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Children with disabilities offered ‘do not resuscitate’ orders amid pandemic
The UK’s efforts to “protect the NHS” from being overwhelmed during the Covid-19 pandemic reportedly extended to asking families of disabled minors whether they should be resuscitated in the event their heart stopped beating.
The so-called “do not resuscitate” orders, known as DNACPRs, were offered to families of children with autism and other learning disabilities amid concerns about pressure on the UK’s socialized National Health Service, the Telegraph newspaper reported on Sunday.
The media outlet cited interviews with families that were presented the opt-out for resuscitation during routine medical appointments. For instance, the mother of a 16-year-old boy with Down’s syndrome said that a clinic employee offered her the option of a DNACPR for her son during a checkup.
“It is a disgusting question,” said the mother, Kent resident Karen Woollard. “The health assistant was following a form and she was very polite about it – suggesting she knew I wouldn’t want it to be ticked – but the question should not have appeared. It was very upsetting.”
The mother of a 16-year-old boy with autism said her son was offered a DNACPR during an NHS appointment and initially agreed because he didn’t understand the question. The boy is happy and healthy and has won gold medals in swimming competitions, said his mother, Debbie Corns.
“I collapsed on the floor crying when I got home,” Corns said. “I am a strong person, but I was devastated… The doctor devalued his life.”
The article follows British media reports earlier this year on patients with mental illness and learning disabilities being given DNACPRs during the pandemic. But unlike the latest report, those allegations concerned adult patients, at least one of whom reportedly died unnecessarily for lack of resuscitation.
DNACPRs are typically used for people who are too frail to be saved through cardiopulmonary resuscitation in the event their heart stops or they stop breathing. Mencap, a UK charity that advocates for people with learning disabilities, reported in January that disabled adults were being told by medics that they wouldn’t be resuscitated if they fell ill from Covid-19.
The UK’s Care Quality Commission said in March that some patients and family members had been denied the opportunity to discuss their DNACPR status or challenge NHS decisions on whether they would be resuscitated. Hundreds of elderly care home residents were written off with unlawful DNACPR decisions, the commission found.
Protests over post-vaccination deaths spread across South Korea
One of the most vaccinated nations on earth is seeing increased public pushback over Covid-19 jabs, as demonstrators in South Korea are demanding accountability for deaths that they blame on the shots.
this month in South Korea. © YouTube / Covid-19 Vaccine Victims and Families Council
Protesters gathered in Busan on Sunday after a similar rally was held in Seoul on Christmas Day. Aggrieved demonstrators held up large portraits of deceased family members – like those typically displayed at funerals in South Korea – and testified as to how their loved ones died soon after being vaccinated against Covid-19.
Dozens of funeral portraits were displayed at Saturday’s demonstration at the government complex in Seoul. Protesters called for the government to identify the causes of adverse reactions and admit that vaccines are to blame.
More than 1,000 South Koreans died shortly after receiving Covid-19 shots, but the government has confirmed a causal connection to vaccines in only a few of those cases. In one of the rare instances where a serious adverse reaction was acknowledged, a nursing assistant was recognized in August as a victim of an industrial accident and awarded government benefits after suffering paralysis in the wake of receiving AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 shot.
Just one week into its rollout of Covid-19 vaccines in late February and early March, South Korea’s Disease Control and Prevention Agency said that seven people had died and 24 had reported serious adverse reactions after receiving their AstraZeneca jabs. The government reportedly began an investigation in August after a teenager with no underlying health conditions died following inoculation with the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine.
An association called the Covid-19 Vaccine Victims and Families Council has held rallies in several South Korean cities. Demonstrators on Sunday marched from Busan City Hall to Busan National University of Education, Yonhap News reported.
Vaccine safety may become a contentious issue in South Korea’s presidential election. The opposition People’s Power Party last week held a public hearing on vaccine side effects, inviting alleged victims and their family members to offer suggestions for support measures that presidential candidate Yoon Seok-yeol may adopt.
Kim Jong-in, the party’s campaign chairman, reportedly accused President Moon Jae-in’s administration of being indifferent on vaccine damages. The administration has pledged to compensate victims of vaccine side effects, but it’s also the arbiter of whether injuries and deaths are attributed to the jabs. “I think the people have reached a point where they can’t trust the government,” Kim said.
Surely, they are not suggesting that Big Pharma has some extensive influence over the government of the country. What an outrageous idea! Especially if it's true.
South Korea typically has some of the world’s highest jab rates for various vaccines, and the Covid-19 shots have been no exception. About 83% of South Koreans have been vaccinated against Covid-19, easily the highest rate among G20 nations.
CDC says it exaggerated Omicron’s spread
The figure, overstated by around 225%, had been put out ahead of last week’s
stern warning to Americans issued by Joe Biden
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has corrected its Covid-19 reporting, saying its previous estimate for the percentage of new cases caused by the Omicron variant was more than triple the actual figure.
Only 22.5% of US Covid-19 infections recorded in the week that ended on December 18 were linked to Omicron, rather than the 73.2% estimate that was announced last week, the CDC said on Tuesday. It also revealed that the new strain accounted for 58.6% of new cases in the week that ended on December 25, while almost all other infections were caused by the Delta variant.
The CDC attributed its huge miss on last week’s report – which triggered dramatic headlines about the variant’s lightning-fast spread – to new data becoming available. ABC News referred to Tuesday’s revised figure on Omicron cases as “noticeably lower.”
From 73% to 22.5% because of new data is just absurd. There had to be something seriously wrong with the original data, or it was deliberately exaggerated. What little credibility CDC had has just flown out the window.
“We had more data come in from that timeframe and there was a reduced proportion of Omicron,” a CDC spokesperson told Reuters. “It’s important to note that we’re still seeing a steady increase in the proportion of Omicron.”
The overstated figure was released by the CDC on December 20, the day before President Joe Biden gave a speech warning that unvaccinated Americans are at high risk of serious illness because of the new variant. He also made the claim that “almost all” of the more than 400,000 Americans who died from Covid-19 in 2021 hadn’t been inoculated.
Because of fears over Omicron, Biden’s administration tightened travel restrictions, including a ban on visitors from eight countries in southern Africa, where the variant was first identified last month. The travel ban will end on December 31, the president said on Tuesday. Still, he has warned that unvaccinated Americans face “a winter of severe illness and death.”
And, yet, Omicron almost never results in severe illness or death!
White House medical adviser Anthony Fauci said on Monday that with Omicron spreading, even Americans who are vaccinated against Covid-19 shouldn’t attend large New Year’s Eve parties. “There will be other years to do that, but not this year,” he said.
South African Medical Association chairwoman Angelique Coetzee has called the international reaction to Omicron “a storm in a teacup,” insisting that the new strain causes minor or no symptoms in most people. She said last week that with infections now declining in South Africa, and the strain allegedly not having caused increases in Covid-19 hospitalizations or deaths, the country is “over the curve” on Omicron.
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Dozens of children mistakenly given Covid jabs for adults
Health authorities in Germany accidentally gave 42 kids Covid-19 shots
intended for adults
Forty-two children aged five to 11 have been given Covid-19 vaccine doses meant for adults. Health authorities in Hanover, Germany, have claimed it should not enhance the risk of side effects.
On Monday, a spokesperson for the Hanover regional government announced that 42 children at a city zoo vaccination center had been given shots with higher concentrations, meant for adults.
The chief specialist at the health department, Marlene Graf, said the increased dose is not harmful, and no serious consequences are expected. “According to our knowledge, possible side effects should be limited to local reactions and fever,” she stated.
Graf explained that from a medical point of view, it is unnecessary to give children an increased dose of the vaccine but suggested it would not have a negative impact on their immunity against Covid-19.
The boys and girls received three times the dose of the Pfizer/BioNtech vaccine intended for their age group – 30 micrograms instead of 10 micrograms, according to German media.
All parents of the children concerned have been informed directly by the regional administration, the spokesperson said. Medical advice has been made available to them.
Regional president Steffen Krach said the mistake must not be repeated. “Even if no serious health consequences are to be expected, something like this should not have happened,” he stated.
Man sets self on fire while screaming ‘No vax ID!’
Shocked witnesses say the gruesome act of self-immolation was accompanied by shouts
against coronavirus restrictions in Victoria, Australia
A man in Australia sustained life-threatening injuries after setting himself ablaze in public, reportedly in protest of the country’s coronavirus restrictions, including a new vaccine mandate in Victoria state.
The horrific self-immolation took place in the Melbourne suburb of Richmond on Saturday – New Year’s Day – according to local media reports, with witnesses stating an unidentified man soaked himself in gasoline and lit himself on fire, all the while denouncing ongoing pandemic measures.
“His skin was burning. He was on fire,” one witness, who asked not to be identified, told Melbourne’s Herald Sun. “His skin is stuck to my shirt. He was just off his face [intoxicated] screaming about the mandates.”
The aftermath of the grisly act was reportedly captured on film, in which a witness said the man had “just f***ing blown his car up” as the wails of horrified bystanders could be heard in the background. A significant blaze was also visible some distance down the road.
Another witness who was eating at a restaurant nearby during the incident said she could hear the man “screaming ‘no vax ID!’” and saw him “throwing books,” adding that he then “poured gas on himself and on his car. It was on purpose.”
While a number of people attempted to restrain the man and extinguish the flames, state police confirmed that he was rushed to hospital with serious burns, while a spokesperson for the facility said he was in critical, but stable, condition.
In addition to a series of on-and-off lockdowns, Victoria state has imposed a number of sweeping mandates aiming to stem the spread of Covid-19, among them a vaccine requirement affecting a large swath of its labor force, as well as a ‘passport’ scheme that prohibits entry to bars, restaurants, and other public venues for the unimmunized.
New highly mutated Covid strain discovered
A coronavirus variant with 46 mutations has been detected in southern France
The new variant of Covid-19 was first discovered in a patient who returned to France from Cameroon. Researchers said it’s too early to assess the variant’s features.
The new strain, B.1.640.2, was detected in 12 patients living in the same geographical area in southeastern France, a team of scientists said in a preprint published online on medRxiv last week.
The strain is related to the B.1.640 lineage, which was classified as a variant under monitoring (VUM) by the World Health Organization (WHO) in November.
The first known patient was a vaccinated adult who returned to a French village from a trip to Cameroon and exhibited mild respiratory symptoms the day before the diagnosis.
Genome analysis revealed that the virus of this particular strain has 46 mutations, the researcher said. “It is too early to speculate on virological, epidemiological or clinical features of this… variant based on these 12 cases,” they wrote.
“Overall, these observations show once again the unpredictability of the emergence of new SARS-CoV-2 variants and their introduction from abroad, and they exemplify the difficulty to control such introduction and subsequent spread.”
Scientists around the world have been on high alert for new mutations of the coronavirus because they could produce variants that are more contagious and vaccine-resistant.
The emergence of the Omicron variant, classified as a variant of concern (VOC) by the WHO in November, prompted multiple countries to close their borders and tighten other pandemic-related restrictions.
“As this pandemic drags on, it’s possible that new variants could evade our countermeasures and become fully resistant to current vaccines or past infection, necessitating vaccine adaptations,” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned last week.
