Covid-19 and Proud to be a Victorian!

I know we’re all worried, and overloaded with bad news about this damn virus but…please read this first hand article by a nurse doing testing at ‘the Towers’: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-11/testing-residents-in-melbournes-public-housing-nurse/12443060

If you only have time for a few snippets, this warmed my heart:

‘I left that day with a full heart thanks to all the “thank yous” and “I love yous” from the residents.
We were invited into many homes, and even offered tea and coffee. I went into a few rooms with elderly, frail people and young children (this was optional and only if we felt safe).
We felt like guests. ‘

Near the end the nurse writes:

‘I have so many wonderful memories of the past few days, all positive. I’d like the broader community to understand that sometimes media portrayals of what goes on are not necessarily true.’

For a very long time now, I’ve noticed that 9 out of 10 news stories are about people who are not infected by the virus ‘doing it tough’. I don’t deny that a lot of people are doing it tough; a massive drop in weekly income will do that to you. But where are the stories about our local heroes? The doctors and nurses and paramedics and yes, police officers who are risking their own lives to keep everyone safe?

And how about the heroes who keep our cities alive? The jobs they do are poorly paid but vital. Can you imagine what would happen if our rubbish were not collected? Or if the power went off and there was no one there to turn it back on again? Or how about food? It doesn’t just appear magically in supermarkets.

We owe every one of these heroes a huge vote of thanks, yet the media ignores them.

And last but not least there are those who have been infected. Why aren’t we hearing their stories? I’ve heard one story about a 23 year old man with Type I diabetes. He came down with Covid-19 and survived, but it wasn’t fun, not be a long, long stretch of the imagination.

If governments want us to co-operate then we need to be told the full story, the good, the sad, and the scary, not just the stories that confirm that life is not ‘fun’ at the moment. If we are to have any kind of life during this pandemic, we all need to rediscover what it means to be socially responsible. We all have to become heroes.

Stay well,
Meeks

Covid-19 – stealth virus?

Apologies, I had a completely different post in mind for today, but this update is really important. When Covid-19 first started to spread, we were told that people might be a little infectious a day or two before symptoms developed, but they shed most of the virus [i.e. infected others] after the symptoms became obvious. It seems the advice was wrong.

New evidence suggests that the reason Covid-19 is spreading so widely across the world is because most of those infected are asymptomatic – i.e. have no symptoms at all, not even mild ones. Effectively, this makes Covid-19 a stealth virus, similar to HIV [part of the reason HIV spread as far as it did was because victims did not know they had it].

Dr John Campbell does a good job of explaining the evidence for the new findings and highlights why testing is now more vital than ever.

Adding to these sources is the data from Iceland. Because Iceland has a very small population and very good health care, they did a lot of testing per capita. What they found was that roughly 50% of those testing positive for Covid-19 were asymptomatic.

So far, most countries have only tested those people who are already symptomatic – i.e. to confirm the presence of the virus – or those who may have come in contact with infected people. There has been no testing of the population in general. Without general testing, we cannot know who is infected and who isn’t. More importantly, we cannot know who is spreading the infection, and who isn’t.

Lockdowns are a shotgun approach that works because it effectively assumes that everyone is a spreader. But this is only a short term solution. We cannot come out of lockdown until we know who the spreaders really are. That means testing on a grand scale.

If you are on other forms of social media, please pass this information on as it could influence our leaders to get serious about testing.

Meeks

Toxic #nanoparticles in baby formula?

I was first introduced to the idea of very small, man-made ‘objects’ by the 1966 sci-fi movie ‘The Fantastic Voyage’:

The story was fanciful in the extreme – science will never be able to shrink humans to the size of atoms – but the concept of building a microscopic sized machine was not that far off the mark. These days, you can find nanoparticles in ‘…scratchproof eyeglasses, crack- resistant paints, anti-graffiti coatings for walls, transparent sunscreens, stain-repellent fabrics, self-cleaning windows and ceramic coatings for solar cells.¹

Unfortunately, the one place you do not want to find nanoparticles is in infant formula, so I was shocked when I read this article from Friends of the Earth:

http://emergingtech.foe.org.au/illegal-and-potentially-toxic-nanoparticles-found-in-baby-formula/

In a quick summary, Friends of the Earth commissioned the Arizona State University to test seven samples of baby formula on sale here in Australia. The test results showed that five of the seven contained nanoparticles that are specifically prohibited in baby food. Despite this, Food Standards Australia and New Zealand [FSANZ] dismissed the concerns raised by these results without even running tests of their own.

Friends of the Earth believe that FSANZ is overly influenced by large multinational corporations and is calling for the body to be investigated. I don’t know whether their claims are justified or not. All I know is that if I had a baby, I’d be switching brands until these allegations are either proved by more testing…or disproved by more testing. Either way, the tests must be done.

The following table is taken from the Friends of the Earth article. The yellow highlight at the bottom is mine.

 

If this information proves to be alarmist, then I apologise in advance but when it comes to health, especially the health of babies, I believe the precautionary principle should trump every other consideration. As mothers, we have the right to choose what food we put into the mouths of our children.

Meeks

¹ http://ec.europa.eu/health/scientific_committees/opinions_layman/en/nanotechnologies/l-3/5-nanoparticles-consumer-products.htm

#Monsanto, Roundup and the spike in #autism

Like a lot of people, I’ve worried that GMOs would cause health problems down the track, but I assumed that Monsanto’s Roundup was just another weedkiller. Wrong. Roundup has been the villain of the piece all along. 😦

Before you  watch the video talk below, let me give you a very quick roundup [excuse the pun] of how this all began. The first genetically modified food product was the Flavr Savr tomato. The company that produced it was bought out by Monsanto, but Monsanto was not in the business of producing food, it was in the business of producing weedkiller. So why buy the GMO technology? The reason was to produce food crops that would be, effectively, immune to the effects of its Roundup Ready product. Such crops would, effectively, extend the life of the Roundup product indefinitely.

To achieve this goal, Monsanto needed to get its Roundup tolerant crops into commercial production as quickly and cheaply as possible. This meant two things:

• circumventing the testing protocols that apply to medicinal drugs
• and avoiding the necessity for product labelling

The development of medicinal drugs is a very long and costly process as the drugs have to be tested extensively, not only to prove their efficacy, but also to prove that they don’t do more harm than good. All of this research, development and testing takes years and costs a lot of money. A lot of years and a ton of money. At about the 6 minute mark of the video, you’ll hear that Monsanto only tested their product for 3 months. And no, that was not a typo. As for labelling, the US still doesn’t have it.

The Frankenfoods protests focused everyone’s attention on the GMOs themselves, and environmentally they are still a huge concern. But in all the outrage, the effects of Roundup slipped quietly under the radar. It was meant to be safe. Monsanto said it was safe. Right…

Even if you’re not a ‘scientific’ person, Stephanie Seneff explains her findings in a clear, easy to understand way, and this is information we all need to know. The bit about glyphosate accumulating in breast milk really floored me.

My thanks to D.Wallace Peach for opening my eyes. First DDT, now Roundup. We are what we eat, and it’s hurting us in stealthy, insidious ways, starting with our children.

Bon appetit,

Meeks

Being wrong about food.

I have not written much about GMOs [genetically modified organisms] because… because I did not want to come across as some conspiracy theorist who has an axe to grind against ‘Frankenfoods’.

The truth is, I do not believe genetic engineering is inherently ‘wrong’ or ‘evil’. Like any branch of science, genetic research has the potential to save lives. But…

But the sneaky introduction of genetically modified organisms into our food chain was not the solution to some dire ‘need’. There is nothing wrong with the food we currently have. So why ‘fix’ it? The answer is to make money.

Again, making money is not inherently ‘wrong’ or ‘evil’. But… when the imperative to make money results in :

1. Buying legislators to ensure GM food does NOT have to go through the same rigorous, and expensive testing as drugs, and

2. Denies consumers both knowledge and choice

then that is morally wrong, and an abuse of the technology.

But don’t take my word for it. Please follow the link below to a post with truly shocking facts and figures.

Being wrong about food..

Once you have read this post you can make up your own minds about whether this situation is dangerous or not.

Meeks