Today's Must-Reads - 16 March 2024

A selection of the latest news, studies, reports and articles

I spend a lot of time each day gathering together new information and fascinating articles. I then pick one or two of the most interesting topics and write about them. However, that leaves a lot of missed out information that I’m not sharing.

Below is a summary of all the latest articles and information that I’ve found. This is a slimmed down version for all readers but is usually for paid subscribers only.

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Climate Change

• Fears for patients as NHS rolls out net zero electric ambulances. Paramedics fear patients will be forced to wait longer because of the hours lost recharging the vehicles, with particular concern about coverage of rural areas, given the limited range. The move next month is part of a series of measures that whistleblowers fear put green credentials above medical priorities. The drive had created a bureaucracy that was diverting vast sums from the front line, and placing “grossly unethical” obstacles in the way of clinical decisions, one whistleblower warned.

• Effects of geoengineering must be urgently investigated, experts say. Richard Spinrad, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), said the government-backed body was estimating the effects of some of the likely techniques for geoengineering, including those involving the oceans. Potential geoengineering techniques include seeding the oceans with iron to absorb more carbon dioxide, or spraying water from the oceans into low-level clouds to reflect some of the sun’s radiation.

Covid

• Weaponising ‘long Covid’ damaged public trust. The idea that long Covid presents a unique and significant threat to the enduring health of millions of people has become established as an article of faith among many in the public health establishment. So the suggestion this week by Queensland’s Chief Health Officer that we should abandon the term “long Covid” has set the cat among the pigeons. The politicisation of post-Covid-19 symptoms is unhelpful both to medical professionals and the broader public. Ending the use of the term “long Covid” would be a positive step in reversing this trend.

• Time to stop using term ‘long Covid’ as symptoms no worse than those after flu, Queensland’s chief health officer says. The lead author of the study, the state’s chief health officer Dr John Gerrard, said it was “time to stop using terms like ‘long Covid’” because they imply there is something unique about the longer-term symptoms associated with the virus, and in some cases create hypervigilance. Gerrard said long Covid may have appeared to be a distinct and severe illness because of the high number of people infected with Covid-19 within a short period of time, rather than the severity of long Covid symptoms.

• Covid DID come from Wuhan lab, says new analysis of patients, records and virus' makeup: '70% chance'. Researchers from Australia and Arizona used a risk analysis tool- which they described as the most comprehensive yet - to determine the chances the SARS-CoV-2 virus was of 'unnatural' or 'natural' origin. The team compared the characteristics of the virus and the pandemic to 11 criteria that analyzed things like the rarity of a virus, the timing of a pandemic, the population infected, the spread of a virus and the unexpected symptoms of a virus. Based on the nature of Covid, researchers assigned a score to each category - less than 50 percent meant the pandemic would be classified as a natural outbreak, but 50 or more percent would mean the pandemic was an unnatural outbreak. Covid received a score of 68 percent.

Covid Mandates & Lockdowns

• AFL great Tredrea has unfair dismissal claim thrown out. A lawsuit brought by AFL great Warren Tredrea against his former employer Channel Nine for firing him when he refused to abide by COVID-19 vaccine mandates has been thrown out. The former Port Adelaide forward claimed the broadcaster unfairly terminated his $192,500 a year contract as a South Australian sports presenter in January 2022 for refusing to get the vaccination. Tredrea argued Nine’s direction requiring staff to be vaccinated was unreasonable because the virus posed a low risk of illness, the vaccine was not particularly effective and it presented health risks to recipients. Justice Geoffrey Kennett dismissed Tredrea’s application in a Federal Court hearing on Thursday, agreeing with Nine’s claim that it had a right to terminate his contract to protect itself from reputational damage.

• Australian doctor suspended for Covid vaccine and mask comments – ordered undergo ‘education and mentoring’. Dr Mitch Sambell, who previously worked for Albany Health Campus as a junior doctor but has not practiced medicine since April 2023, was on March 1 found to have engaged in professional misconduct by the State Administrative Tribunal. The Medical Board of Australia applied for disciplinary action against Dr Sambell for comments he made at a Special Electors’ Meeting called to oppose the WA Government’s Covid-19 mandates in the Shire of Denmark in March 2022, and an interview with Scorpion Media Group in 2022. In his speech Dr Sambell said he saw “countless cases of vaccine injury” while working as a doctor, referred to the Covid-19 vaccines as “experimental medical therapy”, and said colleagues with similar views had been censored, gagged and threatened by the government.

Economy/Energy/Finance

• Russian ‘dark fleet’ lacks disaster insurance, leaks suggest. Russian oil tankers circumventing western sanctions are relying on insurance that appears impossible to claim against, according to leaked documents exposing the risks taken by Moscow’s “dark fleet”. The cache of shipping files, seen by the Financial Times and the Danish media group Danwatch, reveals a number of Russian vessels travelling from the Baltic are relying on insurance that can be easily voided in the event of a disaster.

• No recovery in sight for Germany economy, ministry says. A tangible recovery in Europe's biggest economy is not yet in sight despite positive trends in industrial production, construction and foreign trade at the start of 2024, Germany's economy ministry said on Friday in its monthly report. "This is due to persistently weak domestic demand, high financing costs and continued subdued sentiment among private households and companies," said the ministry in its report.

• Britain to import energy from US under plan for transatlantic power cable. Britain homes could one day be powered by electricity generated in America under plans to install up to six power cables across the Atlantic. The cables would stretch roughly 3,500 miles across the ocean, reaching depths of up to 11,000 feet, and carrying power roughly equivalent to several nuclear power stations. The scheme, which is still in its early stages, is one of several long-distance subsea cable projects that have been prompted by rapid improvements in technology.

Health

• The Unsaturated Truth: Drop Seed Oils If You Want to Be Healthy. Chronic, non communicable diseases are increasing everywhere modernity comes to call. The industrial revolution changed food processing forever. Oils could be extracted from plants on an industrial scale. Advanced nations began consuming vegetable oils high in omega-6 polyunsaturated fats. Omega-6 oils are easily oxidised, especially when heated. The omega-6 oil has destabilised our omega-6 to omega-3 fat ratio. Cells are more likely to become damaged due to oxidation creating oxidative stress and chronic inflammation, two symptoms that characterise many chronic diseases including but not limited to: cardiovascular disease, cancer, dementia, and metabolic diseases including obesity and diabetes type 2.

• Harvard doctor says animal products are essential for mental health - in blow to veganism: 'The brain needs meat'. Dr Georgia Ede, a Harvard-trained nutritional and metabolic psychiatrist and author of Change Your Diet, Change Your Mind, studies the relationship between what we eat and our mental and physical health. And despite the health halo that vegan diets have been given over the last few years, she claims that giving up meat could be detrimental for mental health. 'It's actually less about protein and more about all of the other nutrients that are inside meat,' she said. 'You can get your protein needs met through a vegan and vegetarian diet if you plan it carefully.'

• Global cancer phenomenon: It's not just America... the UK, Japan, South Africa and Australia are among dozens of countries suffering mystery spikes of all different kinds of tumors in young people. Between 1990 and 2019, cases of cancer in young people across the globe have increased by 79 percent and deaths have risen 28 percent. Studies project diagnoses will continue to rise by 31 percent and deaths will rise by 21 percent in 2030. Nearly every continent is experiencing an increase of various types of cancer in people under 50 years old, which is particularly problematic as the disease tends to be caught in later stages in this population because most doctors aren't trained to look for it in young people.

Politics

• CIA allegedly made fake social media accounts to troll the Chinese government. Reuters reports the operation began in 2019 and was also aimed at causing paranoia within Xi Jinping’s government. CIA agents reportedly made fake social media accounts to spread rumors, such as allegations that Communist Party members hid ill-gotten wealth outside the country, and criticize Chinese government initiatives, like saying a program financing infrastructure projects in other countries was corrupt. Reuters said the operation, authorized by then-President Donald Trump, operated beyond China and used social media to influence public opinion in Southeast Asia, Africa, and the South Pacific.

Science

• Scientists Discovered a 'Fear Switch' in The Brain, And How to Turn It Off. In a bid to better understand fear and how it works, a team led by neurobiologist Hui-Quan Li of the University of California San Diego has mapped the changes in brain chemistry and neural signaling in mice receiving hefty frights – and, even better, figured out how to stop it. They found that a severe fright sort of flipped a switch in the neurons, changing the neurotransmission mechanism from glutamate, which excites neurons, to GABA, which inhibits neuronal activity. The switch appears to sustain a fear response where it would otherwise shut down or be absent, producing symptoms consistent with a generalized fear or anxiety disorder.

Technology

• Mysterious Drones Swarmed Langley AFB For Weeks. Langley Air Force Base, located in one of the most strategic areas of the country, across the Chesapeake Bay from the sprawling Naval Station Norfolk and the open Atlantic, was at the epicenter of waves of mysterious drone incursions that occurred throughout December. The War Zone has been investigating these incidents and the response to them for months. We know that they were so troubling and persistent that they prompted bringing in advanced assets from around the U.S. government, including one of NASA's WB-57F high-flying research planes. Now the U.S. Air Force has confirmed that they did indeed occur and provided details on the timeframe and diversity of drones involved.

• Drone Swarms Are About to Change the Balance of Military Power. On today’s battlefields, drones are a manageable threat. When hundreds of them can be harnessed to AI technology, they will become a tool of conquest. The future of warfare won’t be decided by weapons systems but by systems of weapons, and those systems will cost less. Many of them already exist, whether they’re the Shahed drones attacking shipping in the Gulf of Aden or the Switchblade drones destroying Russian tanks in the Donbas or smart seaborne mines around Taiwan. What doesn’t yet exist are the AI-directed systems that will allow a nation to take unmanned warfare to scale. But they’re coming.

Vaccines

• The extent and impact of vaccine status miscategorisation on covid-19 vaccine efficacy studies. It is recognised that many studies reporting high efficacy for Covid-19 vaccines suffer from various selection biases. Systematic review identified thirty-nine studies that suffered from one particular and serious form of bias called miscategorisation bias, whereby study participants who have been vaccinated are categorised as unvaccinated up to and until some arbitrarily defined time after vaccination occurred. Simulation demonstrates that this miscategorisation bias artificially boosts vaccine efficacy and infection rates even when a vaccine has zero or negative efficacy. Furthermore, simulation demonstrates that repeated boosters, given every few months, are needed to maintain this misleading impression of efficacy.