Another Alcatraz?
"Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens said of the accused felons who escaped Friday by cutting through half-inch steel bars and rappelling three floors down from the roof by a makeshift rope made from sheets. Hutchens said local and federal investigators in several counties have received several tips but have had no concrete sightings of the men. There was no indication any of them have left the country, she said. A separate inquiry was launched into how the inmates got the tools to cut through the steel bars and plumbing tunnels to make it to the roof."
"Escaped California inmates may have had help" by Gillian Flaccus Associated Press January 26, 2016
SANTA ANA, Calif. — Three California inmates who sawed through a metal grate, crawled through plumbing tunnels, and shimmied to freedom down a bed-linen rope probably had help and may have benefited from the complacency of jail staff, security experts said.
The inmates vanished early Friday in a jail break eerily similar to the escape of two inmates from an upstate New York prison last summer. Those men also cut through a wall under a bunk bed and used piping and tunnels inside the facility to reach the outside.
See: Sweating Out the End of Jade Helm
Looks like it never ended, and now they are recycling scripts!
A major question for investigators will be how the men were able to plan and execute their flight with such precision, said Kevin Tamez, a managing partner for MPM Group, a Philadelphia firm that consults on prison security, management, and infrastructure.
It’s likely someone slipped them blueprints or told them how the bowels of the jail were laid out, he said.
This sure stinks like something that came out a bowel.
‘‘If I were whoever’s investigating, there are some people who would be on a polygraph, I guarantee you,’’ Tamez said. ‘‘They had to have had some inside help.’’
Oh, an inside job, huh?
Lieutenant Jeff Hallock, a spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, said there is no evidence so far that the trio had help from the inside but authorities know it’s a possibility.
Yes, authority would always tell us if a false flag was an inside job, uh-huh.
It was the first escape in nearly three decades from the facility, built in 1968. The similarities to last summer’s escape in New York point to complacency among guards and administrators at the California facility, experts said.
One wonders if they were let go to justify this -- if this even real.
‘‘This summer, we had this huge escape from Clinton Prison in New York and every prison or jail administrator in the country should have said to themselves, ‘Huh, I wonder if I am vulnerable?’ and should have checked their steam shafts and tunnels and every other thing that gives access to the outside,’’ said Martin Horn, a professor of corrections at John Jay College of Criminal Justice at City University of New York.
Motion sensor cameras — available for $55 and often used as baby monitors — can be installed along interior tunnels and pipes to catch inmates, Tamez said.
Thorough searches of dorms probably would have discovered the tools used or damage to the vent grill, he said.
Hallock said the jail’s policy is to do walk-throughs every hour to check on inmates. More involved searches are done randomly, he said, but declined to be more specific.
It’s unclear why the inmates, who were charged with violent felonies, were housed in a dorm with more than 60 other inmates. Assignment to a large, busy room probably made it easier for them to avoid detection, Horn said.
Then it should be back to the hole, I don't care what Obama says.
Authorities believe Jonathan Tieu, 20, and Bac Duong, 43, are in Southern California. They held a news conference in Vietnamese to ask for help....
--more--"
"Escaped inmate was ordered deported to Vietnam in 1998" byAmy Taxin and Gillian Flaccus Associated Press January 26, 2016
SANTA ANA, Calif. — One of three inmates who escaped from an Orange County jail was ordered deported to Vietnam in 1998 but remained in the country and racked up a lengthy rap sheet, immigration officials said Tuesday.
Uh-oh.
I'll bet this story soon disappears.
It clashes with the current agenda of we must welcome the migrants.
Bac Duong, 43, checked in with federal immigration officials as required until August 2014, the statement said. U.S. officials can’t detain immigrants indefinitely while they await deportation and must release most after six months.
Even if they are killers and rapists. Globe won an award for a series on that.
Of course, they can indefinitely detain and torture innocent people accused of being terrorists.
Sheriff’s officials are focusing the search on neighborhoods where the men could be hiding, especially among Orange County’s sizable Vietnamese-American population, which is among the largest in the U.S. Two of the men have ties to local Vietnamese gangs, sheriff’s Lt. Dave Sawyer said.
It's at times like these that Californians must be rethinking the sanctuary state status.
I know Vietnam is a bad place and all, but.... didn't someone wage chemical warfare on them over a damnable lie once, long ago?
Hossein Nayeri, 37, was arrested in 2014 on charges including kidnapping and torture.
Was he working for the CIA?
Authorities said he abducted a marijuana dealer, burned him with a blow torch and cut off his penis because Nayeri thought the man had buried money in the desert.
That guy needs to smoke some weed and chill out.
The men were gone for as long as 16 hours before officials noticed they were missing from the common dorm they share with more than 60 other inmates at Orange County Central Jail. An attack on a guard delayed a Friday night head count by hours.
Get up Morris.
The sheriff’s department has been slow to add more rooftop security cameras at the jail despite a grand jury’s recommendations for eight years straight, according to a report in the Orange County Register. The department has said since 2008 that budget constraints prevented upgrades to the camera systems at the five county jails.
Is that what this is? A push for even more surveillance?
The escape was eerily similar to one last year in New York, where two inmates cut through a portion of a wall hidden under a bunk bed and used piping and tunnels inside the facility to get out. But the search for the pair focused on nearby woods instead of a dense urban population.
Yeah, how "eerie."
It's the next logical step, isn't it?
The slow and incremental implementation of martial law -- for public safety, of course.
A major question for California investigators will be how the men could plan and execute their escape with such precision, said Kevin Tamez, a managing partner for MPM Group, a Philadelphia-based firm that consults on prison security, management and infrastructure.
It’s likely someone slipped them blueprints or told them how the bowels of the jail were laid out, he said.
There is no evidence so far that the trio had help from the inside, but authorities know it’s a possibility, Orange County sheriff’s Lt. Jeff Hallock said.
It was the first escape in nearly three decades from the California facility built in 1968. It holds 900 men and is in Santa Ana, about 30 miles southeast of Los Angeles.
Hallock said the jail’s general policy is to do walk-throughs every hour to check on inmates. More thorough searches are done randomly, he said, declining to give more details.
It’s unclear why the inmates charged with violent felonies were housed in the common dorm with dozens of others. Assigning them to a large, busy room likely made it easier for them to avoid detection, said Martin Horn, a professor of corrections at John Jay College of Criminal Justice at City University of New York.
Federal authorities are offering $50,000 for information leading to their capture.
--more--"
They did come up with one clue; the bus they used to escape was found on the side of a highway.
Time for me to take a break, readers.
NDUs:
"Newly released police body camera footage shows a 51-year-old man screaming ‘‘They’re killing me!’’ and ‘‘I can’t breathe’’ while Oakland, Calif., police officers held him down. The man later died and last week, the city of Oakland settled a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family for $450,000."
Ca$e clo$ed then.
Thursday, January 28, 2016
A Perroty of Justice
Related: Squawking Perrot
The Bloom is off, so to speak:
"After 30 years, a prisoner gets a chance for justice" by Yvonne Abraham Globe Columnist January 28, 2016
In a groundbreaking ruling with national implications, a Superior Court judge on Tuesday ordered that George Perrot be given a new trial on the rape charge that put him behind bars for so long. It is the first time a judge in the United States has ruled that justice was denied because prosecutors relied on forensic hair analysis, now widely discredited.
“George was only 17 when he was arrested and has spent 30 years in prison without ever receiving a fair trial,” said his attorney, Kirsten V. Mayer. “He never had the opportunity to do the everyday things that are so easy to take for granted when you are not in prison. We are now working to reunite him with his family as soon as possible.”
Perrot was charged with raping an elderly Springfield woman in 1985, when he was 17, even though the victim, a neighbor, insisted he was not her attacker.
Then WTF happened?
No matter, prosecutors argued: There was other evidence against Perrot — most notably, a single strand of hair found at the scene. On the stand, an expert witness from the FBI testified that the hair, found on the victim’s bed, was a match for Perrot, and that only someone “with a lesser amount of training” would conclude otherwise. In closing arguments, prosecutor Francis Bloom told jurors the hair evidence was so strong that Perrot could be innocent only if police had planted that strand in the victim’s house.
What has become far from a parody is that is now the likely case regarding AmeriKan JU$TU$, and the sad fact is, despite what others claim, there never was a golden age of America regarding justice -- in Massachusetts or anywhere else. It's always been mechanism of power to protect the privileged, oppress dissent, and punish the noncompliant.
The jury convicted him.
We now know that Bloom crossed a line — in this and in other ways — presenting the jury with a false choice, a fact underscored by Judge Robert J. Kane’s thoughtful and thorough decision Tuesday.
Those are the only kind we ever get thanks to the framers of issues in the media, and whatever choice made within that range always benefits those who framed the issue.
Over the last two decades, consensus has grown that the microscopic hair analysis that was crucial to Perrot’s conviction, and a factor in hundreds of others, amounts to bogus science.
Will they be saying that about global warming decades from now -- or any other on which $cience they seem too flip?
I'm thinking of the cholesterol guidelines being adjusted and relaxed just as this nation is awash in surplus pork and corn products (you know, the slave diet that was better than that of European peasantry back in the day).
The FBI now acknowledges that nobody can identify a particular person as the source of a hair or say whether a match is even probable.
So the FRBI agent testilied.
One is now left ponder just who it is exactly that has been populating the jails and how many criminals have been running around free all these years.
Before this week’s ruling, Perrot’s attorneys had tried several times to win him a retrial, alleging prosecutorial misconduct and citing gaps in the Commonwealth’s case.
Perrot was troubled, under the influence of drugs and alcohol, and sleep-deprived when police interrogated him. Though he was a minor, no parents or attorneys were present. Police said he eventually signed a confession admitting to breaking into the rape victim’s home but still denying the sexual assault. But he has no recollection of signing the statement, and he has since repeatedly denied breaking into the woman’s house that night.
When Perrot was first arrested, District Attorney Matthew J. Ryan Jr. suggested he was responsible for a series of horrendous rapes of elderly women in the area.
Matty Ryan was a corrupt pos that was hooked in with Bulger mobsters if memory serves. Was a long time ago.
But three victims failed to pick the 17-year-old out of a highly suggestive lineup that included police officers. An analysis of semen found at the scene of another of the rapes excluded Perrot. The victim in the one rape with which he was charged described a clean-shaven attacker, but Perrot had plentiful facial hair. During Perrot’s first trial, the woman said a paragraph was added to her sworn statement after she signed it.
None of it was ever enough to clear his name: It kept coming back to that single hair.
Tuesday’s ruling “will send a thunderbolt through the forensic community,” said Chris Fabricant, director of strategic litigation at The Innocence Project, which assisted Mayer in the case, which was also taken up by the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University. “The judge ruled that the hair evidence would be inadmissible in a trial today, upsetting a century of precedent.”
The implications are mind-boggling.
In his decision, Kane took the remarkable step of singling out Bloom for criticism. The prosecutor “despised Perrot,” Kane wrote. “He referred to Perrot as ‘inherently evil’ and ‘a sociopath’ and scoffed at Perrot’s redemption.”
The judge said “such feelings enable a person possessing public authority to shed the restraints and scruples that limit the exercise of power. The feelings allow the official to see the individual as apart from the community of citizens whose rights must be regarded.”
It's okay if it is a president.
Kane found that Bloom’s animus towards Perrot influenced his dealings with the FBI expert who testified in the case, who then “departed from his role as a neutral expert and slipped into the role of a partisan for the government.”
It was merely the latest finding of a transgression by Bloom, who left a trail of them when he was an assistant district attorney. Before Perrot’s first trial, a first-degree murder conviction was overturned because of Bloom’s misconduct in the courtroom. After Perrot was convicted, it was discovered Bloom had fabricated a written confession, forging the signatures of Perrot and a detective, to trick two of the teen’s friends into admitting they had helped rob and rape one of the victims.
Okay, I'm thinking CRIMINAL CHARGES at this point.
A judge called his actions “outrageous” and “reprehensible,” and Bloom was publicly censured.
Ooooh! How severe!
You see?
AmeriKan JU$TU$ is a JOKE!!!!!
In 2013, another murder conviction was overturned, and the defendant released from prison after 27 years, because witnesses recanted their identifications of him. They claimed Bloom had offered them leniency for false testimony. Bloom, now a personal injury lawyer, did not return a call.
I must say, the oath means nothing when I'm serving on a jury. Authority lies. They lie right to your face. All you need is a sip to see it.
Perrot’s attorney will now request he be released on bail pending a retrial.
What retrial?
The Hampden district attorney may appeal the decision, or accept it and retry the case against Perrot — or decide not to.
In a statement, District Attorney Anthony D. Gulluni said he disagrees with the judge’s decision, citing the fact that Perrot was found guilty in two trials and previous appeals were denied.
They always do, and isn't that a crime? Disobeying a judge?
He is likely to argue that Perrot, who left the state when a previous release was reversed, will flee if granted bail.
Why would he, but who could blame him if he did?
“Going forward,” the statement continued, “we will evaluate an appeal and will respond in court to the defendant’s request for bail, based on his security risk to the public and his history of flight before trial.”
I'm not feeling threatened by them, and it would be really helpful if authority didn't trot that out untold times on a daily basis.
A friend called Perrot to tell him the good news on Tuesday night. He was so happy he couldn’t form words at first.
I'm glad we have a happy ending and the $y$tem, despite its flaws, worked.
“I am going home!” he finally yelled....
So when will the lawsuit be filed?
--more--"
I dont want to split hairs here, but the whole $y$tem of AmeriKan JU$TUS is a parody of itself these days, folks, complete with started and scripted show trials -- and it is no longer a laughing matter.
UPDATE: Springfield man is freed after 1992 rape conviction is overturned
The Bloom is off, so to speak:
"After 30 years, a prisoner gets a chance for justice" by Yvonne Abraham Globe Columnist January 28, 2016
In a groundbreaking ruling with national implications, a Superior Court judge on Tuesday ordered that George Perrot be given a new trial on the rape charge that put him behind bars for so long. It is the first time a judge in the United States has ruled that justice was denied because prosecutors relied on forensic hair analysis, now widely discredited.
“George was only 17 when he was arrested and has spent 30 years in prison without ever receiving a fair trial,” said his attorney, Kirsten V. Mayer. “He never had the opportunity to do the everyday things that are so easy to take for granted when you are not in prison. We are now working to reunite him with his family as soon as possible.”
Perrot was charged with raping an elderly Springfield woman in 1985, when he was 17, even though the victim, a neighbor, insisted he was not her attacker.
Then WTF happened?
No matter, prosecutors argued: There was other evidence against Perrot — most notably, a single strand of hair found at the scene. On the stand, an expert witness from the FBI testified that the hair, found on the victim’s bed, was a match for Perrot, and that only someone “with a lesser amount of training” would conclude otherwise. In closing arguments, prosecutor Francis Bloom told jurors the hair evidence was so strong that Perrot could be innocent only if police had planted that strand in the victim’s house.
What has become far from a parody is that is now the likely case regarding AmeriKan JU$TU$, and the sad fact is, despite what others claim, there never was a golden age of America regarding justice -- in Massachusetts or anywhere else. It's always been mechanism of power to protect the privileged, oppress dissent, and punish the noncompliant.
The jury convicted him.
We now know that Bloom crossed a line — in this and in other ways — presenting the jury with a false choice, a fact underscored by Judge Robert J. Kane’s thoughtful and thorough decision Tuesday.
Those are the only kind we ever get thanks to the framers of issues in the media, and whatever choice made within that range always benefits those who framed the issue.
Over the last two decades, consensus has grown that the microscopic hair analysis that was crucial to Perrot’s conviction, and a factor in hundreds of others, amounts to bogus science.
Will they be saying that about global warming decades from now -- or any other on which $cience they seem too flip?
I'm thinking of the cholesterol guidelines being adjusted and relaxed just as this nation is awash in surplus pork and corn products (you know, the slave diet that was better than that of European peasantry back in the day).
The FBI now acknowledges that nobody can identify a particular person as the source of a hair or say whether a match is even probable.
So the FRBI agent testilied.
One is now left ponder just who it is exactly that has been populating the jails and how many criminals have been running around free all these years.
Before this week’s ruling, Perrot’s attorneys had tried several times to win him a retrial, alleging prosecutorial misconduct and citing gaps in the Commonwealth’s case.
Perrot was troubled, under the influence of drugs and alcohol, and sleep-deprived when police interrogated him. Though he was a minor, no parents or attorneys were present. Police said he eventually signed a confession admitting to breaking into the rape victim’s home but still denying the sexual assault. But he has no recollection of signing the statement, and he has since repeatedly denied breaking into the woman’s house that night.
When Perrot was first arrested, District Attorney Matthew J. Ryan Jr. suggested he was responsible for a series of horrendous rapes of elderly women in the area.
Matty Ryan was a corrupt pos that was hooked in with Bulger mobsters if memory serves. Was a long time ago.
But three victims failed to pick the 17-year-old out of a highly suggestive lineup that included police officers. An analysis of semen found at the scene of another of the rapes excluded Perrot. The victim in the one rape with which he was charged described a clean-shaven attacker, but Perrot had plentiful facial hair. During Perrot’s first trial, the woman said a paragraph was added to her sworn statement after she signed it.
None of it was ever enough to clear his name: It kept coming back to that single hair.
Tuesday’s ruling “will send a thunderbolt through the forensic community,” said Chris Fabricant, director of strategic litigation at The Innocence Project, which assisted Mayer in the case, which was also taken up by the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University. “The judge ruled that the hair evidence would be inadmissible in a trial today, upsetting a century of precedent.”
The implications are mind-boggling.
In his decision, Kane took the remarkable step of singling out Bloom for criticism. The prosecutor “despised Perrot,” Kane wrote. “He referred to Perrot as ‘inherently evil’ and ‘a sociopath’ and scoffed at Perrot’s redemption.”
The judge said “such feelings enable a person possessing public authority to shed the restraints and scruples that limit the exercise of power. The feelings allow the official to see the individual as apart from the community of citizens whose rights must be regarded.”
It's okay if it is a president.
Kane found that Bloom’s animus towards Perrot influenced his dealings with the FBI expert who testified in the case, who then “departed from his role as a neutral expert and slipped into the role of a partisan for the government.”
It was merely the latest finding of a transgression by Bloom, who left a trail of them when he was an assistant district attorney. Before Perrot’s first trial, a first-degree murder conviction was overturned because of Bloom’s misconduct in the courtroom. After Perrot was convicted, it was discovered Bloom had fabricated a written confession, forging the signatures of Perrot and a detective, to trick two of the teen’s friends into admitting they had helped rob and rape one of the victims.
Okay, I'm thinking CRIMINAL CHARGES at this point.
A judge called his actions “outrageous” and “reprehensible,” and Bloom was publicly censured.
Ooooh! How severe!
You see?
AmeriKan JU$TU$ is a JOKE!!!!!
In 2013, another murder conviction was overturned, and the defendant released from prison after 27 years, because witnesses recanted their identifications of him. They claimed Bloom had offered them leniency for false testimony. Bloom, now a personal injury lawyer, did not return a call.
I must say, the oath means nothing when I'm serving on a jury. Authority lies. They lie right to your face. All you need is a sip to see it.
Perrot’s attorney will now request he be released on bail pending a retrial.
What retrial?
The Hampden district attorney may appeal the decision, or accept it and retry the case against Perrot — or decide not to.
In a statement, District Attorney Anthony D. Gulluni said he disagrees with the judge’s decision, citing the fact that Perrot was found guilty in two trials and previous appeals were denied.
They always do, and isn't that a crime? Disobeying a judge?
He is likely to argue that Perrot, who left the state when a previous release was reversed, will flee if granted bail.
Why would he, but who could blame him if he did?
“Going forward,” the statement continued, “we will evaluate an appeal and will respond in court to the defendant’s request for bail, based on his security risk to the public and his history of flight before trial.”
I'm not feeling threatened by them, and it would be really helpful if authority didn't trot that out untold times on a daily basis.
A friend called Perrot to tell him the good news on Tuesday night. He was so happy he couldn’t form words at first.
I'm glad we have a happy ending and the $y$tem, despite its flaws, worked.
“I am going home!” he finally yelled....
So when will the lawsuit be filed?
--more--"
I dont want to split hairs here, but the whole $y$tem of AmeriKan JU$TUS is a parody of itself these days, folks, complete with started and scripted show trials -- and it is no longer a laughing matter.
UPDATE: Springfield man is freed after 1992 rape conviction is overturned
BFD Burned by Scigliano
"Court hears testimony about district fire chief’s alleged scam" by Laura Crimaldi Globe Staff January 22, 2016
Whenever Edward A. Scigliano IV approached a North Attleborough company about using credits on the Boston Fire Department’s account, he used the same line: The commissioner said he could use the money to buy supplies for the firefighting academy.
That scenario, described in detail on the witness stand by a sales executive at Greenwood Emergency Vehicles Inc., came under scrutiny Thursday during the trial in Suffolk Superior Court of Scigliano, a district chief with the Boston Fire Department. He is accused of procurement fraud and larceny.
Prosecutors allege Scigliano, 46, devised two schemes to steal more than $46,000 from the city, then used the money to pay credit card bills and buy items like a 52-inch, high-definition television, a gas grill, and an elliptical machine....
I'm shocked, aren't you?
--more--"
He's no hero.
I was going to take a stab at a few other items but decided to throw them out instead -- and yet I am somehow haunted by them.
UPDATE:
"Former fire commissioner testifies at larceny trial" by Peter Schworm Globe Staff January 25, 2016
Former Boston Fire Commissioner Roderick Fraser Jr. testified Monday that he never authorized Edward Scigliano IV to use personal credit cards for thousands of dollars of department purchases.
Scigliano, a district chief with the Boston Fire Department, is on trial for allegedly stealing $46,000 from the city, money prosecutors say he used to pay his credit card bills and buy items such as a gas grill and 52-inch television.
Scigliano, 46, has pleaded not guilty, and his lawyer Monday sought to portray the questioned transactions as legitimate attempts to improve the Boston Fire Academy....
--more--"
Also see: Boston Fire district chief convicted of stealing city funds
UPDATES:
Boston Fire district chief sentenced to probation
Former Boston fire district chief convicted of procurement fraud terminated
Whenever Edward A. Scigliano IV approached a North Attleborough company about using credits on the Boston Fire Department’s account, he used the same line: The commissioner said he could use the money to buy supplies for the firefighting academy.
That scenario, described in detail on the witness stand by a sales executive at Greenwood Emergency Vehicles Inc., came under scrutiny Thursday during the trial in Suffolk Superior Court of Scigliano, a district chief with the Boston Fire Department. He is accused of procurement fraud and larceny.
Prosecutors allege Scigliano, 46, devised two schemes to steal more than $46,000 from the city, then used the money to pay credit card bills and buy items like a 52-inch, high-definition television, a gas grill, and an elliptical machine....
I'm shocked, aren't you?
--more--"
He's no hero.
I was going to take a stab at a few other items but decided to throw them out instead -- and yet I am somehow haunted by them.
UPDATE:
"Former fire commissioner testifies at larceny trial" by Peter Schworm Globe Staff January 25, 2016
Former Boston Fire Commissioner Roderick Fraser Jr. testified Monday that he never authorized Edward Scigliano IV to use personal credit cards for thousands of dollars of department purchases.
Scigliano, a district chief with the Boston Fire Department, is on trial for allegedly stealing $46,000 from the city, money prosecutors say he used to pay his credit card bills and buy items such as a gas grill and 52-inch television.
Scigliano, 46, has pleaded not guilty, and his lawyer Monday sought to portray the questioned transactions as legitimate attempts to improve the Boston Fire Academy....
--more--"
Also see: Boston Fire district chief convicted of stealing city funds
UPDATES:
Boston Fire district chief sentenced to probation
Former Boston fire district chief convicted of procurement fraud terminated
The Show Must Go On
And so must this blog:
"Catholic group pushes for cancellation of Virgin Mary drama" by Don Aucoin Globe Staff January 21, 2016
Denouncing a one-woman play about the mother of Jesus as blasphemous, a Pennsylvania-based Catholic organization has launched an online petition calling for the cancellation of “The Testament of Mary,’’ scheduled for Watertown’s New Repertory Theatre this month.
“It is simply outrageous and shocking beyond belief that the Holy Mother of God is subject again to the intolerable blasphemies of the play ‘The Testament of Mary,’ ’’ declares a message on the website of America Needs Fatima.
Isn't Fatima the daughter of Muhammad?
According to the website, more than 30,000 people have signed the petition, which contends that Mary is “deeply insulted’’ in the play, adding: “Every Catholic and God-fearing American is disturbed by such blatant insensitivity to God and His Holy Mother.’’
I'm not taking any, but I don't know what it is yet.
Jim Petosa, artistic director at New Repertory Theatre, said Thursday that the production will go ahead as scheduled and told the Globe by e-mail: “I believe in freedom of speech, but that includes my freedom to imagine and write, and the freedom of a theatre to put on a play which I wrote in all seriousness.
You watch that!
“I have no interest whatsoever in mockery or blasphemy,’’ Toibin added. “I have attempted to create a work of art based on a figure who, for many reasons, haunts my dreams.”
I have no interest in the play, but....
A representative of America Needs Fatima said the organization’s director, Robert Ritchie, was too busy preparing for Friday’s antiabortion March for Life in Washington, D.C., to be interviewed Thursday.
Then he got snowed under. Hmmm.
In “The Testament of Mary,’’ the title character looks back in love and anguish on the life of Jesus, including the events that led up to his crucifixion. It is a complex portrait of a very human Mary, but several sections have raised hackles among devout believers....
That was when the curtain fell.
--more--"
Thankfully, no Iranians will be attending.
Also see: Teen Idol
I need a new repertoire, readers.
"Catholic group pushes for cancellation of Virgin Mary drama" by Don Aucoin Globe Staff January 21, 2016
Denouncing a one-woman play about the mother of Jesus as blasphemous, a Pennsylvania-based Catholic organization has launched an online petition calling for the cancellation of “The Testament of Mary,’’ scheduled for Watertown’s New Repertory Theatre this month.
“It is simply outrageous and shocking beyond belief that the Holy Mother of God is subject again to the intolerable blasphemies of the play ‘The Testament of Mary,’ ’’ declares a message on the website of America Needs Fatima.
Isn't Fatima the daughter of Muhammad?
According to the website, more than 30,000 people have signed the petition, which contends that Mary is “deeply insulted’’ in the play, adding: “Every Catholic and God-fearing American is disturbed by such blatant insensitivity to God and His Holy Mother.’’
I'm not taking any, but I don't know what it is yet.
Jim Petosa, artistic director at New Repertory Theatre, said Thursday that the production will go ahead as scheduled and told the Globe by e-mail: “I believe in freedom of speech, but that includes my freedom to imagine and write, and the freedom of a theatre to put on a play which I wrote in all seriousness.
You watch that!
“I have no interest whatsoever in mockery or blasphemy,’’ Toibin added. “I have attempted to create a work of art based on a figure who, for many reasons, haunts my dreams.”
I have no interest in the play, but....
A representative of America Needs Fatima said the organization’s director, Robert Ritchie, was too busy preparing for Friday’s antiabortion March for Life in Washington, D.C., to be interviewed Thursday.
Then he got snowed under. Hmmm.
In “The Testament of Mary,’’ the title character looks back in love and anguish on the life of Jesus, including the events that led up to his crucifixion. It is a complex portrait of a very human Mary, but several sections have raised hackles among devout believers....
That was when the curtain fell.
--more--"
Thankfully, no Iranians will be attending.
Also see: Teen Idol
I need a new repertoire, readers.
Stanwood Street Search
This what I found in my printed Globe:
"Boston police seized almost 60 grams of heroin and more than 70 grams of cocaine in Dorchester Wednesday. Seven people were arrested and officers also recovered about $700 in cash as a result of the search, police said. The arrests were a result of a search warrant on Stanwood Street, police said. Hector Arias, 38, and Jillian Rabassa-Collazo, 24, both of Boston, are each charged with trafficking heroin and cocaine, according to police. Alexis Rosa-Hernandez, 35, was charged with trafficking cocaine, and Rafael Lugo-Soto, 31, was charged with intent to distribute the two drugs. Both are Boston residents, police said. Police arrested three other individuals, whose identities were not released, for conspiring to violate drug laws, the statement said."
They were then released into the custody of the Vets Center.
Globe cleaned it up pretty good, huh?
"Boston police seized almost 60 grams of heroin and more than 70 grams of cocaine in Dorchester Wednesday. Seven people were arrested and officers also recovered about $700 in cash as a result of the search, police said. The arrests were a result of a search warrant on Stanwood Street, police said. Hector Arias, 38, and Jillian Rabassa-Collazo, 24, both of Boston, are each charged with trafficking heroin and cocaine, according to police. Alexis Rosa-Hernandez, 35, was charged with trafficking cocaine, and Rafael Lugo-Soto, 31, was charged with intent to distribute the two drugs. Both are Boston residents, police said. Police arrested three other individuals, whose identities were not released, for conspiring to violate drug laws, the statement said."
They were then released into the custody of the Vets Center.
Globe cleaned it up pretty good, huh?
Staudte Defense by Missouri Mom
Turns out there isn't one:
"Missouri mom pleads guilty to killing family with antifreeze" Associated Press January 21, 2016
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — A southwest Missouri woman has admitted to plotting with a daughter to fatally poison her husband and son and attempt to kill another daughter over a 14-month period.
Diane Staudte, 53, of Springfield pleaded guilty Thursday to one count of first-degree murder, one count of second-degree murder, and one count of first-degree assault, The Springfield News-Leader reports. Another daughter, 25-year-old Rachel Staudte, pleaded guilty earlier to helping with the poisonings at her mother’s insistence.
As part of a deal with prosecutors, Diane Staudte will avoid a possible death sentence. She faces a sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
Staudte told investigators that she poisoned her 61-year-old husband, Mark Staudte, with antifreeze because she hated him, and that she killed her 26-year-old son, Shawn Staudte, because he was “worse than a pest,” according to the probable cause statement. She also admitted poisoning her daughter Sarah Staudte over four days.
A medical examiner initially ruled that her husband’s April 2012 death was from natural causes and her son’s September 2012 death was from prior medical issues. But a tip led authorities to re-examine the deaths in 2013.
--more--"
Also see: Ferguson, US reach tentative deal on police overhaul
"Missouri mom pleads guilty to killing family with antifreeze" Associated Press January 21, 2016
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — A southwest Missouri woman has admitted to plotting with a daughter to fatally poison her husband and son and attempt to kill another daughter over a 14-month period.
Diane Staudte, 53, of Springfield pleaded guilty Thursday to one count of first-degree murder, one count of second-degree murder, and one count of first-degree assault, The Springfield News-Leader reports. Another daughter, 25-year-old Rachel Staudte, pleaded guilty earlier to helping with the poisonings at her mother’s insistence.
As part of a deal with prosecutors, Diane Staudte will avoid a possible death sentence. She faces a sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
Staudte told investigators that she poisoned her 61-year-old husband, Mark Staudte, with antifreeze because she hated him, and that she killed her 26-year-old son, Shawn Staudte, because he was “worse than a pest,” according to the probable cause statement. She also admitted poisoning her daughter Sarah Staudte over four days.
A medical examiner initially ruled that her husband’s April 2012 death was from natural causes and her son’s September 2012 death was from prior medical issues. But a tip led authorities to re-examine the deaths in 2013.
--more--"
Also see: Ferguson, US reach tentative deal on police overhaul
Citgo Sign For Sale
"Iconic Citgo sign is losing its landlord" by Tim Logan Globe Staff January 21, 2016
A big chunk of a busy Boston neighborhood — and control of one of the city’s best-known landmarks — is on the market.
Boston University said Thursday that it has hired a real estate firm to sell a block of buildings on the northern side of Kenmore Square along Commonwealth Avenue and Beacon Street, including one that carries the Citgo sign on its roof.
The famous flashing sign, which has served as backdrop to Fenway Park home runs since 1965, is not itself for sale; it’s owned by a sign company that leases air rights atop 660 Beacon St .
But the property sale raises questions about the sign’s future. It is not a protected landmark and BU said there are no conditions included in the terms of the sale, though a university official said he expected it would probably stay put.
Putting the nine buildings up for sale is the final move in a decades-long plan by Boston University to spark redevelopment in the once-grungy square that serves as its front door, a bustling crossroads where it bought up much of the real estate in the 1970s.
Since then, many of the businesses that gave Kenmore its old character have gone — the music clubs and dive bars, the IHOP and the Deli Haus, and, for that matter, the methadone clinic that brought hundreds of addicts to the neighborhood every day. Now there’s a spruced-up T station, destination restaurants such as Eastern Standard, and the block-length Hotel Commonwealth, which just underwent a swanky renovation — all on the southern side of Kenmore Square.
It's called gentrification.
The north side, home to BU’s Barnes & Noble campus bookstore and a hodgepodge of restaurants and storefronts with offices above, is less changed. BU — which would rather focus on education and research than redeveloping Kenmore Square — wants a new owner to finish the job, said Gary Nicksa, BU senior vice president for operations.
The properties could easily fetch tens of millions of dollars. The market for office buildings in Boston — including smaller, second-tier buildings such as these — has been strong of late. That hot market helped push BU to sell now, Nicksa said, after considering a sale several times in recent years....
--more--"
A big chunk of a busy Boston neighborhood — and control of one of the city’s best-known landmarks — is on the market.
Boston University said Thursday that it has hired a real estate firm to sell a block of buildings on the northern side of Kenmore Square along Commonwealth Avenue and Beacon Street, including one that carries the Citgo sign on its roof.
The famous flashing sign, which has served as backdrop to Fenway Park home runs since 1965, is not itself for sale; it’s owned by a sign company that leases air rights atop 660 Beacon St .
But the property sale raises questions about the sign’s future. It is not a protected landmark and BU said there are no conditions included in the terms of the sale, though a university official said he expected it would probably stay put.
Putting the nine buildings up for sale is the final move in a decades-long plan by Boston University to spark redevelopment in the once-grungy square that serves as its front door, a bustling crossroads where it bought up much of the real estate in the 1970s.
Since then, many of the businesses that gave Kenmore its old character have gone — the music clubs and dive bars, the IHOP and the Deli Haus, and, for that matter, the methadone clinic that brought hundreds of addicts to the neighborhood every day. Now there’s a spruced-up T station, destination restaurants such as Eastern Standard, and the block-length Hotel Commonwealth, which just underwent a swanky renovation — all on the southern side of Kenmore Square.
It's called gentrification.
The north side, home to BU’s Barnes & Noble campus bookstore and a hodgepodge of restaurants and storefronts with offices above, is less changed. BU — which would rather focus on education and research than redeveloping Kenmore Square — wants a new owner to finish the job, said Gary Nicksa, BU senior vice president for operations.
The properties could easily fetch tens of millions of dollars. The market for office buildings in Boston — including smaller, second-tier buildings such as these — has been strong of late. That hot market helped push BU to sell now, Nicksa said, after considering a sale several times in recent years....
--more--"
Where You Can Stay Tonight
"Airbnb takes pitch to US mayors" by Cecilia Kang New York Times January 22, 2016
WASHINGTON — Chris Lehane, Airbnb’s head of global policy, appeared Thursday before hundreds of US mayors with an enticing pitch: Team up with us to collect millions of dollars in taxes for you.
Then you can wake up and go to the casino to play some fanta$y $ports.
On Wednesday, the head of the hotel industry’s lobbying group spoke to the same audience with a very different message: Airbnb isn’t a good partner; it is breaking your city laws.
The heated battle between Airbnb, the popular room-sharing app, and the hotel industry is playing out in city halls across the country. Airbnb has fought back with a political ground campaign led by former White House advisers.
This week, those difference are being aired at the US Conference of Mayors, an event attended by local politicians with heavy influence over the future of the fast-changing lodging industry.
The appeals are taking many forms, but perhaps the sharpest debate is over numbers and facts....
--more--"
Also see: Tonight's Bed and Breakfast
Can't stay here tonight; no vacancy.
Maybe you should try the Hilton.
WASHINGTON — Chris Lehane, Airbnb’s head of global policy, appeared Thursday before hundreds of US mayors with an enticing pitch: Team up with us to collect millions of dollars in taxes for you.
Then you can wake up and go to the casino to play some fanta$y $ports.
On Wednesday, the head of the hotel industry’s lobbying group spoke to the same audience with a very different message: Airbnb isn’t a good partner; it is breaking your city laws.
The heated battle between Airbnb, the popular room-sharing app, and the hotel industry is playing out in city halls across the country. Airbnb has fought back with a political ground campaign led by former White House advisers.
This week, those difference are being aired at the US Conference of Mayors, an event attended by local politicians with heavy influence over the future of the fast-changing lodging industry.
The appeals are taking many forms, but perhaps the sharpest debate is over numbers and facts....
--more--"
Also see: Tonight's Bed and Breakfast
Can't stay here tonight; no vacancy.
Maybe you should try the Hilton.
Wednesday, January 27, 2016
This Blog Born Again
No, I'm not talking about Ted Cruz's father....
"New Gov’t Task Force Calls for Screening Every Adult, Pregnant Women for Depression
By Brandon Turbeville
January 27, 2016
********
What about individuals who don’t want to seek counseling, take antidepressants, or otherwise engage in a “treatment policy?” In addition, what about those individuals who are diagnosed as depressed for legitimate reasons or as a natural reaction to a specific event? What about the over-diagnosing of individuals as depressed when that is simply not the case at all?
Read for instance the U.S. News and World Report article by Lauran Neergaard which reads more as a press release than anything else. Neergaard attempts to explain the need for screening in the following way.
She writes:
Still, the constant screening of adults without a shred of concern for their own choices and decisions, cannot help but remind us of Scotland’s horrific practice and program called GIRFEC (Getting It Right For Every Child). Based on the idea of “supporting the wellbeing of children,” Scotland is now witnessing an approach in which every child is now given their own caseworker and every action, reaction, behavior and feeling of both the child and the parents is literally scrutinized by government. The result is that children are being ripped from loving homes. In homes where children do reside, parents are often so terrified of having them taken that anything resembling a normal family life brings the fear of a government social worker to the forefront of a parent’s concern.
Notice also how Neergaard describes the screening process and the questionnaires that are available. Some questionnaires ask questions like how often patients have felt bad about themselves or how often they have felt like they are a failure over the last two weeks. Others ask if the patient has little interest in doing things while others want to know if the patient has had trouble sleeping or concentrating. These are legitimate questions, but the answers to these questions, particularly if they are given to a medical doctor, psychiatrist or social worker, whose views of the world are dangerously narrow, could have far reaching and long lasting ramifications for the unsuspecting patient.
Parents may be visited by a child services agent, who generally is more than eager to confiscate their children. Some patients may be visited by a law enforcement agent, demanding they turn over their guns. Others may be forcibly hospitalized. All this because they made the mistake of trusting their physician or answering a question honestly.
Not only that, but look at the nature of the questions. In a country with massive unemployment yet still a notoriously consumerist and money-obsessed society, how could one who spends hours a day staring at a box that reinforces their own inadequacy not feel bad about themselves? And how bad is bad? Is bad feeling like you’re worth absolutely nothing or is bad feeling like the jogging suit you’re wearing makes you look ridiculous in front of people who are better dressed?
How often have you felt like a failure? Try asking this question to an individual who has lost his job because it has been sent to China so big corporations can reap bigger profits. Or perhaps to someone who is in the process of losing their home because they could not pay their mortgage after they lost their job. Or perhaps their wife became ill and, in the freest country in the world, they went bankrupt in order to save her life? Suppose if one asked that question of a man who had recently been released from prison for the hardened crime of possessing a plant, knowing his youth and any ability for his future are now virtually gone. Is it conceivable that these people may feel like failures?
Of course, the recommendations also suggests going after other easy targets such as pregnant women and those who have just given birth. These two population groups are notoriously in flux in terms of their emotions due to the fact that they are carrying a living human being in their bodies or have just given birth to one. Both exhibit a number of blips on the radar screen for any fanatical mental health professional to seize upon if they so desire.
As already mentioned, one of the most concerning aspects of these recommendations is the utter lack of concern or even acknowledgement of the patient’s right to refuse treatment or even refuse to be screened.
Allowing doctors, social workers or any other authority figure to violate rights based upon their conclusion that a person is suffering from a mental disorder is a slippery slope indeed.
In fact, it is such a slippery slope, that it would be best to stay far away from the edge. Scientific and mental health dictatorship has been experimented with in the past – we would be wise not to allow ourselves to repeat it....
--MORE--"
Heck, while I was over there I ran into a good friend:
Gov’t Using the Psychology of “Lockdown” to Make Martial Law the Norm
Oddly, there was nothing in my Globe on the active shooter drill in San Diego and what really happened (gave a listen there yesterday and his efforts do need to be acknowledged sometimes).
Now, to stay on topic(?):
"Panel calls for depression screenings during, after pregnancy" by Pam Belluck The New York Times January 26, 2016
The recommendation comes in the wake of new evidence that maternal mental illness is more common than previously thought; that many cases of what has been called postpartum depression actually start during pregnancy; and that left untreated, these mood disorders can be detrimental to the well-being of children.
Meaning you are getting an agenda shoved in your face, and since when has the lying government given a damn about children?
"In a furor with echoes of the crisis in Flint, Michigan, parents in and around Sebring no longer trust the water coming out of their taps — or the explanations from community leaders — after learning just days ago that high levels of lead were detected in some homes over the summer. Residents in the rural area of about 8,100 people near the Rust Belt city of Youngstown are demanding to know why they were kept in the dark for months. Children are being tested for lead poisoning. Schools have been closed for three straight days. Bottled water is being passed out. And state regulators are calling for a criminal investigation of the water plant manager. ‘‘How long has this been going on?’’ Nina McIlvain asked Tuesday as she loaded bottled water into her car. Over the summer, seven of 20 homes where the water is routinely tested showed excessive levels of lead. The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency said the operator of the small water system that supplies Sebring and two other villages failed to notify the public within the required 60 days and submitted ‘‘misleading, inaccurate or false reports.’’ Plant superintendent James Bates denied he falsified reports, calling the allegations an ‘‘outright lie.’’ Village Manager Richard Giroux maintained on Tuesday that he was not aware of the problem until last week. But a letter released by the Ohio EPA showed that he was told in December. Anger and frustration have been boiling over since Thursday, when the village warned that children and pregnant women shouldn’t drink the tap water. A standing-room-only crowd filled a council meeting Monday night, demanding answers and action.
Could this be the tipping for the $cum political cla$$ of this country?
The mayor told one mother whose son showed elevated lead levels that it was too early to blame the water entirely, prompting a chorus of jeers. Classes were called off after tests showed that two drinking fountains at separate schools in Sebring had lead levels that exceeded EPA standards. Lead can cause learning disabilities and behavior problems in children. Many researchers say that no amount is safe for youngsters. State regulators said they believe the contamination was triggered by water that for some reason had become too corrosive and caused lead pipes leading into homes to leach heavy metal into the drinking water. Regulators asked the water plant to treat the water to reduce its corrosiveness. The most recent round of testing at the homes that had elevated lead over the summer showed that only one had detectable levels, said Ohio EPA spokeswoman Heidi Grimmer. ‘‘That tells us what the village is doing to treat the water is starting to work,’’ she said.
Then drink up!
In Flint, high blood levels of lead have been found in children in the mostly poor, black Rust Belt city of 100,000, where the crisis has led to allegations of environmental racism. Sebring [is] a predominantly white, middle-class community of mostly older, neatly kept homes."
Well, that strikes down that straw man regarding the water, and can you trust what is coming out of your tap -- or the pos politician giving you answers in your town?
At least they care about your kids!
Sorry, but I was feeling a little Flinty.
Now I'm depressed!
The recommendation was part of updated depression-screening guidelines issued by the panel, an independent group of experts appointed by the Department of Health and Human Services. In 2009, the group said adults should be screened if clinicians have the staff to provide support and treatment; the new guidelines recommend adult screening even without such staff members.
Katy Kozhimannil, an associate professor of public health at the University of Minnesota, said, “Policymakers will pay attention to it. Increased screening and detection of depression is an enormous public health need.”
Maybe it's something in the water! Literally!
The panel gave its recommendation, which was published in the journal JAMA, a “B” rating, which means depression screening must be covered under the Affordable Care Act.
It's already unaffordable and they just added more cost.
For years, obstetricians and other health care providers who saw women during and after pregnancy often felt ill equipped or reluctant to ask about problems like depression, anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Maybe they shouldn't be asking then. If the person wants to tell them, well, that's their choice.
Dr. Samantha Meltzer-Brody, the director of the perinatal psychiatry program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said many women are reluctant to share symptoms with doctors on their own. If a mother is “feeling so anxious you’re going to come out of your skin or feeling that you’re going to harm your baby, you may think: ‘Oh my God, I’m having these crazy feelings and nobody’s talking about it. I must be a terrible mother.’”
No one screened Melissa Mead, 30, of The Dalles, Oregon, during or after her first pregnancy, five years ago. Shortly after her son Brady’s birth, “I experienced postpartum depression, anxiety and OCD,” she said, and “I didn’t know what it was.”
Mead cried constantly, barely slept, rarely left home and was “scared to death that my baby was going to suffocate,” she said.
Not to make light of it, but stop reading the goddamn newspaper and watching TV then!
At her job as an optician, she said that people asked, “‘Isn’t everything so wonderful?’ and I was like ‘I kind of feel like dying on the inside,’ and you don’t want to say that because you’re afraid what people will think of you.”
That saddens me in so many ways. Here women have this incredible gift crucial to the survival of the species, something that should be celebrated by us all. We should all be doting on mothers, privately and as a society, including the state. But they have better places to spend money, and how many mothers have been either murdered or had their fathers and mothers, husbands, brothers and sisters, and sons and daughters taken from them by the U.S. war machine all these years?
Think that makes 'em depressed?
After a year, she saw a psychiatrist for talk therapy. When her second son, Emmett, was born, and she had more symptoms, including fearing that she would stab herself with a kitchen knife, Mead tried several medications until one worked. She now volunteers for Postpartum Support International.
She isn't Palestinian, is she?
Might be more than depression then, huh?
Just a disposition to violence, right?
The panel said evidence showed that cognitive behavioral therapy was helpful to mothers. It said that the use of some antidepressants during pregnancy could cause “potential serious fetal harms,” but that “the likelihood of these serious harms is low.”
They want the pregnant mom on antidepressants, huh?
So when do the mothers start shooting their kids?
Dr. Michael Pignone, a professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an author of the recommendation, which was issued by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, also emphasized that “untreated depression has a lot of adverse consequences itself.”
Among them, experts say, are that pregnant women with depression often take poorer care of their prenatal health. And maternal mental illness can affect children, leading to behavioral problems, emotional instability and difficulty in school.
Besides citing evidence that screening accompanied by even minimal counseling helped women with depression, the panel found that screening caused no harm.
That is where print article ended. Web kept pushing.
“A decade ago there was more concern that screening pregnant and postpartum women for mental health would do more harm than good,” said Wendy N. Davis, the executive director of Postpartum Support International. “Medical providers would say to me, ‘If I screen and she screens positively for depression and anxiety, I’m afraid that it will just make her feel more scared, or there’s more stigma to that label.’”
But, she said, “screening tools actually can give a language for both the providers and the patients to feel comfortable talking about it and prevent the stigma.”
The panel recommended that clinicians have the ability to diagnose and treat women, or to refer them elsewhere.
That is crucial, said Dr. Lee S. Cohen, the director of the Center for Women’s Mental Health at Massachusetts General Hospital. “I applaud identifying women who are ill,” he said. But “will she be appropriately referred, will she get treated whether it’s medication or therapy, and over time does she actually ever get well?”
The only state that requires screening, New Jersey, has had mixed results because too few treatment options have been available. While pediatricians and obstetricians were trained to screen, they were not compensated for screening, a study by Kozhimannil found.
A dozen other states, including New York, now have laws encouraging screening, education and treatment. And Bill de Blasio, New York City’s mayor, recently announced a goal of universal screening of pregnant and postpartum women, saying it “should be a part of routine care.”
Eventually it will be EVERYONE!
Routine screening could have benefited Jenna Zalk Berendzen, 40, of Cedar Falls, Iowa, even though during her first pregnancy, five years ago, she was studying to be a nurse practitioner and had medical knowledge. She also had a family history of postpartum depression but had assumed “it’s not going to happen to me,” she said.
That will get the eugenicists, er, geneticists involved.
A week after delivering a son, Maxwell, depression “hit me very, very severely,” she said. She felt suicidal, and at one point, while her husband and baby were sleeping, “I had in front of me 15 bottles of different kinds of meds,” she said. “I would open the bottles up and I would close them, open them and close them. I didn’t want to die, I just thought, ‘It’s never going to get better.’”
Zalk Berendzen ultimately found effective treatment, and has since weaned herself to a low dose of medication. She had no symptoms with the 2014 birth of another son, Samuel. She now works in gynecology at UnityPoint Health in Waterloo, Iowa, where, she said, “Within the last year, we’ve started to recognize we need to be screening every woman.”
You want to know what is depressing?
--more--"
Yup.
I'm starting to feel Zika because I was not aware of certain other things, e.g.
http://www.foxnews.com/health/2016/01/20/transgenic-mosquito-ready-to-join-brazils-war-on-zika-virus.html
"New Gov’t Task Force Calls for Screening Every Adult, Pregnant Women for Depression
By Brandon Turbeville
January 27, 2016
********
What about individuals who don’t want to seek counseling, take antidepressants, or otherwise engage in a “treatment policy?” In addition, what about those individuals who are diagnosed as depressed for legitimate reasons or as a natural reaction to a specific event? What about the over-diagnosing of individuals as depressed when that is simply not the case at all?
Read for instance the U.S. News and World Report article by Lauran Neergaard which reads more as a press release than anything else. Neergaard attempts to explain the need for screening in the following way.
She writes:
Depression can go unrecognized, especially if patients don’t seek a diagnosis. Updating 2009 guidelines, the task force reviewed years of research and said Tuesday that screening for depression remains an important part of primary care for adults of all ages. This time around, the guideline separately addresses pregnant and postpartum women, concluding they, too, benefit from screening.
A variety of screening questionnaires are available, such as one that asks how often, over the last two weeks, patients have felt bad about themselves or felt like they’re a failure, had little interest in doing things or experienced problems sleeping, sleeping or concentrating.
Still undetermined, the task force said, is how often to screen, given that a person’s circumstances and risk could change over time.
Those aren’t new recommendations; several other health groups also have long urged depression screening, although there’s no data on how often it’s done. But the task force says one key is that appropriate follow-up be available to accurately diagnose those flagged by screening — and then to choose treatments that best address each person’s symptoms with the fewest possible side effects.While examining the possibility that a medical issue or symptoms being suffered by a patient can be linked to depression, the idea that catch-all screenings should be in place is not only reminiscent of Brave New World, but is taken directly from the book. So are, I might add, the solutions to it.
Still, the constant screening of adults without a shred of concern for their own choices and decisions, cannot help but remind us of Scotland’s horrific practice and program called GIRFEC (Getting It Right For Every Child). Based on the idea of “supporting the wellbeing of children,” Scotland is now witnessing an approach in which every child is now given their own caseworker and every action, reaction, behavior and feeling of both the child and the parents is literally scrutinized by government. The result is that children are being ripped from loving homes. In homes where children do reside, parents are often so terrified of having them taken that anything resembling a normal family life brings the fear of a government social worker to the forefront of a parent’s concern.
Notice also how Neergaard describes the screening process and the questionnaires that are available. Some questionnaires ask questions like how often patients have felt bad about themselves or how often they have felt like they are a failure over the last two weeks. Others ask if the patient has little interest in doing things while others want to know if the patient has had trouble sleeping or concentrating. These are legitimate questions, but the answers to these questions, particularly if they are given to a medical doctor, psychiatrist or social worker, whose views of the world are dangerously narrow, could have far reaching and long lasting ramifications for the unsuspecting patient.
Parents may be visited by a child services agent, who generally is more than eager to confiscate their children. Some patients may be visited by a law enforcement agent, demanding they turn over their guns. Others may be forcibly hospitalized. All this because they made the mistake of trusting their physician or answering a question honestly.
Not only that, but look at the nature of the questions. In a country with massive unemployment yet still a notoriously consumerist and money-obsessed society, how could one who spends hours a day staring at a box that reinforces their own inadequacy not feel bad about themselves? And how bad is bad? Is bad feeling like you’re worth absolutely nothing or is bad feeling like the jogging suit you’re wearing makes you look ridiculous in front of people who are better dressed?
How often have you felt like a failure? Try asking this question to an individual who has lost his job because it has been sent to China so big corporations can reap bigger profits. Or perhaps to someone who is in the process of losing their home because they could not pay their mortgage after they lost their job. Or perhaps their wife became ill and, in the freest country in the world, they went bankrupt in order to save her life? Suppose if one asked that question of a man who had recently been released from prison for the hardened crime of possessing a plant, knowing his youth and any ability for his future are now virtually gone. Is it conceivable that these people may feel like failures?
Of course, the recommendations also suggests going after other easy targets such as pregnant women and those who have just given birth. These two population groups are notoriously in flux in terms of their emotions due to the fact that they are carrying a living human being in their bodies or have just given birth to one. Both exhibit a number of blips on the radar screen for any fanatical mental health professional to seize upon if they so desire.
As already mentioned, one of the most concerning aspects of these recommendations is the utter lack of concern or even acknowledgement of the patient’s right to refuse treatment or even refuse to be screened.
Allowing doctors, social workers or any other authority figure to violate rights based upon their conclusion that a person is suffering from a mental disorder is a slippery slope indeed.
In fact, it is such a slippery slope, that it would be best to stay far away from the edge. Scientific and mental health dictatorship has been experimented with in the past – we would be wise not to allow ourselves to repeat it....
--MORE--"
Heck, while I was over there I ran into a good friend:
Gov’t Using the Psychology of “Lockdown” to Make Martial Law the Norm
Oddly, there was nothing in my Globe on the active shooter drill in San Diego and what really happened (gave a listen there yesterday and his efforts do need to be acknowledged sometimes).
Now, to stay on topic(?):
"Panel calls for depression screenings during, after pregnancy" by Pam Belluck The New York Times January 26, 2016
The recommendation comes in the wake of new evidence that maternal mental illness is more common than previously thought; that many cases of what has been called postpartum depression actually start during pregnancy; and that left untreated, these mood disorders can be detrimental to the well-being of children.
Meaning you are getting an agenda shoved in your face, and since when has the lying government given a damn about children?
"In a furor with echoes of the crisis in Flint, Michigan, parents in and around Sebring no longer trust the water coming out of their taps — or the explanations from community leaders — after learning just days ago that high levels of lead were detected in some homes over the summer. Residents in the rural area of about 8,100 people near the Rust Belt city of Youngstown are demanding to know why they were kept in the dark for months. Children are being tested for lead poisoning. Schools have been closed for three straight days. Bottled water is being passed out. And state regulators are calling for a criminal investigation of the water plant manager. ‘‘How long has this been going on?’’ Nina McIlvain asked Tuesday as she loaded bottled water into her car. Over the summer, seven of 20 homes where the water is routinely tested showed excessive levels of lead. The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency said the operator of the small water system that supplies Sebring and two other villages failed to notify the public within the required 60 days and submitted ‘‘misleading, inaccurate or false reports.’’ Plant superintendent James Bates denied he falsified reports, calling the allegations an ‘‘outright lie.’’ Village Manager Richard Giroux maintained on Tuesday that he was not aware of the problem until last week. But a letter released by the Ohio EPA showed that he was told in December. Anger and frustration have been boiling over since Thursday, when the village warned that children and pregnant women shouldn’t drink the tap water. A standing-room-only crowd filled a council meeting Monday night, demanding answers and action.
Could this be the tipping for the $cum political cla$$ of this country?
The mayor told one mother whose son showed elevated lead levels that it was too early to blame the water entirely, prompting a chorus of jeers. Classes were called off after tests showed that two drinking fountains at separate schools in Sebring had lead levels that exceeded EPA standards. Lead can cause learning disabilities and behavior problems in children. Many researchers say that no amount is safe for youngsters. State regulators said they believe the contamination was triggered by water that for some reason had become too corrosive and caused lead pipes leading into homes to leach heavy metal into the drinking water. Regulators asked the water plant to treat the water to reduce its corrosiveness. The most recent round of testing at the homes that had elevated lead over the summer showed that only one had detectable levels, said Ohio EPA spokeswoman Heidi Grimmer. ‘‘That tells us what the village is doing to treat the water is starting to work,’’ she said.
Then drink up!
In Flint, high blood levels of lead have been found in children in the mostly poor, black Rust Belt city of 100,000, where the crisis has led to allegations of environmental racism. Sebring [is] a predominantly white, middle-class community of mostly older, neatly kept homes."
Well, that strikes down that straw man regarding the water, and can you trust what is coming out of your tap -- or the pos politician giving you answers in your town?
At least they care about your kids!
Sorry, but I was feeling a little Flinty.
Now I'm depressed!
The recommendation was part of updated depression-screening guidelines issued by the panel, an independent group of experts appointed by the Department of Health and Human Services. In 2009, the group said adults should be screened if clinicians have the staff to provide support and treatment; the new guidelines recommend adult screening even without such staff members.
Katy Kozhimannil, an associate professor of public health at the University of Minnesota, said, “Policymakers will pay attention to it. Increased screening and detection of depression is an enormous public health need.”
Maybe it's something in the water! Literally!
The panel gave its recommendation, which was published in the journal JAMA, a “B” rating, which means depression screening must be covered under the Affordable Care Act.
It's already unaffordable and they just added more cost.
For years, obstetricians and other health care providers who saw women during and after pregnancy often felt ill equipped or reluctant to ask about problems like depression, anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Maybe they shouldn't be asking then. If the person wants to tell them, well, that's their choice.
Dr. Samantha Meltzer-Brody, the director of the perinatal psychiatry program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said many women are reluctant to share symptoms with doctors on their own. If a mother is “feeling so anxious you’re going to come out of your skin or feeling that you’re going to harm your baby, you may think: ‘Oh my God, I’m having these crazy feelings and nobody’s talking about it. I must be a terrible mother.’”
No one screened Melissa Mead, 30, of The Dalles, Oregon, during or after her first pregnancy, five years ago. Shortly after her son Brady’s birth, “I experienced postpartum depression, anxiety and OCD,” she said, and “I didn’t know what it was.”
Mead cried constantly, barely slept, rarely left home and was “scared to death that my baby was going to suffocate,” she said.
Not to make light of it, but stop reading the goddamn newspaper and watching TV then!
At her job as an optician, she said that people asked, “‘Isn’t everything so wonderful?’ and I was like ‘I kind of feel like dying on the inside,’ and you don’t want to say that because you’re afraid what people will think of you.”
That saddens me in so many ways. Here women have this incredible gift crucial to the survival of the species, something that should be celebrated by us all. We should all be doting on mothers, privately and as a society, including the state. But they have better places to spend money, and how many mothers have been either murdered or had their fathers and mothers, husbands, brothers and sisters, and sons and daughters taken from them by the U.S. war machine all these years?
Think that makes 'em depressed?
After a year, she saw a psychiatrist for talk therapy. When her second son, Emmett, was born, and she had more symptoms, including fearing that she would stab herself with a kitchen knife, Mead tried several medications until one worked. She now volunteers for Postpartum Support International.
She isn't Palestinian, is she?
Might be more than depression then, huh?
Just a disposition to violence, right?
The panel said evidence showed that cognitive behavioral therapy was helpful to mothers. It said that the use of some antidepressants during pregnancy could cause “potential serious fetal harms,” but that “the likelihood of these serious harms is low.”
They want the pregnant mom on antidepressants, huh?
So when do the mothers start shooting their kids?
Dr. Michael Pignone, a professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an author of the recommendation, which was issued by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, also emphasized that “untreated depression has a lot of adverse consequences itself.”
Among them, experts say, are that pregnant women with depression often take poorer care of their prenatal health. And maternal mental illness can affect children, leading to behavioral problems, emotional instability and difficulty in school.
Besides citing evidence that screening accompanied by even minimal counseling helped women with depression, the panel found that screening caused no harm.
That is where print article ended. Web kept pushing.
“A decade ago there was more concern that screening pregnant and postpartum women for mental health would do more harm than good,” said Wendy N. Davis, the executive director of Postpartum Support International. “Medical providers would say to me, ‘If I screen and she screens positively for depression and anxiety, I’m afraid that it will just make her feel more scared, or there’s more stigma to that label.’”
But, she said, “screening tools actually can give a language for both the providers and the patients to feel comfortable talking about it and prevent the stigma.”
The panel recommended that clinicians have the ability to diagnose and treat women, or to refer them elsewhere.
That is crucial, said Dr. Lee S. Cohen, the director of the Center for Women’s Mental Health at Massachusetts General Hospital. “I applaud identifying women who are ill,” he said. But “will she be appropriately referred, will she get treated whether it’s medication or therapy, and over time does she actually ever get well?”
The only state that requires screening, New Jersey, has had mixed results because too few treatment options have been available. While pediatricians and obstetricians were trained to screen, they were not compensated for screening, a study by Kozhimannil found.
A dozen other states, including New York, now have laws encouraging screening, education and treatment. And Bill de Blasio, New York City’s mayor, recently announced a goal of universal screening of pregnant and postpartum women, saying it “should be a part of routine care.”
Eventually it will be EVERYONE!
Routine screening could have benefited Jenna Zalk Berendzen, 40, of Cedar Falls, Iowa, even though during her first pregnancy, five years ago, she was studying to be a nurse practitioner and had medical knowledge. She also had a family history of postpartum depression but had assumed “it’s not going to happen to me,” she said.
That will get the eugenicists, er, geneticists involved.
A week after delivering a son, Maxwell, depression “hit me very, very severely,” she said. She felt suicidal, and at one point, while her husband and baby were sleeping, “I had in front of me 15 bottles of different kinds of meds,” she said. “I would open the bottles up and I would close them, open them and close them. I didn’t want to die, I just thought, ‘It’s never going to get better.’”
Zalk Berendzen ultimately found effective treatment, and has since weaned herself to a low dose of medication. She had no symptoms with the 2014 birth of another son, Samuel. She now works in gynecology at UnityPoint Health in Waterloo, Iowa, where, she said, “Within the last year, we’ve started to recognize we need to be screening every woman.”
You want to know what is depressing?
--more--"
Yup.
I'm starting to feel Zika because I was not aware of certain other things, e.g.
http://www.foxnews.com/health/2016/01/20/transgenic-mosquito-ready-to-join-brazils-war-on-zika-virus.html
for starters, and the rest gets gets cryptic from there in so many ways; however, they do diagnose the symptoms for which you should watch.
Thankfully, I'm sure billions will soon follow to pharmaceutical companies to develop vaccines that can be admini$tered. Remember, we live in an age of technological miracles that can be "made" to happen.
I must admit, it has seemed to me lately that the ma$$ media are only talking to themselves and those who will be left behind, if you will. Over the last few months I've noticed a subtle change in tone, as if they have moved past even the pretense of paying attention to the masses of humanity in their care. They are ignoring us as if we no longer exist, and the frightening thought after Davos is that what do they have planned for us all?
"Officials in Brazil urge women to avoid pregnancy due to Zika virus" by Jenny Barchfield Associated Press January 26, 2016
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Brazil’s health minister says the country is sending some 220,000 troops to battle the mosquito blamed for spreading a virus suspected of causing birth defects — but he also says the war is already being lost.
Marcelo Castro said that nearly 220,000 members of Brazil’s Armed Forces would go door-to-door to help in mosquito eradication efforts ahead of the country’s Carnival celebrations. Agency spokesman Nivaldo Coelho said Tuesday details of the deployment are still being worked out.
Good luck with that "war."
An obvious imposition of martial law, and who can argue?
But the minister also said the country has failed in efforts against the Aedes aegypti mosquito that transmits Zika, dengue, chikungunya and yellow fever.
The war is already lost?
‘‘The mosquito has been here in Brazil for three decades, and we are badly losing the battle against the mosquito,’’ the ministers told reporters as a crisis group on Zika was meeting in the capital, Brasilia.
A massive eradication effort eliminated Aedes aegypti from Brazil during the 1950s, but the mosquito slowly returned over the following decades from neighboring nations, public health experts have said. That led to outbreaks of dengue, which was recorded in record numbers last year.
I feel that is what the globe-kickers are planning for most of us, and this is recent.
Up until a few weeks ago I still like they needed us. Now it has become clear that the population of planet Earth has become to unruly and it is time to thin the herd, so to speak.
The arrival of Zika in Brazil last year initially caused little alarm, as the virus’ symptoms are generally much milder than those of dengue. It didn’t become a crisis until late in the year, when researchers made the link with a dramatic increase in reported cases of microcephaly, a rare birth defect that sees babies born with unusually small heads and can cause lasting developmental problems.
More on that below, as that is where my printed paper ended the piece.
The World Health Organization repeated Tuesday that the link remains circumstantial and is not yet proven scientifically.
Like we would believe anything they say.
But worry about the rapid spread of Zika has expanded across the nation, and the hemisphere beyond. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has advised pregnant women to reconsider travel to Brazil and 21 other countries and territories with Zika outbreaks.
One of them, the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, reported 18 new confirmed cases of Zika on Tuesday, though none involve pregnant women. One case had been reported earlier.
Related:
"Puerto Rico is revising its fiscal and economic reform plan to reflect a jump in the island’s projected deficit and a steep drop in anticipated revenues. The government said the deficit is now projected to grow to $16 billion from $14 billion over the next five years due to the US commonwealth’s worsening economic crisis. Officials also said they expect revenue to fall by $1.7 billion over that period. The government also extended projections within the five-year plan by another five years at the request of creditors, noting the deficit could grow to $24 billion by 2025. Puerto Rico is seeking access to a bankruptcy mechanism as it struggles with $72 billion in public debt the governor has said is unpayable. The island has defaulted on several payments and faces its first lawsuit over the government’s diverting of funds to meet certain payments. US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew is expected to visit Puerto Rico Wednesday to talk about the crisis. He demanded last week that Congress approve legislation by March to deal with it."
It's a U.S. territory, right?
Officials in El Salvador, Colombia and Brazil have suggested women stop getting pregnant until the crisis has passed.
Good luck with that. The regulation of sex, I mean. Seems like that has been a problem since the beginning of the species.
Now if you wanted to secretly sterilize them..... ??????
Repellent has disappeared from many Brazilian pharmacies and prices for the product have tripled or even quadrupled where it’s still available in recent weeks since the government announced a suspected link between Zika virus and microcephaly.
At least some bu$ine$$ activity resulted from this crisis.
Nearly 4,000 suspected cases of microcephaly have been reported in Brazil since October, compared with fewer than 150 cases in the country in all of 2014.
Castro’s remarks have proven controversial, both in and outside Brazil.
World Health Organization spokesman Christian Lindmeier said he hadn’t seen the remarks, ‘‘but in general terms I think that this would be a bit of a fatalistic approach because this should mean we could lay down all our approaches now and declare the war lost.
‘‘I don’t think this is the case,’’ he added at WHO headquarters, in Geneva.
In Brazil, some called for Castro to be fired.
Where's Trump today?
‘‘He is incapable of occupying his position,’’ wrote Helio Gurovitz, a columnist with G1, the internet portal of the Globo television network. ‘‘To prove that Castro doesn’t have the capacity to occupy such an important position, at such a delicate moment with the spread of the epidemic, all that’s needed is a selection of such comments.’’
Both Brazil’s Zika outbreak and the spike in microcephaly have been concentrated in the poor and underdeveloped northeast of the country, though the prosperous southeast, where Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are located, are the second hardest-hit region. Rio de Janeiro will host the Aug. 5-21 Olympic games.
Will they?
Should they?
On Tuesday, officials in Rio also ramped up their fight against the Aedes aegypti, dispatching a team of fumigators to the Sambadrome, where the city’s Carnival parades will take place next month, and the region’s governor was distributing mosquito-fighting vehicles for poor suburbs of the city.
Officials in another hard-hit South American country, Colombia, also ramped up efforts against Zika on Tuesday.
Health Minister Alejandro Gaviria visited the city of Ibague, a hotbed of Zika, to start a ‘‘Tour of Colombia’’ campaign to educate local officials on how to fight the mosquitoes. Colombian officials say they've recorded more than 13,500 suspected cases and President Juan Manuel Santos said there could be 600,000 cases by year’s end.
The WHO’s Lindmeier said Tuesday that the U.N. agency plans a special session on the virus during a Geneva meeting of its executive board on Thursday.
--more--"
For some reason, the Globe left that out.... as they did this:
BOMBSHELL: Declassified Memo Proves the Pentagon had ZERO Evidence of WMDs in Iraq
Nothing in my Globe about that. There is just the staying in Afghanistan forever now (“What we’ve learned is that you can’t really leave,” which is why so many of us were and are against all these wars in the first place) and do the $ame thing all over again, $ame as in Iraq, $ame as in Vietnam, $ame as anywhere the U.S. empire is based or has a puppet ruler in place -- as war criminal cretin Don Rumsfeld makes the late night rounds with a disgusting sellout shilling for his new app.
I wonder why Colbert didn't ask him about D.U. disfigurements.
Speaking of such things the exposure of organ harvesting has been turned on it's head.
Instead we get heartwarming stories without knowing where from came that kidney.
Speaking of being born again, get this:
Charles Colson Task Force on Federal Corrections recommends how to cut US prisoner count
Do you know who is Charles Colson (no professor David Duke he)?
The thumping you here is George Orwell spinning at light speed.
Do the recommendations really matter?
It's the agenda that's the thing, and prisons are starting to cost too much.
Time to lock things up for today.
".... It's classic. It's tragic. It is unspeakably sad and there is nothing I can do about it except watch.
In these times, nothing is what it appears to be unless you have that rare example of the dispassionate, objective awareness ...and then things are just what they appear to be... but who could you tell about it? You are, that lonely voice in the wilderness, crying out with the pebbles of Demosthenes's in your mouth, so it is all garbled and incoherent, against the sound of the sea that roars just beyond the reach of the trees that grip the Earth at the cliff's edge. You know there is nothing you can do but watch; one of billions that twist and turn in a shadow dance, flitting images of temporary forms... in a dream.
They are laughing in your face, as they apply their Eugenics program world wide, with the vaccines and Zika viruses, the wars, the poisoning of food products, the water. There's no need to list these things again. They've been listed often enough. What can we do?
--MORE--"
NDUs:
"Schizophrenia is characterized by delusional thinking and hallucinations. The researchers pieced together the steps by which genes can increase a person’s risk of developing schizophrenia. That risk, they found, is tied to a natural process called synaptic pruning, in which the brain sheds weak or redundant connections between neurons as it matures."
They need to get a “biological handle on the genetics” so they can get inside your brain.
What do you do when it is the government that is delusional and the ma$$ media is passing off agenda-pushing, scripted and staged productions as real events?
See: New lawsuit seeks replacement of Flint’s lead pipes
Oh, yeah, government lies to you, too.
I haven't read any blogs yet and am planning to do some clean up work today.
UPDATE:
Mich. lawmakers approve another $28m for Flint water crisis
The funding received quick and unanimous approval. It is the second round of funding enacted since the crisis was confirmed in the fall."
The whole tone of the thing is the public $ervants who $igned off on it all to save a few bucks and then lied about it are now some sort of heroes.
And they wonder why we don't want to drink this swill anymore?
FURTHER UPDATE:
So what is with the kidneys and body parts being sold in Bo$ton?
"Officials in Brazil urge women to avoid pregnancy due to Zika virus" by Jenny Barchfield Associated Press January 26, 2016
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Brazil’s health minister says the country is sending some 220,000 troops to battle the mosquito blamed for spreading a virus suspected of causing birth defects — but he also says the war is already being lost.
Marcelo Castro said that nearly 220,000 members of Brazil’s Armed Forces would go door-to-door to help in mosquito eradication efforts ahead of the country’s Carnival celebrations. Agency spokesman Nivaldo Coelho said Tuesday details of the deployment are still being worked out.
Good luck with that "war."
An obvious imposition of martial law, and who can argue?
But the minister also said the country has failed in efforts against the Aedes aegypti mosquito that transmits Zika, dengue, chikungunya and yellow fever.
The war is already lost?
‘‘The mosquito has been here in Brazil for three decades, and we are badly losing the battle against the mosquito,’’ the ministers told reporters as a crisis group on Zika was meeting in the capital, Brasilia.
A massive eradication effort eliminated Aedes aegypti from Brazil during the 1950s, but the mosquito slowly returned over the following decades from neighboring nations, public health experts have said. That led to outbreaks of dengue, which was recorded in record numbers last year.
I feel that is what the globe-kickers are planning for most of us, and this is recent.
Up until a few weeks ago I still like they needed us. Now it has become clear that the population of planet Earth has become to unruly and it is time to thin the herd, so to speak.
The arrival of Zika in Brazil last year initially caused little alarm, as the virus’ symptoms are generally much milder than those of dengue. It didn’t become a crisis until late in the year, when researchers made the link with a dramatic increase in reported cases of microcephaly, a rare birth defect that sees babies born with unusually small heads and can cause lasting developmental problems.
More on that below, as that is where my printed paper ended the piece.
The World Health Organization repeated Tuesday that the link remains circumstantial and is not yet proven scientifically.
Like we would believe anything they say.
But worry about the rapid spread of Zika has expanded across the nation, and the hemisphere beyond. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has advised pregnant women to reconsider travel to Brazil and 21 other countries and territories with Zika outbreaks.
One of them, the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, reported 18 new confirmed cases of Zika on Tuesday, though none involve pregnant women. One case had been reported earlier.
Related:
"Puerto Rico is revising its fiscal and economic reform plan to reflect a jump in the island’s projected deficit and a steep drop in anticipated revenues. The government said the deficit is now projected to grow to $16 billion from $14 billion over the next five years due to the US commonwealth’s worsening economic crisis. Officials also said they expect revenue to fall by $1.7 billion over that period. The government also extended projections within the five-year plan by another five years at the request of creditors, noting the deficit could grow to $24 billion by 2025. Puerto Rico is seeking access to a bankruptcy mechanism as it struggles with $72 billion in public debt the governor has said is unpayable. The island has defaulted on several payments and faces its first lawsuit over the government’s diverting of funds to meet certain payments. US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew is expected to visit Puerto Rico Wednesday to talk about the crisis. He demanded last week that Congress approve legislation by March to deal with it."
It's a U.S. territory, right?
Officials in El Salvador, Colombia and Brazil have suggested women stop getting pregnant until the crisis has passed.
Good luck with that. The regulation of sex, I mean. Seems like that has been a problem since the beginning of the species.
Now if you wanted to secretly sterilize them..... ??????
Repellent has disappeared from many Brazilian pharmacies and prices for the product have tripled or even quadrupled where it’s still available in recent weeks since the government announced a suspected link between Zika virus and microcephaly.
At least some bu$ine$$ activity resulted from this crisis.
Nearly 4,000 suspected cases of microcephaly have been reported in Brazil since October, compared with fewer than 150 cases in the country in all of 2014.
Castro’s remarks have proven controversial, both in and outside Brazil.
World Health Organization spokesman Christian Lindmeier said he hadn’t seen the remarks, ‘‘but in general terms I think that this would be a bit of a fatalistic approach because this should mean we could lay down all our approaches now and declare the war lost.
‘‘I don’t think this is the case,’’ he added at WHO headquarters, in Geneva.
In Brazil, some called for Castro to be fired.
Where's Trump today?
‘‘He is incapable of occupying his position,’’ wrote Helio Gurovitz, a columnist with G1, the internet portal of the Globo television network. ‘‘To prove that Castro doesn’t have the capacity to occupy such an important position, at such a delicate moment with the spread of the epidemic, all that’s needed is a selection of such comments.’’
Both Brazil’s Zika outbreak and the spike in microcephaly have been concentrated in the poor and underdeveloped northeast of the country, though the prosperous southeast, where Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are located, are the second hardest-hit region. Rio de Janeiro will host the Aug. 5-21 Olympic games.
Will they?
Should they?
On Tuesday, officials in Rio also ramped up their fight against the Aedes aegypti, dispatching a team of fumigators to the Sambadrome, where the city’s Carnival parades will take place next month, and the region’s governor was distributing mosquito-fighting vehicles for poor suburbs of the city.
Officials in another hard-hit South American country, Colombia, also ramped up efforts against Zika on Tuesday.
Health Minister Alejandro Gaviria visited the city of Ibague, a hotbed of Zika, to start a ‘‘Tour of Colombia’’ campaign to educate local officials on how to fight the mosquitoes. Colombian officials say they've recorded more than 13,500 suspected cases and President Juan Manuel Santos said there could be 600,000 cases by year’s end.
The WHO’s Lindmeier said Tuesday that the U.N. agency plans a special session on the virus during a Geneva meeting of its executive board on Thursday.
--more--"
For some reason, the Globe left that out.... as they did this:
BOMBSHELL: Declassified Memo Proves the Pentagon had ZERO Evidence of WMDs in Iraq
Nothing in my Globe about that. There is just the staying in Afghanistan forever now (“What we’ve learned is that you can’t really leave,” which is why so many of us were and are against all these wars in the first place) and do the $ame thing all over again, $ame as in Iraq, $ame as in Vietnam, $ame as anywhere the U.S. empire is based or has a puppet ruler in place -- as war criminal cretin Don Rumsfeld makes the late night rounds with a disgusting sellout shilling for his new app.
I wonder why Colbert didn't ask him about D.U. disfigurements.
Speaking of such things the exposure of organ harvesting has been turned on it's head.
Instead we get heartwarming stories without knowing where from came that kidney.
Speaking of being born again, get this:
Charles Colson Task Force on Federal Corrections recommends how to cut US prisoner count
Do you know who is Charles Colson (no professor David Duke he)?
The thumping you here is George Orwell spinning at light speed.
Do the recommendations really matter?
It's the agenda that's the thing, and prisons are starting to cost too much.
Time to lock things up for today.
".... It's classic. It's tragic. It is unspeakably sad and there is nothing I can do about it except watch.
In these times, nothing is what it appears to be unless you have that rare example of the dispassionate, objective awareness ...and then things are just what they appear to be... but who could you tell about it? You are, that lonely voice in the wilderness, crying out with the pebbles of Demosthenes's in your mouth, so it is all garbled and incoherent, against the sound of the sea that roars just beyond the reach of the trees that grip the Earth at the cliff's edge. You know there is nothing you can do but watch; one of billions that twist and turn in a shadow dance, flitting images of temporary forms... in a dream.
They are laughing in your face, as they apply their Eugenics program world wide, with the vaccines and Zika viruses, the wars, the poisoning of food products, the water. There's no need to list these things again. They've been listed often enough. What can we do?
--MORE--"
NDUs:
"Schizophrenia is characterized by delusional thinking and hallucinations. The researchers pieced together the steps by which genes can increase a person’s risk of developing schizophrenia. That risk, they found, is tied to a natural process called synaptic pruning, in which the brain sheds weak or redundant connections between neurons as it matures."
They need to get a “biological handle on the genetics” so they can get inside your brain.
What do you do when it is the government that is delusional and the ma$$ media is passing off agenda-pushing, scripted and staged productions as real events?
See: New lawsuit seeks replacement of Flint’s lead pipes
Oh, yeah, government lies to you, too.
I haven't read any blogs yet and am planning to do some clean up work today.
UPDATE:
Mich. lawmakers approve another $28m for Flint water crisis
The funding received quick and unanimous approval. It is the second round of funding enacted since the crisis was confirmed in the fall."
The whole tone of the thing is the public $ervants who $igned off on it all to save a few bucks and then lied about it are now some sort of heroes.
And they wonder why we don't want to drink this swill anymore?
FURTHER UPDATE:
So what is with the kidneys and body parts being sold in Bo$ton?
Tuesday, January 26, 2016
Feeling Zika
Baby born in Hawaii has birth defect linked to Zika virus by Helen Branswell, January 16, 2016
My stomach is already upset because my printed piece byline was:
An obscure virus called Zika — never before known to cause serious illness and with no medication to treat it and no vaccine to prevent it — has sparked fears and disrupted lives the world over.
And I'm just reading about it now?
Concerns about the virus appear likely to affect travel plans for Latin American and Caribbean immigrants living in Massachusetts and for pregnant women across the United States planning winter getaways.
In Brazil, where the virus arrived last spring, nearly 4,000 children with microcephaly have been born since October 2015, compared with 147 in 2014.
HMMMM!
Studies don’t prove Zika causes microcephaly but provide strong circumstantial evidence.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is advising pregnant women to consider avoiding travel to Brazil and 13 other countries and territories in Latin America and the Caribbean: Colombia, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Martinique, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Suriname, Venezuela, and Puerto Rico. On Friday, the CDC added these locations to the travel advisory list: Barbados, Bolivia, Ecuador, Guadeloupe, Saint Martin, Guyana, Cape Verde, and Samoa.
But let the immigrants come!
“It’s another situation where the way we live, how we travel . . . has brought us another virus,” said Dr. Alfred DeMaria, Massachusetts state epidemiologist.
Dr. Pieter Cohen, a Somerville internist with thousands of Brazilian patients, said so far none has come to him with concerns, but he expects soon to have questions to answer and dilemmas to resolve.
For many pregnant women, he said, staying in the United States might not be an option. “So much of their lives and families are in Brazil,” and often they have sick relatives or other family obligations, Cohen said.
Those who must go abroad will need to “take aggressive action to avoid mosquito bites,” he said.
Federal health authorities are advising medical professionals to ask all pregnant women where they have traveled recently. Those who have visited an area where Zika is prevalent and who have two or more symptoms of Zika infection should be tested. DeMaria said the state laboratory cannot perform the test but will probably gain the capacity soon; for now, samples would have to go to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.
The guidelines recommend that pregnant women testing positive for Zika undergo regular ultrasounds to monitor their babies’ growth.
I'm not a woman, but this has to be absolutely frightening to any pregnant woman.
“It’s interesting that the CDC took this aggressive stance as it will assuredly lead to a lot of testing and many false-positives, that is, patients whose blood test is positive but have a completely normal pregnancy,” Cohen wrote in an e-mail. All this testing, he wrote, will lead to much anxiety, but “this is an emerging threat that we understand poorly.”
Related:
"Firearms and motor vehicles are among the leading nonmedical causes of mortality in the United States, but medical ailments, like cancer and heart attacks, kill considerably more people each year than either guns or automobiles according to the CDC."
That's why they are focusing on e-cigarettes and kids while losing the war on AIDS.
I no longer trust the CDC anyway.
Officials at Cambridge Health Alliance, where Cohen works; Boston Medical Center; and MetroWest Medical Center in Framingham — all of which treat a sizable proportion of Latin American immigrants — said they have not seen patients with symptoms of Zika or received many questions from patients. But all have circulated federal health guidance to their staff.
It's not their fault they are here, and it comes with being a sanctuary state.
Because the virus has only recently received widespread attention, Brazilian community leaders in Massachusetts have not detected broad concerns. “The information is still being disseminated to the community here,” said Dr. C. Eduardo Siqueira, a professor at the College of Public and Community Service at the University of Massachusetts Boston.
But to physicians such as himself, Siqueira said, it was a shock to learn the virus has apparently damaged fetuses. “Nobody saw it coming,” he said.
Here is another shock.
The whole world is upside-down, inside-out, and backwards. It's surreal.
Dr. Katherine Economy, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, said microcephaly is rare and has multiple causes, including genetic abnormalities and infections.
Zika cases have already shown up in the United States, including in Hawaii, Illinois, and Florida, all among people who were bitten by mosquitoes overseas.
Oh, good. Means American mosquitoes aren't carrying the thing.
Originally from Africa, Zika thrives on human activity. The mosquitoes that carry it evolved to live in the small puddles that people tend to leave around their houses, in buckets and rain gutters. They bite aggressively during the day.
If the virus establishes itself in the United States, it will be because of the interplay between insect and human. If a person sick with Zika comes to the United States and a mosquito bites within the first week of illness, that mosquito could transfer the virus to someone else. The virus can also be transmitted from mother to child during pregnancy, and some evidence exists that Zika might be sexually transmitted.
OH, BOY!
This is taking on the characteristics of a lab-born disease!
It’s usually the Aedes aegypti mosquito, prevalent in the Southeastern United States, that spreads Zika.
A second mosquito that carries it, although less commonly, is Aedes albopictus. This breed tolerates cooler temperatures and has been found in Massachusetts, said Richard Pollack, a public health entomologist and chairman of the Massachusetts Mosquito Advisory Group.
Uh-oh!
The Aedes albopictus mosquitoes arrived in tire casings brought into the state for processing; their eggs survive the winter. The usual methods of controlling mosquitoes — poisoning their larvae and spraying pesticides at night — are less effective on this breed, Pollack said. There is no suggestion those bugs are spreading Zika in the state.
So we are going to be showered with pesticides this spring and summer, along with the coal ash and all the other contaminants the government is dumping on us.
“Even if there’s no virus being transmitted, because they are aggressive human biters, people will come quickly to hate them,” Pollack said. “Be happy it’s January.”
--more--"
Thankfully, the WHO is now on the case.
Also see: IS THE ZIKA VIRUS IN BRAZIL BEING SPREAD BY GENETICALLY MODIFIED MOSQUITOES FUNDED BY BILL GATES?
Of course, they would never do anything like that.... right?
You know what this reminds me of?
"Beating back Ebola is among the few tangible achievements that senior U.N. officials cite as an example of global cooperation, athough the WHO has been widely criticized for failing to act quickly enough. On Wednesday, an independent commission of 17 experts in public health, research and finance called for greater international investment in preventing future epidemics. “Relative to its significance to global humanity, there is no issue that gets less attention,” Lawrence H. Summers, a professor and former president at Harvard University, said at an event in New York marking the release of a report on the matter."
Hey, look, it's union leader Larry Summers posing as a global health advocate even though “it’s a new normal,” this thing that killed and sickened tens of thousands of people in West Africa.
Of course, this is the same guy who said Africa should be used as a toxic waste dump.
Ebola case is reported in West Africa
I didn't believe the epidemic was over as the U.N. claimed.
Child asthma rates quiet down after earlier increase
Whatever (cough).
Whatever happened with the chikungunya outbreak anyway?
What else is going on in Brazil (according to the Globe):
"TelexFree promoter jailed for contempt in Florida" by Beth Healy Globe Staff January 21, 2016
One of the top promoters in TelexFree Inc.’s alleged $3 billion pyramid scheme is being held in a Florida jail on a contempt charge, after failing to return assets including cars and cash that securities regulators had frozen.
Sanderley Rodrigues de Vasconcelos, known more widely as Sann Rodrigues, was arrested in May on visa fraud charges and has been home under electronic surveillance awaiting trial. He had been given a deadline of Jan. 15 to return $233,473 transferred out of his bank accounts, as well as proceeds from the sale of a Ferrari, a Mercedes, and three Florida condominiums.
A lawyer for Rodrigues could not be reached. He fired a Massachusetts lawyer last summer who used to represent him.
TelexFree, formerly based in Marlborough and Brazil, filed for federal bankruptcy protection in the United States in 2014. Prosecutors and bankruptcy officials allege that it is the largest pyramid scheme in history, in terms of the number of victims.
At least 1 million people around the world invested with the company, which purported to sell cheap long distance phone plans but allegedly made most of its money recruiting members to invest. Money from later participants was used to pay off earlier ones, according to prosecutors.
TelexFree’s top executives are facing criminal charges and prison time if found guilty....
--more--"
Just kind of winging it right now, so WhatsApp, Brazil?
"The WhatsApp messaging service will drop its annual 99-cent subscription fee. Instead, it will test ways to monetize its nearly 1 billion customers by allowing businesses to communicate with WhatsApp users as an alternative to ads. WhatsApp will remove the fees from different versions of its app over the coming weeks because many users who don’t have a debit or credit card are concerned about losing access to their contacts after a free trial period, the company said Monday. “We will test tools that allow you to use WhatsApp to communicate with businesses and organizations that you want to hear from,” WhatsApp said. “That could mean communicating with your bank about whether a recent transaction was fraudulent, or with an airline about a delayed flight.” Facebook Inc. bought WhatsApp for $22 billion in 2014."
I got the me$$age. Time to get some sleep. Maybe I'll feel better tomorrow.
Good night and pleasant dreams, readers. Don't let the mosquitos bite.
My stomach is already upset because my printed piece byline was:
"Hawaii Baby With Brain Damage Is First U.S. Case Tied to Zika Virus" by DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. JAN. 16, 2016
The first case of brain damage linked to the Zika virus within the United States was reported on Friday in Hawaii.
The Hawaii State Department of Health said that a baby born in an Oahu hospital with microcephaly — an unusually small head and brain — had been infected with the Zika virus, which is believed to have caused the same damage in thousands of babies in Brazil in recent months. The presence of the virus was confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Okay, my first reaction was long ago I would have taken this at face value.
My second was what larger agenda is at work here, and what measures were taken to support it that are now being covered up?
Okay, my first reaction was long ago I would have taken this at face value.
My second was what larger agenda is at work here, and what measures were taken to support it that are now being covered up?
The child’s mother had lived in Brazil in May last year and probably was infected by a mosquito then, early in her pregnancy, the health department said. The virus presumably reached the embryo and damaged its developing brain.
Okay, this is certainly possible. Malaria has been a problem in the past, and we have been told mosquitoes carry other things like West Nile and EEE.
What I'm wondering is if the mosquitoes have been weaponized as in the past.
Okay, this is certainly possible. Malaria has been a problem in the past, and we have been told mosquitoes carry other things like West Nile and EEE.
What I'm wondering is if the mosquitoes have been weaponized as in the past.
“We are saddened by the events that have affected this mother and her newborn,” Dr. Sarah Park, Hawaii’s state epidemiologist, said in a statement. “This case further emphasizes the importance of the C.D.C. travel recommendations released today.”
What would those be?
What would those be?
Also on Friday, the C.D.C. recommended that pregnant women consider postponing travel to any countries or regions with active Zika virus transmission.
As of Saturday, those included 17 Latin American and Caribbean countries and territories: Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Martinique, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Saint Martin, Suriname, Venezuela and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. The list of countries with transmission has been steadily growing; on Saturday, Barbados reported its first cases.
Now I don't want to be a poop, but this is at the same time we are being told a surge of Central American immigrant kids are coming.
Now I don't want to be a poop, but this is at the same time we are being told a surge of Central American immigrant kids are coming.
Women considering becoming pregnant were advised to consult doctors before going to Zika-infested areas, and all travelers headed to such areas were urged to take vigorous measures to avoid mosquito bites.
There have been no confirmed cases of Zika virus transmission within Hawaii, Dr. Park said. Six Hawaii residents are known to have had the virus since 2014, but all picked it up through travel elsewhere. Nevertheless, Hawaii is undergoing an outbreak of dengue fever, and the same mosquitoes that transmit it also can transmit Zika.
Related: Peppering You With Posts
Related: Peppering You With Posts
A C.D.C. epidemiologist recently predicted that Zika would follow the same pattern that dengue has, with local transmission during hot weather in tropical parts of the country, including Florida, the Gulf Coast and Hawaii.
In Washington, administration officials said the decision to issue a travel alert developed quickly at the end of the week and triggered a flurry of diplomatic contacts with the countries named in the alert, given the potential economic and tourism impact that the decision could have. Officials said that notification effort delayed the C.D.C. announcement for several hours on Friday.
Scientists do not yet know how the Zika virus damages fetal brains. It is related to the dengue, yellow fever and West Nile viruses, which normally do not cause such damage.
So what government-introduced illness was added or spliced in?
So what government-introduced illness was added or spliced in?
The virus was first discovered in monkeys in the Zika Forest in Uganda in 1947.
They still running out the animals infected man, huh?
I'm no scientist, but I'm no longer buying it. When the propaganda pre$$ exposes Fort Derrick maybe I'll start scratching.
It is widespread in Africa and Southeast Asia but had never been seen as a major threat because the disease it causes is usually mild. About 80 percent of people who get the virus show no symptoms; those who do usually get a fever, rash and red eyes, but they rarely require hospitalization.
Hmm.
They still running out the animals infected man, huh?
I'm no scientist, but I'm no longer buying it. When the propaganda pre$$ exposes Fort Derrick maybe I'll start scratching.
It is widespread in Africa and Southeast Asia but had never been seen as a major threat because the disease it causes is usually mild. About 80 percent of people who get the virus show no symptoms; those who do usually get a fever, rash and red eyes, but they rarely require hospitalization.
Hmm.
In 2007, the Asian strain of the virus was detected moving across the South Pacific; it caused a large outbreak on Yap Island that year. By late 2014, it had reached Easter Island, off the coast of Chile. In Brazil, the virus first appeared in the country in May.
Hawaii is conducting a “Fight the Bite” campaign intended to stop its dengue outbreak. Residents have been urged to get rid of all standing water on their properties, to apply mosquito repellents and to try to avoid being bitten.
The Zika and dengue viruses — like virtually all mosquito-borne diseases — do not occur in mosquito larvae. Adult female mosquitoes pick them up by biting one infected human, and then, some days later, after the virus has traveled from their gut to their salivary glands, they infect another human. Dr. Park said neither the mother nor the baby in Hawaii is still infectious.
--more--"
Before leaving Hawaii:
"Rescuers continued to search choppy waters where debris was sighted after two Marine Corps helicopters carrying six crew members each crashed off the Hawaiian island of Oahu during a nighttime training mission, military officials said. There was no immediate word Friday on the fate of those aboard or what caused the accident."
Related:
Search continues for Hingham man, 11 others missing off Hawaii
Hingham mourns as search for missing Marines is suspended
That certainly brings it home.
"Pregnant travelers urged to stay away from countries with Zika" by Felice J. Freyer Globe Staff January 22, 2016
Before leaving Hawaii:
"Rescuers continued to search choppy waters where debris was sighted after two Marine Corps helicopters carrying six crew members each crashed off the Hawaiian island of Oahu during a nighttime training mission, military officials said. There was no immediate word Friday on the fate of those aboard or what caused the accident."
Related:
Search continues for Hingham man, 11 others missing off Hawaii
Hingham mourns as search for missing Marines is suspended
That certainly brings it home.
"Pregnant travelers urged to stay away from countries with Zika" by Felice J. Freyer Globe Staff January 22, 2016
An obscure virus called Zika — never before known to cause serious illness and with no medication to treat it and no vaccine to prevent it — has sparked fears and disrupted lives the world over.
And I'm just reading about it now?
Concerns about the virus appear likely to affect travel plans for Latin American and Caribbean immigrants living in Massachusetts and for pregnant women across the United States planning winter getaways.
In Brazil, where the virus arrived last spring, nearly 4,000 children with microcephaly have been born since October 2015, compared with 147 in 2014.
HMMMM!
Studies don’t prove Zika causes microcephaly but provide strong circumstantial evidence.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is advising pregnant women to consider avoiding travel to Brazil and 13 other countries and territories in Latin America and the Caribbean: Colombia, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Martinique, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Suriname, Venezuela, and Puerto Rico. On Friday, the CDC added these locations to the travel advisory list: Barbados, Bolivia, Ecuador, Guadeloupe, Saint Martin, Guyana, Cape Verde, and Samoa.
But let the immigrants come!
“It’s another situation where the way we live, how we travel . . . has brought us another virus,” said Dr. Alfred DeMaria, Massachusetts state epidemiologist.
Dr. Pieter Cohen, a Somerville internist with thousands of Brazilian patients, said so far none has come to him with concerns, but he expects soon to have questions to answer and dilemmas to resolve.
For many pregnant women, he said, staying in the United States might not be an option. “So much of their lives and families are in Brazil,” and often they have sick relatives or other family obligations, Cohen said.
Those who must go abroad will need to “take aggressive action to avoid mosquito bites,” he said.
Federal health authorities are advising medical professionals to ask all pregnant women where they have traveled recently. Those who have visited an area where Zika is prevalent and who have two or more symptoms of Zika infection should be tested. DeMaria said the state laboratory cannot perform the test but will probably gain the capacity soon; for now, samples would have to go to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.
The guidelines recommend that pregnant women testing positive for Zika undergo regular ultrasounds to monitor their babies’ growth.
I'm not a woman, but this has to be absolutely frightening to any pregnant woman.
“It’s interesting that the CDC took this aggressive stance as it will assuredly lead to a lot of testing and many false-positives, that is, patients whose blood test is positive but have a completely normal pregnancy,” Cohen wrote in an e-mail. All this testing, he wrote, will lead to much anxiety, but “this is an emerging threat that we understand poorly.”
Related:
"Firearms and motor vehicles are among the leading nonmedical causes of mortality in the United States, but medical ailments, like cancer and heart attacks, kill considerably more people each year than either guns or automobiles according to the CDC."
That's why they are focusing on e-cigarettes and kids while losing the war on AIDS.
I no longer trust the CDC anyway.
Officials at Cambridge Health Alliance, where Cohen works; Boston Medical Center; and MetroWest Medical Center in Framingham — all of which treat a sizable proportion of Latin American immigrants — said they have not seen patients with symptoms of Zika or received many questions from patients. But all have circulated federal health guidance to their staff.
It's not their fault they are here, and it comes with being a sanctuary state.
Because the virus has only recently received widespread attention, Brazilian community leaders in Massachusetts have not detected broad concerns. “The information is still being disseminated to the community here,” said Dr. C. Eduardo Siqueira, a professor at the College of Public and Community Service at the University of Massachusetts Boston.
But to physicians such as himself, Siqueira said, it was a shock to learn the virus has apparently damaged fetuses. “Nobody saw it coming,” he said.
Here is another shock.
The whole world is upside-down, inside-out, and backwards. It's surreal.
Dr. Katherine Economy, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, said microcephaly is rare and has multiple causes, including genetic abnormalities and infections.
Zika cases have already shown up in the United States, including in Hawaii, Illinois, and Florida, all among people who were bitten by mosquitoes overseas.
Oh, good. Means American mosquitoes aren't carrying the thing.
Originally from Africa, Zika thrives on human activity. The mosquitoes that carry it evolved to live in the small puddles that people tend to leave around their houses, in buckets and rain gutters. They bite aggressively during the day.
If the virus establishes itself in the United States, it will be because of the interplay between insect and human. If a person sick with Zika comes to the United States and a mosquito bites within the first week of illness, that mosquito could transfer the virus to someone else. The virus can also be transmitted from mother to child during pregnancy, and some evidence exists that Zika might be sexually transmitted.
OH, BOY!
This is taking on the characteristics of a lab-born disease!
It’s usually the Aedes aegypti mosquito, prevalent in the Southeastern United States, that spreads Zika.
A second mosquito that carries it, although less commonly, is Aedes albopictus. This breed tolerates cooler temperatures and has been found in Massachusetts, said Richard Pollack, a public health entomologist and chairman of the Massachusetts Mosquito Advisory Group.
Uh-oh!
The Aedes albopictus mosquitoes arrived in tire casings brought into the state for processing; their eggs survive the winter. The usual methods of controlling mosquitoes — poisoning their larvae and spraying pesticides at night — are less effective on this breed, Pollack said. There is no suggestion those bugs are spreading Zika in the state.
So we are going to be showered with pesticides this spring and summer, along with the coal ash and all the other contaminants the government is dumping on us.
“Even if there’s no virus being transmitted, because they are aggressive human biters, people will come quickly to hate them,” Pollack said. “Be happy it’s January.”
--more--"
Thankfully, the WHO is now on the case.
Also see: IS THE ZIKA VIRUS IN BRAZIL BEING SPREAD BY GENETICALLY MODIFIED MOSQUITOES FUNDED BY BILL GATES?
Of course, they would never do anything like that.... right?
You know what this reminds me of?
"Beating back Ebola is among the few tangible achievements that senior U.N. officials cite as an example of global cooperation, athough the WHO has been widely criticized for failing to act quickly enough. On Wednesday, an independent commission of 17 experts in public health, research and finance called for greater international investment in preventing future epidemics. “Relative to its significance to global humanity, there is no issue that gets less attention,” Lawrence H. Summers, a professor and former president at Harvard University, said at an event in New York marking the release of a report on the matter."
Hey, look, it's union leader Larry Summers posing as a global health advocate even though “it’s a new normal,” this thing that killed and sickened tens of thousands of people in West Africa.
Of course, this is the same guy who said Africa should be used as a toxic waste dump.
Ebola case is reported in West Africa
I didn't believe the epidemic was over as the U.N. claimed.
Child asthma rates quiet down after earlier increase
Whatever (cough).
Whatever happened with the chikungunya outbreak anyway?
What else is going on in Brazil (according to the Globe):
"TelexFree promoter jailed for contempt in Florida" by Beth Healy Globe Staff January 21, 2016
One of the top promoters in TelexFree Inc.’s alleged $3 billion pyramid scheme is being held in a Florida jail on a contempt charge, after failing to return assets including cars and cash that securities regulators had frozen.
Sanderley Rodrigues de Vasconcelos, known more widely as Sann Rodrigues, was arrested in May on visa fraud charges and has been home under electronic surveillance awaiting trial. He had been given a deadline of Jan. 15 to return $233,473 transferred out of his bank accounts, as well as proceeds from the sale of a Ferrari, a Mercedes, and three Florida condominiums.
A lawyer for Rodrigues could not be reached. He fired a Massachusetts lawyer last summer who used to represent him.
TelexFree, formerly based in Marlborough and Brazil, filed for federal bankruptcy protection in the United States in 2014. Prosecutors and bankruptcy officials allege that it is the largest pyramid scheme in history, in terms of the number of victims.
At least 1 million people around the world invested with the company, which purported to sell cheap long distance phone plans but allegedly made most of its money recruiting members to invest. Money from later participants was used to pay off earlier ones, according to prosecutors.
TelexFree’s top executives are facing criminal charges and prison time if found guilty....
--more--"
Just kind of winging it right now, so WhatsApp, Brazil?
"The WhatsApp messaging service will drop its annual 99-cent subscription fee. Instead, it will test ways to monetize its nearly 1 billion customers by allowing businesses to communicate with WhatsApp users as an alternative to ads. WhatsApp will remove the fees from different versions of its app over the coming weeks because many users who don’t have a debit or credit card are concerned about losing access to their contacts after a free trial period, the company said Monday. “We will test tools that allow you to use WhatsApp to communicate with businesses and organizations that you want to hear from,” WhatsApp said. “That could mean communicating with your bank about whether a recent transaction was fraudulent, or with an airline about a delayed flight.” Facebook Inc. bought WhatsApp for $22 billion in 2014."
I got the me$$age. Time to get some sleep. Maybe I'll feel better tomorrow.
Good night and pleasant dreams, readers. Don't let the mosquitos bite.
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