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CDC Drops 2 Week Quarantine Recommendation

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The governors of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut have yet to comment after Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Friday dropped its recommendation for travelers to quarantine for 14 days upon returning from trips overseas or out of state during the coronavirus pandemic.

The three states have two-week quarantine requirements for travelers coming from 35 states and territories.

The CDC updated its guidelines on its website. Though the two-week recommendation was changed, the federal agency did caution travelers that they can still contract the novel coronavirus while traveling.

“You may feel well and not have any symptoms, but you can still spread COVID-19 to others,” the agency warns. “You and your travel companions (including children) may spread COVID-19 to other people including your family, friends, and community for 14 days after you were exposed to the virus.” (Read more from “CDC Drops 2 Week Quarantine Recommendation” HERE)

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China Suppresses Catholics Under COVID-19 Cover

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Hundreds of underground Catholics in mainland China were stopped from celebrating the Feast of the Assumption on Aug. 15 in the latest example of communists suppressing Christians under cover of Covid-19.

Although most public places, including movie halls, remain open, churches are yet to function in most parts of China. The Marian feast is a day of obligation for Catholics when they are required to take part in Eucharistic liturgy.

Traditionally, the Feast of the Assumption is considered one of the major Catholic celebrations in China along with Christmas and Easter, when hundreds gather in their parish churches for solemn liturgical celebrations and exchange greetings.

However, this year most churches of the underground communities in Shenyang, Liaoning province, were closed. Officials presented it as a step to avoid large gatherings to check the spread of Covid-19.

A few churches were opened but police beefed up patrols to restrict the number of people gathering in them, local Catholics told UCA News. (Read more from “China Suppresses Catholics Under COVID-19 Cover” HERE)

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Gym Becomes Campaign Rally Location to Keep Doors Open Due to COVID Regulations

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New Jersey’s Atilis Gym co-owners Frank Trumbetti and Ian Smith have fought to keep their doors open during the coronavirus pandemic and now, partnering with Republican U.S. Senate candidate Rick Mehta, the gym has become an official campaign rally location.

“We took a stand for our constitutional rights and for the rights of all small business owners throughout the country,” Smith told “Fox & Friends Weekend” Sunday. “And it wasn’t intended to become political. We were trying to offer a solution to a problem where the government was failing, and it turned political. And that was because of Gov. Murphy’s actions. So now we made it political just as much as he has.”

The owners are leaning on the fact that state officials cannot interfere with a political campaign, declaring the gym a campaign rally location for candidate Mehta who is looking to unseat Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., but Trumbetti said that doesn’t mean local officials won’t try to shut their Bellmawr gym down again. . .

Smith said Atilis members are excited to be a part of the campaign since Mehta is supportive of the fight small businesses have been facing during the pandemic. Mehta told Fox News’ Pete Hegseth that he believes it’s “time to put policy over politics.” (Read more from “Gym Becomes Campaign Rally Location to Keep Doors Open Due to COVID Regulations” HERE)

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Biden Would Re-Lock Down U.S. If Elected President

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Former Vice President Joe Biden said in an exclusive interview with ABC “World News Tonight” Anchor David Muir on Friday that as president, he would shut the country down to stop the spread of COVID-19 if the move was recommended to him by scientists.

“I would shut it down; I would listen to the scientists,” Biden told Muir Friday, alongside his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., during their first joint interview since officially becoming the Democratic Party’s presidential and vice presidential nominees.

Biden also criticized what he argued is the “fundamental flaw” of the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, that the nation cannot begin to recover economically until the virus and public health emergency is under control. (Read more from “Biden Would Re-Lock Down U.S. If Elected President” HERE)

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Researcher: The Odds of Catching COVID-19 on a Flight Are Extremely Low

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The odds of catching COVID-19 on a short commercial flight, even if it’s full, are extremely low, according to an analysis by a statistician at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

CNN reported on the findings of Arnold Barnett, professor of statistics at MIT, who calculated the odds and determined that although flyers will want to take precautions such as wearing a mask, transmission of the virus on airplanes is very rare. From CNN:

According to his findings, based on short haul flights in the US on aircraft configured with three seats on either side of the aisle, such as the Airbus 320 and the Boeing 737—and assuming everyone is wearing a mask—the risk of catching the virus on a full flight is just 1 in 4,300. Those odds fall to 1 in 7,700 if the middle seat is vacant.

“Most things are more dangerous now than they were before Covid, and aviation is no exception to that,” he tells CNN Travel.

“But three things have to go wrong for you to get infected (on a flight). There has to be a Covid-19 patient on board and they have to be contagious,” he says. “If there is such a person on your flight, assuming they are wearing a mask, it has to fail to prevent the transmission.

(Read more from “Researcher: The Odds of Catching COVID-19 on a Flight Are Extremely Low” HERE)

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College Kids Much More Likely to Die From Car Wrecks, Alcohol, or Drugs Than Virus

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As you send your kids off to college, you might be apprehensive about them getting killed. But if you follow the data instead of the media, you will understand that they are exponentially more likely to die from a car accident or from getting convinced to drink or shoot up drugs than from COVID-19.

Local media and health officials in South Bend, Indiana, are sounding the alarm about a “spike” in cases at the University of Notre Dame. Of course, there is no mention of any of them getting seriously ill beyond the typical bugs that spread quickly on college campuses without a media circus focusing attention on it. The entire emphasis is on masks, quarantine, and contact tracing, when this has already spread and is not deadly in any statistically meaningful way for those in their late teens and early 20s. One doctor who is an adjunct professor at the university blamed the spread on “high-risk behavior that has happened off campus, and for all I know some on-campus as well” because of course there is no natural way a flu-like virus could spread through normal-risk behavior.

What is shocking and laughable, yet tragic at the same time, is the lack of recognition that not wearing masks (even assuming they work) is the least of the “high-risk” behavior on campuses. According to a study published in 2009 by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, 1,825 college-age individuals died in 2005 from alcohol-related car accidents. On the other hand, according to the CDC, just 241 people age 15-24 died of COVID-19, and we know many of those deaths are counted much more liberally than alcohol-related deaths.

Moreover, those deaths are overwhelmingly among young people with rare and deadly conditions that are easily identifiable, and therefore, those individuals would likely stay home from college this semester. Drugs, alcohol, and deadly car crashes, unfortunately, are not limited by health status and often rope in good kids who get in with the wrong crowd and make just one mistake. Perhaps dealing with the attitude of permissiveness on college campuses would save a lot more lives than wearing silly cloths.

According to the 2018 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), “54.9 percent of full-time college students ages 18 to 22 drank alcohol in the past month, and 36.9 percent engaged in binge drinking in the past month.” Other research has found 696,000 students were assaulted by another student who had been drinking and 97,000 students reported experiencing alcohol-related sexual assault or date rape. These are more serious consequences than the very rare hospitalization of a college-age student with COVID-19. Imagine if we had a dashboard chronicling and quantifying every one of these deaths, assaults, and rapes as we do asymptomatic coronavirus cases or symptoms of the virus that are less than the typical bugs experienced on college campuses every year.

Then there is the drug issue. Drugs are more lethal, cheaper, more available, and come with less stigma than ever before. Thousands of young adults die every year from drugs in peer networks they meet in college and other places. Like a virus, drugs spread to kids through group gatherings where they are exposed to this poison. With today’s lethal drugs, just one mistake could get any kid killed. And unlike with the virus, which will easily achieve herd immunity on college campuses with such a young population, there is no immunity to the pressure of drugs. If kids reject it the first time, they will not be immune to other chances.

What’s worse, the depression, anxiety, panic, and isolation being created by those who distort the threat level of the virus are making the drug crisis exponentially worse. I noted last week that the CDC reports 25.5% of 18-24-year-olds in a survey expressed serious consideration of committing suicide because of the epidemic of fear. Well, closely related to that data point is that 24.7% of that same cohort “started or increased substance use to cope with pandemic-related stress or emotions.”

Yet, college students, parents, and administrators seem to be more concerned about COVID-19 than all the other risks that are so much more common on college campuses these days. We have never done this to our youth during other pandemics. As Dr. Andrew Bostom, an associate professor of family medicine at Brown University, pointed out on Twitter, nobody panicked on college campuses during the H1N1 flu, which specifically targeted younger people.

The advice given back then was for those exhibiting signs of illness to isolate themselves. We never counted every last case or prospectively searched out sub-clinical cases that go unknown among patients. As Dr. Bostom points out, during the H1N1 pandemic, there were 317 pediatric deaths, much more than today, and schools were never closed or restricted. Fast-forward a decade, and Albion College in Michigan is barring students from traveling more than five miles off campus and is tracking them. They are treating everyone as sick and healthy young adults like the immunocompromised.

The ultimate result of this pandemic of fear is that so many youngsters will die from fearing a virus that does not affect them. Never before have the immortal words of FDR been more relevant: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” (For more from the author of “College Kids Much More Likely to Die From Car Wrecks, Alcohol, or Drugs Than Virus” please click HERE)

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A Naturally-Occurring COVID-19 Is the Real Conspiracy Theory

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There are new indications that China manufactured the novel coronavirus.

The unique structural features of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, produce an extremely high infection rate and multi-organ secondary infections making this virus more dangerous and challenging for therapeutic interventions.

Although sharing the same human angiotensin converting enzyme-2 receptor, SARS-CoV-2 is more selective for the human receptor and is, overall, far more infectious than SARS-CoV-1, the coronavirus responsible for the 2002-2003 pandemic, which also originated in China.

One of those unique features of SARS-CoV-2 is a furin polybasic cleavage site that facilitates membrane fusion between the virus and the human cell and is widely known for its ability to enhance pathogenicity and transmissibility, but is not present in any closely related bat coronaviruses.

The enhanced ability for membrane fusion may be a cause for the multi-organ infection observed in SARS-CoV-2 patients.

A new scientific study published on August 19, 2020 suggests that other structures in SARS-CoV-2, similar to those found in Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), may also contribute to that alternate infection process.

The MERS-CoV 2012 pandemic produced a total of 2519 cases and 866 deaths, an extraordinary 34% mortality rate.

Like SARS-CoV-2, MERS-CoV is believed to have originated in bats of the beta-coronavirus lineage, but may have passed through camels as an intermediate host before infecting humans.

Unlike SARS-CoV-2, which uses the angiotensin converting enzyme-2 receptor for human infection, MERS-CoV uses a different receptor, Dipeptidyl peptidase 4 (DPP4), and its overall structure is only 40% similar SARS-CoV-2, meaning one could not have evolved from the other.

Yet, SARS-CoV-2 appears to possess a dual receptor strategy for the infection of human cells, similar to MERS-CoV.

In a comparative sequence analysis of the N-terminal domain of the spike protein that drives the binding and fusion process, the authors identified three extended “loop” regions in SARS-CoV-2 and MERS-CoV, but not in SARS-CoV-1, which may give SARS-CoV-2 additional capability to bind to and enter a variety of human cells.

Taken together the unique structural features of SARS-CoV-2 suggest a coronavirus that was highly adapted for human infection.

Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous unsuccessful attempts have been made to provide conclusive evidence that SARS-CoV-2 is naturally occurring.

A recent non-peer reviewed article “A Proposed Origin for SARS-CoV-2 and the COVID-19 Pandemic,” written by Jonathan Latham and Allison Wilson and published on their own website has garnered some interest in the non-scientific media as a possible explanation for the natural origin of SARS-CoV-2.

This elegantly-written and well-documented review, which provides a unique and valuable translation of a Chinese clinical study, is nevertheless marred by offering an untenable theory of the origin of SARS-CoV-2 based on the serendipitous linking of a series of undocumented assumptions.

Although not concisely stated, the Latham-Wilson theory seems to suggest that SARS-CoV-2 originated as respiratory infections in miners working in a cave in Mojiang, Yunnan Province China in 2012, who were infected by a coronavirus while working among bat feces, presumably by RaTG13, SARS-CoV-2’s alleged closest relative,

Over time, RaTG13 rapidly evolved inside at least one of the miners to create SARS-CoV-2. Biological samples from that miner eventually found their way to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where unfrozen samples of the fully human-adapted SARS-CoV-2 infected a laboratory worker and began the COVID-19 pandemic.

First of all, the extent of viral evolution in a single patient that would be required to go from RaTG13 to SARS-CoV-2, about 1,200 nucleotides, is unprecedented in the annals of scientific inquiry.

Latham and Wilson attribute the adaptation to the viral load within a large lung surface area and, in particular, a lengthy infection lasting over four months.

Yet, despite the presence of an active infection of a coronavirus highly adapted for human infection, there is no evidence of human-to-human transmission, even though the Chinese clinical study provides no indication of special quarantine efforts and a therapeutic regime resembling that for ordinary respiratory infections, including fungal infections.

Although it seems likely that the miners experienced an initial viral respiratory infection and secondary, probably bacterial infections, tests for viral infections, including SARS-CoV-1, were negative during the course of hospitalisation.

It was only afterwards, that the Chinese clinical study mentions a positive test for an unidentified virus, one possibility being henipa-like virus, which was also discovered in the same cave along with numerous types of bat coronaviruses.

Strangely, the Wuhan Institute of Virology was experimenting with RaTG13 during 2017 and 2018, while SARS-CoV-2 was supposedly tucked away in a freezer, the Chinese scientists never making the connection between RaTG13 and the miners’ infection.

Finally, although not conclusive in itself, it seems that such a unique, direct bat-to-human natural coronavirus infection would have been big news in the virology community in 2012, yet it went practically unnoticed.

If the Latham and Wilson theory proves anything, it demonstrates the lengths one must go in evidence-stretching to show that SARS-CoV-2 is naturally-occurring, when one begins by precluding the possibility that it was manufactured in a laboratory. (For more from the author of “A Naturally-Occurring COVID-19 Is the Real Conspiracy Theory” please click HERE)

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Lawrence Sellin, PhD is a retired US Army Reserve colonel. He has previously worked at the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases and conducted basic and clinical research in the pharmaceutical industry. His email address is [email protected].

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We Now Have the Best Evidence Yet That Everyone Develops Long-Term Coronavirus Immunity After Infection

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Scientists may now have an answer to one of the most crucial lingering questions about COVID-19: whether people develop long-term immunity. . .

A study published Friday in the journal Cell suggests that everyone who gets COVID-19 – even people with mild or asymptomatic cases – develops T cells that can hunt down the coronavirus if they get exposed again later.

“Memory T cells will likely prove critical for long-term immune protection against COVID-19,” the study authors wrote, adding that they “may prevent recurrent episodes of severe COVID-19.”

That’s because memory T cells can stick around for years, while antibody levels drop following an infection.

The authors of the new study examined blood from 206 people in Sweden who had COVID-19 with varying degrees of severity. They found that regardless of whether a person had recovered from a mild or severe case, they still developed a robust T-cell response. Even coronavirus patients who did not test positive for antibodies developed memory T cells, the results showed. (Read more from “We Now Have the Best Evidence Yet That Everyone Develops Long-Term Coronavirus Immunity After Infection” HERE)

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DNC Showcases Woman Who Lost Her Dad to COVID-19: “He Died Because He Trusted Trump” (VIDEO)

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The Democratic National Convention featured a woman who lost her dad to COVID-19 and who places the blame for his death on President Trump during the first day of the virtual convention on Monday. She said because of what happened to her dad, she will ve voting for presumptive nominee Joe Biden.

Kristin Urquiza, of San Fransico, Calif., said her dad, Mark Anthony Urquiza, “had faith in Donald Trump. He voted for him, listened to him, believed him, and his mouthpieces when they said that coronavirus was under control and going to disappear.”

Urquiza said her father went to a karaoke bar in Arizona after the lockdowns had been lifted in the state and had contracted the virus.

(Read more from “DNC Showcases Woman Who Lost Her Dad to COVID-19: He Died Because He Trusted Trump” HERE)

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New York Governor Labels Coronavirus ‘European Virus’

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CLAIM: At the Democrat National Convention (DNC), New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) suggested the Chinese coronavirus, also known as COVID-19, “infected the northeast” from Europe.

VERDICT: False. Federal officials with the State Department and the intelligence community have said evidence is clear that the coronavirus originated in Wuhan, China, before spreading around the world and eventually to the United States.

On Monday evening, during his speech at the DNC, Cuomo labeled the coronavirus “the European virus,” suggesting it arrived from Europe, not China.

“In fact, [the White House] didn’t even see it coming. The European virus infected the northeast while the White House still fixated on China,” Cuomo said. “The virus had been attacking us for months before they even knew it was here.” (Read more from “New York Governor Labels Coronavirus ‘European Virus’” HERE)

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