to focus a lot on resources, knowledge, and support?Fabien; Yes, Tobi. So, I start by saying that there is a consensus among experts and other actors that there's a potential for growth in the rice sector in West Africa, and perhaps even in Nigeria. And this growth can be attained in particular by raising yields and productivity in the production, processing, and distribution of rice. And raising yields is, of course, the key for many agricultural products. And it requires investment in the management of land, in inputs, improved seeds, in particular for rice; and mechanization, skills, and also in processes to reduce post-harvest losses beyond the farm. That's critical for the development of the sector. At the same time, policymakers should not lose sight of broader objectives. In the end, what matters is for farmers and rural populations to have better living conditions to have higher income and access to better public services in rural areas. It also matters to create jobs in and around agri-food value chains. These value chains can generate a lot of jobs in trading, logistics, in processing. And it also matters to ensure the food security of households. So with these broader objectives in mind - and the rice sector is only a small part of this agricultural and food system. It's important also to consider the opportunities for diversification away from staple food commodities, because as the middle class is emerging in Nigeria and other West African countries, as consumers, urban consumers especially gained purchasing power, as we tell also people to eat more fruits and vegetables for health reasons, new economic opportunities appear for farmers and agri-food value chain actors in sectors that are more profitable than rice, probably. So of course, I'm thinking about horticultural products, spices, livestock products, pulses which can provide proteins... and in these sectors, the returns on investment for [not only] farmers, but also for other actors in the value chain can be higher than for rice. So that is something... rice is important, you know, this is what we were saying at the beginning. But the problem of rice has to be seen in the broader context of the agricultural and food systems. And perhaps there is a role to play for trade, for imports, to balance the supply and the consumption in a country like Nigeria... letting farmers but also policymakers invest more resources in these other value chains that are more profitable for all these sectors.Tobi; Going further on that I want to ask you, especially relevant to this conversation, there is also the talk of industrial policy. A lot of domestic agricultural policies take place within the context of domestic industrial policies for countries. I know Nigeria has been on that path for the last six years. My question then would be, what role do exports play in food policy generally? Isn’t the better path to development through exports, and relying maybe slightly more on imports of staple food commodities, such as rice, rather than focus on growing domestically, I mean, rice, what are your thoughts?Fabien; Yes, I think perhaps, just to make sure that we understand each other and that also it's clear to our auditors, there is a rationale for ensuring that a certain part of a population's need for food is supplied by the country's farmers and domestic supply chains. We see also that in less favourable times, like during the food price crisis, the instability of international markets can disrupt domestic markets. But it's only one consideration among others. It also has to be based on the other opportunities for the domestic economy to grow and to lead to shared prosperity. And so, countries have to think also about the way they participate in the international economy, if not the regional economy. And they should not think, at least in our times, of that. So of course, exports are very important to create economic opportunities for domestic producers to generate foreign earnings because any country has to import certain goods that it cannot produce. And within the agricultural and food sectors, that's also the case. I think we see today that whether we are in Europe, in Africa, or any other part of the world, on a daily basis, we consume products produced somewhere else. And by that, I don't mean that this is the most efficient and sustainable way of securing our food security. But I think it's a reality to start with. And so, for Nigerian farmers and the broader Nigerian economy, it's important to be competitive in some sectors that produce exports and generates foreign earnings for tropical products that grow well in Nigeria, perhaps for specialty products, some fruits, and vegetables, cacao, perhaps coffee, medicinal plants, anything, you name it, I think it's important for Nigeria, also to export. And it is also the earnings from the exports that can allow the country to import the staple food commodities that it cannot produce so that policymakers can ensure stable markets and stable access to food for vulnerable households. So, I think, taking into account this reality, that we should think about policy choices, that doesn't mean that we should not change or, you know, actors should not think about the change.Again, there is perhaps a good economic rationale for increasing the production of rice and other staple foods, provided that it makes economic and social sense. And that it is, importantly, I think we haven't mentioned yet, in line with the boundaries of natural resources, with sustainability criteria. Because perhaps you might want to discuss this also, rice is a very demanding crop in terms of water, in terms of land, in terms of nutrients, it also generates greenhouse gases. So, we do also have to take these environmental aspects into consideration when promoting such a crop.Tobi; In the report, which you co-authored, which is kind of like the background to this conversation, generally. I'm going to put up a link - both the long and short version - in the show notes. You used Senegal as an example of how policy on food and in this case, rice, can evolve productively. So, I mean, for the sake of the audience, can you discuss briefly why Senegal stands out? What did it get right?Fabien; Yes, I think that Senegal stands out not only for its policies directed at the rice sector but also in other agricultural and food sectors. In recent years, the Senegalese government made efforts to better regulate agricultural and food markets, and also production. And it has done that, I think, in the context of efforts to modernize the economy while promoting inclusive development. So perhaps I think without going back to the origin of the story, I think, in Senegal, there was a certain potential to improve, to augment rice production and agricultural policies after 2008 promoted this increase in production. But quickly, policymakers were confronted with the fact that it was difficult for farmers to sell rice, to market their rice. And so given this now realized production potential, the government had to think about how to facilitate the access of this rice to the market. And of course, there was then the dilemma, I think, what to do in the situation where the imports are so important to fulfil the needs of the populations. And so, Senegal undertook a process that, for me, is very interesting by bringing together the rice importers and the actors of the domestic value chain to find a way to remedy the problem of difficult sales for locally produced rice. And these actors worked together to promote investments in the local rice value chain, which has produced some positive effects for the farmers and the local value chain actors. But that relied also on a choice, perhaps a difficult choice, to better control imports of rice to create a room in the market for the locally produced price. So currently, the government is trying to make the import licenses for rice based on the amount of locally produced rice that the wholesalers and the importers buy in a way to couple the imports with local purchases, and so, with investments in the domestic rice sector.This, of course, is a complex undertaking. It requires a rigorous approach to calculating the cost and benefits. And it's still uncertain to what extent this initiative will succeed. But we think based on our research that it is a very good experience to learn from and to exchange with other countries in the region that would like to develop the rice sector in a sustainable way, from an economic standpoint in particular. So it is also in the sense that, you know, our study concluded that countries in the ECOWAS area should collaborate more closely with each other to share experiences, to see what works, what doesn't work, for the development of the rice sector. And also, to coordinate their policies, because I come back to the beginning of our conversation, as our analysis showed [and] also as many people know, if one country adopts a certain import policy for rice and if the neighbouring countries have different policies, and the policy of the first one will affect the other ones, because of the transshipment of rice, both formal and informal, that takes place in the region. So, I wouldn't want, not only to emphasize the example of Senegal, but also the interdependencies between rice policies in the region.Tobi; That sort of leads into my next question, because, yeah, you talked about the importance of policy coordination and cooperation, especially in the region, West Africa, a lot in that report. And of course, we know that the African Continental Free Trade Agreement was recently ratified, we know that implementation is not going to be simple. It's a very complex, long process. So, my question is, I know your organization, the European Center for Development, Policy Management [ECDPM], engages a lot of players on policy, what are you guys doing to make sure that there is better policy coordination and cooperation in the area of food policy?Fabien; Yes, it's true, Tobi, that ECDPM is very active as a keen interest in regional economic integration processes, and more generally, regional and continental level cooperation. But I will just say before starting that our ambitions are limited. We are a center based in Europe. And our aim is, I think, primarily to understand economic development dynamics on the African continent, and to facilitate interactions and cooperation between different actors, between European partners, and African actors in particular.It is, you know, with this approach in mind that we've been working on specific sectors that I think are meaningful from a development point of view, I think it's still the case of the rice sector. But of course, rice, like other commodities are traded in a regional context, we could say that there's probably also some rice being traded across borders, beyond the boundaries of ECOWAS. I think there is some trade with Cameroon and with Chad and other countries. So that's also why ultimately, it's also a question that's relevant to the process of the African Continental Free Trade Agreements. But I think also the realities of rice trade, as an example, shows the complexity of economic integration, of designing and implementing common trade policies, and of moving towards better integration of economies in a way that is beneficial for different actors in the value chain. So, I think, already, starting at the level of ECOWAS, it's a relatively old regional organization, which has attained a certain level of maturity. And so, it has a number of sectoral policies that are now relatively well defined, although there's still much to be done in terms of implementation. But I think that's... it's a long-term process, as you said.And I think we should say that the ECOWAS commission is currently leading an initiative to promote production in the trade of rice in the region in a sustainable way. It's actually one of the flagship initiatives of the ECOWAS in the area of agriculture and food security. And so, there are a number of aspects in the rice sector that have to be addressed at the regional level, as we said, there is the transshipment of rice across the region. And in some cases, it leads to reactions, like bans on land imports, which is going to have repercussions for other sectors, including those who don't have much to do with rice. And of course, this can impede the process of regional and continental economic integration. At the same time, rice is a good example...again, there are trade relations within the region that play a role in the development of the domestic rice sector. Locally produced rice is traded within the region. For instance, between Burkina Faso and Mali.Malian consumers appreciate the organoleptic qualities, I mean, the taste of rice grown and parboiled in Burkina Faso, largely by small-scale women enterprises. And despite the fact that Mali is almost self-sufficient for rice, it still imports from Burkina Faso. And this is not just a curiosity, but it's also an opportunity for the development of regional agri-food value chains that can create jobs, generate more income for farmers and ensure food security. And of course, that's also a challenge at the continental level. So these processes at the regional level are one part of the puzzle, but they can play a big role in formulating better trade policies, but also in supporting the work at the national level, as in Senegal, with better regulatory frameworks for the agri-food sectors, and also to share experiences and to coordinate with perhaps the ultimate objective being to go towards like a regional market with some common policies, common norms, that can ensure the good functioning of cross border value chains. So, yes, that's something that we are paying close attention to in partnership with West African think tanks in particular. And I should say that this work of ours that you have mentioned has been done in partnership with IPAR, a think tank based in Senegal and specializing in rural development and food security.Tobi; So, given the situation that countries face today and also particularly in the region as you have said, I know we may not quite be in the same situation as the 2008 crisis, but there are familiar currents of the same problem. My question is you work on policy a lot, so what are some of the automatic policy responses or stabilizers that countries can adopt in the interim that does not make the situation worse, both for consumers and producers, and other stakeholders involved in the food value chain? What policy heuristics or intuitions can policymakers rely on? What tool is available to them to use in a time like this? Fabien; You're right, Tobi, that the COVID crisis has generated a number of disruptions that we should learn from to develop more resilience, agri-food systems in particular, and we've seen in a number of countries disruptions in agricultural and food supply chains, which also meant losses of jobs, livelihoods for certain people. And this also then can really push people back in terms of wellbeing and development. So, the problem of risk management at different levels is probably even more acute after this crisis. But it's good also to see that progress is being made. And again, if I just keep talking about the agricultural and food sector, at the ECOWAS level, there is an interesting initiative to put in place regional food reserves to deal with instability in the agri-food system at the regional level, and especially also to address emergency needs for food assistance for vulnerable populations. So, this regional reserve initiative, which is being piloted by the ECOWAS Commission, was developed as part of the ECOWAS agricultural policy. And it has two components, the physical reserve of staple food commodities that can be quickly mobilized to address the need of vulnerable populations. And there's also a financial reserve to procure food products quickly, either in the regional market or elsewhere on the continent, or even in international markets.To address supply disruptions, this is an important tool that is being developed and that should probably be encouraged in the following years. But that's only one part of the policy instruments to deal with instabilities, with shock. I think what we see in a number of African countries but even well beyond in the global south and also in more advanced countries is the importance of social protection and public services to deal with difficult times, including in the health sector. So why not a specialist of social protection, I think that there's an important role to play for food assistance, but also cash transfers and other forms of social insurance to ensure that vulnerable populations are not left on their own in very difficult situations - when a crisis hits when it disrupts economic activities when people get sick and can't go to work. And of course, one of the basic needs is food. So social protection and food policy should work hand in hand to protect livelihoods and well-being. There are a number of other instruments to deal with risk, to manage risk, I think. We've seen also that part of the problem that you have presented at the beginning is also related to the cost of fertilizer, which has gone up in [the] international market and of course, makes it more difficult for farmers, including in West Africa, to boost production. What I would say just to conclude is that going back to our example of rice, in the end, it's not so much about attaining self-sufficiency, but it's about managing the vulnerabilities that are due to these interdependencies. Whether it's because of the importation of rice, but also the reliance on exports of extractive commodities, as well as movement of populations and with them of Coronaviruses that can destabilize an economy and, of course, health systems.Tobi; You sort of...and I don't know, that has been happening a lot over the course of this conversation, your answer preempted my next question, which is like my final question. So, it is like a big picture question. What is or are the differences between food security and food self-sufficiency? Because this is a debate that has been going on for a while. And the two get mixed up quite a lot. So, you are an agricultural economist, you're an economist... some Agric economists have argued that the policies that countries that have a little more access to ports or the coast, that the policies that they adopt around agriculture should be a little bit different from countries that are landlocked... so many issues and it can be quite confusing. So, I want to hear from you, what is the difference? What are the nuances between food security within the context of a national economy and self-sufficiency?Fabien; Yes, I think it's a difficult question because there are really different views about how things work behind these two notions. But I think we have to go back to what they mean in the first place. I think food security is first in outcome about how well people access food of good quality, in conditions that will ensure good nutrition for children, for women, and for men, and certain stability. So, it's a desirable outcome that depends on a multitude of factors. Now, if we look at self-sufficiency, it's probably seen by policymakers and others as an important means to attain food security. But perhaps it is sometimes confused with an end in itself. And the policy objectives, perhaps, lose sight of the bigger picture and aim to pursue self-sufficiency, even though it's not the best policy that will lead to desirable outcomes.For rice also, you know, we can question, and if we go back to the beginning of our discussion, to what extent it is a good use of public resources to put so much of them into rice production. And if this rice production is not well channeled to the markets or is risky, because of the agro-climatic conditions in some countries, it can actually be a factor of risk, you know, if we cannot rely on the international market as a result.So, we should not confuse means and ends. But I will say that the question is actually more complicated than that because agriculture and the food sector play an important role in economic and rural development. Policymakers also look at these objectives, ensuring that out of agricultural production, rural households can generate some income can lift themselves out of poverty, and then perhaps some of them will move to urban areas, etc. And agriculture is also a sector that plays an important role in the management of natural resources. In taking care of sparsely populated areas, generating economic activities in relation to non-agricultural activities that maintain life and cohesion in rural territories. So, I think we also have to look at this role, and perhaps behind this objective of self-sufficiency, even though perhaps not everything is well thought through, there's also this intent. Now, I think there's perhaps another motivation that we should mention is that agricultural policies aiming at self-sufficiency is also a way for policymakers to gain the support of rural populations - by way of providing subsidies, resources that will improve their popularity for the next election. I think we can say that because it is, you know, it's part of the political game. And it is seen everywhere, I think, not just in developing countries, but also in advanced economies. So, but in the end, I think what's important, especially with all this matter of rice, is to look at the broader agricultural and food systems.And rice self-sufficiency at the national level, you know, if you want my own opinion, based also on my work, it's probably something to be careful with. It might not be the right policy for every country. But I will emphasize the opportunities in the sense that there are other sectors where it's important to invest, you know, where the potential for generating income and job is more important. At the same time, ensuring a good supply of locally produced rice, which can be of better quality than the imported rice, it's important, but it can be done in cooperation with other countries with a greater role for intraregional or even intra African trade. At an even higher level, I think it's important while promoting the production of African rice, where it makes economic sense, you know... it's important also to secure access to the international market. Because we don't know what can happen, especially in the context of climate change, a drought, a shortage of water can decimate the rice production in a certain year, in a certain country. And that country in these circumstances will probably have to rely on the international market to secure the food needs of its population. So, I think we have to keep in mind the multiple factors that contribute to the desired outcome of food security, and also rural development and find the right balance between the different policy objectives. And that's where I think the importance of regional cooperation, but even more so of, you know, inclusive policy dialogue that takes into account different perspectives is critical to achieving this right balance or, at least, a good enough balance between different policy objectives.Tobi; Thank you so much for clarifying that. Bonus question, if I may. We have a bit of a tradition on the show. We call it the one idea. So, what is the one idea that...it may be from your work, it may be from another field which you admire, what's the one idea that excites you so much, you want everybody to know about it, you'd like to see it spread, you'd like to see more people think about it. What is that one idea?Fabien; It's a difficult question Tobi, but I think I like this question. I think if I look forward, I think the role of young farmers and entrepreneurs is very important to solve the questions that we are discussing now. Because these entrepreneurs, farmers, you know, represent the future of agriculture. And I think I very much like how you aim also to target them through this podcast, amongst others. And I think thatI have exciting news to share: You can now read Ideas Untrapped in the new Substack app for iPhone.With the app, you’ll have a dedicated Inbox for my Substack and any others you subscribe to. New posts will never get lost in your email filters, or stuck in spam. Longer posts will never cut-off by your email app. Comments and rich media will all work seamlessly. Overall, it’s a big upgrade to the reading experience.The Substack app is currently available for iOS. If you don’t have an Apple device, you can join the Android waitlist here. you know, we, in general, you know, as policymakers, policy commentators, development partners, have to invest more in the potential of these young people to develop new ideas, new technologies, also new trade linkages to exploit the potential of these agri-food systems.Tobi; Thank you. Thank you so much. My guest today has been Fabien Tondel, the policy officer at the European Centre for Development and Policy Management. It's been an absolute pleasure speaking with you.Fabien; Thank you, Tobi. It was my pleasure as well. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.ideasuntrapped.com/subscribe

Two years into the pandemic, this week we looked at the end of public-health restrictions, will masks-off be problematic in schools, and why have COVID deaths been so hard to track. Finally, epidemiologist Dan Werb discusses his book, "The Invisible Siege: The Rise of Coronaviruses and the Search for a Cure." See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When the world was hit with a novel coronavirus two years ago, it was one of the handful of times this pathogen has been present. Or was it? Epidemiologist Dan Werb, author of "The Invisible Siege: The Rise of Coronaviruses and the Search for a Cure," discusses the world's history with the coronavirus, the intersection of outbreaks, science, and the business of finding vaccines and treatments. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In today's episode, Andy & DJ discuss Delta Airlines kicking a man off their plane for wearing a "Fuck Joe Biden" sweater, Facebook allowing posts calling for violence against "Russian invaders," and new documents that reveal the United States Military was funding bioresearch on Coronaviruses in Ukraine.

CrossPolitic Daily News Brief for Tuesday, January 28, 2020 The Left Takes Aim at Conservative Judges https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-chief-justice-roberts-must-overrule-the-judiciarys-outrageous-assault-on-the-federalist-society Josh Hammer, Editor at Large of The Daily Wire writes: “The Judicial Conference of the United States, an arcane body established by Congress and led by the chief justice of the Supreme Court, is responsible for helping establish the national policy guidelines that govern the administration of the federal courts. Alas, the Conference is arcane no longer. Over the past week, the Conference's Committee on Codes of Conduct, which oversees federal judicial ethics, has forced a national conversation by launching an absolute wrecking ball of a draft advisory opinion. The Committee, which is chaired by Judge Ralph Erickson of the Eight Circuit Court of Appeals, has 15 total members: Eight Democratic presidential nominees, five Republican presidential nominees, and two others. The Committee's advisory opinion, if formally implemented by the Committee, would “advise[] that formal affiliation” with both FedSoc and the American Constitution Society (ACS), FedSoc's (much) more overtly political progressive counterpart, “is inconsistent with” the governing Code of Conduct for United States Judges. Specifically, the Committee states that “although neither [FedSoc nor ACS] is a ‘political organization'” under the Code, “their activities nevertheless implicate [the Code's] broad prohibition against political activity” — whatever that is supposed to mean. What's worse, the draft opinion also holds that federal judges' law clerks and staff attorneys must not join either FedSoc or ACS. But on the other hand, membership with the leftist, remarkably biased American Bar Association (ABA) “does not raise these same concerns and is not necessarily inconsistent with the Code.” Hammer points out that the Federalist Society takes no positions on political issues, but exists solely in defense of an originalist interpretation of the Constitution, that is, that words have definite, objective meanings, and should be interpreted according to those meanings at the time of writing. This shared commitment leaves room for much discussion and debate among originalists. By contrast, the left-leaning legal associations, the American Constitution Society and American Bar Association frequently publish many legislative opinions across the political policy spectrum and generally hold that the Constitution is a “living document,” and may be interpreted according to the changing whims of American culture. Hammer finds the notion that the ABA does not raise these same concerns “ludicrous.” He also points out that the long term effect of something like this will discourage young conservative law students from joining the Federalist Society, leaving them with fewer networking opportunities, generally fewer jobs, and likely additional pressure to keep their opinions or questions to themselves.  No doubt all of this is a result of Trump's aggressive work to re-balance the American judicial landscape. To date, he has nominated 239 individuals, of whom 187 have been confirmed by the Senate. As of January 2, 2020, there were 80 vacancies, and 35 had pending nominations. Most, if not all, of Trump's judicial nominations have been members of the Federalist Society.  Sanctuaries for the Unborn https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/25/us/sanctuary-cities-for-unborn-anti-abortion-texas-trnd/index.html CNN: Ten towns in Texas have voted to declare themselves "sanctuary cities for the unborn," with most adopting ordinances that outlaw abortion within city limits. At least 13 cities are considering such ordinances, and three -- Mineral Wells, Omaha and Jacksboro -- have already voted against them.  Most of the towns that have enacted the pro-life ordinances have populations of less than 6,000 people. None have abortion clinics. The town of Waskom, with a population of 1,900, became the first "sanctuary city for the unborn" last June, according to the movement leading the charge across Texas. The town of Gary, with a population of 300, became the latest one last week. While Mark Lee Dickson, leader of the Sanctuaries For the Unborn movement and the director of Right to Life of East Texas was quoted by CNN, claiming that criminal penalties would be retroactively applied if Roe v. Wade is overturned, I don't really trust CNN's ability to report news, but it hasn't generally been considered lawful to prosecute people retroactively.   But regardless, there are at least two things to applaud here and encourage: First, the goal for sanctuary cities should initially be something like the underground railroad, and this means that cities that pass these ordinances should be thinking broadly about how they will support these ordinances as communities. The goal should be to have as many citizens and local businesses and lawyers and law enforcement officers committed to defending life and providing for those in need. These important steps toward resisting unjust laws need the support of entire communities. This support should be thought out in terms of providing for mothers in need, sort of city-wide Pro-life network that can provide shelter, counseling, prenatal care, food, clothing, and even assistance after the birth of children, and so on. Sanctuary cities need to give thought to how they will actually be sanctuaries for the unborn.  It may not be long before mothers are literally running for help and support to these cities, and if that happens, you better believe that the legal pressure will come against these cities with even more force. And that leads to the second point, which is that we really do need civil magistrates who are willing to play chicken with the judges and federal enforcers of unjust laws. This need not come to violence, but there is a long and venerable history of peaceful civil disobedience that needs to be cultivated in our cities, with regard to abortion, sexual morality, and marriage, among other things. To our great shame, only Kim Davis, a Kentucky county clerk stood her ground in 2015 following the Supreme Court's hilarious Obergefell decision, claiming that two dudes can get married.  Citing personal religious objections to homosexual marriage, Davis began denying marriage licenses to all couples to avoid issuing them to homosexual couples.[2][3] A lawsuit, Miller v. Davis, was filed, and Davis was ordered by the U.S. District Court to start issuing marriage licenses. She appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, but her application was denied. Davis continued to defy the court order by refusing to issue marriage licenses "under God's authority";[2] she was ultimately jailed for contempt of court. Davis was released after five days in jail under the condition that she not interfere with the efforts of her deputy clerks, who had begun issuing marriage licenses to all couples in her absence. Davis then modified the Kentucky marriage licenses used in her office so that they no longer mentioned her name. May the Lord be pleased to raise up thousands of Kim Davises who are willing to cheerful defy the insanity of our courts. This is what I mean by playing chicken with them. Make them come and stop us. Make them come and arrest us. And if whole cities and counties, and perhaps, Lord willing, whole states stand together, peacefully resisting the murder of unborn babies, and sodomite mirage, and drag queen story hours, it will at least make their lives really difficult. Which, I think is a very godly thing to do.  The Wuhan Coronavirus is Making Headlines https://www.cnn.com/asia/live-news/coronavirus-outbreak-01-27-20-intl-hnk/index.html The US State Department has ordered personnel working at the US Consulate General in Wuhan to depart for the United States, a State Department official told CNN in a statement, with a flight currently scheduled to leave on Wednesday. As of now 82 people have died and more than 2,700 cases have been confirmed, including 13 places outside of China. Nearly 60 million people are affected by full or partial lockdowns in Chinese cities. 5 cases have been confirmed in the U.S. China's health minister reported Sunday that the virus can spread even before symptoms show, making it even more difficult to contain.  Coronaviruses are common in many different species of animals, including camels and bats. Rarely, these coronaviruses can evolve and infect humans and then spread between humans.  This is why Coronaviruses are called “zoonotic,” meaning they are transmitted between animals and people. Common signs of infection include fairly ordinary cold and flu symptoms, with somewhat more intense respiratory issues. And now everyone listening with a cold wonders if they're infected.  Moments like these are good reminders that human beings are but a breath. The Lord took Kobe Bryant and his daughter and their friends in an unexpected moment this last weekend, and God rules every atom, every germ, every virus in His perfect wisdom. God has struck nations with plagues before, and there is no reason why He couldn't again. Despite all of our medical advances, for which we ought to be very grateful, God is still sovereign and men are smoke in the wind. While God has sent plagues in judgment on men for their wickedness, plagues have also been moments of glorious opportunity for followers of Christ to serve and love the sick and dying. In the early church, Christians became famous for their care of the sick and dying in various Roman plague outbreaks. When pagans left their family members behind, Christians cared for the abandoned, no doubt leading many to a saving knowledge of Christ in the process, and of course many succombed to the sicknesses themselves, not considering their own lives more valuable than the glory of laying them down for the cause of Christ.  Whatever becomes of this Wuhan coronavirus, may the Lord find us faithful at our tasks each day, gladly laying our lives down in obedience to our King, fearless of death, because our King has suffered in our place and now He holds the keys of Death and Hades, and we can never die.  This is Toby Sumpter with your CrossPolitic Daily News Brief for Tuesday, January 28, 2020. You can find this show and past episodes and all the shows on the Fight Laugh Feast Network at CrossPolitic dot com. If this is a helpful resource for you, please consider sharing it with a friend and becoming a club member. Not only will you be supporting this work, you will also get exclusive access to a number of behind the scenes interviews, master classes, and more. See you tomorrow. 

This week on The Sunday Magazine with Piya Chattopadhyay • Historian Margaret MacMillan unpacks how the war in Ukraine threatens the global order • Disaster psychologist Dr. Sarb Johal on how COVID-19 sent us into a collective existential crisis • Epidemiologist Dan Werb traces the underestimated history of coronaviruses • Maude Barlow reflects on a lifetime of activism and the keys to not giving up Discover more at https://www.cbc.ca/sunday

The World Health Organisation has revealed that a new coronavirus was discovered by Chinese scientists and may pose a threat to humans in the future. Researchers from Wuhan, China, where Covid-19 was first spotted in 2019, found this new virus amongst bats in South Africa. At the same time, they warned of its high death and transmission rate. According to experts, the NeoCoV virus is not new. It is associated with the MERS-CoV virus, in outbreaks in Middle Eastern countries in 2012 and 2015, and is similar to SARS-CoV-2, which causes Covid-19 in humans. Coronaviruses are a wide range of viruses that can cause a variety of diseases, ranging from the common cold to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, SARS.

In today's top stories, Army vaccine could protect against array of COVID-19 variant. In other news, 5G's next big launch could make its improved speed promises a reality. And finally, Amazon reverses decision to stop accepting UK-issued Visa credit cards.

Since we first spoke to Leidos Chief Medical Officer Dr. Donald Kosiak 18 months ago, the world has changed in a myriad of ways we could never have imagined.In today's episode, Dr. Kosiak discusses variants, vaccines, masks, what the strategy is for exiting the pandemic and what we might see in the future when we manage to move past it. At the start of the pandemic, people were thinking we might be able to suppress the virus, meaning we would eradicate it, but that's just not the case. Coronaviruses tend to need to become endemic, like the common cold. Meaning the only way out of the pandemic for all of us is through immunity. And that immunity can come in several ways: from getting COVID in the past and recovering, from getting the vaccine and gathering immunity, or a hybrid of those, i.e. getting the vaccine and having COVID infection. “Until a large percentage of the global population, not just that of the United States, has one of those three things happen, we'll be reading about COVID and dealing with COVID for the foreseeable future.”On today's podcast:The strategy for exiting the pandemicWhat we can learn from past pandemicsThe vaccines and their effectivenessThe Delta variant and breakthrough casesThe debate on masks

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health (Public Health) is cooperating with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to respond to recent reports of a novel (new) coronavirus. Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses, some causing respiratory illness in people and others that circulate mostly among animals. Common symptoms in an infected person include fever, cough and shortness of breath or difficulty breathing. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/vet2vet/support

CME CREDIT IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE FOR THIS EPISODE In this episode, Dr. Clancy and coronavirus expert Dr. Stanley Perlman discuss what we've learned about coronaviruses and how we can apply that knowledge to mitigate future outbreaks. Gerard Clancy, MD, Senior Associate Dean for External Affairs and Professor of Psychiatry, University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine Stanley Perlman, MD, PhD, Professor of Microbiology and Immunology, Professor of Pediatrics, University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine Financial Disclosures Dr. Gerard Clancy, Dr. Stanley Perlman, and the members of the planning committee for Rounding@IOWA have no relevant financial relationships to disclose. Educational Objectives - After listening to this podcast, learners should be able to: Compare and contrast the 3 deadly coronavirus outbreaks since the early 2000s. Discuss the importance of facilitation of rapid response research and policy recommendation implementation in the face of an epidemic. Discuss new opportunities for increasing the speed with which new research can be transferred to the clinical field. Describe actions that scientists and the government can take to limit the impact of future viral outbreaks. Date Recorded: 3/17/2021

In this podcast, I will go over the difference between COVID-19 and Coronaviruses. Also, I will go over the definitions of coronaviruses and the questions I wonder and some answers to them too. Enjoy! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/chason-samuel/support

If we all get one cold this year, then over 50 million Americans will experience Coronaviruses OC43 and 229e symptomatically.  We will never know the number of "cases" because we don't test for it.  We probably are all exposed to these C Viruses daily.     15% of human colds are caused by these friends of ours.      Dr. Fred Clary, founder of Functional Analysis Chiropractic Technique and lifting/life coach/ gym-chalk covered philosopher opens a conversation on how  our friends OC43 and 229e are not even in the news.

This week, join me in listening to an interview with some of the authors of the paper "Coronaviruses and the Chemical Senses: Past, Present, and Future" written by: Surabhi Bhutani, Keiland Cooper, Antonella Di Pizio, Paule V. Joseph, Valentina Parma, and Bob Pellegrino. To connect with the interviewees on Twitter: Surabhi Bhutani, @SurabhiBhutani Keiland Cooper, @keilandwcooper Valentina Parma, @Val_Parma Bob Pellegrino, @kingfunk5000 To read the paper "Coronaviruses and the Chemical Senses: Past, Present, and Future" click here. To find the GCCR survey, available in many languages, click here. You can find the Global Consortium for Chemosensory Research on Twitter @GCChemosensoryR. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thesmellpodcast/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/thesmellpodcast/support

In this podcast, I speak with an outpatient primary care doc who was deployed to the healthcare frontline and a virologist who is on the frontline of Coronavirus research!⁣ ⁣ Dr. Aniqa Gorgani is a family doc in private practice on Long Island, who was pulled from her clinic to treat COVID patients in the hospital. She is a true healthcare hero!⁣ ⁣ Dr. Susan Weiss is a professor of microbiology at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine and is a world authority on Coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-2. LISTEN TO THE PODCAST ON iTUNES TOO!: itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/e... VISIT MY WEBSITE AT: www.mudgildermatology.com/ DON'T FORGET TO FOLLOW ME ON: INSTAGRAM: www.instagram.com/dr_mudgil/ FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/mudgilderm/ TWITTER: twitter.com/real_dr_mudgil EMAIL ME AT: mailto:info@mudgildermatology.com

Moving COVID-19 patients from one ICU to another is possible thanks to transportation ventilators. In the second of two episodes on ventilators, James Di Virgilio talks to Dr. Richard Melker, Professor Emeritus of Anesthesiology at the University of Florida College of Medicine. He holds over 25 issued U.S. patents including several for emergency medical devices in use throughout the world, and by the US Special Forces. TRANSCRIPT: Intro: 0:00 Welcome to a special two-part edition of Radio Cade . We’ll be discussing COVID-19 and ventilators. In part one, we visit with Dr. Sem Lampotang. And in part two, we visit with Dr. Richard Melker. We hope you enjoy the program. Inventors and their inventions. Welcome to Radio Cade a podcast from the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention in Gainesville, Florida. The museum is named after James Robert Cade , who invented Gatorade in 1965. My name is Richard Miles. We’ll introduce you to inventors and the things that motivate them, we’ll learn about their personal stories, how their inventions work and how their ideas get from the laboratory to the marketplace. James Di Virgilio: 0:54 Welcome to a special episode of Radio Cade. I’m your host, James Di Virgilio. Today we’re going to be covering mechanical ventilation and its effect on the COVID-19 crisis. Mechanical ventilation is a life-saving therapy that is used extensively and modern intensive care units. The origins of modern mechanical ventilation can be traced back five centuries ago to the seminal work of Andreas Vasilis really the founder of modern human anatomy. Joining the program now is Dr. Richard Melker. We just had him on the show very recently. He is the professor emeritus at the Department of Anesthesiology at the UF College of Medicine. We touched on ventilators last time you were with us Dr. Melker, COVID-19 had not taken off yet like it is now. We want to talk with you about ventilators. I know you have a story about how you got interested in them. Welcome to the show. And tell us a little bit about that story. Dr. Richard Melker: 1:49 Well, thank you. Yeah, I think using a chronological order will allow people to understand how we got to the sophisticated ventilators we have today, and also as to why we don’t have enough of them. So I went to medical school and graduated in 1974 and did my residency in pediatrics at a hospital in Los Angeles called Harbor General Hospital. It’s now called Harbor UCLA Medical Center, but most people would never recognize the name of the hospital, but the hospital had another name called Rampart General. And Rampart General was a hospital used in a TV show called The Emergency. And back in the days, when I was doing my residency at Harvard General Hospital, they were filming this show and using my hospital as where the patients were taken by ambulance. And I was doing my residency and realize that when the paramedics came in, they really had no understanding about children. So I went to the chairman of my department and I said, you know, Los Angeles County has one of the best EMS systems in the United States. It was one of 12 systems that was a paramedic system at the time. And I said, if I can spend some time with them, I would like to write some material that they could use for training paramedics on how to care for children. And my chairman was all for it. So every Friday at 12 o’clock, I would leave the hospital and I would go to ride with the paramedics for the rest of the day. And the fire station that they were using on television was actually the fire station that I worked out of with the paramedics. And by the time I completed my residency and was ready to move to Florida, I had written a textbook some information on how paramedics should care for children. And so I had filled a gap that one wouldn’t think needed to be filled, but it was very clear that it was because this information was shared around the United States. So I came to the University of Florida in 1977, and I did a fellowship. And during that fellowship, which means I was already a licensed physician and I spent two additional years doing pediatric cardiology and critical care medicine. And I was fortunate enough at the University of Florida to work in the critical care division with some of the most brilliant faculty who were developers of some of the original ventilators that were used, both for adults and for children. And when I completed that fellowship, obviously I knew a lot more about ventilators. And when I started and I became the medical director of the Alachua County EMS system, and I started riding on the ambulance with the crews, or I would carry a radio and I would meet them at the scene of an accident or whatever the medical issue was. And what I realized was that on the way to the hospital, they were ventilating patients. And I’ll describe ventilation in a moment. I’ll define it for you. They were ventilating in patients with what was called the demand valve. And basically many of your listeners would be familiar with a lot of demand valves like scuba gear. When you want to take a breath, you breathe in and the valve gives you as much air compressed air as you need. And when you’re filling your lungs with air, then you exhale. And the valve closes so that it’s not wasting gas. And you’re only using the gas when you need it. Another example of a demand valve is a fireman where these face masks, which have a demand valve built into them so that they can go into a fire and their faces are covered and they’re breathing air from a cylinder. And so they’re not breathing in all the toxic fumes and everything. So anyway, the demand valve that was used for all these other applications had been modified so that you could use it to ventilate a patient. So what are you trying to do when you have a patient who’s not breathing on their own or breathing inadequately? What you’re trying to do is to push gas into their lungs. And in order to do that, you have to use a pressure higher than the ambient pressure. So you push the button on the demand valve and it forces oxygen into their lungs. And when they exhale outcomes the carbon dioxide, that’s building up in their blood. So when you ventilate somebody, you give them oxygen under pressure. And then they usually passively the lung recoils and outcomes, the carbon dioxide. So that’s what a ventilator does. And a ventilator is different than a respirator. And the terminology right now is getting very confused. Respirators are devices that the user is breathing normally, and either it filters the air or serve some other purpose, but it’s driven by the normal breathing pattern of the patient who’s using it. So when you and I are breathing like, while we’re talking, now I take a breath in and the pressure inside my chest is lower than the sea level pressure that we’re at. And therefore a gas goes into my lungs and that requires muscles, the respiratory muscles for that gas to get into my lungs. The gas comes out when you stop breathing in because the chest wall and the muscles recoil and the gas comes out. So a respirator is a device where the user is breathing in and out. Now a ventilator is a device that does exactly the opposite if using positive pressure forces gas into the lungs of the patient, and then they exhale. So some people say you inhale and you exhale. And other people use the older terminology where you’re really then is inspiration. But unfortunately when you breathe out, it’s expiration. So you’re expiring. And with what’s going on now, and other terms we went to inhalation and exhalation because of the poor connotation of the word expired . So I’m now at the University of Florida. And I I’m looking at these devices that the paramedics are using. And I was fortunate to have many colleagues, like I said earlier, who had a lot of background in the development of ventilators. As a matter of fact, some of our faculty helped develop the baby bird, which in early 1960s was the first ventilator designed specifically for neonates and these people at the time were in the military. And they developed the baby bird with a scientist and aviator by the name of Forest Bird. So anyway, one of my colleagues, a respiratory physiologist , and I went into the laboratory and studied how this demand valve that they were using on the ambulances works . And what we found is that when you push the button, it would drive gas into the stomach because the resistance to the gas was lower into the stomach than it wasn’t to the lungs. And another problem with it is that it had a peak pressure because everybody was afraid of over pressurizing the lungs. So as you push the button and the pressure went up, the flow of gas would go down. And so it became very apparent that what was needed in what’s called the prehospital arena or the military theater was a ventilator that worked just like the ventilators that we were using in the hospitals. And so with a number of colleagues and I, we developed and actually produce a number of portable ventilators, which is generically called transport ventilators. And so we spent the next couple of years writing papers and doing the research and looking at different transport ventilators. And we liked to believe that we helped advance the development of more and more sophisticated transport ventilators. James Di Virgilio: 11:03 So with regards to transport ventilators, we can look at this like other ventilators your innovation story from start to finish, you said was several years, correct? Dr. Richard Melker: 11:13 Correct. James Di Virgilio: 11:14 Okay. Where we are now with regards to ventilation, let’s bridge these stories, and we just talked with Dr. Lampotang and he was saying that the FDA of course, is relaxing some restrictions that exist, that I’m sure you were facing fully when creating your transport ventilator to allow for these new designs to come into play. So in the arena of ventilation, the question everyone is asking is why don’t we have enough ventilators. They’re academic studies that are from the early two thousands that suggest that in a surge situation, we won’t have enough of them. Hospitals could not possibly afford to have all the $50,000 ventilators, but they could have cheaper solutions on hand in the event that this happens. So why do think we haven’t done that? And should we have even done that in the first place? Maybe we should have waited until we had an event. What are the answers, I guess, to these medical innovation questions when it comes to crisis predictable crisis maybe? Not really sure. Dr. Richard Melker: 12:07 So, as you’ve mentioned, the ventilators that are being used in the hospitals to care for these patients are extremely sophisticated. The permutations and combinations of settings on these ventilators are mind boggling. And these are extremely expensive devices because they have electronics in them. And they have a lot of other features and they’re made in relatively small numbers as we have unfortunately become aware of. And so when we started working on transport ventilators, we actually had companies come to us that were contracted with the military to develop ventilators for use in the battlefield scenario. And I know of ventilators that some of those companies made for the military exclusively, which I am sure in the right patients would be more than adequate to ventilate them in the hospital. Now, one of the interesting things that we’re learning and most of this information is coming from Italy because unfortunately they were severely hit by the virus and undermanned to care for the tremendous number of patients that they saw. But the lung injury that we’re seeing with the COVID-19 virus is very different than the lung injuries that we normally use these highly sophisticated ventilators for, and I’m not doing clinical research anymore, but it would seem to me that because this lung injury is different and it doesn’t require some of the high pressures and sophisticated techniques that are used in the intensive care units, that some of these ventilators would actually be excellent ventilators for the properly chosen patients. As a matter of fact, the doctors in Italy assumed that the lung injury was similar to what they had normally encountered during their practice. And they initially set up the ventilators so that they could treat these patients. And they found that the patients were doing very poorly. So some very good scientists who were also clinicians did some studies using CT scanning and showed that when they set up the ventilator to ventilate these patients with the normal settings that they were using, they were over inflating the lungs. And what happens when you’re over inflate , the lungs, your heart can’t push blood through your lungs. And so one of the major findings that the Italians found and obviously is now well known everywhere. They’re treating patients with COVID-19 is that you don’t have to what they call positive end expiratory pressure. In other words, you don’t need a lot of pressure to keep the lung from collapsing. And as a matter of fact had deleterious effects on the patients. James Di Virgilio: 15:04 Very interesting. I don’t think I’ve seen even a single article yet that has talked about that in detail with regards to that, which to me immediately raises another question. In my professional life, I’m an investor. And all my years of studying have led me to believe that predicting things as humans is often a fool’s errand, we think we know the solution to something we say here’s variable, A and variable B, variable C will be this, which then creates something called a three body problem. For those of you listeners who enjoy things like that, where you really don’t know what the third variable is going to be. So oftentimes in my life, I’ve found that reacting quickly tends to be the best way to handle something. What you’re saying is interesting. Here’s a different situation. Although we could have predicted a surge event, maybe we would have spent a lot of money building ventilators that wouldn’t necessarily work , or in your case, we actually already have ventilators that you were saying solve this problem. Now the question is producing them. So with your ventilator specifically, is it difficult to get the parts to make your ventilator? Now, if you had to mass produce your ventilator, could it be done or is there not enough supply of those parts? Dr. Richard Melker: 16:10 So there’s several answers to your question. Number one, there are a couple of companies that have mass produced ventilators for the military, and I’ve not kept up with them. In other words, when they were developing those ventilators and wanted to know what features had to be in those ventilators for use by the military, that’s where we were involved. But I’ve actually met with the president of the company a couple of years ago at a special forces meeting. And they were selling ventilators like crazy to the military. And I personally believe that those ventilators have features in them that would make them more than adequate to care for many of the patients with COVID-19. So I don’t know how many of those ventilators the military has stockpiled, but you asked the second question, which is equally as important. So, these sophisticated ventilators, and even these less sophisticated transport ventilators or field ventilators have lots of parts of them. And we can tell every company in the United States to start making ventilators, but there are only a certain number of the key parts for those ventilators. And so right now, and I’ve spoken to several people. In other words, there are chat rooms and a lot of different ways that I keep up with my colleagues who are still doing research on ventilators and parts has become a real problem. So, I’ll just give you one little anecdote. When I was at the University of Florida doing my fellowship, we wanted to transport patients from other facilities to our facility. And there was a brilliant respiratory therapist by the name of Paul Blanche. And he went and built a ventilator. And because it was a one off, it did not have to go through FDA certification. We’ll just skip that whole story. And he built a couple of Blanchlater. And when the helicopters service came into being at the University of Florida, we would transport patients from other facilities to our facility using the Blanchlater. Now the Blanchlater’s a little box, you know , size of a shoe box. The ventilators that they using in the hospitals weigh several hundred pounds and they’re huge. And by now you’ve probably seen plenty of pictures of them. So the Blanchlater at our hospital was what we use to move patients from the operating room to the intensive care unit or from the intensive care unit. So you have an MRI done because you can’t bring an MRI machine up to the ICU or from the ICU to a CT scan. So, our hospital had a Blanchlater, a couple of them for these unique transport situations. Well, it turns out that Paul’s little ventilator was so good that he formed a company with a gentleman who had been involved in ventilator companies for his whole career. And they started manufacturing this ventilator and went through FDA approvals and everything. And they were selling and are selling a considerable number of these ventilators every year. But they’ve got an order from the government for 10 times that. So, from one day where you’ve got all your parts and everything to build ventilators at the rate that your company is building them to suddenly have to make 10 times or a hundred times that number of ventilators, where are the parts going to come from? Where are the components going to come from? And that has turned out to be part of the issue. So I don’t personally believe telling general motors to make ventilators is going to solve our problem because they have no inventory. What we need to do is have the companies that are making the ventilators maximize, you know, maybe go to three shifts a day, do whatever they have to do to make more ventilators, but it’s getting the components into the companies to assemble into a ventilator. So, you asked the key question , are we going to continue to make $20,000 ventilators, which after this is over, hopefully are gonna sit in storage somewhere, or are we better off looking at some of these other ventilators that are not quite as sophisticated, but require less parts? FDA clearances is a lot simpler. And I don’t really know the answer . When I heard about the ventilator shortage, I just started scratching my head and calling up my colleagues who still are either working with her consult with the companies that make the ventilators. And they said, the problem is parts. The problem isn’t that there aren’t people to make ventilators. The problem that they have identified is that everybody needs parts at the same time. And because these are expensive products and you’re only turnover a few ventilators a year in a hospital. Normally, in other words, over the past, I would say decade or two people have used ventilators a lot longer than they used to so that they don’t have to buy this capital equipment, which is so expensive. So, the one thing that I see missing, or that I haven’t heard about is who are the people looking at the alternatives to $25 – $30,000 ventilators, because I’m sure knowing friends of mine and colleagues who build ventilators, that they don’t have to be that sophisticated and understanding the underlying lung disease created by this virus who had made me believe that you don’t need quite that level of sophistication. James Di Virgilio: 22:24 Well , I think you’re definitely articulating that correctly. Dr. Lampotang was telling us that his ventilator could probably get 60% of the capacity, the ability of , of the $50,000 ventilator. And it costs him $300 to make it. It’s also rather disposable, right? The parts are a hundred total dollars plus other stuff. So hospitals could just throw a part of it away and spend a hundred bucks to get another one. So you don’t have to worry about issues when it comes to the ventilator cleanliness or transmission of disease, interesting stuff. But I think that raises the next question that you’re touching on, which is complicated and it has to do with supply and demand. So why 15 years ago, did we not produce a lot of ventilators? Well, one, you still had the same supply and demand issue. You didn’t have enough supply to make enough of these $50,000 ventilators. And to what you said is also true hospitals, can’t simply outlay lots of capital to buy ventilators because for every ventilator they buy, that’s something else they can’t buy. They have to steward their funds correctly. And only in the event of a surge, would you need even enough of these ventilators? And like we just talked about, you may not even need the Cadillac ventilator. So now what are we to do? If there’s no supply for the ventilators that we know how to make, what happens next, incomes, someone like Dr. Lampotang, in comes someone like you and your story noticing a need, and then fixing that problem, creativity, innovation come in, they take the place of going on, but sort of this rigid structure. Hey GM, Hey 3N, Hey, go make these things seems great. Sounds good. But it’s not really even possible as you are mentioning. And I think the good news is, as you’ve said, continually, especially from a medical perspective, there are other solutions and these other solutions not only work in the U.S. but they can help people across the world that don’t have the same resources we have to hopefully effectively treat their patients. And the transport piece. I want to touch on that because this is interesting, right? We know in New York city, we’ve got an issue. We have all these patients in ICU’s and in hospitals. And if we have to get them from one hospital to the other one, and they’re on ventilation, how do you get them there? In comes the transport device you’re mentioning, if we have enough of these transport devices, Dr. Melker, are we then able to help efficiently spread out our COVID-19 cases to get use of ICU beds and other maybe even States that aren’t being utilized. Is that a realistic transportation alternative? Dr. Richard Melker: 24:40 The answer is clearly, yes. The provisor is can the companies that make those ventilators gear up quickly enough to dramatically increase the number of those ventilators that are available, or are they having the same part problems that we are a lot of our components aren’t even made in the United States anymore. And we all know the story about why that’s happening. Let me give you a little anecdote, which always brought this to my attention right after 9/11, I was starting to work with a company up in Bowling Green, Kentucky to make a detector for a drug that we use for anesthesia. And the original application of that detector was to detect nerve agents. So it was used by the military and developed by a brilliant scientist. And he formed his own company because he couldn’t get anybody to fund it. So he built his own company. I mean, that’s what you call entrepreneurship. So anyway, he was making these detectives for nerve agents for the military. After 9/11, he got called up by the military and was told every component that you need to make these 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So we can have them in the subway systems. We can have them anywhere where nerve agents might be used to kill Americans. You have priority for everything you need. And what he did was put together a list of the components and the companies that were making the components. He went to three shifts and within two months he was shipping a hundred to a thousand times as many of these detectors systems. And they’re still running today in the New York subway system and all over the United States. So that’s what the system is geared to do during a warfare situation. The government can tell people who have components that are needed to protect the American people, that they must supply those components for the good of the country. James Di Virgilio: 27:09 Indeed. And we saw that invoked multiple times this week, really by the president with regards to the dope act, right? And vote on 3N and whether or not you think it’s good for the president to be able to have such a power or not something you’re saying remains true, which again comes down to that wall of supply and demand. And in your story, there were enough supplies to be able to ramp up in the ventilator story if there’s not enough supplies, the beauty of entrepreneurship and human innovation is, creativity allows us to tweak things or find alternative ways to do it, to get maybe almost all the way there, and sometimes even improve the situation that we are in which I think is just an interesting story of people, right? And that comes down to whether you think as a society, we should predict ahead of time, what’s going to happen, stockpile things, or you think, Hey, we can very quickly respond to what’s happening, tactically. And that’s the most efficient way to do it. Those are obviously debates for a different style podcast , but I want to ask you a medical question. Obviously, you think about things. You are the director of EMS, you’ve run departments, hospitals. When this starts happening, COVID-19 comes on board, they’re meeting, they’re getting together. They have disaster plans . What if we have overflow, how much overflow do we have? Where can we send people in the event of a shortage? These are the types of exercises that are being done by hospitals across the country, correct? Dr. Richard Melker: 28:26 Correct James Di Virgilio: 28:28 And then in the event of an actual shortage, do you feel like the hospitals would be able to work with let’s like, let’s take Gainesville here with private practices and say, well, you’ve got a certain bed because you’re an into an ICU and Shand’s has doubled the surge capacity. Or do we feel that we still even utilizing all of the available rooms , space, buildings we have would not be able to handle a surge. Are we that deficient when it comes to facing something like COVID, or is there a way to plan to be able to expand our capacity? Dr. Richard Melker: 28:55 So the United States has had repeated warnings that this was going to happen. We had SARS, and then we had the middle East respiratory syndrome and epidemiologists, and the military have been telling our governments. This is just a matter of time. We lucked out with SARS. Ebola was kind of a different story. It killed people so fast that you had a ventilator the next day, but particularly the Coronaviruses. And remember, we’re not even talking about an attempt intentionally to harm the American people with a biological weapon. This was just a mutation that occurred in a virus, which every year people would get upper respiratory infections with. But it mutated this time into a virus that we have absolutely no natural defenses for. So if you read what epidemiologists have written, the United States has not paid enough attention to this. And I know everyone wants to believe that we have the best healthcare system in the world, and that could be a debate for a show by itself. But we got caught with our pants down. We were very slow to react. We did not, and still today have not on a national level, done all the things that we have to do to minimize the loss of life. And I think there are people in the administration now who are going people aren’t listening to us. We, you and I are sitting in the state of Florida and our governor, our governor did not issue look orders, and still, it appears somebody has to twist his arm to get him to do anything. Now, I don’t want to get into the political reasons for that, but when you have an epidemic like this, where days matter and accumulate down the line in deaths, every governor in the United States on the first day should have issued proclamations that people need to stay at home, social distancing, everything else. And the proof of it is that where that was done in the United States, we’re going to have far fewer deaths than in areas of the United States, where the governors waited and to say on national television, that you didn’t know that there could be asymptomatic carriers of this disease after everything that all of us see every day in the news is beyond my comprehension. James Di Virgilio: 31:50 Well, you raise a lot of the current points that are going on right now. Obviously, why did we not prepare for this? Why are we slow to react to it? You can study the Spanish flu, right? Influenza of 1918 to see that very much the same things happened. We have cities like St. Louis that instituted social distancing, and actually largely avoided a lot of the significant deaths that other cities at the time like New York didn’t do. And then we have this one, which is different. The benefit of COVID is it’s a lot less deadly for people without underlying conditions that are young, very, very deadly for those underlying conditions. How do we respond? What do we do? But here is something, and for me, I should full disclosure I’m a very small government person. I believe in people taking care of what they can reacting locally reacting quickly. But I think you have to look at what the government spends money on and say, what’s important. You know, we’ve spent $1.5 trillion on a fighter jet program that is basically still defunct, 1.5 trillion. And I don’t even agree with the idea of stockpiling things for the future because we can’t predict the future. But at the very least, if you’re going to take taxpayer dollars and spend it, you would think spending it on the health and welfare of your citizens would be a potentially important thing to do. And here we are, like you said, in this quagmire, because it’s a rope, right? If we pull too far in one of the rope, we’re going to lose the economy, we’re going to have a depression. You’re going to have difficult things. And if you pull too far, the other way, too many people are going to die and we’re stuck with this very difficult, complicated problem to solve. And now the question is looking forward, what do we do? And I think what’s interesting about today’s discussion with you and Dr. Lampotang is obviously people, real people, you and I, and others that have real expertise that can help are able to find solutions to these problems. If we can empower them to solve them right now. And what you said is true right? Every day, we wait to react to what we now know is real, is a day that we’re wasting. And I think that maybe is the saddest narrative out of all of this is there’s a lot of voices out there, but unless we’re able to react to something quickly and less and less cooler heads can prevail to address the problems, what are we left with? What do we do? Where do we go? So in your opinion, are we at a critical risk right now with hospital capacity? If we get surged, are we to the point to where we wouldn’t have alternatives or solutions to be able to treat people, is it as bad as some people say it is? Dr. Richard Melker: 34:05 So I would say that in Gainesville, I can only speak about Shands, but Shands is prepared. In other words, we’ve had enough time in Gainesville to know what works and what doesn’t work. So for instance, whoever was the first person who said, you know, we have all those anesthesia machines that have a ventilator in them. We can jury rig the anesthesia machine and turn it into a ventilator. Okay. Well, if you have 26 ORs , you just got 26 ventilators. Okay? And I’m not going to talk much about the issue of sharing one ventilator with more than one person, because that’s a quagmire, it’s been tried, they tried it in Italy, they’re trying it here. And as you know, the news reports, what they’re told and by and large, most reporters, even reporters who focus on the healthcare field are not going to have the level of sophistication to know which of these things are gonna work and which ones aren’t, but I’m scratching my head a lot and going well, that wasn’t a good decision. But if we talk about North central Florida, I can tell you because I get the emails every day that Shands is prepared. I think South Florida, with the elderly population and so many people living in high rises, where the only way they can get up and down is in an elevator, which is just an incubator for the virus. I think South Florida is in huge trouble. And I believe that the time that we’ve lost is going to translate into a huge number of deaths. I mean, it’s a horrible thing to say, and it’s a horrible thing to even believe. But I was trying to put all of this into something that I could write for lay people to understand. And I think I’m correct. And if I’m wrong, somebody is going to let me know. But despite the fact that we have the first amendment and we have the freedom of speech, if you yell fire in a movie theater and there isn’t a fire and somebody gets injured, that’s not covered. However, if there really is a fire in a movie theater and you run out and don’t tell anybody else, don’t pull the fire alarm, don’t, you know, there’s a fire, you have no liability. And so, you know, I’m thinking, well, what are we going to do to these governors who didn’t respond appropriately to the threats , but you really can’t because the fires occurring and they didn’t do anything about it. So when I was thinking of some way to put this into terms that people would understand, because there are so many people now who are fearful of the government, they’re fearful of the information they’re getting. They’re getting mixed signals every single day. In one news conference, you can cut different people. Different speakers can contradict the person who spoke just before them. How are the American people going to understand the seriousness of this and the fact that not only can they die, but if they’re young and relatively healthy, they can be responsible for the deaths of many, many people and never know it to me. It’s just frustration. You wake up every morning and you go, Oh my God, we’re just not doing it right. We are not taking this seriously. We are so behind the eight ball. And there are a million reasons why, and I think some of them are legitimate. And I think a lot of them aren’t legitimate, but that doesn’t matter. The simple fact is we have to a very large extent, created this scenario. James Di Virgilio: 37:59 A lot of things were said there that I think are echoing. What a lot of other experts are saying. I want to ask you this. What do you make of having to deal with limited information, right? Because on one hand you take information. We have the data I’m looking right now at NYC Health’s, daily data summary on Coronavirus deaths and in New York city. Right now we have 26 people that have died with no underlying health conditions. We have 1400 that have died with underlying health conditions. If people look at the data and they say, well, I have no underlying health conditions. I’m safe. I should be out there developing herd immunity while the at risk patients should be isolated or staying away. What do you say to that solution? Or is that nonsense? And it doesn’t matter what happens to economies or work life, we have to do this to save lives. Like what’s the scale? What I’m not hearing people tell me is what’s the scale? What percentage are we looking at? If we isolate a certain part of the population versus everyone, 20%, 30%, 50%, what’s the prudent course of action. I think I would hope right, most Americans want to do what’s best for everyone. I want to do what’s best for my neighbor. And what’s best for the world around me. How do we know what the right course of action is given maybe some of the difficulty of interpreting the data, what’s the right move in your opinion? Dr. Richard Melker: 39:11 Okay. First of all, you’re asking the question that is the most difficult to answer. And the one that keeps me awake at night, but let’s look at what happened in China and whether we believe they’re true statistics, or we don’t believe their statistics. And we think they should have notified the world sooner, which I believe they should have. What they did to control deaths was taunting . If you look at other countries and we haven’t talked about testing, and I think the biggest single failure of the United States healthcare system has been the screw up of telling people, anybody can get a test anytime they want over two months ago and today, not even being able to do surveillance so we know how to answer the question that you just asked. But if you look at the countries and they’re not all dictatorship , so they’re not all totalitarian South Korea because they tested and identified very quickly those patients with the virus and quarantined them they have kept their death rate extremely low. Okay. Now, what did it take to do that? What rights in the South Koreans give up to do that? Not nearly as much as what we’re going to give up, having not done it. Singapore is a very interesting country as anybody who’s ever studied, their governmental system would know about, Singapore has also managed to have much better control over the spread of the virus. Now the Philippines pick out a slightly different take on it. They’re just going to shoot you. So we’re not going there, but we do have examples of countries that have reacted quickly. And in my opinion, appropriately, and the key to everything was testing. Knowing who had the virus and who did now, what do you do once you have that information is the question you’re answering. And I don’t know the answer, but for a very short period of time in England, they decided that they were going to go with the herd immunity we’re dealing with this and they very quickly gave that up and they’re in big trouble now. So I think the big problem with the herd immunity solution is that not only are we going to wipe out the elderly population and I can see a lot of younger people going well, that’s Medicare, that’s all the things that I didn’t want to pay for anyway. But the reality is that younger people are dying as well. And I don’t think people appreciate the fact that what we call elderly today. Isn’t that elderly. I was thinking the last couple of days, because I’m in my seventies now. But if I died 10 years ago from whatever, cause what technology I developed after that that’s being used like crazy now we’d never had been developed. And so I don’t know the answer to your question, but I just, in my gut have this feeling that the herd immunity solution isn’t going to work. It sounds like a good idea. Now there’s a piece of news that came out today, which obviously your listeners won’t hear today, but it’s very interesting information from Scripps Institute in California. And what they did is they got an individual who had the original SARS Coronavirus back in 2002. And they took the blood from that person. And they found that that person still could have immunity to Coronavirus and that the antibodies in the blood of that person actually worked against the new novel virus. Now, if that pans out, that means we may have, because the antibodies are so similar and we now have the capacity to replicate antibodies very quickly. We have the potential maybe of getting to a vaccination very quickly. Now, I’m sure there are a lot of differences between using an antibody that’s already developed versus most vaccines are either killed or attenuated bacteria or viruses or organism that you’re trying to develop immunity against. But it’s really exciting to me that somebody who had the original SARS still has immunity 18 years later. That’s a pretty good vaccine. James Di Virgilio: 43:58 Yeah, I’d say so. Right? And this is SARS II something that I think has gotten lost from this. Dr. Richard Melker: 44:03 Yeah. I don’t think people realize that the original name was SARS COVID II. We’ve seen this picture. James Di Virgilio: 44:10 Right. We got a glimpse and it didn’t, as you mentioned get transmitted as far Dr. Richard Melker: 44:13 And the messenger came and we shot. James Di Virgilio: 44:16 We did. And I think what’s interesting is the conclusion for me is the data, right? If you talk about innovation, you talk about entrepreneurship. You talk about moving humanity forward. That always has to come from good data. You can’t improve something unless you understand how something works and why it works and why maybe it could work better. And I think that’s the big problem that we have as you said, is without the data, the thesis of, Hey, let’s let the younger people go out. It looks like healthy, young people aren’t dying. Let’s send them out into the world. Could be a good one the thesis of keeping everyone apart from each other could be the best one. The real problem is like you said, what do you do when you don’t know? And that’s where I think you see this middling response. And certainly it’s something we actively could have done much, much better was to figure out who has it, who doesn’t have it give clear messaging to those that have it to stay away. We dropped the ball on that. Something you mentioned, we’ll be on our next episode, we are going to talk all about vaccines and vaccinations, which is obviously the big solution to this problem as far as mitigating the top end risk. And obviously Dr. Melker, thank you for joining us today. Great discussion on a wide range of topics. We appreciate your efforts in the field of medicine, as well as in the field of ventilators. We know that your expertise has been very helpful and hopefully will continue to help those as we go through this. Thank you for joining us on the program today. It’s been fantastic. Dr. Richard Melker: 45:31 I enjoyed it also, and I hope that we move forward more quickly to resolve these issues. Thank you again. James Di Virgilio: 45:39 For Radio Cade, I’m James Di Virgilio. Outro: 45:42 Radio Cade is produced by the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention located in Gainesville, Florida . This podcast episodes host was James Di Virgilio and Ellie Thom coordinates, inventor interviews, podcasts are recorded at Hardwood Soundstage, and edited and mixed by Bob McPeak. The Radio Cade theme song was produced and performed by Tracy Collins and features violinist, Jacob Lawson.

For our second episode of A4N — the Artificial Neural Network News Network podcast — we discuss how anyone can contribute to the cure for the coronavirus pandemic, mind-controlled prosthetic limbs, and what it takes to succeed as an AI start-up. (Reference Links for video are below)Our special guest today is Ben Taylor. Ben is the Co-Founder and Chief AI Officer of zeff.ai, an AI product company, and former Chief Data Scientist at HireVue. He is a prolific thinker and innovator, and we're thrilled to have him as a guest on A4N!Segment 1 on Tackling Coronaviruses with Machine Learning1:12 Ben Taylor, Hirevue2:23 untapt, zeff.ai4:41 Die Antwoord5:39 Maryam Khakpour LinkedIn post, Yuval Noah Harari's book Homo Deus12:05 CORD-1916:33 First episode of A4N podcast17:00 Kaggle Covid-19-related tasks20:44 Folding@homeSegment 2 on Mind Controlled Prosthetics 36:3937:45 Reference blog post from University of Michigan47:41 Gabe Adams: Twitter account and YouTube video54:27 Norman Doidge book The Brain That Changes ItselfSegment 3 on AI Startups 57:0057:20 Reference blog post from Andreesen HorowitzJon Krohn / A4N YouTube channelJon Krohn TwitterJon Krohn website for signing up to email newsletterJon Krohn LinkedInGrant Beyleveld TwitterBen Taylor TwitterBen Taylor LinkedIn

Hello everyone and welcome back to the show! On this episode we go over some much needed information on what we are to do while the NBA is on hiatus and some news on recent starters and firing of coaches. Just sit back (stay healthy) and enjoy the show! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thedeep3pod/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thedeep3pod/support