Do you really need a Covid jab this year?

Many may wonder whether it is healthy to get the Coronavirus vaccinations.
Myself, I have actually been an elite athlete for years, as a dancer and choreographer. Because of this, I was very surprised to get three heart infections in a short time this summer, with inflammation in the heart and in the renal pelvis. This also rang a bell with me from the many articles I have read, pro- and contra- the Corona virus.

US Navy crew member receiving an influenza vaccination

I was in the hospital for a totally different treatment, when the fifth injection was given to my age group. When I enquired whether I would finally take the fifth injection now, it was recommended to take not only this syringe but also the flu vaccine, even though I never had the latter put in before, because I was taking preventive homeopathic treatment and still intend to do so.

My family doctor also assured me that some problems had cropped up in women, but that one can rest assured that all the medications against Corona that entered the market after the initial trials have proven their safety.

According to the British Medical Journal, the BA.2.86 and XBB.1.5 variants are the most closely tracked variants currently circulating in the UK. BA.2.86 or the Pirola variant, is the newest with initial surges detected in September. While it contains certain mutations in the virus’ spike protein, there is no evidence yet that Pirola can circumvent vaccine protection and increase the severity of Covid-19.

Denis Nash, is an epidemiologist at the City University of New York. “Covid-19 can still severely affect people whose vaccine immunity has waned,” he says.

“Many of the deaths are preventable and avoidable, it’s just that people, and particularly the elderly and vulnerable, are not up to date on their vaccines. This makes Covid a threat again.”

Find to read:

Do I need a Covid vaccine this year? Everything you need to know about autumn jabs

As a landmark legal case brands the AstraZeneca Covid jab “defective”, The Telegraph assess your vaccination options

The reason your constant cough will not budge

The Covid pandemic has made us armchair experts on our own health, but we risk becoming a nation of hypochondriacs.

In pre-pandemic times, you’d never have called the office and said:

“Sorry, I’ve got a bad case of human rhinovirus A.”

A cold was a cold, and you’d probably have gone into work coughing and spluttering. Now we have swung to the other extreme: not only would a tickle in the throat make us think twice about leaving the house, but we’re armchair experts on precisely what variant of the coronavirus we think has infected us.

Psychologists agree that many of us have become more focused on our own health and are worrying over the meaning of each cough or sniffle in case it turns out to be something with a scary scientific name.

“We are sensitised to these symptoms and it causes us a shock of the stress hormone cortisol,”

says clinical psychologist Linda Blair.

“We’re overreacting and many people will then catastrophise.”

This January weekly data from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), has found high rates of flu and other respiratory viruses.

Prof Hawthorne said:

“It’s not clear why some of the current respiratory infections going around do seem to be lasting longer than usual – this has been noticed by doctors as well as patients, but we are not entirely sure why this is happening.

If you have had a constant cough this winter that you cannot budge, you are not alone. A royal college has warned that coughs that will not go away may actually be one infection following another after social distancing weakened the nation’s immunity. Prof Kamila Hawthorne, chairman of the Royal College of GPs, said doctors have observed that respiratory infections seems to be lasting longer than usual. Coughs that won’t go away may be one infection after another, after social distancing weakened the nation’s immunity, a royal college has warned.

 

Health editor Laura Donnelly explains when coughs should be investigated.

Some wanting a #childfreemillennial in an ‘overpopulated’ world

In the late 1970s and early ’80s by the central government of China there was an official program initiated to restrict the amount of children, reduce the growth rate of China’s enormous population, making that today there are not enough youngsters to pay for the older generation. There were even forced abortions and sterilizations (the latter primarily of women).

The one-child policy produced consequences beyond the goal of reducing population growth. Most notably, the country’s overall sex ratio became skewed toward males—roughly between 3 and 4 percent more males than females.

It seems now several youngsters also have preference not to have children. They seem to forget that when they would be over 60 there shall be no children able for them to take care. The consequence of not wanting children is not providing a generation who shall be at work whilst the elders would be retired, so that there would not be money to provide for those retired people. Something which has become a huge problem in China.

We wonder if those who now say it will be great to have a child-free life still would say that when they passed the age to have children. shall they still say

“You’ve slept in, woken up to a tidy home, it’s quiet, and you’ve got the rest of the day to potter around, no interruptions. A child-free life is a good life.”

when they find themselves in that quiet home where they are just with themselves and nobody to continue their family generation.

The above message floats over a video that captures a scene of serene domesticity. Posted on TikTok a few days ago, it has already racked up more than 100,000 views.

The video’s creator, “Danni ‘childfree’ Duncan”, who seems mainly to be concerned about his own freedom, is among those who have been able to start a movement under their generation which clearly has decided not to have children. That movement even has its own hashtags (#childfreebychoice and #nothavingkids).

One could easily think that all this is a whim of short duration. But we rather have the impression that these young people do not really realise what their childless life might be in a few years.

However, we obviously cannot ignore or overlook this movement, because it involves not just a few but thousands of women all over the western world.

This craze is just one small part of a wider, and highly significant, demographic issue: across much of the world, birth rates are plummeting.

On Nov 15 this year, the global population is expected to reach eight billion. The United Nations predicts it could grow to about 8.5 billion by 2030 before peaking at 10.4 billion in the 2080s. After that – and some predict it will happen 20 years earlier – the world’s population will start to fall.

Some on the other hand argue that we here in the West should curb births because in the poorer countries, far too many children are coming into this world and thus will overpopulate it. In certain countries they thought lots of children would die because of Covid or because of global warming disasters. In the industrialised countries there was a growth of babies born.

“About nine months after the pandemic, we see what we call a ‘baby bump,’”

said Martha Bailey, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and one of the authors of a study from the National Bureau of Economic Research.

After more than a year, lots of people having been in lockdown, in those countries with economic unemployment we could notice more children being born than normally in the same period over a year. In several countries, lots of 80+ and 90+ people died from the Coronavirus, but still, we can see that the number of 70-79 year-olds increased a remarkable percentage.

We should be aware that usually in countries where conditions for survival are more difficult that more children will be born there, but also more deaths will occur. In the West, similarly, with improved living conditions and a reduction in child deaths, we have had a reduction in births.

The few decades of projected global population growth that remain will be driven by a small number of undeveloped countries, many in the Sahel region of Africa. In countries like Niger, which has the world’s highest fertility rate, economic conditions remain so harsh that women continue to have an average of six or more children in order to survive.

In contrast, for most of the rest of the world – including Britain – it’s a baby bust. And it’s happening now. According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), women born in 1975 had on average just 1.92 children. This compared with the average 2.08 children produced by their mothers’ generation (taken as women born in 1949) and is far below the 2.1 children needed for the existing population to replace itself. For a country it is accepted that, to maintain stability in a country, an overall total fertility rate of 2.1 is needed, assuming no immigration or emigration occurs. A total fertility rate (TFR) of 2.1 is known as the replacement rate. Generally speaking, when the TFR is greater than 2.1, the population in a given area will increase, and when it is less than 2.1, the population in a given area will eventually decrease, though it may take some time because factors such as age structure, emigration, or immigration must be considered.

Last year, the French were urged to have more children after the number of births in the country slumped to its lowest level since the Second World War, with 1.83 children born per woman, compared with 2.02 more than a decade earlier. The birth rate in Spain also dropped to a historic low last year, hitting just 1.19 children born to every woman – a 29 per cent fall compared with a decade earlier.

And in parts of Asia the situation is even worse. South Korea’s fertility rate sank to its lowest ever in 2020, a meagre 0.84 children per woman, giving the country the lowest birth rate in the world.

If, on average, women give birth to 2.1 children and these children survive to the age of 15, any given woman will have replaced herself and her partner upon death.

If young people have now decided not to have children, it means that in a few years’ time, we will indeed have a reduced number of people in several countries but there will also be a very ageing population for which not enough young people will be able to care, a problem China is now facing.

Europe and the U.S.A are already facing a similar problem too because although fertility rates remain well above the replacement rate in many parts of the world, the global TFR has declined significantly since 1970. The decline may be so drastic that populations are expected to halve by 2100 in more than 20 countries, including Spain, Portugal and Japan.

While some may think that humans will have to move to other planets due to overpopulation, some also realise that there will be an emerging population reduction. Elon Musk, the billionaire Tesla chief executive, has called it

“one of the biggest risks to civilisation”.

But why, when living standards and freedoms have never been higher, are women across the globe having so few children or rejecting the concept of motherhood altogether? And what if anything can policymakers do to reverse the trend?

What we should be concerned about is why young people, if not out of selfishness, do not want to bear children. Is it because those twens consider children an economic drain caused by housing, education cost and other costs.

Economic stresses and spiralling house prices mean more couples will feel they can’t afford children,

explains Lyman Stone, chief information officer at Demographic Intelligence.

To promote “no children” may also just be an excuse to avoid such an obligation to share each other with a third party and if they find they can no longer have children, hide it behind their so-called “no children policy”. It looks like many youngsters do not want to invest time or money in any other beings in their relationship. Most of them want leisure time, and time to focus on their own well-being and development.

The reverse of the leisurist coin is the “workist” mindset, in which they value their job very highly as a source of meaning and purpose in their life. Getting higher in work has become a very important factor, and that goal of reaching a high position is considered much more important than having children.

Like leisurism, it is not hugely compatible with parenthood. More than one study has suggested a correlation between workist attitudes – which Stone says are prevalent among a growing share of adults – and lower fertility.

A survey last year by the Pew Research Center in the US found a rising share of childless American adults said they were unlikely to ever start a family. Some 44 per cent of non-parents aged 18 to 49 fell into this category, up from 37 per cent in 2018. While some cited financial reasons, climate change or their lack of a partner as a reason, the majority (56 per cent) said they probably wouldn’t have children because they just didn’t want to.

It’s a group that’s becoming more vocal. In 2015 and 2017, the NotMom Summit – billed as one of the world’s first major conferences for women without children – was held in Cleveland, Ohio. In 2021, Erin Spurling, a British woman in her mid-30s, created the Childfree Lounge, an online community for women without children.

Many of those no-children lovers say they love their freedom, spontaneity and peace and quiet. They often also value time alone or just with a partner or even want to change partners regularly.

+

Find also to read

Child-free by choice: The birth rate crisis gripping the West

++

Additional reading

1. How the pandemic created an unexpected “baby bump”
2. Welfare state and Poverty in Flanders #4 The Family pact
3. Ecological economics in the stomach #3 Food and Populace
4. How to look back at Cop26
5. What effect does population have on climate change?
6. Overpopulation not the cause of overusing our earth

+++

Related

1. Boomers miss the boat: Qld population shift leaves two age groups stranded
2. A Small Circle in Asia Contains More Than Half the World’s Population | HowStuffWorks
3. Book review: ‘Letter to the American Church’
4. Sexual Selection In Men
5. Special Release on 2020 CPH, Municipality of Cabusao7
6. Top 10 Most Populated Countries in Europe #shorts #facts – YouTube 채널: Swapna Ideas
7. Is Large Population a Problem?

The Lancet COVID-19 Major Covid-19 Commission report

Alex Washburne, one of the authors of the Lancet’s paper major Covid-19 Commission report, said:

“We examined whether SARS-CoV-2 was synthesised in a lab. We studied a common method for synthesising [coronaviruses] in the lab.

WHO welcomes the overarching recommendations of The Lancet COVID-19 Commission’s report on “Lessons for the future from the COVID-19 pandemic,” which align with our commitment to stronger global, regional and national pandemic preparedness, prevention, readiness and response. At the same time, there are several key omissions and misinterpretations in the report, not least regarding the public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) and the speed and scope of WHO’s actions.

On 30 December 2019, WHO received the first alerts of cases of pneumonia of unknown cause in Wuhan, China, and notified the IHR focal point, seeking further information from Chinese health authorities the next day.

On 1 January 2020, WHO activated its Incident Management System to manage daily action. The team, which includes focal points on clinical care, infection prevention and control, diagnostics, logistics, communications and more, met daily throughout 2020, into 2021 and continues to meet this year.

As well as mentioning facilities in Wuhan, the report noted that “independent researchers have not yet investigated” US labs, and said the National Institutes of Health has “resisted disclosing details” of its work.

The report comes as controversy swirls the commission chair, the economist Prof Jeffrey Sachs.

At a conference in Madrid earlier this year, he said he was “pretty convinced” that Sars-Cov-2

“came out of US lab biotechnology, not out of nature”

–  a claim that has since been widely promoted by Chinese diplomats.

In August, Prof Sachs also appeared on a podcast hosted by Robert F Kennedy, Jr – one of the world’s most prominent anti-vaccine commentators – to discuss his beliefs, just days after Instagram and Facebook suspended an account led by Mr Kennedy for repeatedly sharing what the platforms said was Covid misinformation, especially around vaccines

Researchers found the fingerprint.

“That fingerprint is in the SARS-CoV-2 genome.”

said Alex Washburne.

Viscount Matt Ridley, who co-authored a book on the origin of the coronavirus, called the new work a “hugely important study”.

“Evidence that strongly suggests SARS-CoV-2 was engineered may have been hiding in plain sight all along,”

he said.

Prof Francois Balloux, the director of the UCL Genetics Institute, said it was

“the strongest piece of evidence to date against a simple scenario of strict zoonotic origin for SARS-CoV-2”.

Prof Kristian Andersen, evolutionary biologist and professor in the Department of Immunology and Microbiology at the Scripps Research Institute, called the work “nothing more than poppycock dressed up as science”.

“In plain language – this is uninformed nonsense and it’s simply not worth engaging with this b*******,”

Prof Anderson said.

The academic also said the paper is

“so deeply flawed that it wouldn’t pass kindergarten molecular biology”.

The pre-print claims to have found telltale signs that the coronavirus was sliced up in a lab and stitched back together again, leaving behind “a very subtle but identifiable fingerprint”.

The team believe they have spotted “sticky ends” on the end of DNA fragments that have been moved around using enzymes.

+++

Related

1. Covid-19 lockdown: remembering March 2020
2. How Long Can You Continue to Test Positive for COVID-19?
3. Is the COVID-19 Pandemic Over? For Employers, Not Yet | Workforce Bulletin
4. Hong Kong Policy Address: 1,000 days on, still no roadmap out of Covid rules that impoverished thousands
5. Joyce Applauds Program to Improve COVID-19 Health Equity Strategies
6. Vaccines or vaccination broth?
7. Covid Update: India sees dip in Covid cases; 2,112 new cases, 4 deaths in 24 hours
8. How COVID-19 is able to evade our immune systems
9. Will COVID-19 resurge in Europe this winter?
10. Zero-COVID policy continues to cause chaos in China
11. Goc A, Rath M, Niedzwiecki A. Composition of naturally occurring compounds decreases activity of Omicron and SARS-CoV-2 RdRp complex
12. COVID increasing once more in the UK
13. The Wry Observer’s Covid-19 update (205): some essential bedtime reading
14. The Wry Observer’s Covid-19 update (206)
15. #Coronavirus Disease #Research References (by AMEDEO, October 17 ’22)
16. Omicron subvariants becoming dominant strains
17. Indonesia launches domestic COVID-19 vaccination
18. House GOP Oversight Members Release Emails of Fauci and NIH Officials Concealing Information on Wuhan Lab Leak Theory from the American Public
19. US extends COVID-19 pandemic status
20. Post #1611, COVID-19, still stuck at 12 new cases per 100K per day
21. Origins of COVID-19 once again spark debate
22. Long-COVID devastating lives according to WHO
23. Potential therapy derived from a banana protein works against SARS-CoV-2
24. Why Are Some Global Health Efforts Failing?
25. Post #1614, COVID-19, new case plateau
26. Is it cold, COVID or the flu? Experts say its ‘very difficult’ to differentiate
27. Surviving the Corona Blues

Dear 2021,

Whichever way we turn, in 2021 we were able to experience another year that tried to undermine mankind.

In the New Year, never forget to thank your past years because they enabled you to reach today! Without the stairs of the past, you cannot arrive at the future!
― Mehmet Murat ildan

It was already an understatement to say that 2020 swept us off our feet, 2021 gave us a run for our money. (Perhaps even literally as well figuratively)

100 years ago another virus had after that terrible Great War tried to reduce the population by large numbers as if that horrible 4 years of war was not sufficient. It had brought down mankind to its knees by a microscopic being. And as if it has to come back every century, we too could feel what it is when a dangerous disease spreads around like mad.

But like the previous 2 years, we could find lightbulbs burning in the darkness.
Set against a backdrop of human loss and misery, many could continue their journey that started off a year before. Several people found new opportunities in this time of malaise. We could see changes in people’s lifestyles, and it was as if man now, at last, gave some rest to nature, having lesser cars driving around. In any case, the Corona period proved beneficial to the environment, with pollution rates decreasing drastically.

Set against a backdrop of human loss and misery was a journey of discovery and realisation that many were just learning to undertake. It brought about a tremendous change in people’s lifestyles, perspectives and proved beneficial to the environment, with pollution rates decreasing drastically. Adoption of minimalistic living practices became the norm in view of the virus’ indefinite tenure. As death tolls rose in a staggering manner, people dwelled in a constant state of apprehension of what the future would bring….. {Dear 2020}

For many, 2021 was a difficult ride, but we all have grown and gotten through it, hopefully learning lessons and making memories in the process. And as you say, we also think, that’s something to be grateful for.

Random Specific Thoughts

In the New Year, never forget to thank your past years because they enabled you to reach today! Without the stairs of the past, you cannot arrive at the future!
―Mehmet Murat ildan

Gosh, I’m almost certainly sure I’m going blind from all the screens. I keep wanting to say it is your fault. Is it?

I’m sorry – where are my manners?

I hope you’re well and the packing is going great. You have but mere minutes before you turn into yet another history chapter. Unlike your predecessor, you weren’t cruel or a fan of surprises but you were clever and cunning. This has been quite the rollercoaster of a year and well, to be honest – I’m not going to blame you for it. I was rather harsh towards 2020 now that I think about i,t and I feel terrible about it.

You see, as humans…

View original post 962 more words

Dear 2021,

So many might be cross with 2021 and by taking on such a negative view on that Corona year miss out on all the blessings they had that year.

It is true many of us would have wished it would have gone differently, but no matter what came over this world, a naughty virus, limiting us in many ways, it also created many opportunities.

Let it be known, in a few years time everything of 2019, 2020 and 2021 might be forgotten as in a sealed book somewhere up high in the bookcase or in a bookshelf in a dark corner.

The good things of it we carry with us with pleasure and hope soon to be relieved from that virus, but in the meantime, we shall not let us bring down.

 

+

Preceding

Let’s count…

Musings of a Bookworm

Before I start I have to thank Deepthy from Random Specific Thoughts for coming up with this idea and then letting me borrow it for a post. You should definitely check out her post here.

So here goes…

Photo by Sindre Stru00f8m on Pexels.com

Dear 2021,

The things we experience in life change us, they shape our understanding and the way we view the world. And so, for me 2021, a year that can only be described as a rollercoaster of a year, wasn’t all bad.

Of course at times I wished things were different, and, to be perfectly honest, I still do. However that isn’t your fault 2021, it’s not the actual events that cause these feelings, it’s my perception and the experience I have of them. This may seem like an odd thing to say, especially taking in to consideration the pandemic and all its effects, but…

View original post 237 more words

New rules in Belgium to stop the spread of coronavirus

 

 

When we look around us we have the impression that there are a lot of folks who seem to come from another planet where they do not know that there is a dangerous virus going around this globe. They do not take any precautions to avoid the virus spreading further. In case much more people would have kept a distance and wearing mouth masks as well having had a vaccination, we would have already for a long time some more normal life. But now, because of so many not taking enough precautions, we have a yo-yo effect because the government does not want to listen enough to the medics but prefer to find a balance with the economic sector.

The government has set once more some rules to stop the spread of coronavirus.
They and we can only hope that more people shall come to see the seriousness of this disease and shall follow these rules. This way, you will avoid becoming ill or making others ill.
Thank you for following them.
Together we’ll stop the coronavirus.

Please remember:

 

Please note: Some cities and towns have stricter rules. For example, in cities where not enough people have been vaccinated, such as in Brussels. Check the website of the city or town.But generally you can say we have to respect the basic principles

• hygiene measures (e.g. washing hands, coughing and sneezing hygiene)
• we have to keep the distance rule = the safety distance of 1.5 m is the norm,
• outdoor activities should be prioritised wherever possible. Where necessary, indoor areas must be adequately ventilated;
• wear breath protection i.e. mouth mask worn correctly (nose and mouth completely covered): The mouth mask obligation has been further extended and is widely used from the age of 10. For example, you will also have to wear a mouth mask when moving around in the hospitality industry.
• Teleworking will again become compulsory for positions that lend themselves to it. If your boss does not wants to do it, try to convince him for keeping to this rule.
• The Covid Safe Ticket (CST) is extended to include a mouth mask requirement in the following sectors:
  • public events and private meetings with more than 50 persons inside or more than 100 persons outside,
  • catering industry, also when private meetings take place
  • theatres, concert halls, music halls, cabarets and other performing arts facilities, cultural centres and multi-purpose halls for cultural activities, indoor circuses, cinemas, museums and (indoor) amusement and theme parks.

Measures per region

• Flanders
• Wallonia. Consult the FAQ of Wallonia
• Brussels Capital Region
• German-speaking community

Journeys

In Belgium

• You are allowed to move around freely.
• If you are using public transport (bus, tram or train) and are you older than 12 years of age, wear a face mask covering your mouth and nose.

Travelling abroad

• Travel is permitted. More info on:
  • travelling abroad
  • travelling or returning to Belgium

Shops and catering industry

• All shops are open.
  • When you enter the store disinfect your hands first. Wear a face mask.
  • Do you own a shop? Read the guide by the FPS Economy.
• Markets are being organized.
• Night shops are open.
• Hairdressers and other non-medical contact professions, such as pedicure and beauty salons, are open. Wear a face mask.

Bars and restaurants

• Bars and restaurants are open.
• You need to have a Covid Safe Ticket. You can find your Covid Safe Ticket at www.covidsafe.be or via the CovidSafeBE app.
  • Do you own a bar or restaurant? Read the guide by the FPS Economy.

Sports and leisure

• Events or shows can be organized, for example theatre, professional sports competitions or concerts.
• Organized activities, such as sports clubs or associations, are allowed.
• Religious services are allowed.
• You can practice sports anywhere.
• Dance clubs and night bars are open

Caution:

• In some places you need to wear a face mask indoors. For example: in libraries, theater halls, concert halls, sports centers, etc.
• In some places you need a Covid Safe Ticket. For example: at large-scale events, in dance clubs and in fitness centers.
  • You can find your Covid Safe Ticket at www.covidsafe.be or via the CovidSafeBE app.
  • Do you have to show a Covid Safe Ticket? Then wearing a face mask is no longer mandatory.

Al of niet corona-vaccinatie verplichten

Er is al heel wat te doen geweest rond het al of niet vaccineren. Er zijn heel wat mensen die niet inzien dat vaccinatie het beste redmiddel is om zo veel mogelijk mensen te beveiligen tegen het Coronavirus. In meerdere landen gaat het zelfs zo ver dat er mensen oproepen tot burgerlijke ongehoorzaamheid. dat is totaal onverantwoord en zou ernstig bestraft moeten worden met een duidelijk making dat men enkel ieders vrijheid en gezondheid kan beschermen door deze maatregel van injectie op te leggen.

Vooral die mensen die de verantwoordelijkheid dragen over anderen, zoals mensen in de zorgsector, horen hun gezond verstand te gebruiken en te beseffen dat een injectie met het coronavaccin niet enkel hen, maar ook de anderen rondom hen beschermd.

Met recht en rede heeft de minister van Volksgezondheid Frank Vandenbroucke in de ‘Cooke & Verhulst Show’ gepleit voor een verplichte vaccinatie voor het zorgpersoneel. Daarom wil Vandenbroucke dat er een wet wordt goedgekeurd die de vaccinatie verplicht voor wie werkt in de zorgsector ook al is hij geen voorstander van een algemene verplichting om zich te laten vaccineren met een vaccin tegen het coronavirus.

De regering twijfelt nog steeds om het vaccinatiecertificaat te verplichten als een toelatingsbewijs voor bepaalde evenementen. Maar zulk een verplichting zal juist een goede aanzet zijn voor heel wat mensen om de knoop door te hakken en zich te laten inenten met dit vaccin, zoals zij ook al zijn ingeënt met zovele andere vaccins (de meeste kinderziekten, pokken, rode hond, tetanus, e.a.).

Indien wij terug onze vrijheid willen herwinnen en komaf willen maken met dit longvirus, zijn wij beter om de bevolking algemeen gevaccineerd te krijgen en niet te snel mondmaskers en sociale afstand regels over boord te gooien.

Het zou trouwens niet slecht zijn indien mensen er nu een gewoonte van zouden maken in de winter periode bij de banale verkoudheden en griepvirussen ook een mondmasker in het openbaar te dragen.

Waarom je laten vaccineren?

Vreemd genoeg vinden wij in zeer veel landen nog altijd mensen die tegen de anti-coronavaccinaties zijn.

Door het vaccin maakt je lichaam antistoffen aan. Die stoffen helpen om tegen de deeltjes van het virus te vechten. Kom je later in contact met het virus? Dan beschermen de antistoffen jou.

Het gaat er niet alleen om je zelf te beschermen. Het weigeren van gevaccineerd te worden doet de vraag rijzen of men wel voldoende rekening houdt met de mensen om zich heen?

Het vaccin beschermt niet alleen jezelf, maar ook de mensen in je omgeving. Als zoveel mogelijk mensen in België en andere landen zich laten vaccineren, kan het virus zich minder snel verspreiden.

De vaccinatie tegen het coronavirus is gratis voor iedereen, dus dat kan zeker geen reden zijn om zich niet te laten vaccineren.

Doordat meerdere mensen nog niet gevaccineerd zijn, is de mogelijkheid ontstaan dat het virus over gaat van de een naar de ander waarbij er ook mutaties optreden. Sommige mutaties blijken nu zelfs gevaarlijker dan de oorspronkelijke boosdoener. De Delta variant is nu zelfs de grootste variant van het virus geworden die over de hele wereld weid verspreid is.

Het coronavirus overwinnen staat of valt met de vaccinatiestrategie, maar dan moet iedereen ook bereid zijn om zich te laten vaccineren.
We willen allemaal ons normale leven terug. Dat kan alleen als we de verspreiding van het virus tegengaan en ons met z’n allen laten vaccineren.

Strength Surfaces in Times of Unheaval. Be the Catalyst!

 

BowmanAuthor and Writer/Editor

Dare to be more each day!

Sometimes we have to go to the depths of despair to find the core of our being. This has been just such a year for everyone on a global scale. We have to regroup and become the CATALYST!

How do we go on? By believing in each other!

Dwelling on the past, however, has never helped anyone. The future cannot change, redeem, or soften the past. It is what it is, and we all must accept it. Acceptance, though, is not in hiding from the past, but rather in learning from the past. That is how all of us, one at a time, can look to a greater tomorrow. One small act of kindness is the CATALYST!

Everyone was touched by the virus. We have all looked death in the eye and watched strong, remarkable people succumb to its ghastly demise: wives, husbands, lovers…

View original post 242 more words

Preventable: The Inside Story of How Leadership Failures, Politics, and Selfishness Doomed the U.S. Coronavirus Response Book Review

Donald Trump is the guilty one that America was and is still so much caught in the Corona crisis. In case he would not have minimalised this “Chinese” disease and would have given the right advice to the American citizens, a lot of deaths, suffering and sorrow could have been avoided.

Writergurlny

Hindsight is always 2020. The question we have to ask ourselves, is when the same issue comes up, is the past repeated or do we truly learn from our errors?

Andy Slavitt has spent many years within the world of healthcare. His new book, Preventable: The Inside Story of How Leadership Failures, Politics, and Selfishness Doomed the U.S. Coronavirus Response, was published in June. It documents the time he spent in the last Presidential administration and the missteps that led to more than half a million Americans dead from Covid-19. Speaking to government officials, politicians on all sides of the spectrum, and medical professionals, he talks about in detail what went wrong and what could have been done to save lives.

As I got further into the narrative, I was getting angry. The United States is one of the wealthiest nations in the world. While there was no…

View original post 60 more words

You’ll Probably Get Covid-19 Eventually. But Avoid It for as Long as You Can.

That even people who had two injections of anti-covid-vaccines are not totally safe, was proved by the several who still got infected with the delta variant and the 8 deaths from the elderly home in Belgium.

Dewayne-Net Archives

You’ll Probably Get Covid-19 Eventually. But Avoid It for as Long as You Can.
The next six months of this pandemic may look dispiriting. But that doesn’t mean we’re doomed.
By Melody Schreiber
Aug 6 2021
https://newrepublic.com/article/163186/youll-probably-get-covid-eventually-avoid-long-can

“Hot vax summer” never quite materialized. For parents, like me, and other caregivers with vulnerable family members, it wasn’t clear what exactly we could do safely. Now, as Covid-19 cases in the United States spike and we learn that vaccinated people may transmit the delta variant to others, we are all donning masks again and gritting our teeth in preparation for more restrictions. And we’re wondering: Will it always be like this?

The science is pretty clear: SARS-CoV-2 is here to stay. It will become endemic, which means the virus will continue circulating through humans and animals in the next few years. Elimination, where the virus is almost entirely quashed, is possible, but…

View original post 1,140 more words

Vaccinations and anti-vaxers

Ex-president Donald Trump was against vaccinations and even did want Americans to believe the “Chinese disease would soon be over”. This ego tripper managed lots of Americans not to believe in the dangers of the Coronavirus.

By his misleading words he got many Republicans, evangelicals, but also poor blacks, and Hispanics to believe it are foreign forces and socialists or, worse, communists, trying to undermine the American society. Today many are suspicious of the government which would have become in power by a fraud election. Conservative evangelicals are among the quickest to share all those absurd stories about a.o. coronavirus-related conspiracy reaching to the highest levels of government. In many countries we can see that it is the Religious Right which is a hothouse of anti-vax activism and health fads.

Fools will readily believe a case without closely seeking out and attending to the criticisms of it (Proverbs 18:17). They routinely judge before hearing. They also attend to and spread rumours, inaccurate reports, and unreliable tales, while failing diligently to pursue the truth of a matter. The wise, by contrast, examine things carefully before moving to judgment or passing on a report. {Wisdom and Folly in Christian Responses to Coronavirus}

a lot of youngsters only go be the headings on their Social Media. Titles on You Tube or on Facebook, without going to read the article, let withstand to think about it and to examine what is said in it.

They do not follow up closely on viewpoints that they have advanced, seeking criticism and cross-examination to ascertain their truth or falsity. And when anything is proven wrong, they do not return to correct it. {Wisdom and Folly in Christian Responses to Coronavirus}

You would think, in the U.S.A., after the new president tried to get some order again, the American citizens would get back to their senses. The number of new Covid-19 cases per day has increased dramatically in the United States in the past month. New, dangerous variants have spread widely. At first Trump could convince people not to wear masks, but luckily now they show up in many parts of the country. Artists, often looked at as being “left”, went to get their vaccination as soon as they could. CEO’s also did not wait to long before getting vaccinated. But for the lowest-income groups, we can see it is more difficult to get people over the line. In the U.S.A. only 1.1 percent of the population of poor countries has received a single shot. Some people have surrendered to a sense of doom because they formed unreasonable expectations that the Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines would miraculously obliterate the virus.

You would expect after the 2020 lockdowns, the 2.4 million Americans hospitalised and the 610,000 killed, more Americans would hurry to get the vaccinations over and done with. But the unmistakable fact is that they’ve made great progress in recent months to smother the virus and steer national life back toward normal. Where 5,463 people died from Covid-19 on one day at the beginning of the year, the daily death count is now bouncing in the low hundreds. One good thing may be that already an undetermined number of people have acquired some immunity from Covid-19 by exposure to it.

Today in America, severe Covid-19 infections and death are almost entirely in unvaccinated people. And the vaccines are still remarkably effective — of the 163 million fully vaccinated in the United States, only 1,141 have died from the virus.

It is known that the older you are, the greater the chance of getting seriously ill or dying from CoViD, and the younger you are, the less likely you are to have serious symptoms. This makes a lot of youngsters not worrying or not afraid of getting infected. For them there are many reasons not to receive an injection. Though lots of those reasons are based on absurd messages on Social Media. Social Media is doing a lot of damage and undermining national safety. One would expect them to see now, that because of the success of the vaccination in the older population, that the infection rate from the Delta variant has sent the number of infections soaring, the number of deaths, at least right now, is surprisingly low.

Young and old should come to recognise this virus is not an ordinary virus, like we have seen previously several viruses coming over the lands. It is not a virus that shall allow us to cry victory soon. No matter who might be president or in power, all shall have to start with acknowledging that it’s not within our power to eliminate Covid-19 from our shores the way we have polio, or to vaccinate every American against the virus. If we’re willing to agree on an end goal of dramatically reducing the severe illness and deaths from the virus, however, we might begin to see what winning is about.

According to Anthony Fauci the vaccines are even effective against the new variants that people fret so much about.

“A higher percentage of Americans have taken a Covid-19 vaccine in the past seven months than took a flu vaccine during the catastrophic 2017-18 flu season (37 percent of adults). Only 54 percent of the American population had taken the Salk polio vaccine six years after its introduction. Viewed from these angles, Americans in 2021 have not been particularly “vaccine hesitant.”

he says. But when we see news coverage and some documentaries about the handling of CoViD in the United States we got another view, with a lot of people between the age of 20-40 coming up with a lot of reasonable and sometime idiotic fantasies why they do not want to be vaccinated.

All over the world people should become convinced that it is a matter of not only protecting yourself, but out of love for the other, protecting those around you. The more people we vaccinate, the safer we all are today and how sooner we can go back to a normal life. We need everybody to be able to go to work, to have all the shops, pubs and event centres open again. Trying to get everything working properly again, we should safeguard ourselves by taking enough precautions that the illness can not spread. The less opportunity dangerous variants will have to emerge and spread tomorrow the better our life shall be and the better our economy shall be able to recover from those two years ‘disaster’.

So many in France and Germany shout about their freedom being taken, but do they ever think about what freedom really might be? Freedom is also respecting the freedom of others!

The age factor helps to explain why the rate of vaccination has stalled and is unlikely to accelerate, especially among the 19-to-49 crowd, many of whom feel immortal. We also hear that several of that age group in Europe went only to get their vaccination to be able to travel or to go to music festivals.

Some people also point to the fact that lots of people die in car accidents or find their death by having cancer. They say the older generation reacted to strongly on a disease which perhaps should be regarded like any other flu variant or a disease that comes over our countries once in a while to bring a clean brush against overpopulation.

Jack Shafer, Politico’s senior media writer, agrees that everybody who can access a Covid-19 vaccine should line up and get the shot. Right now. But he also points out that we need to determine our “tolerance level” for the disease, realising that we are unlikely to eradicate it completely but that we cannot keep shutting down our society in an effort to eliminate all risk. According to him we also don’t do that with other diseases. He points out that in the 2017-2018 flu season, influenza put 810,000 Americans in the hospital and killed 61,000. Those are terrible numbers, but we didn’t panic, mandate masks, or lock down the economy.

+

Also interesting to read

1. Remembering what happened in the previous influenza pandemic
2. According to Pew Most White Evangelicals Don’t Think COVID-19 is a Medical Crisis
3. Undermining security and democracy via the Internet
4. No time yet to relax the CoViD-19 restriction measures
5. Lockdown greetings for a newer year
6. Not created to be on our own
7. CoViD-19 Curation
8. A new start when the lockdown comes to an end
9. NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo his state of the state address
10. G7 and Building Back Better
11. Good time to sort out your friends and contacts
12. In Coronatime thinking about death
13. A living Word giving confidence
14. Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief

+++

Related

1. Wisdom and Folly in Christian Responses to Coronavirus
2. Employee shortage, COVID-19 surge leave ICU nurses exhausted
3. Japan’s pandemic entering ‘new phase’ as Tokyo COVID-19 cases hit record high
4. As delta variant spreads, New York City ramps up vaccination efforts among students
5. Clubs NSW calls for COVID-19 vaccinated individuals to be allowed back into venues
6. NYC, Big Employers Taking Hard Line Against Vaccine Holdouts
7. Be aware of othersAugust 1, 2021
8. Waking Up
9. Anti Vaxers
10. Hospital CEO tells anti-vaxers to ‘shut up’
11. Public hearing underway as thousands want a say in the proposed ban on religious exemption for childhood vaccines
12. How To Talk To Anti-maskers And Not Lose Your Mind
13. Mick Jagger and Dave Grohl mock anti-vaxxers in new song
14. Jaco: Welcome to the death lottery; wanna play?
15. Re- emerging
16. 07/12/2021 Summer Doldrums
17. “Freedumb Must Reign!”
18. 28 & 1/3 Grams
19. It Sails Through the Air
20. Covid returns again – Why are you still not vaccinated?
21. I’m mad as hell, and not sorry
22. Give Them The Stick, Not The Carrot
23. Jaco: Make the anti-vaxers pay
24. Those who not get to the vaccine
25. Anti-vaxers had their fun
26. Wild deer found to have coronavirus antibodies in four-state study

Man vs ‘Terminator’ – The Battle Of Covid 19 Rages Worldwide

Lots of people do forget the importance to protect oneself but also the other.
The quickest way to get rid of all the limitations is to have as many people as possible to be vaccinated and for some time not to go to other countries, but staying safe in your own bubble.

 

+++

Related

1. Florida Covid surge triggers restrictions, openness to vaccine among Haitian-Americans
2. Japan’s Govt: 74% of elderly fully vaccinated but need to “speed up vaccinations” highlighted
3. ICU nurse creates video dedicated to COVID patients who have died, revealing constant struggles
4. About 99.999% of fully vaccinated Americans have not had a deadly Covid-19 breakthrough case, CDC data shows
5. More ‘pain and suffering’ ahead as COVID cases rise, Fauci says
6. North Bay Has The Highest Vaccination Rate In Racine County
7. Histopathology features of the lung in COVID-19 patients
8. CDC Urges Vaccinated People To Mask Up Indoors In Places With High Virus Transmission
9. World And U.S. Vaccination Statistics As Of July 9, 2021
10. Vaccine Passports Could Allow Travel With Fewer Restrictions. The World Health Organization Says “Meh”
11. CoV-2 Genome Explorer
12. Neil Oliver sparks outrage after claiming he would ‘cheerfully risk catching Covid’ on GB News
13. Scioto County COVID-19 cases up almost 83% from last year

Salsaworldtraveler'sblog

A couple of things caught my attention this week relating to the seemingly ever changing myriad of Covid-19 restrictions. First, the French Parliament passed a law that will require a health pass for access to restaurants, bars, trains and planes from the beginning of August. (In France, all venues accommodating more than 50 people already require proof of vaccination or a recent negative Covid-19 test, including museums, cinemas and swimming pools.) Second, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revised its guidance on wearing masks and now the agency recommends that some fully vaccinated people wear masks indoors if they live in areas with significant or high spread.

Those are only two of many examples of increased Covid-19 restrictions going into effect around the globe. The Delta Variant of SARS-CoV-2 is more transmissible and can cause worse health outcomes than other variants. Because Delta is more transmissible, it is fast becoming the dominant…

View original post 883 more words

No Longer ‘Hidden Victims,’ Children Are Dying as Virus Surges in Indonesia

 

Dewayne-Net Archives

No Longer ‘Hidden Victims,’ Children Are Dying as Virus Surges in Indonesia
Hundreds have died from Covid-19 in recent weeks, many of them under the age of 5. National leaders face mounting criticism that they have been unprepared.
By Richard C. Paddock and Muktita Suhartono
Jul 31 2021
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/25/world/asia/children-deaths-virus-indonesia.html

Hundreds of children in Indonesia have died from the coronavirus in recent weeks, many of them under age 5, a mortality rate greater than that of any other country and one that challenges the idea that children face minimal risk from Covid-19, doctors say.

The deaths, more than 100 a week this month, have come as Indonesia confronts its biggest surge yet in coronavirus cases over all — and as its leaders face mounting criticism that they have been unprepared and slow to act.

“Our numbers are the highest in the world,” the head of the Indonesian Pediatric Society, Dr. Aman…

View original post 805 more words

Let South America come to you #1 Reasons to stay away from South America

When you can not go to South America, why do you not bring South America into your home?

Reasons to stay away from South America

Virustime

2020-2021 was no time to go to South America because of a acute respiratory syndrome virus attacking the population badly. Brazil is the Latin American country affected the most by the COVID-19 pandemic. As of July 27, 2021, the highest number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Latin America could be recorded, and Brazil could be placed third highest in the world, the country had reported approximately 19.7 million cases. It was followed by Argentina, with more than 4.8 million confirmed cases of COVID-19. In total, the region had registered more than 40 million diagnosed patients, as well as a growing number of fatal COVID-19 cases.

As of July 27, 2021, more than 1.3 million people have died due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in Latin America and the Caribbean. The country with the highest number was Brazil, reporting more than 550 thousand deaths. As a result of the pandemic, Brazil’s GDP is forecast to decline by approximately six percent in 2020. Meanwhile, Mexico ranked second in number of deaths, with over 238 thousand occurrences.

Peru has more than 2.1 million confirmed cases of COVID-19

Classified as a “variant of interest” by the World Health Organization (WHO) on June 17, the lambda, or C.37, variant of the coronavirus has already been detected in some US states and at least 29 nations — many of them in Latin America.

In Peru, where it was identified in August 2020, the lambda variant accounted for more than 80% of new infections in June, and it is also spreading rapidly in Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Mexico.

Coronavirus lambda variant spreads across Latin America

The WHO classified C.37 as a “variant of interest” after it appeared in a number of countries simultaneously. In Peru, where the lambda variant was identified in August 2020, it now accounts for most of new infections.

Peru has more than 2.1 million confirmed cases of COVID-19

Classified as a “variant of interest” by the World Health Organization (WHO) on June 17, the lambda, or C.37, variant of the coronavirus has already been detected in some US states and at least 29 nations — many of them in Latin America.

In Peru, where it was identified in August 2020, the lambda variant accounted for more than 80% of new infections in June, and it is also spreading rapidly in Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Mexico.

“So far we have seen no indication that the lambda variant is more aggressive,”

WHO virologist Jairo Mendez-Rico told DW.

“It is possible that it may exhibit higher infection rates, but we don’t yet have enough reliable data to compare it to gamma or delta.”

Alpha (B.1.1.7), beta (B.1.351) delta (B.1.617.2) and gamma (P.1) are also categorized as “variants of concern” by the WHO. The classification indicates that they are more transmissible and more difficult to treat and can lead to more serious illness.

“Although it is possible, currently there is no indication that variants are more dangerous and lead to increased mortality,”

said Mendez-Rico.

“It is likely that SARS-CoV-2 will become more transmissible throughout the course of its evolution but not necessarily more damaging.”

Time to stay away

The Lambda version spread more quickly than variants deemed far more dangerous by the WHO out of the way, even prevailing over the gamma variant, which had run rampant in neighboring Brazil. But with all the variants going around it is not the ideal time to go to South America when you are not really needed overthere.

Virologist Pablo Tsukayama said lambda was more transmissible, which had helped it spread so quickly in Peru.

“With […] the highest mortality rates in the world, we are the country that has struggled most when it comes to the coronavirus,”

he said.

“Therefore, it is probably no wonder that the new variant has gotten its start here.”

By the end of July, COVID-19 deaths in Peru had surpassed 195,000.

“It is very likely that new variants will appear during a third wave of coronavirus infections during the South American winter between July and September,”

said Tsukayama.

 “They may not be any more lethal but they will definitely be more communicable.”

Last month the landlocked country in south-central South America Paraguay registered 18.09 deaths per million, compared with 2.71 in India, 2.2 in South Africa, 1.01 in the US, and 0.14 in the UK.

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted essential health services in most countries and territories in Latin America and the Caribbean, threatening immunization of children and care of expectant mothers and people with chronic conditions, Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) Director Carissa F. Etienne warned.

Attractive New World

For many the New World, the Western Hemisphere, or simply the Americas is something which is very attractive and lets us dream a lot. South America is compact and roughly triangular in shape, being broad in the north and tapering to a point — Cape Horn, Chile—in the south.

Having a total area of about 6,878,000 square miles (17,814,000 square km), or roughly one-eighth of the land surface of Earth it has so much to offer, one needs months or years to properly visit it and to taste all the goodness of it.
Mount Aconcagua, in Argentina, near the border with Chile, is not only the continent’s highest point but also the highest elevation in the Western Hemisphere. The Valdés Peninsula, on the southeastern coast of Argentina, includes the lowest point, at 131 feet (40 metres) below sea level. In relation to its area, the continent’s coastline — some 15,800 miles in length — is exceptionally short. San José Gulf was officially decreed a wildlife sanctuary in 1974.

With a grand total of 12 countries packed into the 4^th largest continent in the world, South America easily presents a lot of terrain and culture to cover, though not all places are very safe to visit, because of political and crime- but now also because of health risks.

Notwithstanding all the difficulties many countries of that continent have to cover it is a continent teeming with superlatives. According to some it is also next to New Zealand the most of what our fantastic planet has to offer.

South America may very well be the place to visit to see many wonders of the world, but for sure now is not the time to do it. Colouring ‘red’  it looks like you shall have to wait some time before it will be alright to visit it.

But do not worry, if you want already some taste of it, you can get it (if not today) already tomorrow.

+

Continues with

Let South America come to you #2 For those with a good taste

++

Additional reading

1. Avoiding to get Water at the price of gold #2 Dealing with effects of a changing climate
2. 2019 was #1 a Year of Raising fire and voices
3. CoViD-19 Curation
4. Challenges of the Post-Pandemic period
5. Looking at: ‘The rich are getting richer, and the poor are… also getting richer’ by Daniel Hannan

+++

Related

1. This Month’s Region of the World: Latin America
2. A new Continent – South America
3. The Pandemic’s Legacy Will Spur New Protests in Latin America
4. Otras 135 personas murieron y 10.356 fueron reportadas con coronavirus en todo el país
5. Brazil sees a significant fall in the average number of deaths due to Covid-19
6. Venezuela Is Without a Vaccination Plan
7. Murió por coronavirus Gino Renni, el actor italiano que conquistó a los argentinos con su humor
8. Por fin Logre mi Vecina Argentina Viniera a visitarme , Vean como se sienta encima de la verga y la se la mete entera en la cola
9. Magnitude-6-2 Peru-Ecuador-border-region
10. Climate change may inflict more droughts and higher temps on South America.
11. Rare Snowfall Enchants Brazilian Resort Town
12. Horse power
13. Lomas de Lachay
14. Florianópolis
15. by Gateway Landscape Photography on Flickr.Avenue of the Glaciers, Beagle Channel, Tierra del Fuego, Chile.
16. Flora Veloso biography: 10 things about Miss Earth Argentina 2021
17. On the approach to Fitz Roy in Southern Patagonia, Argentina
18. My Older Sisters Griselda and Xiomara: Survivors of the Guatemalan Civil War
19. An Inca highway still benefits people living nearby | The Economist
20. Why Latin American venture capital is breaking records this year
21. Happy Peru Day – Feliz Fiestas Patrias
22. July 30, 2021 Moray and the Moras Salt Mines
23. Peru: 50 organizations call for an ecological transition towards economic recovery
24. Sismo en Perú dejó al menos 41 heridos, tres de ellos en grave estado
25. Terremoto de magnitude 6,1 atinge a costa norte do Peru e deixa feridos
26. A 6.1-magnitude earthquake strikes Peru.
27. Haurez
28. Informality rate in Brazilian labour market rises to 40%
29. Belem – Brazil – Icoaracy
30. Channel-billed Toucan Ramphastos vitellinus
31. São Paulo Sunday
32. Rare Snowfall Enchants Brazilian Resort Town
33. Vídeo: o momento em que uma casa desmorona e cai no mar na Argentina
34. Río by Lumtz

Iran’s water crisis stokes another round of protests

The 42 years of Islamic fundamentalism proved that this so religious system is as corrupt like any other system where people in power try to earn as much they can for themselves (at the cost of the population).

We shall have to face not only political refugees but soon more ecological refugees.

Democracy for Iran

By Struan Stevenson

July 26 (UPI) –Prior to the 1979 revolution, Iran’s population of 34 million people relied on a stable water supply, sourced from millennia-old underground canals and aquifers. The Iranian revolution, hijacked by the mullahs, changed all that.

The theocratic regime handed control of the nationalized water industry — and indeed over 80% of all other business, industrial and service sectors — to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the regime’s equivalent of the Gestapo. The IRGC answers directly to the elderly supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. It pays no tax and corruptly siphons vast financial resources into its own pockets and into financing proxy wars and terrorism across the Middle East and further afield.

The IRGC members use oil revenues stolen from the Iranian people to race ahead with the clandestine construction of a nuclear weapon and ballistic missile delivery systems capable of reaching Tel Aviv, Israel…

View original post 921 more words

Religious Resistance against vaccination

In the United States we can see a great tendency not to go for vaccination because according to lots of Christian citizens God would protect them.

Millions of white evangelical adults in the U.S. do not intend to get vaccinated against Covid-19. Tenets of faith and mistrust of science play a role; so does politics. Also in Calvinistic Holland we can find lots of people who do not want to be vaccinated.

Some people also come with the most absurd stories, like the government placing a chip in people or having vaccinations with “aborted cell tissue.” Others claim to have received a divine message that God was the ultimate healer and deliverer

“The vaccine is not the saviour.”

Several religious people find they do not need the vaccine because God designed the body to heal itself, if given the right nutrients. They are also convinced that it shall be the Will of God to decide who becomes ill or not and if they shall survive this pandemic.

Across white evangelical America, reasons not to get vaccinated have spread as quickly as the virus that public health officials are hoping to overcome through herd immunity.

There are about 41 million white evangelical adults in the U.S. About 45 percent said in late February that they would not get vaccinated against Covid-19, making them among the least likely demographic groups to do so, according to the Pew Research Center.

“If we can’t get a significant number of white evangelicals to come around on this, the pandemic is going to last much longer than it needs to,”

said Jamie Aten, founder and executive director of the Humanitarian Disaster Institute at Wheaton College, an evangelical institution in Illinois.

Those who refuse to have a jab forget that they are putting the lives of others in danger, the same as they are putting people at risk by ignoring the request not to have a public meeting with too many people. Several church groups can still be found to have public church services, with people coming very close to each other and by singing loud.

In the States

“The sheer size of the community poses a major problem for the country’s ability to recover from a pandemic that has resulted in the deaths of half a million Americans,”

the Times warned.

“And evangelical ideas and instincts have a way of spreading, even internationally.”

Though not all pastors advice their flock to stay away from vaccination.

Many high-profile conservative pastors and institutional leaders have endorsed the vaccines. Franklin Graham told his 9.6 million Facebook followers that Jesus would advocate for vaccination. Pastor Robert Jeffress commended it from an anti-abortion perspective on Fox News.

“We talk about life inside the womb being a gift from God. Well, life outside the womb is a gift from God, too.”

The president of the Southern Baptist Convention, J.D. Greear, tweeted a photo of himself receiving a shot.

+

Related

According to Pew Most White Evangelicals Don’t Think COVID-19 is a Medical Crisis

Zijn Liefde kent geen grenzen

Velen geven blijk van opgesloten te zitten, maar grijpen deze kans niet om zich even ernstig te bezinnen. Al maanden hebben wij nu allemaal tijd gekregen om na te denken over zin en onzin van dit aardse bestaan en over de waarde van onze relatie met de medemens, maar ook met de natuur. Vraag is hoe veel mensen tijd genomen hebben om na te denken over onze relatie met de Goddelijke Schepper en Toelater van al die dingen die wij mogen hebben en waarmee wij ons mogen omringen?

Vandaag kijken wij even naar een reactie van een familie op zending in Costa Rica, waar bijna het hele schooljaar de kinderen online les volgden.

Ze hebben het alle drie gehaald en goed hun best gedaan ook al was het niet wat ze zelf zouden kiezen. Graag willen ze weer terug naar het ‘oude’, naar het gewone klaslokaal. Maar goed, dat gaat hopelijk volgend jaar veranderen.

*

Te onthouden:

Het Evangelie kent geen grenzen. De liefde van God, de waarheid van God zit niet aan gebouw vast, maar ook niet vast aan een plaats, maar woont in Zijn volk.

• Velen vergeten dat dit juist een tijd is waarbij het zo belangrijk is om elkaar via het internet verder te bemoedigen en de Blijde Boodschap verder uit te dragen zodat meerderen het licht aan het einde van de tunnel zullen kunnen zien.

De Coghis in Costa Rica

De regels worden steeds strikter. De vijand lijkt steeds dichtbij te komen. Dit virus ken geen grenzen en gaat waar het heen wil. We worden er sterk op gewezen om afstand te houden en als we dat niet zelf doen dan wordt het ons opgelegd. Maar…

De liefde van God kent geen grenzen

Niemand kan met geld de grens nog oversteken, ze zitten dicht. Vandaag is hier in Costa Rica aangekondigd dat als je een verblijfsvergunning hebt als buitenlander en je nu het land verlaat dan kan het zomaar ineens zijn dat je die verblijfsvergunning verliest. Ik weet niet precies waarom dit is aangekondigd en waarom deze strikte regel, maar we leven in rare tijden.

De meeste beslissingen, moeten we geloven, zijn om de mensen te beschermen, maar er zullen ook beslissingen tussen zitten waar we niks van snappen. En toch temidden van al deze beslissingen, temidden van een realiteit…

View original post 496 more words

Draag zorg voor je eigen immuunsysteem

Tijdens deze coronamaanden is er al heel wat gesproken over het immuun maken of ons lichaam verdedigbaar te maken tegen bacteriën en virussen.

Vanaf dat wij ontworpen worden staan wij onderhevig aan wat door onze aardse makers (onze ouders) wordt door gegeven. Wij worden onlosmakelijk verbonden met de erfelijkheid via onze ouders en voorouders. Maar zodra wij ter wereld komen staan we voortdurend bloot aan talloze micro-organismen die ons op elk moment kunnen aanvallen. Denk maar aan virussen, bacteriën … Daarom heeft de mens een erg efficiënt verdedigingssysteem ontwikkeld waardoor hij al miljoenen jaren kan overleven en evolueren. Hoe kun je dit geniale systeem een handje helpen? Welke voeding eet je het best om ongewenste microben af te weren?

Velen vergeten dat wij zelf veel in de hand hebben bij het ons verdedigbaar maken tegen vijanden van buiten af. De Schepper heeft ons voorzien van een uitstekend werkingsmechanisme.

Om een efficiënt schild op te bouwen en een goede tegenaanval te kunnen organiseren, moeten wij gewoon voorzien dat wij ons houden aan de wetten van de natuur en daarbij zo veel mogelijk natuurlijke stoffen eten en chemicaliën vermijden. Alle extra toegevoegde industriële chemische stoffen zijn eigenlijk overbodige stoffen die ons lichaam extra kunnen belasten.

De voeding zou een bijzonder apart geplaatst  (heilig) gebeuren in ons leven moeten zijn, waarbij wij volledig bewust zijn van wat wij ons lichaam bezorgen. Wij moeten er op toe zien dat ons lichaam alle grondstoffen verkrijgt die ons systeem nodig heeft om ons wapenarsenaal goed te onderhouden.

Hoe bescherm je jezelf dus het best tegen ongewenste bezoekers?

Draag zorg voor je darmen, de ‘longen’ van je immuunsysteem!

80% van je imuuncellen bevinden zich in je darmen. Ze zijn verspreid over de volledige darmwand, die daarbovenop wordt beschermd door een slijmlaag. Dat zegt genoeg over hoe belangrijk dit orgaan is in het beschermingssysteem van je lichaam. Je darmen bevatten ook tal van micro-organismen, zoals bacteriën, virussen en gist, maar laat je niet misleiden! Deze bacteriën zijn niet ongezond. Integendeel: ze zijn zelfs heel nuttig. Hou je darmflora dus zeker in topconditie.

• Kies voor gefermenteerde voeding zoals yoghurt, kefir, kaas met rauwe melk, gefermenteerde dranken zoals kombucha, vruchtenkefir, zuurkool, met melkzuur gefermenteerde groenten … Al deze producten vind je gebruiksklaar in elke biowinkel.  Ze bevatten goede bacteriën die essentieel zijn voor gezonde darmen.

• Eet ook vezelrijke voeding om je darmflora een boost te geven. Zorg ervoor dat elke maaltijd voor minstens de helft uit seizoensgroenten bestaat, zoals asperges, broccoli, venkel, pastinaak, aardperen (als je ze lust), knoflook enzovoort. Als begeleider kies je voor granen of iets soortgelijks, zoals eenkoren, rijst, gierst, quinoa, boekweit … Beperk dit tot maximaal een kwart van je bord als je niet erg sportief bent 😉

• Eet minstens twee keer per week peulvruchten, die je voor het koken een nachtje laat weken.  Vergeet ook de zaden en noten niet, zoals lijnzaad, chiazaad, amandelen, walnoten … De vezels en micronutriënten die ze bevatten, zijn bijzonder voedzaam.

Omega 3, de natuurlijke ontstekingsremmer!

Omega 3 is essentieel voor je immuunsysteem en om chronische ontstekingen tegen te gaan. Gelukkig zit je voeding boordevol omega 3, zodat je ten volle kunt genieten van de voordelen die deze stof te bieden heeft.

Neem elke dag twee eetlepels koolzaad- of walnootolie en/of één theelepel lijnzaadolie. Eet twee tot drie keer per week vette vis, maar let op: roofvissen zoals verse tonijn en zalm bevatten ook veel zware metalen. Die eet je beter niet meer dan een keer per week. Sardines, ansjovis, makreel en kabeljauwlever zijn betere keuzes. Bij het aperitief of in rillettes: zo eet je snel en eenvoudig je portie vis. Bovendien bevatten ze vitamine D en zink, twee voedingsstoffen die een belangrijke rol spelen in je immuunsysteem.

Pimp je bord

Antioxidanten zijn een echte schat voor je gezondheid – én ze zitten in tal van ingrediënten. Geef ze dus een mooi plekje op tafel (en op je bord, natuurlijk). Gekleurde planten zitten boordevol antioxidanten. Denk maar aan bosbessen, braambessen, rode uien, pruimen, rode bieten, gekleurde wortelen, kiwi’s, avocado’s, zoete aardappelen, granaatappelen, kolen, alle soorten noten… Daarnaast vind je ze onder meer in groene thee, cacao, specerijen, olijfolie en oesters. Zorg dus voor kleur op je bord en experimenteer naar hartenlust met verschillende smaken.

 

Gooi het dus over een andere boeg en versterk je immuunsysteem vanaf vandaag dankzij deze eenvoudige tips die je elke dag kunt toepassen.

➡️ Wil je meer weten over dit onderwerp? Lees dan het Franse boek ‘L’Alimentation spécial immunité’ van diëtiste en voedingsdeskundige Véronique Liesse. Hierin vind je ook tal van eenvoudige, efficiënte recepten die je zelf kunt klaarmaken.

*
Een deel van dit artikel is geschreven in samenwerking met Sylvie Dejardin, voedingsconsulente en partner van het Europese FOOD-programma. Dit programma is erop gericht werknemers, werkgevers en restauranthouders bewust te maken over gezonde, lekkere voeding, vooral tijdens de middagpauze.