We've gotten so much more creative with new vaccines
By
FIRST ARTICLE: First case of highly pathogenic avian influenza transmitted from cow to human confirmed
Texas Tech University
The case was made public in an article published in
the New England Journal of Medicine. Steve Presley, the director of
The Institute of Environmental and Human Health (TIEHH) and the BTRL, and
Cynthia Reinoso Webb, the biological threat coordinator at TIEHH, were
co-authors on the journal publication.
The journal article explains that in March a farm worker
who reported no contact with sick or dead birds, but who was in contact with
dairy cattle, began showing symptoms in the eye and samples were collected by
the regional health department to test for potential influenza A.
Initial testing of the samples was performed at the BTRL,
which is a component of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
Laboratory Response Network-Biological (LRN-B) located at TIEHH.
"It's a huge thing that the virus has jumped from
birds to mammals, dairy cows in this case, and then to humans," Presley
said. "That's why this paper in the New England Journal of
Medicine is very significant. It's going to lay the foundation, I
believe, for a lot of research in the future of how the virus is
evolving."
The involvement of Texas Tech's BTRL is a continuation of
the partnership between regional, state and federal public health partners.
"Being part of the CDC LRN-B, we have the standing
capability to test for a lot of biological threats and some that are considered
emergent," Reinoso Webb explained.
The lab's standby status allowed Reinoso Webb and the
Texas Tech BTRL team to respond quickly to the needs of the regional public
health authority. Knowing the potential dangers of the virus, Reinoso Webb
pushed the testing into the safest laboratory available, and the team went to
work.
Having received the samples in the early evening, results
were being reported to regional, state and federal levels within hours. By the
next day the samples were on their way to the CDC for further testing and
confirmation.
"We were on the phone with the CDC until around
midnight discussing different scenarios and follow up requirements,"
Reinoso Webb said. "There is a lot of federal reporting. It was a very
complicated case, even though it was two samples and one patient.
"But we had this wonderful communication with the
CDC and made sure we did everything by the book. This is how it's been
structured, and this is how the communication was supposed to happen."
Materials provided
by Texas Tech
University. Note: Content may be edited for style and
length.
Continue to second article....
What ever happened to the idea of retiring with dignity and security?
LYNN PARRAMORE, Institute For New Economic Thinking
Not so in other rich countries like
Germany, France, and Canada, where robust public pensions and healthcare
systems offer retirees stability and dignity. After a lifetime of hard work,
older citizens in the U.S. find their reward is merely scraping by, as savings
diminish under the weight of soaring medical costs in the most expensive
healthcare system in the developed world.
The solution from America’s elites? Suck it
up and work longer.
An example of this mindset appeared in
a New York Times op-ed by
C. Eugene Steuerle of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center and Glenn Kramon, a
Stanford Business School lecturer. The two accused older folks of robbing
economic resources from the young through Social Security and Medicare—never
mind that workers fund these programs with their own lifelong payroll
contributions.
They paint a picture of 65-year-old
Americans jauntily playing “pickleball daily” and jet-setting “far and wide,”
proposing to increase the age to collect Social Security and Medicare benefits,
essentially forcing future retirees to work longer. (Curiously, they overlook
how this move robs young people—too young to vote—of future retirement years.
This echoes 1983, when the Reagan administration and Congress pushed the Social
Security age from 65 to 67, impacting Gen X before they could even vote on it).
Leave baby animals alone!
White-tailed deer give birth to fawns in May and June.
Each year, DEM receives many calls about fawns mistaken to have been abandoned
by their mother. This is almost never the case.
“In nature, a doe gives birth and for the next five to seven days, the fawn is
incapable of following the doe, so it is natural for the fawn to lie in a
curled ‘freeze’ position on the ground hidden in grass or sparse brush,” said
Dylan Ferreira, a wildlife biologist in DEM's Division of Fish and Wildlife (DFW).
Cancer cure? Something else for RFK Jr. and the anti-vaxxers to rant about
By UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA
The results mirror those in 10 pet dog
patients suffering from naturally occurring brain tumors whose owners approved
of their participation, as they had no other treatment options, as well as
results from preclinical mouse models. The breakthrough now will be tested in a
Phase 1 pediatric clinical trial for brain cancer.
Reported May 1 in the journal Cell, the discovery represents a potential new way to recruit the immune
system to fight notoriously treatment-resistant cancers using an iteration of
mRNA technology and lipid nanoparticles, similar to COVID-19 vaccines, but with two key differences:
useFlorida, of a patient’s own tumor cells to create a personalized vaccine,
and a newly engineered complex delivery mechanism within the vaccine.
Morgan asks Dr. Jerome Larkin if he would order closures, masking when we are hit by another pandemic
By Alexander Castro, Rhode Island Current
After a small clinic’s worth of physicians showed up to testify in support of Gov. Dan McKee’s choice for the next director of the Rhode Island Department of Health, the Senate Committee on Health and Human Services affirmed its support for Dr. Jerome “Jerry” Larkin at a hearing Thursday.
Morgan, left, with ex-Charlestown state rep Blake "Flip" Filippi
The committee voted 5-1 in favor of Larkin’s nomination, with Sen. Elaine Morgan, a Hopkinton/Charlestown Republican, serving the only nay vote. EDITOR'S NOTE: See Morgan's MAGA questions for Larkin below.
Greg Paré, spokesperson for the Rhode Island Senate, said in an email Thursday that Larkin’s appointment will hit the Senate floor on Tuesday, May 19.
The clinicians, many of them colleagues and former protégés of Larkin, came to say nice things about the doctor who serves as medical director of inpatient infectious diseases consultation services at Rhode Island Hospital and teaches clinical medicine as a professor at Brown University. The committee’s mailbox had also been stuffed with written testimonies.
“We got many, many letters,” said Sen. Joshua Miller, who chairs the committee. “I don’t remember seeing a letter that was not in support.”
But the most memorable affirmation may have been from Dr. Sabina Holland, medical director of the pediatric HIV clinic at Hasbro Children’s Hospital.
“The highest compliment that a pediatrician can give another pediatrician is to entrust them with the care of their children,” Holland said. “He could have my children.”
Here's why Trump has refused to release his tax returns = he's a cheat (big surprise)
By Paul Kiel, ProPublica, and Russ Buettner, The New York Times
 |
| By Dave Whamond |
Former President Donald Trump used a dubious accounting maneuver to claim improper tax breaks from his troubled Chicago tower, according to an IRS inquiry uncovered by ProPublica and The New York Times. Losing a years-long audit battle over the claim could mean a tax bill of more than $100 million.
The 92-story, glass-sheathed skyscraper along the Chicago River is the tallest and, at least for now, the last major construction project by Trump. Through a combination of cost overruns and the bad luck of opening in the teeth of the Great Recession, it was also a vast money loser.
But when Trump sought to reap tax benefits from his losses, the IRS has argued, he went too far and in effect wrote off the same losses twice.
Now Charlestown needs to take care of ITS firefighters
The House approved
legislation from Rep. Teresa A. Tanzi to allow South Kingstown’s all-volunteer
firefighting force to use a break on their district fire taxes to recruit and retain members.
“We are very fortunate in South Kingstown to have an all-volunteer force of firefighters who provide excellent service to our residents,” said Representative Tanzi (D-Dist. 34, South Kingstown, Narragansett).
“However, in recent years it has become more difficult for them
to recruit volunteers. Allowing the district to grant tax exemptions will give
them another important recruitment tool and show our community’s appreciation
for the work that they do protecting us.”
Representative Tanzi’s bill (2024-H 7838) would
allow the Union Fire District of South Kingstown to grant district
fire tax exemptions or abatements
to current and retired firefighters and their spouses.
The bill now heads to the Senate, which has
already passed companion legislation (2024-S 2633)
sponsored by Sen. V. Susan Sosnowski (D-Dist. 37, South Kingstown).
No shellfish from Ninigret, Quonnie until next week
 |
| Photo by Will Collette |
The following areas are currently closed to shellfish
harvest and are scheduled to reopen to shellfishing at 12 PM on Thursday, May
23:
The heavy rain on Wednesday night dropped over four inches of rain in a 12-hour period in Washington County. Rainfall totaled 3.7” at Westerly Airport with higher localized totals in the Wakefield area.
What's the fix?
Christopher Niezrecki, UMass Lowell
 |
| The first U.S. offshore wind farm was built in 2016 off Rhode Island’s Block Island. AP Photo/Michael Dwyer |
Several big hitters, including Ørsted, Equinor, BP and Avangrid, have canceled contracts or sought to renegotiate them in recent months.
Pulling out meant the companies faced cancellation penalties ranging from US$16 million to several hundred million dollars per project. It also resulted in Siemens Energy, the world’s largest maker of offshore wind turbines, anticipating financial losses in 2024 of around $2.2 billion.
Altogether, projects that had been canceled by the end of 2023 were expected to total more than 12 gigawatts of power, representing more than half of the capacity in the project pipeline.
So, what happened, and can the U.S. offshore wind industry recover?
First, he needs to answer for what he did at Trump’s January 6 insurrection
By
Will Collette
Price
served 8 years in the State House and accomplished nothing. Seriously, nothing
– and go look it up if you want
to prove me wrong.
What
Price did manage to do was embarrass himself, his district and the state of
Rhode Island with his radical, Q-Anon style rantings about guns, conspiracies
and just about every other far-right meme and cliché. And he was an active
participant in the January 6 insurrection.
District
39 encompasses Richmond, Hopkinton and Exeter. It tends to be slightly more
conservative than the rest of Rhode Island. Price thinks this is why he should
run, telling WPRI “I think it [District 39]
should be represented by someone that’s conservative.”
Further, he told WPRI “after watching my opponent [incumbent
Megan Cotter] that ultimately won with a close margin, watching her, and what
she’s doing while she’s up there and who she’s aligned with up there.”
What Megan is “doing up there” in the State House is working hard for the 39th District with a special emphasis on protecting the
land and people of her district.
In
her announcement for re-election, Megan highlighted
funding for a van for Wood River Health, increasing access to affordable health
care, bringing legislative grants in for non-profits in her district, and
creating a Forest Management Commission,
which she chairs.
That commission is addressing problems like the sharp uptick in
wildfires in South County and clear-cutting woods for commercial-sized solar
installations, rather than using more appropriate locations.
According to the official state Legislative Tracker, Megan worked on 130 bills and
resolutions this year.
Justin Price’s crowning achievement in his 8 years was to create a
special legislative commission to study “chem-trails.” That’s a right-wing
conspiracy theory that some nefarious villains are putting mind-altering
chemicals into jet contrails. I could find no record of this commission
actually meeting or issuing any findings.
Nonetheless, Price told WPRI his priorities would be to focus on “representing
my district” and “Focus on bringing the issues from my district up to
the State House.” Except he did none of that in his prior eight years in
office.
Use the Legislative Tracker to
look up Price’s “achievements.” The last legislation he worked on as a minor (5th) co-sponsor
was a resolution congratulating
Charlestown’s former state rep. Blake “Flip” Filippi on his “service.”
Incidentally, state Republicans gave Price the second-highest vote total in the April 2 Presidential preference primary sending him to the Republican National Convention as a delegate for Trump.
Unanswered questions about his role in Jan. 6 insurrection
Price
admitted he was there along with what he claimed were “the other 1 million people” though
the official estimate is less than 15,000 on the Capitol grounds of whom 2,000
actually stormed the building.
Price claimed he did not enter the Capitol,
though he has not disclosed his actual location. However, just being on the Capitol
grounds that day means that Price admits to breaching police security lines set back a block
or more from the actual Capitol grounds. That is a federal crime.
Price has not – at least not yet – drawn enough
attention from the FBI to join the more than 1,200 who
have been charged, though there’s still time. Around 900 of Price’s fellow
insurrectionists have either been convicted or pleaded guilty. Only two were
judged “not guilty.”
There is no actual Antifa organization and no
uniforms, logos or other identifying marks – unlike the Oathkeepers, Proud Boys
and other insurrectionists we all saw with our own eyes storming the capital,
using chemical sprays, clubs, rocks and even American flags to beat Capitol and
DC Police. The MAGA myths about who stormed the Capitol have been thoroughly debunked.
Then there’s a problem of simple logic: why would
people that Price identified as Antifa want to storm the Capitol to block the
election of Joe Biden?
More
importantly, Price needs to reconcile his repeated oaths to “defend the
Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic” with what he did on
January 6. He took that oath as a United States Marine and again as a Rhode
Island State legislator.
The
US Constitution, 14th Amendment, Section 3 states in whole:
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
It
was clearly a violation of his oaths for Price to have crossed police lines to
join in the storming of the Capitol.
I
hope RI Secretary of State Greg Amore will bar Price from running when by his
own admission, he committed acts on January 6 that exactly fit the kind of
person the 14th Amendment is intended to disbar.
Further,
if we are to believe his claim that he saw Antifa mounting the attack, WTF did
he do about it? Are we to believe that he simply watched “Antifa” beating the
police and then smashing into the Capitol and did nothing?
Why
didn't he help the DC and Capitol Police as his oath to “protect and defend” required? Well, either he lied when he claimed he
saw Antifa attack the Capitol, or he was simply afraid of getting hurt.
Either
way, there's nothing to be proud of. Unless your name is Justin Price and your
political legacy amounts to nothing, and you want to be consistent. Mission
accomplished.
