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thedepressionoftrees · 3 years

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I didn't want to get political on this blog but due to recent events (cough cough the delaying of a stimulus check that will save literally thousands of people from homelessness and keep children from going to bed hungry cough)

It disgusts me to know that this country that I live in is so far conservative, that saying, "hey, maybe we shouldn't let poor people starve to death" is considered communist speech. Bitch no, that is a basic human right. It's bad enough that if you tried to propose the idea of a public library nowadays, people would call it socialism and anti-capitalist.

The people ruling my country are so fucked up. They refuse to send aid to the people literally starving on the streets. The people who list their jobs because the people in charge didn't listen to the fucking warning of a global pandemic. More people are dying each day then people died in the 9/11 attacks. If this were a terrorist attack, we would have gone after the culprits with everything we have. Instead, the talking tangerine in the white house has done nothing.

Meanwhile the rich keep getting richer. They exploit the system meant to give everyone a chance for prosperity. Jeff bezo's wealth has jumped by 64% by exploitation of workers and human suffering.

I feel especially bad for our medical workers and the heroes that fight on the front line of this pandemic. They have been working non-stop to try and keep us healthy and alive. At first we thanked them. We applauded them. We prayed for them. But we didn't pay them. How the fuck do you eat applause and thanks? You can't.

Then the vaccine comes out. The frontline workers should get it first, right? Nope, it's the politicians that have fervently called this virus a hoax, despite us have 19.4 million fucking cases and 336,000 deaths in the US alone. That's more Americans then the amount of americans that died in the revolutionary war, the war of 1812, the Mexican American war, World War 1, the Korean war, and the vietnam war COMBINED. And that number is still going up.

Also if you refuse to wear a mask because, "iT gOeS aGaInSt My RiGhTs" do me a favor. Take that dildo in your skull that you call a brain, and shove it up your ass until you hit teeth. You are all literally the worst and if you catch covid, congratulations, that's karma.

There are other things that I could get into like systemic police brutality, companies that don't allow their employees to unionize, global warming, the upcoming energy crisis, the raping of mother nature's resources, racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia, gun laws, anti abortion laws, the absolute lack of sex education taught in schools, the lack of a living wage, college prices, the housing market, the slow decline and fall of capitalism, the rampant opioid crisis, the handling of foreign relationships, how the United States is literally the laughingstock of the world, how Trump's "make America great again" slogan has absolutely failed, relationships with China, the national debt, the lack of education resources, the amount of money poured into National defense (despite the fact that the US is not at war), the civil war that might happen when biden takes over as the president, the black lives matter movement (black lives matter, I support you guys), how we are rapidly approaching an overthrow of a corrupt government similar to the french revolution, the exploitation of the lower class and workers, the constant inflation of the economy, student debt, monopolies, the 1%, how when the far right invade a government building and pepper spray police officers they're hailed as "heroes who stood up to the law" but when the left tried to peacefully protest literally anything, it's shut down with literal military force. The crime rates, payed prisons, tax cuts, megachurches, robocalls, the education system, religious tax breaks, how the middle and lower class are slowly melding into one group of people getting fucked over by the rich. But I'm not going to get into any of that, at least not today.

If the founding fathers could see what we've done with this country they would be disgusted.

On the slightest chance that any political leaders are reading this, I'm begging you, help us. We cannot survive like this.

#politics #not a shitpost #democrats #stimulus check #this is a call for help #this is a call to action #far left #socialist #social injustice #socialism #worldpolitics #get your shit together usa #coronavirus

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geminalupus · 3 years

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This question might be more business-y than vaccine worry but I’ll try asking you anyways so I hope you don’t mind! So is there any known difference between Moderna and Pfizer? I don’t really understand why two companies (?Biotech makers? Pharmaceuticals?) are creating what I think is two different vaccines instead of pouring resources into one to help the development of the vaccine. At the end of the day it’s not like a person can choose which one to take right? Sorry if my ask is a mess!

Thanks for your question!!!! Like I said I’m here to help however I can-- if my answer isn’t super clear feel free to ask follow up questions!! The businessy part ends up being an integral part of any sort of biomedical development-- which is why I had to take classes on logistics and legalities as a biomedical engineering major in undergrad.

So there are a couple of different things contributing to Moderna and Pfizer making their own vaccines. One is just that they were already two companies that were established in pharmaceuticals and vaccine development (although the difference between pharm and biotech gets kinda blurry and there is some crossover within these companies but that’s a bit of a side tangent). So they already had their own research teams and facilities, and since they had separate facilities it makes sense to just use what you have with the team you know. There is also an element of “if we have everyone try to do something similar but in slightly different ways someone should get something that actually works”, rather than having to go through ideas one by one. While Moderna and Pfizer are the only ones with clinical trial data at their current state, Oxford-AstraZeneca is also in human trials and several other companies are at least in the Phase 1 (is this safe) stage so we have hopes for lots more vaccines being approved by the time we get to April when the general public (not first-line health, long term care facility, or at-risk populations) should be receiving vaccines. (and the Oxford-AstraZeneca partnership I think is an example of what you originally asked about too where academic research scientists partnered up with industry scientists to work on the vaccine development).

Now, that being said, the science community has actually been very open about vaccine development throughout, so while they may not have had formal “collaborations” in a way we would classically think about it, these drug companies have not been at all “secretive” in a way they might normally be when they’re trying to be the ones to get a patent on their creation first (this is not to say the FDA isn’t fully aware of what’s happening with drug development, just that typically companies try not to let competitors know what they’re doing so that they can make the money off of it first---- everyone has essentially agreed to forget about the money/competition part for the COVID vaccine). So for example, my university has had an ongoing COVID update symposium within our School of Medicine every two weeks since the pandemic started to keep open dialogues about the most recent discoveries to make sure everyone is on the same page as soon as possible. So even though Moderna and Pfizer are two separate companies, they-- and other research scientists both from industry and academia-- have been communicating with each other so as soon as someone had data showing the mRNA vaccine looked to be the most promising, that’s what everyone started trying to work on.

At the end of the day, the two vaccines are very very similar, just due to manufacturing there are some minor differences in the technical aspects of how these vaccines are made and stored. One of the differences you may have heard of is that the Pfizer vaccine needs to be stored at -70C (not a temperature most normal clinics are prepared for) while the Moderna vaccine can be stored at -20C (still very cold, but other vaccines such as the chicken pox vaccine requires this so more clinics are prepared for it, and it can be stored in a regular fridge for longer than the Pfizer vaccine). I will be very honest in that I am not versed in the specific process for how the mRNA vaccine is created on a more technical level, but a lot of these differences in temperature requirement come down to how stable the mRNA is, and how long it takes it to degrade at various temperatures. This comes down to some of the specific techniques used by one company or another, but because we had the two different companies making this vaccine it means we actually have a nice way to split the distribution--- larger cities with research hospitals will have the capabilities for storing the -70C vaccine while the more stable vaccine can go to the rural areas that don’t have those capabilities. (disclaimer: this is not to say there is any official announcement I have seen or heard saying this is how the distribution would be split, it just makes logical sense based on current requirements and capabilities of various areas)

You’re absolutely right that at the end of the day you will not be able to go to your doctor and say “I want vaccine A not vaccine B (or C or D or however many we end up having)”. As I just mentioned, which vaccine your clinic gets will likely be a question of distribution and resources for storage. However, both of these vaccines look to be very safe and have astonishingly high efficacy (which is really great for the future of more mRNA vaccines-- these will be the first approved by the FDA and most of the mRNA vaccine field was working on HIV before being pulled for COVID research which is really exciting about the possibility of an HIV vaccine in the near(ish) future!!!!) so with what we know at this point I would personally feel very good with receiving either vaccine.

This ended up much longer than I originally planned but I hope this helped answer your question!!! Again please feel free to send follow-ups or more clarification questions if I was unclear with anything!

#science #ask your neighborhood immunologist #covid vaccine

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firstumcschenectady · 3 years

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“Rainbows and Rain” based on Genesis 9:8-17 and Mark 1:9-15

When do you look for rainbows? After it rains, right? The Genesis story connects the rainbow with God's promise not to flood the earth – again. It is an oddly timed symbol for such a promise, because by the time it stops raining and the rainbow shows up … it has stopped raining and the fear of flooding is likely already relieved.

Or, maybe that's the beauty of it.

Because during a rainstorm we can anticipate it. “When this is over, we can look for a rainbow!” So, even during the storm, we anticipate it's ending and the reminder that all will be well.

Of course, in these days of climate changed by humans, rain can be rather scary at times. Floods come more often, and more destructive than usual. But that actually fits. The ancient Israelites were desert people and deserts have weird relationships with rain. That is, they need water for life, and have less of it than most, but because the earth is so parched most of the time, and water tends to come in deluges rather than sprinkles, heavy rainstorms quickly lead to flash flooding.

The ancient Israelites may have had some of our current misgivings about torrential rain, and this story may have been a way to center in the midst of their fears. While it rains, you can anticipate God's promise. When it is pouring, you start preparing for God's sign of hope.

While I believe that the rainbow became a symbol for LGBTQIA pride because of the diversity of colors representing celebrating the diverse ways of being, I have always appreciated this anticipatory hope aspect of it as well. The choice of the rainbow symbol, to those aware of this Genesis story, is a choice to say, “things aren't good now, but they're gonna be.”

Or, in the language of the African American church tradition, “God is the one who makes a way out of no way.” (I'm so thankful for the creation of pride flags that intentionally include people of color as well as the trans community in the beauty of human diversity.)

Dear ones, the rainbow feels like a good symbol in the midst of our current “Rainstorm”, doesn't it? Or perhaps you want to call it a monsoon. Your choice. ;)

Which, come to think of it, is also the Jesus narrative, and our gospel lesson today. So much of what happens in the story assumes a greater knowledge of the time of Mark and Jesus than we generally have, so let me retell the story with some context put in:

“In those days, Jesus came from Nazareth (Nowhereville) of Galilee (sketchy!) - leaving behind his family, friends, and village – everything he knew, everything he was. He was baptized by John – a rural Holy Man, in the River Jordan, the traditional waters for the Ancient Jewish People. Baptism marked Jesus as a student of John's, it also symbolized his choice to leave behind his society and culture and obligations, and follow only the Divine.

As he was coming out of the water, he had a God-experience, a rather beautiful one. It was as if the heavens were torn open and God was more accessible, and the Spirit came right there to be with him. Jesus heard a voice offering a blessing, claiming him! "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased." In such a way, he who had left his kin was adopted into God's family.

After such a profound blessing though, the Spirit of God send Jesus into the wilderness. Jesus did not choose it, the wilderness is the place where it is hard to sustain life, and he was alone, and he struggled, and he was tempted, and he had to figure out what it would mean for his life to be a Holy Man too. He was there for 40 days, like Moses was awaiting an audience with God. With God's help – again proving Jesus as God's kin – Jesus made it through.

When he came back out of the wilderness, his teacher John had been arrested. He was on his own as a Holy Man. He went back to Galilee, that suspicious place he was from, and started speaking God's 'good news.' Which didn't sound exactly like people expected it to. He said, 'The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.'”1

That “good news” seems to require a little bit more examination. One scholar points out, “'Gospel' was most commonly used in antiquity to announce benefits to the populace.”2 Another summarizes what Jesus says with, “He boldly announces that the reign of God – with its dreams of justice and love, equality and abundance, wholeness and unity- is dawning.”3

Jesus is a rainbow.

He is a sign of hope, in the midst of the storm. He comes out of nowhere, is claimed by God, and offers a message of hope and promise. The world with its power hierarchies, the world that counts some people as “disposable”, the world where economies exist to let rich people get richer on the labor of the poor, the world that wants to appropriate religion to support the powerful, the world that tells the 99% to fight each other for the scraps left over after the 1% have been fed, the world which says to take care of yourself and your own first and let other's fend for themselves – the WORLD's powers are at an end. A new reign is coming, and it will look entirely different.

In God's kindom, there is no hierarchy, everyone is working toward for the common good. In God's kindom there are no disposable people, all are treated as beloved children of God. In God's kindom, there are neither rich nor poor. Instead, each person offers their gifts and labor for the betterment of the whole, and resources are distributed according to need. In God's kindom, we all treat each other as “insiders” and work for each other's well-being as well as our own.

To repent is to let go of the fear, the competitiveness, and the judgements of the WORLD, and allow the love, the hope, and the compassion of the kindom to take root.

This isn't easy. It never has been. Nor is it now. Judgements are hard to let go of, including judgements of ourselves. They're extra hard in matters of life and death, like vaccines, and access to health care, and decisions about masking and distancing and schooling and childcare and caution vs. risk these days. Right? The issue is that these judgments slip far too easily into shame, including self-shame from people who have gotten COVID, which IS blaming victims.

I don't claim the authority to know about the best vaccine distribution plan, but I do think it is useful to take a kindom look at our pandemic lives. What does it look like when we look from love, hope, and compassion?

From that angle, I see a lot of gratitude: for the ways people have adapted to make all of us healthier, for creativity and hard work in trying to keep things going as they need to, for those offering care or services even when there is risk to self involved.

I also see more clearly the injustices of the moment: that not all “frontline workers” have had a choice about if they want to be in the frontlines at all, and that far too many people are forced by economic circumstances to take risks they don't want to take. That people of color have been impacted in a multiplicity of ways: with less access to adequate housing, with more people doing “essential work”, with less access to protective gear, with higher poverty rates that require taking greater risks, with less access to health care, and with less responsive health care when it is accessed. (To name a few.) Each of these systemic pieces of racism in our society are highlighted by the higher infection rates and higher death rates among people of color, and show us yet again the impact of disparity on people's very lives. Lack of equity kills, and movements from the world-as-it-is to the World-as-God-would-have-it-be are movements from death to life.

Looking at the pandemic from the kindom view, mostly, I'm overwhelmed with compassion: for the impossible decisions everyone is making to the best of their ability; for the dehumanizing isolation so many are living with; to the life-draining balancing acts being asked of mothers, fathers, and caregivers. From this view, judgements lighten, and love grows.

Finally, the kindom view reminds us that we are no stronger than our “weakest link.” That is, we are unable to be healthy in isolation. Until the WORLD is vaccinated, all of us are at risk. And that's always been true, but now we can see it clearly.

We're all in this together. We're all in this storm together (although it impacts us differently.) And from the midst of this storm, we're all reminded that at the end of the storm, the rainbow comes. God doesn't abandon us in the storm, hope doesn't die, the kindom is at hand, repent and believe. Entering into the kindom's values will help kindom come. Remembering the rainbow helps us live through the storm. Thanks be to God. Amen

1Summary influenced by:

Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998 and 2008, ~128.

Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003) 146-7.

Debie Thomas, “Beasts and Angels” https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2924-beasts-and-angels 2-14-21, accessed 2-18-21.

2Malina and Rohrbaugh, 148.

3Myers, 91.

February 21, 2021

Rev. Sara E. Baron First United Methodist Church of Schenectady 603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305 Pronouns: she/her/hers http://fumcschenectady.org/ https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

#Thinking Church #Progressive Christianity #FUMC Schenectady #Schenectady #UMC #The United Methodist Church #Sorry about the homophobic UMC world #Rev Sara E Baron #Lent #Rainbows #Baptism of Jesus #Jesus is a rainbow #Signs of Hope #A Lent of Hope #Pandemic from a kindom view #Compassion

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orbemnews · 3 years

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How the Search for Covid-19 Treatments Faltered While Vaccines Sped Ahead Nearly a year into the coronavirus pandemic, as thousands of patients are dying every day in the United States and widespread vaccination is still months away, doctors have precious few drugs to fight the virus. A handful of therapies — remdesivir, monoclonal antibodies and the steroid dexamethasone — have improved the care of Covid patients, putting doctors in a better position than they were when the virus surged last spring. But these drugs are not cure-alls and they’re not for everyone, and efforts to repurpose other drugs, or discover new ones, have not had much success. The government poured $18.5 billion into vaccines, a strategy that resulted in at least five effective products at record-shattering speed. But its investment in drugs was far smaller, about $8.2 billion, most of which went to just a few candidates, such as monoclonal antibodies. Studies of other drugs were poorly organized. The result was that many promising drugs that could stop the disease early, called antivirals, were neglected. Their trials have stalled, either because researchers couldn’t find enough funding or enough patients to participate. At the same time, a few drugs have received sustained investment despite disappointing results. There’s now a wealth of evidence that the malaria drugs hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine did not work against Covid. And yet there are still 179 clinical trials with 169,370 patients in which at least some are receiving the drugs, according to the Covid Registry of Off-label & New Agents at the University of Pennsylvania. And the federal government funneled tens of millions of dollars into an expanded access program for convalescent plasma, infusing almost 100,000 Covid patients before there was any robust evidence that it worked. In January, those trials revealed that, at least for hospitalized patients, it doesn’t. The lack of centralized coordination meant that many trials for Covid antivirals were doomed from the start — too small and poorly designed to provide useful data, according to Dr. Janet Woodcock, the acting commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. If the government had instead set up an organized network of hospitals to carry out large trials and quickly share data, researchers would have many more answers now. “I blame myself to some extent,” said Dr. Woodcock, who has overseen the federal government’s efforts to develop Covid drugs. She hopes to tame the chaos with a new effort from the Biden administration. In the next couple of months, she said, the government plans to start large and well-organized trials for existing drugs that could be repurposed to fight Covid-19. “We are actively working on that,” Dr. Woodcock said. Brand-new antiviral drugs might also help, but only now is the National Institutes of Health putting together a major initiative to develop them, meaning they won’t be ready in time to fight the current pandemic. “This effort will be unlikely to provide therapeutics in 2021,” Dr. Francis Collins, the head of the N.I.H., said in a statement. “If there is a Covid-24 or Covid-30 coming, we want to be prepared.” Even as the number of cases and deaths have surged around the country, the survival rate of those who are infected has improved significantly. A recent study found that by June, the mortality rates of those hospitalized had dropped to 9 percent from 17 percent at the start of the pandemic, a trend that has been echoed in other studies. Researchers say the improvement is partly because of the steroid dexamethasone, which boosts survival rates of severely ill patients by tamping down the immune system rather than blocking the virus. Patients may also be seeking care earlier in the course of the illness. And masks and social distancing may reduce viral exposure. When the new coronavirus emerged as a global threat in early 2020, doctors frantically tried an assortment of existing drugs. But the only way to know if they actually worked was to set up large clinical trials in which some people received placebos, and others took the drug in question. Getting hundreds or thousands of people into such trials was a tremendous logistical challenge. In early 2020, the N.I.H. narrowed its focus to just a few promising drugs. That support led to the swift authorization of remdesivir and monoclonal antibodies. Remdesivir, which stops viruses from replicating inside cells, can modestly shorten the time patients need to recover, but has no effect on mortality. Monoclonal antibodies, which stop the virus from entering cells, can be very potent, but only when given before people are sick enough to be hospitalized. Hundreds of hospitals and universities began their own trials of existing drugs — already deemed safe and widely manufactured — that might also work against the coronavirus. But most of these trials were small and disorganized. In many cases, researchers have been left on their own to set up trials without the backing of the federal government or pharmaceutical companies. In April, as New York City was in the throes of a Covid surge, Charles Mobbs, a neuroscientist at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, heard about some intriguing work in France hinting at the effectiveness of an antipsychotic drug. Doctors at French psychiatric hospitals had noticed that relatively few patients became ill with Covid-19 compared with the staff members who cared for them. The researchers speculated that the drugs the patients were taking could be protecting them. One of those drugs, the antipsychotic chlorpromazine, had been shown in laboratory experiments to prevent the coronavirus from multiplying. Updated Jan. 30, 2021, 3:17 a.m. ET The doctors tried to start a trial of chlorpromazine, but the pandemic ebbed — temporarily, it turned out — in France by the time they were ready. Dr. Mobbs then spent weeks making arrangements for a trial of his own on patients hospitalized at Mount Sinai, only to hit the same wall. “We ran out of patients,” he said. If doctors like Dr. Mobbs could tap into nationwide networks of hospitals, they would be able to find enough patients to run their trials quickly. Those networks exist, but they were not opened up for drug-repurposing efforts. Many scientists suspect that the best time to fight the coronavirus is early in an infection, when the virus is multiplying quickly. But it’s particularly hard to recruit trial volunteers who are not in a hospital. Researchers have to track down people right after they’ve tested positive and find a way to deliver the trial drugs to them. At the University of Kentucky, researchers began such a trial in May to test a drug called camostat, which is normally used to treat inflammation of the pancreas. The scientists thought it might also work as a Covid-19 antiviral because it destroys a protein that the virus depends on to infect human cells. Because camostat comes in pill form, rather than an infusion, it would be especially useful for people like the trial volunteers, many of whom lived in remote rural areas. But the researchers have spent the past eight months trying to recruit enough participants. They have had trouble finding patients who have recently received a Covid diagnosis, especially with the unpredictable rise and fall of cases. “This has been the source of the delays for essentially all of the trials around the world,” said Dr. James Porterfield, an infectious disease clinician at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine, who is leading the trial. While doctors like Dr. Porterfield have struggled to carry out studies on their own, a few drugs have become sensations, praised as cure-alls despite a lack of evidence. The first supposed panacea was hydroxychloroquine, a drug developed for malaria. Television pundits claimed it had healing powers, as did President Trump. Rather than start one large, well-designed trial across many hospitals, doctors began a swarm of small trials. “There was no coordination, and no centralized leadership,” said Ilan Schwartz, an infectious disease expert at the University of Alberta. Nevertheless, the F.D.A. gave the drug an emergency clearance as a treatment for people hospitalized with Covid. When large clinical trials finally did begin delivering results, it turned out that the drug provided no benefit — and might even do harm. The agency withdrew its authorization in June. Many scientists were left embittered, considering all that work a waste of precious time and resources. “The clear, unambiguous and compelling lesson from the hydroxychloroquine story for the medical community and the public is that science and politics do not mix,” Dr. Michael Saag of University of Alabama at Birmingham wrote in November in the New England Journal of Medicine. Now another drug is becoming popular before there’s strong evidence that it works: the parasite-killing compound ivermectin. Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, who extolled hydroxychloroquine in April, held a hearing in December where Dr. Pierre Kory testified about ivermectin. Dr. Kory, a pulmonary and critical care specialist at Aurora St. Luke’s Medical Center in Milwaukee at the time, called it “effectively a ‘miracle drug’ against Covid-19.” Yet there are no published results from large-scale clinical trials to support such claims, only small, suggestive ones. Even if the federal government had set up a centralized trial network, as it is trying to do now, scientists would have still faced some unavoidable hurdles. It takes time to do careful experiments to discover promising drugs and then to confirm that they’re really worth investigating further. “In drug development, we’re used to 10-to-15-year runways,” said Sumit K. Chanda, a virologist at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute in La Jolla, Calif. In February, Dr. Chanda and his colleagues began a different kind of search for a Covid-19 antiviral. They screened a library of 13,000 drugs, mixing each drug with cells and coronaviruses to see if they stopped infections. A few drugs proved promising. The researchers tested one of them — a cheap leprosy pill called clofazimine — over several months, doing experiments in human lung tissue and hamsters. Clofazimine fought off the virus in the animals if they received it soon after being infected. Now, nearly a year after he started his research, Dr. Chanda is hoping he can get funding for the most difficult part of drug testing: large and randomized clinical trials that can cost millions of dollars. To complete this stage efficiently, researchers almost always need the backing of a large company or the federal government, or both — as happened with the large clinical trials for the new coronavirus vaccines. It’s unclear how the Biden administration’s new drug-testing effort will choose which drug candidates to support. But if trials begin in the next few months, it’s possible they could reveal useful data by the end of the year. Pharmaceutical companies are also beginning to fund some trials of repurposed drugs. A study published this week in Science found that a 24-year-old cancer drug called plitidepsin is 27 times more potent than remdesivir at halting the coronavirus in lab experiments. In October, a Spanish drug company called PharmaMar reported promising results from a small safety trial of plitidepsin. Now the company is preparing to start a late-stage trial in Spain to see if the drug works compared with a placebo. The pharma giant Merck is running a large, late-stage trial on a pill called molnupiravir, originally developed by Ridgeback Biotherapeutics for influenza, which has been shown to cure ferrets of Covid-19. The trial’s first results could emerge as early as March. Experts are particularly eager to see this data because molnupiravir may be effective in treating more than just Covid-19. In April, scientists found that the drug could also treat mice infected with other coronaviruses that cause SARS and MERS. Any antivirals that may emerge in 2021 won’t save the lives already lost to Covid-19. But it’s possible that one of those drugs may work against coronavirus pandemics to come. Noah Weiland and Katie Thomas contributed reporting. Source link Orbem News #Ahead #Covid19 #Faltered #Search #Sped #treatments #Vaccines

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readeverymorning · 4 years

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This Simple Guide Will Teach You How to Meditate, Even When Your Mind Wanders

Nicol NataleAugust 21, 2020·9 mins read

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/simple-guide-teach-meditate-even-194400411.html

From Prevention

We've all been there: The clock strikes midnight, and our thoughts race on as if we'd just walked into the office with our first cup of coffee. Sleep? Never heard of her, minus a few quick minutes of shut-eye in between the tossing and turning. This scenario is all too common for many. It's incredibly challenging to calm down a racing mind after a full day of working, parenting, and taking care of other responsibilities, not to mention a pandemic. The good news is you can train your mind to calm the heck down so you can get a proper night's rest, improve focus at work, and relieve stress—all through the practice of meditation.

"In a world increasingly built on falsehoods, the need to establish an infallible inner GPS is paramount to one's safety and sanity," says Kelly Morris, meditation teacher and founder of The Infinity Call. "Meditation can provide you with the instant reset needed to move forward coherently and gracefully."

What is meditation, exactly?

"Meditation is the practice of intentionally awakening to our thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations in the mental space of observance and acceptance," says Andrea Parsons, M.S.W., L.C.S.W., a psychotherapist in both private practice and at one of the nation's largest HMO. "Meditation asks us to be the observer of our thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations rather than the critic of them."

A daily meditation practice allows us to get clear about what we're experiencing by directing our focus to our inner world, Parsons says. Many of us have been taught to dismiss or reject certain emotions or thoughts, which creates separation from oneself. Practicing meditation helps us to reconnect with ourselves. Because meditation involves focusing inward with the mind and being an observer of our thoughts, the practice results in a number of psychological and physical benefits, such as improving our ability to problem solve, reducing stress hormones in the body, and boosting the immune system. And you don't have to spend hours sitting crossed-legged to reap the benefits.

There’s no “proper” way to meditate.

Many are discouraged from meditating because they believe they have to be taught or they aren't doing it right. "There are as many ways to meditate as there are people in the world," Morris says. "Much like the proverbial snowflake, everyone is slightly different in their needs, outlooks, and capacities. As such, there is no singular, 'proper' way to meditate."

Common misconceptions around meditation include that it's too hard, boring, mysterious, selfish, and only belongs to Eastern cultures, Morris says. But this is not the case. There are endless ways to meditate, ranging from beginner to advanced practices. The six main categories of meditation are mindfulness meditation, focused meditation, spiritual meditation, mantra meditation, and Transcendental Meditation® (TM):

Mindfulness meditation involves paying attention on your thoughts and observing them without judgement.

Focused meditation is when you concentrate using any of the five senses, like breathing or staring at a candle flame.

Spiritual meditation is used in religions, when participants reflect on a deeper connection or purpose.

Mantra meditation is when you recite a mantra over and over again, such as "Om."

Transcendental Meditation® builds off of mantra meditation in which the participant is given a custom mantra from a TM® instructor.

Movement meditation involves moving the body in some way that brings peace, such as qigong, walking, or yoga.

Mindfulness meditation involves paying attention on your thoughts and observing them without judgement.

Focused meditation is when you concentrate using any of the five senses, like breathing or staring at a candle flame.

Spiritual meditation is used in religions, when participants reflect on a deeper connection or purpose.

Mantra meditation is when you recite a mantra over and over again, such as "Om."

Transcendental Meditation® builds off of mantra meditation in which the participant is given a custom mantra from a TM® instructor.

Movement meditation involves moving the body in some way that brings peace, such as qigong, walking, or yoga.

Other types of meditation include sound bath meditation, visualization, Vipassana meditation, chakra meditation, and many, many more. You'll want to familiarize yourself with the various methods, and then begin with the one that sounds the most comfortable and accessible for you. Because meditation is so customizable, you're bound to find something that works!

What to think about when meditating

Whether you're a beginner or an advanced practitioner, the mind will do nothing but wander, Morris says. "For most people, the mind has been trained to be discursive since birth. It's normal to entertain five or six thoughts at the same time and to even be rewarded for it—the common vernacular is 'multitasking,'" she explains. "Single-pointed concentration, though, makes the brain happy."

Beginners are often frustrated with the mind's tendency to wander during meditation. That's because they are assuming that the mind should be "silent" when they're "successfully" meditating. "This simply isn't true, and it prevents many people from exploring a meditation practice that has the capacity to improve their lives on every level," Morris says.

Ultimately, there are going to be thoughts that pour in while you're meditating, but the key isn't to try and silence them. Instead, just observe them. "Meditators, like everyone else, are forced to think whatever thoughts the Thought Army decides. We are not in charge," Morris explains. "Over time, the meditator realizes that they aren't thinking, that their thoughts are actually thinking them. We don't generally choose our thoughts, although we may think we do. It helps to remember that meditation isn't an effort to 'not think.'"

When (not if!) the mind wanders beyond control, Parsons recommends gently bringing it back with your breath or bringing your attention a focal point such as a candle or a sound. Morris adds that feeling into the sensations of the body or the ground beneath you can also help you recenter.

How to start meditating for beginners

Like everything else, meditation takes practice. "I've found that most people will read an article about meditation and attempt to sit down with the best of intentions, but they will only last for a few minutes at most," Morris says.

"To maximize the likelihood of staying with meditation, I recommend starting with three minutes in the morning or night," Parson explains. If you have a history of trauma, Parsons recommends consulting with a mental health professional, as meditating can exacerbate symptoms in survivors. "Gradually, work your way up to more minutes of meditating. Just as an athlete or musician attains their level of skill after years of practice, we need to gradually build our meditation practice," she says.

Morris suggests working up to 10 to 20 minutes of meditation a day. "If you find a comfortable seated position, one can sit for 10 to 20 minutes. It's the content of the mind that makes people leap up and decide 10 or 20 minutes is way too long," she says. "Beginners who want to explore the possibilities of meditation can engage with this simple guide: Wake up, go to the bathroom, sit down. Don't check your email, text messages, DMs, social media pages, the news or anything else. Simply wake up and directly sit before the day takes its toll."

The Benefits of Meditation

Just a few minutes of meditation a day can have profound effects on your health. "Meditation is an endless fountain of benefits and rewards, from improved sleep to reduced loneliness to better skin," Morris says.

Meditation improves our ability to problem solve.

Our problem-solving abilities can become impaired when our minds are distracted or we are tired, but meditation can help bring focus and alertness. "Meditation keeps us aware of what is happening in the moment," Parsons says. "This allows us to respond more effectively to our environment compared to when our mind is replaying the past or anticipating some type of future loss."

Meditation reduces stress hormones in the body.

When we become stressed, our bodies activate the stress response, in which the nervous system releases a flood of stress hormones including adrenaline and cortisol. "Activation is when we notice a physiological response in our bodies as the result of stress hormones being released, such as heart racing, sweaty palms, upset stomach," Parsons explains. "We often activate the stress response because of catastrophic thinking or replaying a past upset." People who meditate regularly can avoid activating the stress response, she says, adding that meditation helps us stay present.

Meditation may boost the immune system.

"Participants of a study who approached unwanted thoughts and feelings non-judgmentally rather than fighting them off showed more activation in their brain's region of positive emotion," Parson says. "These participants also produced more antibodies when given a flu vaccination compared to other participants."

Resources for beginners

There's an abundance of resources for assistance with meditating at home. Parsons recommends checking out Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, Zen priest angel Kyodo williams, Jack Kornfield, Ph.D., Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D., and Tara Brach, Ph.D. "Each practitioner has their unique approach, so checking out several resources can help you find the best fit for you," she says, adding that all sites have meditations.

You can also download the app Insight Timer. "I respect their commitment to offering over 30,000 free meditations," Parsons says. "I also recommend the Liberate Meditation app, which is a subscription-based app created by and for Black, Indigenous and People of Color." Other meditation apps include Calm, Headspace, and Mindvalley.

Parsons says you can even refer to podcasts. "I recommend 10% Happier by Dan Harris, which is offering a Coronavirus Sanity Guide for free," she says. "I also think that The Rubin Mindfulness Meditation podcast is a unique form of meditation with rotating teachers guiding meditation that's focused on artwork."

If you're looking for more specific training, check out Morris' one-on-one phone sessions at The Infinity Call. "The Infinity Call is a grounding, virtual meditation practice dedicated to healing the lives of all those who identify as women around the world by reconnecting them and their identities to the Earth," she says. Lastly, you can always try group meditations, at studios or in person. "That tends to help people remain more focused compared to meditating alone," Parsons says. Check to see if a studio near you is open before scheduling a class.

Your meditation practice will be unique to you. However you cultivate your meditation practice, know that you have an ample amount of resources, support, and guidance to get started. Keep in mind that beginning a meditation practice can be difficult, but the psychological and physical benefits make it well worth it to stick with it.

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hollywoodjuliorivas · 4 years

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Bill Gates is a co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. This article is adapted from his blog post “Pandemic I: the First Modern Pandemic,” available at gatesnotes.com.

It’s entirely understandable that the national conversation has turned to a single question: “When can we get back to normal?” The shutdown has caused immeasurable pain in jobs lost, people isolated and worsening inequity. People are ready to get going again.

Unfortunately, although we have the will, we don’t have the way — not yet. Before the United States and other countries can return to business and life as usual, we will need some innovative new tools that help us detect, treat and prevent covid-19.

[Full coverage of the coronavirus pandemic]

It begins with testing. We can’t defeat an enemy if we don’t know where it is. To reopen the economy, we need to be testing enough people that we can quickly detect emerging hotspots and intervene early. We don’t want to wait until the hospitals start to fill up and more people die.

Innovation can help us get the numbers up. The current coronavirus tests require that health-care workers perform nasal swabs, which means they have to change their protective gear before every test. But our foundation supported research showing that having patients do the swab themselves produces results that are just as accurate. This self-swab approach is faster and safer, since regulators should be able to approve swabbing at home or in other locations rather than having people risk additional contact.

Another diagnostic test under development would work much like an at-home pregnancy test. You would swab your nose, but instead of sending it into a processing center, you’d put it in a liquid and then pour that liquid onto a strip of paper, which would change color if the virus was present. This test may be available in a few months.

We need one other advance in testing, but it’s social, not technical: consistent standards about who can get tested. If the country doesn’t test the right people — essential workers, people who are symptomatic and those who have been in contact with someone who tested positive — then we’re wasting a precious resource and potentially missing big reserves of the virus. Asymptomatic people who aren’t in one of those three groups should not be tested until there are enough for everyone else.

The second area where we need innovation is contact tracing. Once someone tests positive, public-health officials need to know who else that person might have infected.

For now, the United States can follow Germany’s example: interview everyone who tests positive and use a database to make sure someone follows up with all their contacts. This approach is far from perfect, because it relies on the infected person to report their contacts accurately and requires a lot of staff to follow up with everyone in person. But it would be an improvement over the sporadic way that contact tracing is being done across the United States now.

An even better solution would be the broad, voluntary adoption of digital tools. For example, there are apps that will help you remember where you have been; if you ever test positive, you can review the history or choose to share it with whoever comes to interview you about your contacts. And some people have proposed allowing phones to detect other phones that are near them by using Bluetooth and emitting sounds that humans can’t hear. If someone tested positive, their phone would send a message to the other phones, and their owners could get tested. If most people chose to install this kind of application, it would probably help some.

Naturally, anyone who tests positive will immediately want to know about treatment options. Yet, right now, there is no treatment for covid-19. Hydroxychloroquine, which works by changing the way the human body reacts to a virus, has received a lot of attention. Our foundation is funding a clinical trial that will give an indication whether it works on covid-19 by the end of May, and it appears the benefits will be modest at best.

But several more-promising candidates are on the horizon. One involves drawing blood from patients who have recovered from covid-19, making sure it is free of the coronavirus and other infections, and giving the plasma (and the antibodies it contains) to sick people. Several major companies are working together to see whether this succeeds.

Another type of drug candidate involves identifying the antibodies that are most effective against the novel coronavirus, and then manufacturing them in a lab. If this works, it is not yet clear how many doses could be produced; it depends on how much antibody material is needed per dose. In 2021, manufacturers may be able to make as few as 100,000 treatments or many millions.

If, a year from now, people are going to big public events — such as games or concerts in a stadium — it will be because researchers have discovered an extremely effective treatment that makes everyone feel safe to go out again. Unfortunately, based on the evidence I’ve seen, they’ll likely find a good treatment, but not one that virtually guarantees you’ll recover.

That’s why we need to invest in a fourth area of innovation: making a vaccine. Every additional month that it takes to produce a vaccine is a month in which the economy cannot completely return to normal.

The new approach I’m most excited about is known as an RNA vaccine. (The first covid-19 vaccine to start human trials is an RNA vaccine.) Unlike a flu shot, which contains fragments of the influenza virus so your immune system can learn to attack them, an RNA vaccine gives your body the genetic code needed to produce viral fragments on its own. When the immune system sees these fragments, it learns how to attack them. An RNA vaccine essentially turns your body into its own vaccine manufacturing unit.

There are at least five other efforts that look promising. But because no one knows which approach will work, a number of them need to be funded so they can all advance at full speed simultaneously.

Even before there’s a safe, effective vaccine, governments need to work out how to distribute it. The countries that provide the funding, the countries where the trials are run, and the ones that are hardest-hit will all have a good case that they should receive priority. Ideally, there would be global agreement about who should get the vaccine first, but given how many competing interests there are, this is unlikely to happen. Whoever solves this problem equitably will have made a major breakthrough.

[The Opinions section is looking for stories of how the coronavirus has affected people of all walks of life. Write to us.]

World War II was the defining moment of my parents’ generation. Similarly, the coronavirus pandemic — the first in a century — will define this era. But there is one big difference between a world war and a pandemic: All of humanity can work together to learn about the disease and develop the capacity to fight it. With the right tools in hand, and smart implementation, we will eventually be able to declare an end to this pandemic — and turn our attention to how to prevent and contain the next one.

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