The pandemic has affected all of us; countries closed their borders, traveling is kept to a minimum, being in contact with people is limited, lockdowns, and most of all, the ever-increasing number of deaths.
While the world struggles to hold on and survive, healthcare professionals and frontliners are situated in front, serving all of us.
Nurses, in particular, have been called to work, assigned to different places, and worked tirelessly and diligently to give their best to patients suffering from Covid-19.
But like their patients, the number of nurses dying from Covid and exhaustion has also become an alarming concern to the healthcare world. It is also among the reasons why there are nursing shortages in hospitals.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), nurses represented the most significant number of healthcare workers involved in this pandemic.
The year 2020 marks the 200th year since Florence Nightingale founded nursing, and it also became the year when nurses had to face the biggest challenge of their lives as the pandemic spread across the world.
What is Covid-19?
The World Health Organization defined Coronavirus (Covid-19) as an infectious disease where the infected people will experience mild to moderate respiratory illness. Older people and those with medical problems like diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, cancer, and others are more likely to develop serious infections.
The transmission mode of Covid-19 is primarily through droplets of saliva or nose discharges of an infected person when they are coughing or sneezing.
To slow down the transmission of Covid-19, protect yourself and others by frequent handwashing, using an alcohol-based rub or sanitizer, and wearing facemasks. Practicing social distancing and getting vaccinated also helps in slowing down the spread of this disease.
9 Reasons for Nursing Shortages During Covid-19
Nursing shortages have always been an issue, even before the pandemic set in. However, it’s been given more light during the pandemic. But what are the most common reasons why nurses are short-staffed these days? Here’s what we gathered [1].
1. Overworked and exhaustion
While nurses’ wages have improved over recent years, there are still nurses who struggle with lower pay. Add the long hours of work and dealing with covid cases, and many nurses become burned out with work.
2. Older nurses are about to retire
As the years go by, more and more elderly nurses are retiring. Studies showed that about one-third of the nursing force aged 50 and above would quit in a couple of years.
3. Nurses are quitting their jobs
A study conducted in December 2020 by the NNA (National Nurses Association) showed that heavy workloads, stress, insufficient funds, and burnout are among the concerns of many nurses quitting and leaving their jobs.
Many nurses considered working a different career besides nursing so as not to be involved with Covid patients. Others quit because handling Covid-19 cases has become too much for them.
5. The trauma of the pandemic
Another good reason why there are plenty of nursing shortages in hospitals these days is the trauma that the pandemic caused [2]. In January 2020, the ICN (International Council of Nurses) raised their concern about the mass trauma experienced by nurses during the surge of Covid-19.
They also took note of the medium to long-term effects of this trauma on the nursing workforce. The issues and risks combined with the stress and overworked nurses threaten the already vulnerable nursing community.
6. Burned-out nurses
As the pandemic continues, the number of nurses reaching their point of burnout increases as well. Because of this, many nurses are considering the idea of leaving their jobs.
If this happens, nurses leaving their jobs because of burnout could potentially damage the healthcare system in the years to come.
7. Depression and anxiety
Besides being burned out at work and working long hours handling covid patients, many nurses reported experiencing depression and anxiety. Research conducted in the Philippines shows that prolonged distress from the pandemic has developed stress among nurses.
On the other hand, Egypt and Pakistan showed that the pandemic threat has prompted 95% of their nurses had intentions to leave their present jobs involving Covid-19 Triage Hospitals, and 25% want to leave the profession for good because of the stress, anxiety, and depression that they’re experiencing.
8. A limited supply of new nurses
There are plenty of new nurses graduating each year, and it’s not enough to cover up for the deficit caused by those who will be retiring soon.
New nurses are helpful, but not so they can fill in for those who are already experts in the field. In short, they need time and experience to become fully capable of handling difficult situations like Covid patients.
9. Not enough pay
Another reason nurses leave their current jobs is to search for better opportunities. Nurses who have been on the front lines working in nursing homes are not making livable wages. So if they can find another hospital that offers higher incentives and better compensation, they will leave.
How Can Hospitals Avoid a Shortage of Nurses During Pandemic?
There are millions of registered nurses in the United States, yet there are still shortages in the workforce [3]. How can this be resolved?
Dr. Joanne Spetz, Ph.D., a professor at the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies and associate director for research at the Healthforce Center at the University of California, San Francisco, suggested these tips to help our nurses get back into work:
Offer financial incentives. Higher salaries or student loan repayment programs will encourage nurses and future nurses to serve in different areas where the pandemic hit the hardest.
Create quicker ways of speeding up the license application for nurses living in other states and authorization of immediate license reactivation.
To expand their scope of practice and oversight rules. The best example of this is to loosen regulations that require physicians to oversee nurse practitioners. Allow nurses to do jobs that do not necessarily require the presence of a physician.
Create a law or rule that nursing students and those scheduled to graduate soon to help and provide support in hospitals during the pandemic.
Provide new child care options to nurses, especially pregnant or those who have small children.
Provide nurses with their personal needs like lodging. This way, they don’t put their families at risk of being exposed to the virus. Supporting their mental and emotional health are also important. Providing them with activities to de-stress can help reduce their anxieties as well.
Provide nurses with adequate access to personal protective equipment, especially those working in critical areas or handling Covid-19 patients.
Provide a flexible schedule for nurses so they can juggle their work and family life. Flexible schedules allow them to decompress between stressful and emotionally demanding shifts that can drain their energies. A flexible schedule keeps nurses happy and more positive in their working environment.
A chance to develop their careers through promotion also helps in retaining nurses. Hospitals must help their nurses to obtain the highest education possible. It will encourage nurses to stay within the organization and feel more satisfied with their accomplishments professionally.
Give your nurses a voice by listening to their concerns. Nurses who can voice their concerns to supervisors and managers are most likely to stay within the company. Implementing their suggestions and ideas also show nurses that the hospital managers are serious about their inputs and that they are also an essential part of the company.
Nurses Will Stay
Nurses are among the best workers globally, and they will stay working as long as they can handle the situation. However, the pandemic changed all that.
It’s not a secret that many of our nurses are exhausted these days, and there’s no certainty as to when this pandemic will end. The only certainty we can give is to protect our nurses by supporting them, providing them with their needs, and hearing them out.
If every nursing company provides their nurses with these, there will surely be no nursing shortages in hospitals. So support your nurses whenever you can; we still need them!
Looking for more nursing and travel nursing information? Check out these helpful links!
For full disclosure, this certainly isn’t to say that smoking marijuana will protect you from COVID-19. It’s not the reason why a person gets COVID either. Generally, it doesn’t have anything to do with cannabis. Regardless of your view on cannabis, the results are intriguing. But can cannabis be used as a treatment for Covid-19?
SARS-CoV-2
The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) or the COVID-19 pandemic includes at least 272 million cases worldwide. It has resulted in 5.3 million deaths, and over 600 000 new cases daily as of December 2021. Its crown-like protrusions on its outer surface characterize it.
SARS-CoV-2 features RNA strands that encode its four main structural proteins. It has a spike, envelope, membrane, nucleocapsid, 16 nonstructural proteins, and several “accessory” proteins.
These proteins bind to the host cell by recognizing the receptor angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2). ACE2 is a homolog of ACE. It then converts angiotensin I to angiotensin 1–9. The ACE2 is distributed mainly in the lung, intestine, heart, and kidney, and alveolar epithelial type II cells are the principal expressing cells.
ACE2 is also a known receptor for SARS-CoV. The S1 subunit of the SARS-CoV S protein binds with ACE2 to promote the formation of endosomes, which triggers viral fusion activity under low pH [1].
Is it possible to use cannabis as a treatment for COVID-19?
This study was published in the Journal of Natural products. The Oregon State University (OSU) research shows hemp compounds prevent coronavirus. It shows that it prevents it from entering human cells.
Findings of the study led by Richard van Breemen at OSU found a pair of cannabinoid acids. It binds to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. It is blocking a critical step in the virus’s process to infect people [2].
The compounds are cannabigerolic acid, or CBGA, and cannabidiolic acid, CBDA, which inhibit the same spike protein.
This compound is the drug target used in COVID-19 vaccines and antibody therapy. These cannabinoid acids are abundant in hemp and many hemp extracts. But, it doesn’t have any controlled substances like THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana.
Richard van Breemen demonstrated through research that they were effective against variants of SARS-CoV-2. It also includes variant B.1.1.7. It was first detected in the United Kingdom, and variant B.1.351 was first seen in South Africa.”
When researchers created antiviral interventions, any part of the infection and replication cycle is a potential target. It targets the spike protein means cell entry inhibitor. It blocks and shortens infection by preventing virus particles from infecting human cells. In addition to that, binding to spike proteins will prevent the spike from binding to ACE2 enzymes.
The Research Method
Van Breemen’s team used affinity selection–mass spectrometric (AS-MS). It is a discovery of natural ligands to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. It ranked these cannabinoid ligands by affinity to the spike protein. As two CBDA and CGBA have the highest relationships and proves to block infection.
AS-MS involves incubating an important receptor like the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. This protein with a mixture of possible ligands such as a botanical extract.
The ligand-receptor complexes separate from nonbinding molecules using one of several methods. These are ultrafiltration, size exclusion, or magnetic microbeads. The ultra-high-pressure liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (UHPLC-MS) was used to characterize the affinity-extracted ligands.
“Our earlier research reported on discovering another compound, one from licorice, that binds to the spike protein too,” he said. “However, we did not test that compound, licochalcone A, for activity against the live virus. We need new funding for that.” Licorice is an herb that grows in parts of Europe and Asia.
Fun fact: In November 2017, The World Health Organization announced that CBD showed no evidence of abuse or dependence potential in humans. There is no evidence of public health-related problems associated with using pure CBD.
In January 2018, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) removed CBD from its prohibited list, no longer banning its use by athletes.
Cannabis and the Cytokine Storm
One of the main events that occur in patients with COVID-19 is a “cytokine storm.” A cytokine storm is when your body releases pro-inflammatory cytokines, leading to increased inflammation.
Cytokines are small proteins released by many different cells in the body. This includes those of the immune system, which coordinates the body’s response to infection.
Unfortunately, excessive or uncontrolled levels of cytokines are released in some patients. Similarly, it activates more immune cells, resulting in hyperinflammation. It can seriously harm or even kill the patient.
What happens is COVID patients suffer from lung fibrosis. It is an untreatable condition that leaves lung tissue scarred. This makes it more difficult for them to breathe.
C.Sativa is a type of cannabis in a cytokine storm study to reduce multiple cytokines and pathways related to inflammation and fibrosis.
Two of the cytokines that C.Sativa facilitated were TNFa and IL-6. These are the main targets when trying to block a COVID-19 cytokine storm.
A 2020 mouse-model study found that CBD, an active cannabinoid compound found in cannabis, the results suggests a potential protective role for CBD during ARDS.
It can extend CBD as part of the treatment of COVID-19 by reducing the cytokine storm, protecting pulmonary tissues, and re-establishing inflammatory homeostasis [3].
How Else Could Cannabis Benefit COVID-19 Patients?
The symptoms of COVID-19 include body aches, sore throat, headaches, and pain. Research shows that Cannabis can help treat these symptoms.
In a study in 2018, 2,032 medical cannabis users have examined. These ranging from 21 illnesses treated with Cannabis showed promising results. It has shown significant potential as a pain reliever. Its potency showed its ability to increase serotonin effects, a neurotransmitter that can induce pain relief [4].
The endocannabinoid system distributes throughout the central and peripheral nervous systems. It is a part of the inflammatory and pain processing. It also plays physiological regulatory roles across every organ system.
This system interacts within its pathways and major endogenous pain pathways. It includes inflammatory, endorphin/enkephalin. THC is 20 times more anti-inflammatory than aspirin. It is also twice as anti-inflammatory as hydrocortisone. It has well-documented analgesic and anti-inflammatory benefits. This includes arthritic and inflammatory conditions.
The CB1 and CB2 Receptors
The CB1 receptor is the most abundant G protein-coupled receptor in the brain. It is also one of the most productive in peripheral and central nervous systems.
CB1 receptors connect to the presynaptic peripheral and central nerve terminals. They’re found through the anatomical pain pathways. These receptors are also present in other neurological central and peripheral locations. The CB1 receptor with the “high” felt with some cannabis strains.
These receptors are within the peripheral tissues and immune cells. It helps the release cytokines, chemokines, and cell migration, including neutrophils and macrophages. Some are present in the central nervous system. It may also contribute to pain relief by dopamine release modulation.
Anxiety
For many COVID-19 Patients and patients in general, hospitalization can be stressful. As WHO stated, there aren’t any physical dependencies associated with CBD. They believe that the compound could help reduce the symptoms of stress and anxiety. Besides that, CBD can increase serotonin activity and lower cortisol levels.
Reducing these chemicals is helpful for anxiety management as serotonin reduces anxiety. Cortisol is a stress hormone at higher levels in patients with anxiety and depression [5]. In a 2019 Double-blinded placebo trial with CBD. They took 37 18-19 Japanese teenagers with social anxiety disorder.
One group (N=17) took 300mg of CBD for four weeks, the other group took a placebo (N=20). The results state that CBD could be a practical option to treat social anxiety.
Watch the full Episode 86 and learn more about how CBD can help Covid by clicking here 👇
TIME STAMPS:
0:00 Introduction 0:52 Sponsor Ads 2:01 Cup of Nurses Introduction 3:35 Episode Introduction 10:29 SARS Cov-2 Update 13:38 Is it possible to use cannabis as a treatment for COVID-19? 14:57 The Research Method by Van Breemen’s Team 21:23 How We Should Deal with C19 Vaccines 24:34 Fun Fact About the Use of CBD 25:08 Cannabis and the Cytokine Storm 31:48 What is C. Sativa? The compound in the Cytokine storm. 33:03 Mouse-Model Study of CBD 33:54 How else could Cannabis benefit COVID-19 Patients? 42:12 The CB1 and CB2 Receptors
Over the years, the issues among overcharging staffing agencies have become a problem. Many nurses have been asking for a better ratio and higher pay for their services, but it all seems to fall on deaf ears. Even before the pandemic, this has been an ongoing issue among the nursing community. Now that we are facing a pandemic, the same problem still exists.
In this episode, we will talk about the overcharging staffing agencies for nurses, how the pandemic affected nurses’ jobs, and even share some of our experiences as travel nurses.
In the letter, Senators Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) and Bill Cassidy, MD (R-La.), and Representatives Doris Matsui (D-Calif.) and David B. McKinley (R-W.Va.) wrote:
“We have received anecdotal reports that the nurse staffing agencies are vastly inflating the price, by two, three or more times pre-pandemic rates, and then taking 40% or more of the amount being charged to the hospitals for themselves in profits.”
They asked for an investigation by “one or more of the federal agencies with competition and consumer protection authority” to find any evidence of anti-competitive price patterns, price collusion, and higher pay for nurses due to the rate increases.
Our opinion is that they will find out the rates are driven by supply ad demand. There isn’t not necessarily pricing fixing or gouging going on, just a shortage of nurses.
Insider info: This started with Aya, who, at the start of the pandemic, where in New York they were charging like $350/hr bill rates. The hospital fired them and filed a complaint [1].
We don’t think this will have any impact on nurses as they have been underpaid for years. The market dictates the rate, not the agencies. Don’t forget that the hospitals got $35,000 for every Covid patient.
What does AMN Healthcare say about this?
AMN Healthcare is the largest travel nursing company, with a 17% market share, and most significant in allied healthcare staffing, with a 12% market share [2].
Kelly Rakowski, chief operating officer for strategic talent solutions at AMN Healthcare, wrote in an email to MedPage in a general response that its “pricing is agreed upon directly with our healthcare organization clients. Inflationary pressures and demand drive up the wages needed to attract clinicians to open positions. Any price increases are driven primarily by the compensation directly to healthcare practitioners.”
Several things contributed to the healthcare shortage; it was not only a national pandemic. The pandemic did two things: Increasing the direct number of patients needing care and driving some nurses out of the healthcare system due to burnout.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the seasonally adjusted number of nursing and residential care facility staff on payrolls nationwide dropped by 157,000 from October 2020 to October 2021, to just under 3 million.
Hospitals in states like Pennsylvania and Dewelare say the hospitals cannot compete with staffing agency pay rates, which makes them unable to retain local nursing staff.
Travel Nursing Fun Facts
The most popular contract spots are Texas, California, and New York.
The most popular cities for travel nurses are:
Denver, Colorado
New York, New York
Austin, Texas
Tucson, Arizona
San Diego, California
Dallas, Texas.
Only about 20% of people that start traveling go back to a perm job for more than two years. The highest paying contract for 36hrs is $5,000-$6,000 per week, gross [3].
The lowest paying contract for 36hrs is $2,000 per week, gross.
Nurses will not travel for less than $2,000 per week, gross.
To watch the full episode, click here for more 👇👇👇
SHOW NOTES:
0:00 Introduction 0:48 Cup of Nurses Introduction 2:33 Episode Introduction 3:00 Are Staffing Agencies Overcharging? 4:03 Letter about staffing agencies that are overcharging 10:48 How travel nursing agencies work 13:33 What AMN Healthcare say about this? 23:58 Who’s paying for FEMA nurses? 26:31 Travel Nursing fun facts
The World Health Organization has another variant in the sight and this time it is the Mu variant. Many people don’t know that there are different strains. Like certain types of bacteria, there are also different strains of a virus. Mu variant is another variant that has been seen and there can be many more that we do not know of [1].
What do we know about the variant so far?
First discovered in Colombia in January 2021. So far it has reached 39 countries. The good news is that so far it is not overtaking the delta strain [2].
Preliminary findings are showing that the Mu variant can potentially evade the antibodies created from the vaccine.
Vaccine manufacturers are turning their focus on the Delta and Mu variants. There is a potential for “escape variants” to come into existence. An escape variant is a variant that has different spike proteins and other components that would render our current vaccines useless.
So far there are around 2,000 cases the most in California, Florida, Texas, and New York.
Fauci stated that the Mu variant can evade certain antibodies, among them those associated with the vaccines.
How do Viruses Mutate?
A virus’s goal is to enter a host and replicate. When the virus replicates there are instances that go through replication errors and those errors lead to mutations. Sometimes those mutations make the virus weaker but often times it strengthens it.
The virus’s antigens can change and that’s when our immune system, specifically our antibodies, is not able to recognize the invading virus.
Influenza is another RNA virus. When comparing Influenza and Covid, Covid replicates slower than influenza at a rate of about 4 times slower.
Scientists think that Covid has the ability to proofread newly-made RNA copies.
Scientists also don’t see an “antigen shift” coming soon. Antigen shift is when the 2 different strains of the same virus infect a host and their genomes merge together to create another strain. This leads to the immune system’s inability to recognize or combat the virus. This usually leads to pandemics or worsening of pandemics.
Antibody-dependent Enhancement
Antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE), sometimes less precisely called immune enhancement or disease enhancement, is a phenomenon in which the binding of a virus to suboptimal antibodies enhances its entry into host cells, followed by its replication. Suboptimal antibodies can result from natural infection or from vaccination.
ADE may cause enhanced respiratory disease and acute lung injury after respiratory virus infection (ERD) with symptoms of monocytic infiltration and an excess of eosinophils in the respiratory tract. This along with type 2 T helper cell-dependent mechanisms may contribute to the development of the vaccine-associated disease enhancement (VADE), which is not limited to respiratory disease.
Some vaccine candidates that targeted coronaviruses, RSV virus, and Dengue virus elicited VADE and were terminated from further development or became approved for use only for patients who had those viruses before.
ADE was observed in animal studies during the development of coronavirus vaccines, but as of 14 December 2020 no incidents had been observed in human trials. “Overall, while ADE is a theoretical possibility with a COVID-19 vaccine, clinical trials in people so far have not shown that participants who received the vaccine have a higher rate of severe illness compared to participants who did not receive the vaccine.
Mechanism of ADE
ADE has been documented to occur through two distinct mechanisms in viral infections: by enhanced antibody-mediated virus uptake into Fc gamma receptor IIa (FcγRIIa)-expressing phagocytic cells leading to increased viral infection and replication, or by excessive antibody Fc-mediated effector functions or immune complex formation causing enhanced inflammation and immunopathology
Abortion
An abortion can also be called a “termination of pregnancy”. It is when a pregnancy does not end with a birth of a child.
History of Abortion
By the 1900s abortion was a felony in every state with some acceptions in limited circumstances when the woman’s life was in danger, rape, or incest. Abortions did continue to occur and reached about 800,000 a year by the 1930s. American Birth Control League was founded in 1921 and then changed to Planned Parenthood Federation of America in 1942 [3].
Pre Roe vs. Wade
In 1964, Gerri Santoro died trying to do an illegal abortion, and her photo became the symbol of an abortion-rights movement. Some women’s rights activist groups started developing their own skills in abortions. In Chicago, a group known as “Jane” operated a floating abortion clinic throughout much of the 1960s. Women seeking the procedure would call a designated number and be given instructions on how to find “Jane” [4].
In 1965 the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) issued a medical bulletin accepting a recommendation that clarified that “conception is the implantation of a fertilized ovum” and birth control methods that prevented implantation became classified as contraceptives, not abortifacients.
In 1967, Colorado became the first state to decriminalize abortion in cases of rape, incest, or if pregnancy would lead to permanent physical disability of the woman. Similar laws were passed in California, Oregon, and North Carolina.
In 1970, Hawaii became the first state to legalize abortions on the request of the woman, and New York repealed its 1830 law and allowed abortions up to the 24th week of pregnancy. Similar laws were soon passed in Alaska and Washington.
In 1970, Washington held a referendum on legalizing early pregnancy abortions, becoming the first state to legalize abortion through a vote of the people.
A law in Washington, D.C., which allowed abortion to protect the life or health of the woman, was challenged in the Supreme Court in 1971 in the United States v. Vuitch. The court upheld the law, deeming that “health” meant “psychological and physical well-being”, essentially allowing abortion in Washington, D.C.
By the end of 1972, 13 states had a law similar to that of Colorado, while Mississippi allowed abortion in cases of rape or incest only and Alabama and Massachusetts allowed abortions only in cases where the woman’s physical health was endangered. In order to obtain abortions during this period, women would often travel from a state where abortion was illegal to one where it was legal.
The legal position prior to Roe v. Wade was that abortion was illegal in 30 states and legal under certain circumstances in 20 states.
Roe vs. Wade
Roe vs. Wade was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States protects a pregnant woman’s liberty to choose to have an abortion without excessive government restriction. It struck down many U.S. federal and state abortion laws and prompted an ongoing national debate in the United States about whether and to what extent abortion should be legal, who should decide the legality of abortion, what methods the Supreme Court should use in constitutional adjudication, and what the role of religious and moral views in the political sphere should be.
The decision involved the case of Norma McCorvey (Jane Roe) who in 1969 became pregnant with her third child. McCorvey wanted an abortion, but she lived in Texas, where abortion was illegal except when necessary to save the mother’s life. She was referred to lawyers Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee, who filed a lawsuit on her behalf in U.S. federal court against her local district attorney, Henry Wade, alleging that Texas’s abortion laws were unconstitutional. A three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas heard the case and ruled in her favor. Texas then appealed this ruling directly to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In January 1973, the Supreme Court issued a 7–2 decision ruling that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides a “right to privacy” that protects a pregnant woman’s right to choose whether or not to have an abortion.
But it also ruled that this right is not absolute, and must be balanced against the government’s interests in protecting women’s health and protecting prenatal life. The Court resolved this balancing test by tying state regulation of abortion to the three trimesters of pregnancy:
During the first trimester, governments could not prohibit abortions at all
In the second trimester, governments could require reasonable health regulations
During the third trimester, abortions could be prohibited entirely so long as the laws contained exceptions for cases when they were necessary to save the life or health of the mother.
The Court classified the right to choose to have an abortion as “fundamental”, which required courts to evaluate challenged abortion laws under the “strict scrutiny” standard, the highest level of judicial review in the United States.
What’s Going on in Texas?
There is a new anti-abortion law that went into effect in Texas. It’s named the Heartbeat Act, which bans abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy. Many women don’t even know they are pregnant before then.
The law allows private citizens to sue abortion providers and those who help a woman get an abortion. It includes those who give a woman a ride to a clinic or provide financial help to get an abortion. Private citizens who bring these suits don’t need to show any connection to those they are suing.
The law bans abortions as soon as cardiac activity is detected. This is interesting because when we have brain-dead patients their heart is still beating but we still don’t consider them “dead”.
Groups that pushed for this law are hoping to make it hard for the federal courts to knock it down. Instead of having public officials enforce this law, it allows individuals to bring civil lawsuits against providers or anyone who aids abortions.
Anyone that would sue can win $10,000 or more and there is even a whistleblower page being created. It feels like they are placing a bounty on people that seek help with abortions [5].
Know more about this law by watching the full video here 👇👇
SHOW NOTES
0:00 Introduction 1:31 Episode Introduction 2:38 What is Mu Covid Variant? 8:20 Antibody-Dependent Enhancement 20:25 Abortion History 29:32 Texas Abortion Law
First Artificial Heart Transplant & Lab Leak Hypothesis
A surgical team at Duke University Hospital, led by doctors Jacob Schroder and Carmelo Milano, successfully implanted a new-generation first artificial heart transplant in a 39-year-old man with heart failure, becoming the first center in North America to perform the procedure.
A U.S. patient received an Aeson total artificial heart device implant for the first time. It was created in July 2008 and initially approved in Europe in 2012. It also became the first real artificial heart to receive FDA approval. In July of 2021, the company also made its 1st sale in Europe. The company did have trial setbacks before; in 2014, their first transplanted patient died 75 days after the operation.
The Operation
The operation lasted more than eight hours as part of a clinical trial at Duke University Hospital. It started after midnight and ended around 8:30 a.m. The surgery team placed the Aeson total first artificial heart created by a French medical technology company called Carmat. Both the designer and developer of the Aeson aimed to provide a therapeutic alternative for people suffering from end-stage biventricular heart failure.
Today, they announced the first implant of its Aeson bioprosthetic artificial heart in a commercial setting. The surgeons said the biggest problem is fitting the device into the heart, limiting the first generation of applicability for small patients.
Heart Failure
Heart Failure occurs when the heart can no longer carry out its essential function as a “blood pump”. They no longer provide enough cardiac output. It affects the heart’s left chamber, then the right chamber leading to biventricular heart failure. At this stage, the brain, liver, and kidneys do not receive enough nutrients and oxygen to function.
It is a global pandemic affecting at least 26 million people and more. Although we have advances in therapies and prevention, 5% of our population has terminal heart failure. All are described as end-stage, and refractory to current medical treatment.
As heart failure is a progressive disease, the prognosis is poor. Less than 50% survival five years after diagnosis.
How the Device Works
The device consists of two ventricular chambers and four biological valves. This ensures that the prosthetic resembles the human heart and functions like one [1].
The heartbeat is created by an actuator fluid that the patient carries in the bag outside the body. The heart pumps using micropumps in response to the patient’s needs. It is determined by the sensors and microprocessors in nature itself.
Two outlets connect the artificial heart to the aorta. It is the major artery in the body and the pulmonary artery that carries blood to the lungs to oxygenate it.
As part of efforts to lead a near-normal life, the recipient will have to carry around almost a nine-pound (four kgs) bag. This bag consists of a controller and two chargeable battery packs. Both work for approximately four hours before requiring recharging.
The device was approved for use in Europe for bridge patients diagnosed with Bi-ventricular failure. It also works for those who need a heart transplant in the next 180 days.
Back in May, a group of scientists – shifted the debate about the origins of COVID-19. they published a letter in the journal of science saying the lab-leak theory needs to be taken more seriously by the scientific community.
The previous administration and other political influencers, almost all scientists, and most media denounced it. Saying it is an anti-Chinese and anti-science conspiracy: only right-wing outlets covered it at the time [2].
A few weeks ago, Anthony Fauci, Biden’s chief medical adviser, asked Chinese officials to release the hospital records of WIV staff members. Others have asked for blood samples from WIV staff members and access to WIV bat and virus samples, laboratory notebooks, and hard drives.
Email to Fauci from Kristain Anderson, one of the fiercest public critics of the lab leak theory and its proponents, discussed with Fauci in February 2020 if SARS-CoV2 was “engineered “:
“The unusual features of the virus make up a tiny part of the genome (<0.1%), so one has to look closely at all the sequences to see that some of the features (potentially) look engineered.
“We have a good team lined up to look very critically at this, so we should know much more at the end of the weekend. I should mention that after discussions earlier today, Eddie, Bob, Mike, and myself all find the genome inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory. “
A Virus That Came from Nowhere
A zoonotic origin of COVID-19, i.e., directly from bats or via another intermediate animal host, is scientifically the most logical theory. The problem is they found no clues, despite all these investigations. The virus appeared from nowhere, already perfectly adapted to humans, sometime in November 2019.
The search of Wuhan’s “wet market” where the animals poached from the wild are sold also delivered nothing. There is no animal host, no traces of SARS-CoV2 antibodies anywhere in the blood, animal or human, before November/December 2019.
Wall Street Journal cited U.S. intelligence sources: “Three researchers from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care, according to a previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report.
A Conflict of Interest
In early 2021, the World Health Organization deployed a team to China in early 2021, led by Peter Daszak, a British zoologist. Daszak had a conflict of interest about the size of a planet: his EcoHealth Alliance was for years channeling almost 40 million U.S. funding money from NIH and Pentagon to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) for coronavirus research.
In 2019, the Daszaks team and Wuhan’s Lab of Virology (WIV) began conducting gain of function research. The advancement of function research, where naturally occurring coronaviruses were manipulated in the lab to make them more pathogenic for humans. The idea is to develop a universal coronavirus vaccine [3].
WIV was doing viral experiments like state-of-the-art genetic manipulation and virus passaging in human cell culture or genetically manipulated (“humanized”) mice to make the coronaviruses more pathogenic to humans.
Beijing is Seeking to Counter the Hypothesis
Earlier in the pandemic, the Chinese government flouted the pangolin theory. They claimed to have found SARS-CoV2 antibodies in poached pangolins sold on Chinese markets [2].
Alina Chan and her colleague proved that research was badly drawn at best: the same pangolin virus genome was published by various papers as independent isolations.
Per published paper: “To our knowledge, all of the published pangolin CoV genome sequences that share a nearly identical Spike receptor binding domain with SARS-CoV-2 originate from this single batch of smuggled pangolins. It raises the question of whether pangolins are truly reservoirs.”
Call it a tale of two laboratories: the Fort Detrick Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in the U.S., the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, and a competing narrative about the origins of Covid-19.
In August 2019, Fort Detrick’s BSL-4, our top security lab, was shut down by the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention for safety violations related to the disposal of dangerous materials. It reopened in April 2020, but the closure became the main topic in China’s tightly controlled domestic information environment.
The hashtag for Fort Detrick’s Chinese name has over 270 million hits on Weibo, a Twitter-like platform, usually on themes of the U.S. hiding bioweapons and researching deadly viruses.
To Global times in China, “Combining more than 8,000 pieces of news reports related to the lab-leak theory, the Global Times found that as many as 60 percent of the coverage was from the U.S. alone.”
Human Mistake
By 2010, researchers published it as fact: “The most famous case of a released laboratory strain is the re-emergent H1N1 influenza-A virus which was first observed in China in May of 1977 and Russia shortly after that.”
The virus may have escaped from a lab attempting to prepare an attenuated H1N1 vaccine in response to the U.S. swine flu pandemic alert. The virus reappeared after a 20-year absence.
Genetic analysis indicated that this strain was missing decades of nucleotide sequence evolution, suggesting an accidental release of a frozen laboratory strain into the general population [4]
What’s next for lab-leak investigations?
The Chinese government rejected the World Health Organization’s plan for the second investigation phase into the origins.
Find out if the C19 Lab leak theory is true by watching the full episode here 👇
SHOW NOTES;
0:00 Introduction with the Hosts 1:28 Affiliates/Updates 7:22 Heart Failures 7:38 Stages of Heart Failures 8:26 Device/process used in heart transplant 11:41 Lab-leak hypothesis 15:21 Origin of Covid-19 16:10 A virus that came from nowhere 19:17 Conflict of interest 25:26 Beijing is seeking to counter the hypothesis 31:11 Top 5 Pandemic 31:24 Human Mistake 32:17 Closing thoughts
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