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You can say, “don’t go deer,” all you want to the Covid-19 coronavirus. But apparently the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) ain’t going to listen. A preprint posted November 1 on the bioRxiv website detailed how a research team found SARS-CoV-2 in a third of the White-tailed deer sampled in Iowa from September 2020 through January of 2021.
The team from Penn State, University of Cambridge, University of Chicago, and Houston Methodist Hospital examined samples of retropharyngeal lymph nodes from a total of 283 deer, 151 of whom were free-living and 132 were in captivity. Of course, you may not know what retropharyngeal lymph nodes are because you may not say, “check out his or her retropharyngeal lymph nodes” when scrolling through Tinder dating profiles. In this case, “retro” means situated behind rather anything with the word “disco” in it. Your pharynx is essentially your throat. So retropharyngeal lymph nodes are lymph nodes behind your throat. The researchers searched the lymph node samples for evidence of SARS-CoV-2 genetic material (i.e., RNA) using RT-PCR.
The results may cause you to go oh deer. A little over a a third (33.2%) of all samples from September 2020 through January of 2021 were positive for SARS-CoV-2 RNA. Narrowing the time window to Nov 23, 2020 through January 10, 2021, pushed this number even higher up to 82.5% with 80 of 97 having detectable SARS-CoV-2 RNA. Read More
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San Francisco will soon require everyone 5 and older to show vaccination proof for restaurants, theaters, Warriors gameshttps://t.co/Qzb9W0zmpX
— Emily Hoeven (@emily_hoeven) November 3, 2021
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Real-time notices of recalls and alerts from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are listed in the widget. Click on items within the widget for more information on a specific recall or alert.
If the product details in the recall notice match the details on the food product you have at home, do not open or consume the product. Instead, do one of the following:
Use the recalls widget on your website to notify your users about the latest food safety recalls and alerts. Click on the "Embed" button and copy and paste the code in your web page. When new alerts and recalls are issued, the widget will be automatically updated. Read More
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Bill Gates has warned that governments must prepare for future pandemics and smallpox terror attacks by investing billions in research and development.
Mr Gates made the warning during a Policy Exchange interview with the chair of the Health Select Committee Jeremy Hunt.
The Microsoft founder also called for the formation of a new billion-dollar World Health Organisation Pandemic Task Force.
While the research may be expensive, he said that it could also lead to other innovations, such as eradicating flu and the common cold.
He said that countries like the US and the UK must spend “tens of billions” to fund the research.
“I’m hoping in five years, I can write a book called, ‘We ARE ready for the next pandemic’, but it’ll take tens of billions in R&D – the US and the UK will be part of that”, he said.
Mr Gates suggested that the “germ-games” could include preparing for acts of bioterrorism such as smallpox attacks on airports.
“You say, OK, what if a bioterrorist brought smallpox to 10 airports? You know, how would the world respond to that? There’s naturally-caused epidemics and bioterrorism-caused epidemics that could even be way worse than what we experienced today”, he said. Read More
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Democratic leaders are on track to bring both President Biden’s social spending bill and the bipartisan infrastructure bill up for votes on Friday following weeks of intense negotiations with progressive and moderate holdouts.
The House Rules Committee is slated to meet throughout the night to finalize the text of Biden’s spending bill, dubbed the "Build Back Better Act." The legislation is expected to outline roughly $1.75 trillion in spending over a 10-year period.
When the bill is finalized, the House will debate and vote on the "rule" for the spending bill and then vote on whether to pass the bill itself. House lawmakers will also vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which is focused on physical projects. The House already debated the infrastructure bill, likely fast-tracking a final vote. Read More
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