There be Dragons...

"Despite the many ichthyosaur fossils found in Britain, it is remarkable to think that the Rutland ichthyosaur is the largest skeleton ever found in the United Kingdom. It is a truly unprecedented discovery and one of the greatest finds in British paleontological history."

"Not only is it the largest ichthyosaur skeleton ever found in Britain, but it is also the most complete skeleton of a large prehistoric reptile ever discovered in the U.K."

"And yes, that includes dinosaurs."

Dr.Dean Lomax, paleontologist, United Kingdom

Nigel Larkin said the skeleton's permanent home would "need to be somewhere quite big"   Photo: Nigel Larkin

 

Ichthyosaurs were first identified in the 19th century by the paleontologist Mary Anning. They were marine reptiles living in Britain 250 million years ago, and 90 million years ago became an extinct species. They are often called Sea Dragons, characterized by large teeth and eyes, ranging in size from one to over 25 metres. Capable of growing to truly gigantic size and an obviously formidable predator of its time.

 

A current discovery has led to great celebration in Britain surrounding one of the "greatest finds" in paleontological history following the discovery in Rutland of a skeleton of an intact skeleton of a 180-million year-old sea dragon measuring ten metres in length, its skull weighing in at about a tonne. The largest, most complete fossil of any marine reptile discovered in Britain.

 

The first bones were found during the mud and frost of February   Photo: Natalie Turner

Joe Davis, an employee of the Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust discovered the skeleton during a routine drainage of a lagoon island in February 2021 at Rutland Water. It is a "highly significant discovery both nationally and internationally", noted Dr. Mark Evans of the British Antarctic Survey. 

"It's not often you are responsible for safely lifting a very important but very fragile fossil weighing that much", remarked Nigel Larkin, a specialist paleontological conservator. Team members at Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust were uncertain of the origins when they first located the remains sticking out of clay, and they suggested initially that what they were looking at could possibly be pipes.

 

Ichthyosaurs were top of the food chain in the seas of the Jurassic period  Anglian Water

 

Experts from the University of Leicester were called in and the ichthyosaur skeleton was professionally identified. A team of expert paleontologists from around the U.K. dug out the remains in August and September, working in partnership with Anglian Water, Rutland Country Council and the Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust, supported by volunteers experienced in excavating fossil marine reptiles.

The remains of ammonites and belemnites -- squid-like animals which may have been nibbling on the animal's remains -- surrounded the skeleton. During the initial construction of Rutland Water two incomplete and much smaller ichthyosaurs were discovered in the 1970s, despite which it was declared unusual to find a specimen of this kind in the Midlands.

Dr. Dean Lomax with the skeleton of Temnodontosaurus trigonodon. Image credit: Anglian Water / Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust / Matthew Power Photography, www.matthewpowerphotography.co.uk.

In Our Galactic Backyard

"It's mind-bogglingly wonderful t at the universe is still full of surprises."

"This is an entirely new kind of source that no one has ever seen before. And while we know the Milky Way must be full of slowly spinning neutron stars, no one expected them to be able to produce bright radio emissions like this."

"It's a dream come true to find something so totally unexpected and amazing."

"This object was appearing and disappearing over a few hours during our observations."

"That was completely unexpected. It was kind of spooky for an astronomer because there’s nothing known in the sky that does that."

"And it’s really quite close to us—about 4000 lightyears away. It’s in our galactic backyard."

"It’s a type of slowly spinning neutron star that has been predicted to exist theoretically. But nobody expected to directly detect one like this because we didn’t expect them to be so bright."

"Somehow it’s converting magnetic energy to radio waves much more effectively than anything we’ve seen before."

Natasha Hurley-Walker, radio astronomer, Curtin University, International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research

"This is more likely to be the 'first of its kind' rather than 'one of a kind'.:

"We are now monitoring this object using many different radio telescopes in the hope it switches 'on' again."

"When studying transients, you’re watching the death of a massive star or the activity of the remnants it leaves behind."

Gemma Anderson, Curtin ICRAR node astrophysicist, study co-author

The location of the source in the sky in January 2022, marked with a large white star marker. At this time of year, it is above the horizon during the day. Image source: Stellarium

"It's incredibly bright when it's 'on'. It's one of the brightest radio sources in the sky."

"It’s exciting that the source I identified last year has turned out to be such a peculiar object."
"The MWA’s [Murchison Widefield Array telescope] wide field of view and extreme sensitivity are perfect for surveying the entire sky and detecting the unexpected."

Tyrone O'Doherty, Curtin ICRAR node doctoral student, study co-author

Tile 107, or “the Outlier” as it is known, is one of 256 tiles of the MWA located 1.5km from the core of the telescope. The MWA is a precursor instrument to the SKA. Photographed by Pete Wheeler, ICRAR

In what may be the first known example of an 'ultra-long period magnetar', a type of neutron star -- a compact collapsed core of a massive star that became a supernova at explosion, highly magnetized and rotating slowly  unlike fast-spinning neutron stars called pulsars that appear as though they're blinking off and on in seconds or milliseconds -- evidence has been detected of an object that had previously been thought to exist but never before detected. 

A celestial object like none other seen before was spotted with the use of the Murchison Widefield Array telescope located in the outback of Western Australia as it unleashed gigantic energy bursts about three times hourly when viewed from Earth during a two-month period in 2018, according to researchers. It appears to the scientists studying it to be an absolutely dense star whose behaviour is quite unlike any ever seen previously, an astrophysical object hypothesized to exist but never before has proof been seen.

Continuous beaming of strong radio waves may be emanating from the object's north and south poles, the beam sweeping through the line of sight from Earth's vantage point, appearing to switch on every 18 minutes and 11 seconds for 30 to 60 seconds, then off again. A lighthouse with its rotating light seeming to blink on and off from the perspective of a stationary observer has a similar effect.

In cosmic terms, the object's location is relatively close to Earth -- about 4,200 light years in distance, the distance that light travels in a year; 9.5 trillion kilometres away. Astronomically speaking the object is in a category known as "transients" which are astrophysical objects appearing to turn on for limited time periods. A supernova is known as a 'slow transient', which can suddenly appear and then disappear months later with the dissipation of the stellar explosion. Rapidly blinking on and off, pulsars are known as 'fast transients'.

The search for transients between the two extremes had been until now, without success. Among the universe's densest objects, neutron stars, including pulsars, are approximately 12 kilometres in diameter, similar to the size of a city, but containing greater mass than our sun. A magnetar, a neutron star with an extreme magnetic field, has the potential to power the radio pulsations, according to the researchers' expectations.

Magnetar
An artist’s impression of what the object might look like if it’s a magnetar. Magnetars are incredibly magnetic neutron stars, some of which sometimes produce radio emission. Known magnetars rotate every few seconds, but theoretically, “ultra-long period magnetars” could rotate much more slowly. Credit: ICRAR.

 

All-Purpose COVID Vaccine Courtesy of U.S. Army

WRAIR’s COVID-19 vaccine.

U.S. Army photo by Mike Walters

"Walter Reed’s Spike Ferritin Nanoparticle COVID-19 vaccine, or SpFN, completed animal trials earlier this year with positive results. Phase 1 of human trials, wrapped up this month, again with positive results that are undergoing final review,

"We're testing our vaccine against all the different variants, including Omicron."

"We want to wait for those clinical data to be able to kind of make the full public announcements, but so far everything has been moving along exactly as we had hoped."

"With Omicron, there's no way really to escape this virus. You're not going to be able to avoid it. So I think pretty soon either the whole world will be vaccinated or have been infected."

"We need to evaluate it in the real-world setting and try to understand how does the vaccine perform in much larger numbers of individuals who have already been vaccinated with something else initially…or already been sick"   Dr. Kayvon Modjarrad, director of Walter Reed’s infectious diseases branch

DefenseOne.com

A scientist with the Emerging Infectious Disease branch of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research conducts studies to find a vaccine for COVID-19 in July 2020. Shawn Fury, Army

In development for the past two years, a vaccine has been brought to Stage 1 trial at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland, the product of Army scientists. Pre-human trials were conducted on monkeys with promising results. The vaccine is now in its first human trial, being tested for safety on human volunteers.

"Since September of 2020 there have been five SARS-CV-2 variants of concern -- Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and now the current, Omicron."

"So, obviously, innovative approaches are needed [to counter COVID and its many emerging mutations]."

"I don't want anyone to think that pan-coronovirus vaccines are literally around the corner in a month or two."

Dr.Anthony Fauci, head, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

$43 million in research grants has been issued by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, to a varied number of academic institutions in a bid to help develop a pan-coronavirus vaccine. The emergence of COVID-19 was not the first time a coronavirus came along to surprise the scientific community, posing a dangerous threat to public health.

 

When SARS emerged in 2002 in China, it spread rapidly around the globe, suspected of having caused 43 deaths in Canada alone; its mortality rate was higher than COVID's, but it was not as infectious. Because the virus so debilitated those it infected, the virus itself prevented its own effective transmission. For a virus to be successful in replicating in its human host, it ideally would want to keep its victims alive, and relatively medically stable.

SARS still succeeded in infecting almost eight thousand people, killing 1,000 of those it infected in 29 countries it spread within. 

 

Saudi Arabia identified the presence of MERS (MERS-CoV), a coronavirus respiratory illness that spread to several countries, claiming 800 lives. Recently a hybrid of MERS was discovered -- NeoCov, discovered in a bat population, but not yet spread to humans, though researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Wuhan University believe it is just a matter of time before it becomes another zoonotic, jumping the species barrier.

NeoCov coronavirus found in bats may pose threat to humans in future, scientists caution

The original COVID mRNA vaccines matched some genetic sequences, diminishing their effectiveness by reducing illness against newer strains of the coronavirus. Both Pfizer and Moderna, the original pharmaceuticals to use mRNA techniques in their formulations, are now restructuring their vaccines to more directly address the Omicron strain which proved able to evade the properties of the vaccine's effectiveness against Delta.

 

The target of a pan-coronavirus vaccine would be the genetic code common to virus sub=variants. This is a challenge that could take a length of time counted in months or extend to years, according to scientists hoping to produce a universal COVID vaccine. COVID-19 has demonstrated its capacity for mutations, raising concerns the virus will remain a threat to contend with on a long-term basis. 

 

Appeals for an all-purpose vaccine have increased since the emergence of the COVID variants in a desperate bid to find a vaccine to create lasting immunity against all potential mutations. A precedent was set when Linfa Wang, a virologist with Duke-NUS Medical School tested antibodies of SARS survivors from Singapore to discover that people who had received COVID vaccine saw their immune system generate "super-antibodies" able to neutralize both SARS viruses and other coronaviruses. 

 

A service member of the United States Forces Korea receives the first round of the COVID vaccine. Photo by HANDOUT /US FORCES KOREA/AFP via Getty Images

 

Hitting The Moon

"I realized that my software complained because it couldn't project the orbit past March 4. And it couldn't do it because the rocket had hit the moon."

"[This may constitute] the first unintentional case [of space junk hitting the moon, a crash that would create a new crater, but not do significant damage to the moon as it's] built to take this sort of abuse."

"When a couple of them [astronomers] sent in their results, they confirmed the initial data and made the actual impact time and location considerably more certain."

Bill Gray, researcher in orbital dynamics

Photo taken of a view of the moon from Cannes, southern France.

"As more players get into deep space, we need to have more attention paid to the junk that we're leaving out there."

"It's not as much about what SpaceX does now because it's a perfectly standard practice to leave your junk in deep Earth orbit and just abandon it."

"It's a big space out there, and if something ends up hitting the moon or ends up re-entering the Earth's atmosphere or going into orbit around the sun, the attitude has kind of been, 'So be it'. That may change as we get busier on the moon."

"Deep-space junk is by no means a threat or a crisis at the moment, but it is something that we're in the early stages [of] now."

"This SpaceX case is a marker that deep space is just starting to get busier, and it's time to start thinking about our policies for deep space."

Jonathan McDowell, astronomer, Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

"For launches of spacecraft intended to orbit the Earth, the best practice is to reserve enough fuel in a rocket's upper stage to return it to Earth's atmosphere, where it will burn up."

"This is what SpaceX and most Western rocket companies customarily do to help control debris in low Earth orbit."

"The moon, of course, has no atmosphere for the stage to burn up in."

"[The rocket also] lacked the energy to escape the gravity of the Earth-Moon system [resulting in the booster's chaotic orbit for close to seven years]."

Eric Berger, meteorologist, Ars Technica

The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida in 2015   Getty Images

Tracking the orbit of the SpaceX rocket with his Project Pluto astronomical software designed to provide commercial and freeware data research to both professional and amateur astronomers, the meteorologist, Bill Gray was puzzled when he received an unexpected reading on the Falcon 9 booster launched in 2015, part of a mission for a space weather satellite to be sent on a million-mile trip. The second stage of the rocket has been hurtling haphazardly through space for years.

And then he realized why it was that he was unable to obtain readings on the booster from his software since early March, as he finally understood that the SpaceX rocket is veering off on a collision course with the moon. He posted his finding on his blog post and since then other space observers confirmed the data to be correct, agreeing that the rocket, which weighs in at about four tonnes, is on a course to crash into the far side of the moon by March.

Some astronomers think of this news as "not a big deal", albeit interesting. What the situation does highlight is the potential for increasing numbers of such occurrences rising out of space junk floating about in deep space. The first interplanetary mission was launched by SpaceX in February of 2015 from Cape Canaveral, Florida where the Falcon 9 travelled a million miles in assisting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Deep Space Climate Observatory to begin its journey to Lagrange Point 2, a gravitationally stable solar orbit on the far side of the sun to Earth.

SpaceX's 50th Falcon 9 rocket launches from Cape Canaveral, Florida, as the moon looks on, March 6, 2018.  Getty

What went against expectations to see the rocket's second stage reaching a transfer orbit and a long burn, was that the booster was absent sufficient fuel to return to Earth because it was so high in its orbit to enable it to return to Earth's atmosphere. Instead it was caught in the Earth-Moon system of gravity, resulting in its chaotic orbit for close to seven years. Meteorologist Gray felt that such a chaotic orbit could result in three possibilities: hitting the moon; hitting Earth; or picking up enough energy to zoom past the moon and propelled toward the sun.

When, on January 14 he realized the rocket could be expected to crash into the moon, Dr.Gray contacted a group of astronomers for verification of his data. Space junk is beginning to pose a real threat to space travel and to the uninterrupted operation of weather and communication satellites. NASA tracks roughly 20,000 pieces of space junk, mostly old and broken satellites. A spacewalk was abruptly called off in November following notification that space junk threatened astronaut activity outside the International Space Station after Russia fired a missile destroying a dead satellite, sending over 1,500 pieces of debris into low Earth orbit.

In April 20198, the lunar lander Beresheet by Israel Aerospace Industries was the first private spacecraft to land on the moon, by crashing. As it did, the lunar lander spilled thousands of tardigrades -- microscopic creatures known also as 'water bears' regarded as the toughest animals on the planet -- onto the moon's surface.

Tardigrade, American Scientist

COVID-19 Antibodies No Protection Against Omicron

"It's therefore vital that we continue to monitor the situation closely to understand the impact of the Omicron variant, which now makes up almost all infections in the country."

"There is good news in our data in that infections had been rapidly dropping during January, but they are still extremely high and may have recently stalled at a very high prevalence."

"There is rapidly increasing prevalence among children now they are mixing more following the start of the school term and, compared with December, prevalence in older people, aged 65 plus, has increased... which may lead to increased hospitalizations."  

"It's therefore vital that we continue to monitor the situation closely." 

Professor Paul Elliott, director, Real Time Assessment of Community Transmission (REACT), Imperial School of Public Health, United Kingdom

PA Media

The "Plan B" COVID restrictions implemented across Britain this past December when Omicron was spreading at lightning speed through the population is being lifted. No longer is the public being instructed to work from home. Rules that meant people had to wear face masks in shopping interiors and on public transport are set to be suspended.

"It's reassuring to see COVID-19 infections beginning to slow across the country", leading to restrictions being lifted, said U.K. Health Secretary Sajid Javid. He did, however, acknowledge that case numbers remain elevated, recommending that people protect themselves and those around them by making certain they got their booster shots.

A large study in the U.K. on COVID19 revealed that approximately two-thirds of participants testing positive in January reported they had been infected previusly with the coronavirus. Researchers tested a selection of positive results with the intention of determining which variant was leading in infecting participants in the Real-Time Assessment of Community Transmission study.

99 percent of the samples analyzed were found to be Omicron infections, with a small number of the tests revealing themselves to be the BA.2 variant; a sub-type of Omicron, recently making its appearance, and under investigation. The remaining one percent of the infections were the Delta variant which, before Omicron came on the scene was the leading COVID variant infecting populations across the world.

 

Many research groups studying Omicron in animals have found that, compared with other variants, it causes much less damage to the lungs.  Credit...Jerome Delay/Associated Press

Over 100,500 volunteers' infections were scrutinized by study scientists between January 5 to January 20. A record number of cases was reached in early January as Omicron was recognized as the dominant variant. Among the total number of participants infections rose steeply to about 4.41 percent as opposed to 1.40 percent a month in December. Evidence that Omicron can evade at least some of the defences generated by infection with previous variants was supported by the high proportion reporting earlier cases.

 

Despite much higher infection numbers, however, deaths and hospitalizations remained lower than with previous waves. The prevalence of the virus was elevated to its highest level since the study began in May of 2020, with the peak of infections occurring around January 5, before case numbers began declining and finally levelled off from the middle of the month.

 

Among children between the ages five to 11 the highest infection rate across all age groups was identified, at 7.81 percent; infections seen to be rising with the return to school in January. The concern among researchers is that the close to 12-fold increase for those over 65 may still end up leading to increased hospitalizations. 

 

Moving Along ...

"First, they are wary of long-term care facilities and second, they are increasingly valuing the size of their homes during lockdowns."

"Baby boomers' parents currently live in long-term care facilities, so they have witnessed their parents living in isolation as facilities put a halt to visits and residents typically had to stay in their rooms. As a result, Engel & Volkers advisers are reporting that clients who would typically be ready to downsize are increasingly delaying." 

"Because of equity accrued in their homes, many can hire private help to ensure they can stay in the homes they own in communities they love for as long as possible."

"Millennials are starting to have families and have struggled because there is less housing supply for growing families."

Anthony Hitt, CEO, Engel & Volkers Americas 

It's a lack of supply, not investors, that has resulted in Canada's housing crisis.  Photo by Ben Nelms/Bloomberg

Most of Canada's major cities are facing a tight real estate market. And the culprit? The reason housing stocks are so sparse and whatever is available costs the Earth? Why people who own houses they've lived in too long, overstaying their welcome, in the opinion of real estate agents and anxious would-be home buyers who face the double-whammy of scarce resales and sky-high prices. These are the people being pointed out; baby boomers who refuse to gracefully place their homes up for sale.

It hasn't always been like this. In years gone by the tradition has been that seniors would sell their family homes to downsize or to make the choice to live in retirement communities. Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, are known in the real estate business to own substantial housing stock. And a number of conditions have emerged to make them want to hold on to the housing they own. Not just for nostalgic reasons, but comfort and security.

As well, people of those generations are healthier than their predecessor generations and don't feel prepared to move into retirement communities, or need to live in long-term care or nursing homes.
And many among them still hold down jobs. It's not only a Canadian trend, but one well documented in the United States as well. And the ghost in the room is COVID-19; the pandemic exacerbated a problem already in existence.

 

The extremely fresh scenarios witnessed of the tragedy during the pandemic in Canada's long-term-care and retirement facilities are well known to boomers, making them wary of such a future for themselves. A report issued in 2020 by the Royal Society of Canada studied long-term care in Canada during the early waves of the pandemic and highlighted a ruinous state of affairs.

A far greater proportion of total country COVID-19 deaths was experienced in Canada in nursing homes in comparison to other comparable countries; 81 percent of such deaths occurring in Canada, in comparison to 28 percent in Australia, 31 percent in the United States, and 66 percent in Spain. In particular the United States and Spain had frightful numbers of COVID-sick, hospitalized, in ICUs, and a high death toll ... in the general population at large. Whereas in Canada the bulk of COVID deaths were among the elderly living in congregate conditions.

Over 80 percent of all deaths occurring in Canada from COVID were the result of the elderly and immune-compromised in nursing and seniors' homes, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada. All of this has resulted in Boomer home-owners deciding to renovate their homes, or to hire private assistance in its upkeep. And this trend has created a supply bottleneck for first-time buyers and young families.

 

Royal LePage real estate noted the trend in a study, finding a majority of Boomer homeowners -- 52 percent -- would prefer renovating their properties over selling them and moving elsewhere. That same study found that 75 percent of Boomers own their own homes and that among them 17 percent own more than one property.

"There are currently fewer properties listed for sale in Canada than at any point on record", observed Shaun Cathcart, senior economist at the Canadian Real Estate Association, remarking on the latest home sales figures for December. There were basically 1.6 months of inventory on a national level, making two thirds of local markets sellers' markets, the lowest level ever on record by CREA.

2021 was the busiest year for home sales on record, the Canadian Real Estate Association says. (Cole Burston/Bloomberg)

Not So Fast! There Are Some Complicating Factors...

 

"[Like any other medication, Paxlovid carries] some risks."

"Paxlovid is a prescription medication. It has the potential to interact with a number of other commonly used drugs in ways that can decrease drug effectiveness or in some cases, cause potentially serious effects."

"As with any prescription medication, patients need to discuss the risks and benefits of treatment with the health care provider who is aware of their health conditions."

Dr. Supriya Sharma, Chief Medical Adviser, Health Canada

 

"People are assuming that if they get COVID and they have risk factors, they can just get this prescription. But it's not that simple."

"It is a great thing to have in the tool box, but won't make a huge dent."

Dr.Lynora Saxinger, infectious-disease specialist, University of Alberta

Pfizer's Paxlovid   CBC

"We know that the unvaccinated are at higher risk of getting severe outcomes and getting hospitalized and ending up in the ICU. So this is the evidence, and we’re following that evidence,"

"As health care providers, you don’t pick and choose which patients you have coming into the hospital and getting treated. And so I think this approach [making the prescription drug Paxlovid available as an oral medication against COVID] ensures that we are prioritizing treatments for those most in need."

Canada's Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Teresa Tam

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) product monograph for Pfizer's oral COVID medication lists over a hundred other drugs, many of them commonly prescribed, that should not be taken with the COVID pills. Alternately under certain circumstances, continued with under a doctor's direction and carefully monitored. Ironically, the patients for whom Paxlovid is most likely to be prescribed, the elderly and the immuno-compromised who have among other illnesses, heart problems and high blood pressure, take medications to ease symptoms for which Paxlovid can be counterindicated.

Pfizer's final trials with its COVID pill was given a high success rating of 90 percent in cutting hospitalizations in high risk patients who were given the drug in the early detected stage of their illness. A drug that is easily administered, and although under a medical supervisor's direction, can be taken at home for the five-day treatment that it entails. In Canada, the federal government ordered a million courses of the drug. And it is provided free of charge to the patient, by prescription.

In many ways this new drug appears to answer some very large asks of a COVID medication. On the other hand there is the downside involved with its use whereby a booster ingredient added to the drug for greater efficacy has the potential to  react dangerously with quite a few commonly used medications. Increasing, for example, the potency of blood thinners, heart-arrhythmia therapies, epilepsy drugs and a long list of others. 

People most at risk of serious COVID infection are the very patients targeted for the new pill['s use. Their age and other health issues make them likely candidates for the very drugs that the new Pfizer pill is contraindicated for. "It has a utility, it has a use. (But) I certainly would not call it a game-changer" noted Dr. Gerald Evens,  head, infectious diseases division of Queen's University medical school.

The issue winds around one part of the new medication, a drug called ritonavir, which inhibits enzymes that metabolize drugs; and it leaves more of the active ingredient, nirmatrlvir to enable it to work more efficaciously against the virus. The booster, ritonavir has the very same purpose impacting on a range of other drugs to increase their potency and it can dangerously do so in some cases.

Examples abound but a few scenarios are that a patient on blood thinners could begin spontaneous bleeding in the gastrointestinal tract or brain. A patient taking pills for hypertension might see falling blood pressure so severe they pass out. "There are all kinds of ways that Paxlovid could cause serious harm", said Dr Andrew Hill, a pharmacology researcher at Liverpool University in the United Kingdom.

The FDA cautions that with certain anti-arrhythmia drugs Paxlovid could cause heart rhythm problems, so is thus contraindicated. Combining Paxlovid with cholesterol-lowering pills lovastatin and simvastatin sees the potential of leading to rhabdomyolysis, potentially a life-threatening breakdown of skeletal muscle fibres.

Doctors treating most of the patients for whom Paxlovid is recommended will have to assess patients' vulnerabilities under these circumstances. A reduction of the dose of a particular contraindicted drug may be a solution, or to hold back its use over the five-day course of Paxlovid. Doing so in other situations could be viewed as too risky for the patient. 

 

The situation presents as a challenge when elderly patients take multiple medications. The cost, just incidentally, for each course of Paxlovid is stiff, at $530.

Pfizer's Paxlovid anti-COVID pill is not the "game-changer" some people expect, an infectious diseases expert says. Photo by Handout/Pfizer/AFP via Getty Images)

Risking Life for a New Life

"The investigation into the death of the four individuals in Canada is ongoing along with an investigation into a larger human smuggling operation."

Affidavit, John Stanley, special agent, U.S.Homeland Security

"[The agency] deeply regrets the tragic loss of life."

"Whatever the circumstances, no one should ever have to choose such a perilous journey."

Rema Jamous Imseis, Canada representative, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

 

"They believe that that's the only country [the United States] that has a lot of opportunities." 

"And there's [an] envy factor that [makes them think], 'That person can go to … that particular country. Why not me?' So they would land here and then they try to, you know, go back to or travel to [the] U.S. and migrate there, right? That's their motivation." 

 "But they don't realize the fact that Canada has equal opportunities, right? And they can make their life here, too."    

"They may not have realized the fact that walking so long a distance is not practically feasible."

Akhil Shah, president, Friends of Gujarat, Brampton, Ontario

Four people, one an infant, were found dead in a Manitoba field near the Canada-U.S. border, on Wednesday. A U.S. Homeland Security agent believes they may have been victims of a wider human smuggling operation. (Submitted by RCMP)

 

Canada signed an agreement in 2004 with the United States that asylum seekers who attempt entry to Canada from the United States at an official border crossing are sent back to the U.S. and vice versa, each being recognized as a safe country to seek asylum in; those declaring themselves refugees are meant to remain in the first country accessed. 

 

On the other hand, those deliberately bypassing official border crossings to declare themselves refugees when they're apprehended by Canadian law agents like the RCMP are escorted into Canada and invited to file a refugee claim, and to remain in Canada while their claim is being processed -- to be either accepted or denied on the basis of assessed claim merit. 

Canada was intercepting thousands of people from Africa and Haiti and the Middle East during a period of several years when haven-seeking refugee claimants -- but mostly migrants -- were passing from the United States in to Canada, at a time when the U.S. was attempting to come to grips with the millions of illegals living underground in America.

Recently, even while the U.S. is attempting to cope with tens of thousands mostly Central American migrants and haven seekers on their southern border with Mexico, a small number of aspirants to enter the U.S. from Canada has drawn attention from U.S. border agents and Homeland Security. What has spotlighted this new border incursion event is the discovery of four members of a family from India found frozen to death just over the border from northern Manitoba attempting to enter the U.S.

At this time of year, freezing temperatures and frequent blizzards become threats to human life. The family, comprised of two adults, a teenager and a baby, became disoriented, had no idea where they were or where they were heading, and succumbed to the severe cold, dying on an isolated patch of snow-covered ground in a sparsely populated area. They had walked for hours, were exhausted and died of exposure.

They were headed for Minnesota with the expectation they would meet at an assigned destination where they would be picked up and driven to an appointed place. American investigators have arrested and charged 47-year-old Steve Shand of Florida with human smuggling. He was driving a 15-passenger rental van from the airport in Minneapolis. At the time that agents stopped the van five other Indian nationals were nearby having "walked across the border expecting to be picked up by someone on the U.S. side", after having walked for 11 hours.

Human smuggling experts say the initial investigation and arrest connected to a family being found frozen to death near the U.S. border points to a “sophisticated operation.”  John Woods/The Canadian Press

COVID Helping Tuberculosis Comeback

"This report confirms our fears that the disruption of essential health services due to the pandemic could start to unravel years of progres against tuberculosis."

"This is alarming news that must serve as a global wake-up call to the urgent need for investments and innovation to close the gaps in diagnosis, treatment and care for the millions of people affected by this ancient but preventable and treatable disease."

Dr.Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General, World Health Organization

 

"In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic pushed 100 million people into poverty."

"Nearly 20 percent of global tuberculosis incidence is attributable to under-nutrition."

"Without global vaccination, health-care systems in low- and middle-income countries will collapse."

"[Countries in southern Africa] are experiencing massive COVID-19 surges on top of already high tuberculosis and HIV co-infection burdens."

Article, New England Journal of Medicine 

"Once COVID came, we totally lost track of the TB stuff."

"Housing is the biggest issue we face. There are multiple families per house. People are sleeping on couches."

Eric Lawlor, mayor, Pangnirtung, Nunavut, Canada

With most private clinics closed, patients with H.I.V., TB and malaria have few places to go for the kind of medical care offered at this Doctors Without Borders clinic in Nairobi.   Credit...Brian Inganga/Associated Press

In Canada, tuberculosis affects Inuit -- the majority of the Nunavut population -- disproportionately. Both TB and COVID are being spread in the territory by a housing crisis, since both diseases spread readily through person-to-person contact. Some 80 percent of Nunavut residents were given at least one dose of the COVID vaccine, and residents generally follow public health guidelines. 

There is a rising realization globally that tuberculosis is increasingly leading to rising deaths for the first time in a decade and a half, attributable to the presence of COVID. In November, the World Health Organization raised the alarm by citing approximately 1.5 million tuberculosis deaths worldwide in 2020.

Tuberculosis remains the leading cause of death from infectious disease, though it's thought of by most people as an illness of the long-gone past. During the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, cases of TB were seen on a rise when  AIDS patients with compromised immune systems were unable to fight off the infection. North American TB cases began decreasing in the mid-90s, but in many parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America it remains common.

 

Dr. Giorgio Franyuti said many patients with TB at a makeshift hospital in Mexico City were being misdiagnosed with Covid-19.  Credit...Meghan Dhaliwal for The New York Times

Six countries of the world: India, Indonesia, China, Nigeria, Pakistan and South Africa, see sixty percent of worldwide tuberculosis cases. TB is a disease, like COVID, that primarily affects the lungs and like COVID it is transmitted by tiny droplets int he air. Unlike COVID, there is no vaccine for tuberculosis, and what makes it deadly is the antibiotic-resistance of many strains of TB.

What has brought about its resurgence is the medical attention having been shifted wholesale toward treating people with COVID; as a result fewer TB patients were being treated, diagnosed and prevented from dying pf tuberculosis because of a lack of access to medical care. According to the article published in the New England Journal, vaccine inequity represents a large portion of the problem.

Poverty and malnutrition help spread tuberculosis; so that countries with high levels of poverty and malnutrition are also those countries with limited access to the COVID vaccine, as a result of which greater numbers of COVID cases translate to more TB deaths.

 

A patient with tuberculosis waits to be seen by a doctor at the Sizwe Tropical Diseases Hospital in Johannesburg, South Africa. Annual deaths from the infectious disease are on the rise after years of progress.   Michele Spatari /AFP via Getty Images

Hunting The Wandering Jew

HOW TO QUEST FOR THE HART IN WOODS

"Cervine and elaphine metaphors abound in medieval art — where stags’ cruciform antlers symbolize Jesus Christ, and illustrated hare and deer hunts in Haggadot refer, in part, to anti-Semitism — and in the Bible, where deer (Naphtali’s tribal symbol) take on sexual (Song of Songs), spiritual (Psalms and Proverbs), and messianic (Isaiah) implications. Speaking last month at the Chicago Humanities Festival, Paul Reitter, a German professor from Ohio State, asserted that Bambi’s hunters were at least partial stand-ins for anti-Semitic persecution in Salten’s 1923 book, “Bambi. Eine Lebensgeschichte aus dem Walde."

Menachem Wecher, The Forward, December 2, 2013

What a peculiar juxtaposition; the modern era's most popular child fantasy film that inspired both fear and hope in child audiences toward whom the Walt Disney film 'Bambi' was directed, came at the very time that Europe's Jews faced the most notoriously existential scheme in modern history for gross annihilation. The anthropological portrayal of hunted wild animals in their forest haven as opposed to the continent-wide strategic search for the presence of Jews to be gathered up, placed in death camps and murdered to satisfy the anti-Semitic death-lust of Nazi Germany.

A wildly popular story of a family of deer and their neighbours, some of whom survived, some of whom did not, as a look at the dark and sinister world of survival of creatures in the wild, threatened by other species' predator instincts, by natural phenomena, and by human hunters. Oddly enough, written by a man who was himself a hunter, but expressed a distaste for those who hunted illegally as poachers. A man who was a citizen of Austria and who hid his Jewishness because of the persecution he suffered as a schoolboy by anti-Jew teachers and other pupils. 

The novel, published in German in 1923, is being increasingly identified as an allegory for the persecution of Jews during the early years of the 20th century. Its author was Felix Salten, the title of the book, Bambi: A Life in the Woods. And the content of the book is quite dissimilar in form and content than the later film version the world knows as Disney's 'Bambi'. 

When the book was first translated into English in 1928, one American reviewer compared its dark aspect as "profoundly pertinent to the modern experience as The Magic Mountain (1924 Thomas Mann novel]". Felix Salten was born Siegmund Salzmann in 1869 Hungary and when he was four weeks old his family moved to Vienna where his school bullying as a victim of anti-Semitism coloured his outlook on life, and convinced him to hide his Jewishness.

He eventually changed his name to remove its identification of himself as a Jew; in his words he "unmarked" himself. A move he later regretted and reversed, when he became a Zionist under the influence of Theodore Herzl with whom he struck up a close friendship. His family history included a long line of rabbis, but Salten preferred while he was making a name for himself as a novelist, to be secular, to integrate himself in the larger Austrian society.

A propaganda campaign blaming Jewish subversion for the defeat suffered by Germany and Austria during the First World War, inspired the writer to commit to writing his Bambi novel. He was by then a Zionist  and travelled to Palestine after which he wrote a travel book with Zionist overtones titled New People on Ancient Soil: A Tour to Palestine.

In Salten's Bambi, he wrote: "The terrible hardship (a harsh winter season and food scarcity) destroyed all their memories of the past, undermined their conscience, ruined all their good customs and manners, and demolished their faith in one another." An understated metaphor transcribing the situation that Jews found themselves in through the diaspora born of their Judean exile; hounded, despised and persecuted. Civilized veneer easily scrubbed away in the face of adverse events.

There are philosophical discussions in Bambi where elderly deer say they will never forgive their persecutors: "He's (humanity) murdered us ever since we can remember ... And now we're going to make friends with him! What stupidity!" Bambi's father speaking of hunting dogs at the bidding of their human masters: "The worst part of it all is that ... they spend their lives in fear. They hate (humans) and themselves ... They kill themselves for (their) sake."

Bambi's father and mother teach their son to trust no one but his own judgement. To ensure that he is always prepared to defend himself. And to do that he must learn to value a solitary life. Salten was forced in his old age to leave Vienna for exile in Switzerland when Hitler annexed Austria. He died in Switzerland in 1945, presumably in the knowledge that the worst oppressor/persecutor and mass murderer of Jews had committed suicide before he himself died.

Before he died Salten addressed the failure of Jewish attempts at integration into the societies they lived within, that those efforts all too often came to nothing, as suspicion and persecution and viral anti-Semitism took on waves of renewal. It might have buoyed his dark view of the sinister world order that seemed to always reject a Jewish presence, had he lived to 1948 to witness a return of the wandering Jew to their Judean heritage in the State of Israel.

 

Rescuing Family Members From Involuntary Euthanasia

"There's a huge demand. People want to get their pets back [to their  home countries], their cats and their dogs and their rabbits, and they just can't get them back via commercial routes."

"There is this new sort of wave of jet pooling where people come together and try to find a date and say 'right, we're going to go on this day'."

Chris Phillips, pet and medical charter manager, Air Charter Service

 

"We can't predict how the future's going to be ... every week we get another airport that's dropping the routes."

"Quite a few people [were looking at the option of hiring private jets]."

"The heartbreaking thing is ... [for] a lot of people, their dog is a member of their family, they're drawing the short straw by paying these extremely high rates."

Steve Pheby, senior consultant, Ferndale Kennels and Cattery

 

"Flights are frequently cancelled [at] short notice, which makes it really hard as the pets have to have their paperwork and vet checks done within a certain time frame relative to the flight."

Annett Schirmer, Hong Kong-based academic

Caviar flew from Hong Kong to the UK on a Dog Express jet in December and the pet travel company has three private jet flights scheduled in the coming months. Credit: Dog Express PST

"We were waiting for the pet cargo ticket for so long. Even if it's too expensive for us, it was a special experience." Expensive yes, but somehow people like Bianca Ho who saved 5-year-old Caviar by flying out with him on a private charter to the U.K. found it worth every penny. Flight on a commercial airliner just wasn't working for them, she had already waited for over six months. Her dilemma is one shared by many animal lovers suddenly finding themselves in an untenable position.

 

One faced by Hong Kongers finding the only way they could rescue their animals from the draconian position taken by health authorities to 'eliminate' potential danger from animals passing on the coronavirus to humans in Hong Kong living with beloved family pets to avoid having their pets gathered up by Hong Kong authorities and euthanized was to literally spirit them away, fly them out of the no-longer semi-autonomous area to remove them from the danger posed by new anti-COVID regulations.

 

A handful of hamsters were found to be COVID-positive, leading to a directive that all pet shops on the island close, and a thousand hamsters destroyed. Knowing their pets were next on the agenda, Hong Kongers have responded to the new pandemic restrictions that squeeze freight space on commercial flights, by chartering private jets. Zero COVID regulations have led to soaring cargo rates and flight cancellations.

 

 

The response was people grouping themselves for the purpose of leasing private jets with the fairly steep passage of roughly $31,250 for every owner with a pet. Passenger flights were banned by Hong Kong authorities from eight countries, representing a portion of the city's tough elimination policies for the coronavirus threat. Airline companies in attempting to keep pace with changing regulations have been cancelling flights.

 

Expatriates are now abandoning the city just as increasing numbers of locals join immigration schemes the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada have arranged following the political destabilization of 2019 in the Chinese territory. China's zero-tolerance for any potential vectors of the virus from any source has seen authorities taking to culling suspected animal species to avoid human contact and feared subsequent infections.

 

Even people found to have visited the now-shuttered 150 pet stores have been quarantined for fear of animal-to-human transmission. In the first half of 2021 Hong Kong's population was diminished by 1.2 percent. Now people who can afford the stiff freight are taking their pets with them, despite struggling with insufficient numbers of flights, which has led inevitably to a growing demand for private jets.  

Before the pandemic, explained Steve Pheby of Ferndale Kennels and Cattery, his business was generally balanced evenly between importing and exporting pets. In this new, evolving situation the situation is now 90-95 percent export-based. Hong-Kong based Pet Holidays arranged 18 private jets for pet relocation in 2021 for flights to the U.K. and to Canada, Taiwan and Singapore, whereas in 2020 there were none.

 

 

Another 20 private jets chartered for pets' escape representing roughly a third of clients moving from commercial flights to chartered services are anticipated for 2022. Dozens of flights were arranged last year by Top Stars Air, a business aviation sales company. Currently, the company receives about 20 requests daily. Its next flight, a jet to fly in from Dubai minus the crew disembarking in recognition of Hong Kong's strict quarantine requirements. 

An academic based in Hong Kong, Annett Schirmer planned to relocate to Europe in May and was focused on arranging a flight for her three dogs and cat, through social media. U.K. pet travel operator PBS International Freight working with private jet companies has seen "a large increase" in demand from Hong Kongers.