Michael Gordon Jackson leaves Regina Court of King's Bench Tuesday with some friends and supporters. (Richard Agecoutay/CBC - image credit)
The trial of a Carievale, Sask., man charged with abduction after he allegedly failedto return his seven-year-old daughter to the care of her mother in 2021 began this week in Regina.
COVID-19 vaccination emerged as an issueon Tuesday, the second day of Michael Gordon Jackson's jury trial at Regina King's Bench Court. Jackson has pleaded not guilty.
The girl's mother, who is estranged from the accused,testified Tuesday that Jackson was opposed to the COVID vaccine and did not want his daughter to receive the shots.
The mothersaid she met Michael at a diner while waitressingin 2013. They started dating and were married five months later. Their daughter was born a year after they met.
The mothersaid she left Michael in December 2016 after three and a half years of marriage and took her daughter to live with her in Regina.
Under their agreement, they would have joint custody, but the mother would have the final decision in health and education matters, she said.
The mother had primary custody, but Michael would get the daughter on Easter holidays, spring break, family week and certain long weekends.She said that for one of those long weekend visits, in November 2021, Michael was supposed to to pick their daughter up from school in Regina and bring her back five days later.
That didn't happen, she testified.
Michael Gordon Jackson, on left in the sweater, is charged with abduction. (Richard Agecoutay/CBC)
Mother says accused sent links to anti-vaccine videos
The mother testified thatfor several days, Michael would her links on COVID-19 vaccinations and ask her opinion on vaccinations.
She said she was driving to Carievale to pick up her daughter and received a text message from Jackson saying he "wasn't going to play games" and thatshe needed to provide a letter stating she would not vaccinate their daughter before he would return the girl to her mother.
Story continues
In February 2022, the mother obtained an affidavit stating she would not vaccinate their daughter.
"I made the letter so I could see my daughter," she testified.
Despite the letter, Jackson did not return to girl, the mother said.
Police issueda Canada-wide warrant for Jackson's arrest.
On February 22, 2022, the mother heard from RCMP that they had found her daughter and arrested Jackson. She was then flown to the Vernon RCMP detachment, where she was reunited with her daughter. They came home the next day.
Jackson is representing himself at trial with the help of a "friend of the court" who assists him with procedure.
Jackson cross-examined the mother Tuesday. Under his questioning, she confirmed that she knew how "passionate" he was about vaccinations and that he didn't want their daughter getting COVID shots.
The trial, which is happening before Justice Heather MacMillan-Brown and a jury, is expected to last two weeks.
Its spring, the season for sweet strawberries, colorful tulips, crisp vegetables and a COVID-19 booster shot.
Health experts with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommend an extra doseofthe 2023-24 COVID-19 vaccinefor all people in the U.S. ages 65 and older.
To help sort out the details about the new spring COVID-19 booster shot,Dr.Michelle Barron, UCHealthssenior medical director of infection prevention and control, answers a few common questions, below.
CDC experts recommend the booster for everyone ages 65 and older. In addition, people who are immunocompromised also have been eligible for extra doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, according to Barron.
At this stage of the COVID-19 pandemic, older adults are having a tougher time when they get a bad case of COVID-19. Thats not surprising because immune systems in older people arent as strong as they are in the young, aside from younger people who are immunocompromised.
Here are some reasons why medical advisors to the CDC recommended a spring COVID-19 booster shot.
More than half of people who had to be hospitalized for COVID-19 between October and December of 2023 were older than age 65, according to CDC researchers.
Even four years into the pandemic, people continue to die of COVID-19, and people ages 65 and older have a much higher risk of dying of COVID-19 than younger people.People ages 75 and older were much more likely to die if they contracted COVID-19 than people who were sick with COVID-19 and were 65 to 74 years old.
Vaccine effectiveness wanes over time, so especially for vulnerable people, its great to give the immune system a boost in combating COVID-19 infections.
Youll want to wait at least four months since the last time you had a COVID-19 vaccine, Barron said.
No, if youve recently gotten sick with COVID-19, you should wait about three months.
You dont want to get your new shot until its been 90 days since your last COVID-19 episode, Barron said.
No, dont wait for the fall vaccine. Unless youve recently been sick with COVID-19, you should not wait to get a spring booster dose.
Vaccine makers and experts at the CDC are planning for newly formulated COVID-19 vaccines for the fall of 2024. Anyone who gets a booster this spring will also be eligible to get a dose of the newest COVID-19 vaccine this fall.
Yes.Even though vaccine effectiveness wanes over time, Barron said its still tremendously helpful to get COVID-19 vaccines and booster shots because they significantly reduce deaths and hospitalizations.
Barron thinksthe newest CDC guidelinessimplify things.
The message I have for all of this is to use good old-fashioned common sense. If you are sick, please dont visitagrandparentwhoisolder and vulnerable. Also, please dont spend time with your friend who is just finishing cancer treatments or visit a brand new baby, Barron said. All of those people are at risk for having complications if they get sick, regardless of the virus that were talking about.
Medical experts advise people to stay home and avoid contact with other people until at least 24 hours after they havehadsymptoms like a fever, bad cough or other signs of illness.
Once a persons fever breaks, they should still be cautious about exposing others since some people can remain contagious later. CDC experts encourage people to use good hygiene practices like frequent hand washing and wear a mask if theyre in crowded indoor settings. Its also wise to keep your distance from vulnerable people and take steps to be in well-ventilated areas.
What do you recommend as the right approach if people are sick, even if they havent gotten tested and dont know if they have COVID-19, the flu, RSV or a cold?
If you feel sick, and youre coughing, sneezing or cant eat or drink, you should stay home, Barron said. Whatever the cause, if you have a fever, you should not be at work or at school until youve no longer had a fever for at least 24 hours without taking anti-fever medications like Tylenol or ibuprofen.
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Taipei, April 9 (CNA) Taiwan's Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on Tuesday began administering the second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine targeting the Omicron subvariant XBB to vulnerable groups.
In a press conference, Deputy Health Minister Chou Jih-haw () urged the vulnerable groups to get vaccinated as soon as possible, as the pandemic continues to be a threat.
Eligible recipients include seniors aged 65 and above, Indigenous people aged 55-64, as well as individuals aged 6 months and older with immunodeficiency or weakened immune systems, the CDC said.
Taiwan initiated the rollout of the XBB vaccine in September last year, with Moderna and Novavax being the current available brands.
The first and second doses of the XBB vaccine should be administered with an interval of at least 12 weeks (84 days), the CDC said, adding that they could come from different brands.
Statistics showed that individuals with weaker immune systems may experience a decline in vaccine efficacy three to five months after receiving the first COVID shot, Chou said, stressing the importance of getting a second shot.
(By Tseng Yi-ning and Lee Hsin-Yin)
Enditem/cs
SINGAPORE - Senior citizens should consider receiving booster doses of the updated Covid-19 vaccine regularly, according to a recently published study by local researchers.
This is because in people over 65, protection from the first two doses wanes faster as they have a lower immune cell count.
The study was led by Dr Vanda Ho, a PhD student at the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, and Immunology and Infectious Diseases Translational Research Programmes at NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine.
It involved 29 participants, 14 of whom were aged between 66 and 82, and the rest being younger adults between 25 and 39 years old. They all received two doses of Pfizers mRNA Covid-19 vaccine.
The findings of the study were published in the peer-reviewed journal Ageing Cell in February.
Older adults had a significant increase in neutralisation after the second dose, but this was still lower than the younger adults, despite the former being robust, said Dr Ho.
So it is important for older adults to go for booster vaccinations regularly to protect themselves, she noted.
mRNA vaccines work by introducing a small piece of a protein found in the virus so that cells can produce the viral protein. The immune system then recognises the protein as foreign and produces antibodies to protect the body against infection.
The immune system can be triggered by a vaccine to produce neutralising antibodies in response to the virus or bacteria in the vaccine, resulting in the system recognising and fighting the infection naturally when exposed to the disease later.
As a geriatrician at the National University Hospital, Dr Ho often sees older adults come into the wards with infections for the first time.
Unfortunately, after that first infection, they tend to be re-admitted for further infections. I saw the same patients decline functionally and cognitively because of the initial infection.
That really triggered my interest that maybe we can prevent the infection, or at least reduce the side effects, then we can help to increase their health span, she told The Straits Times.
She added that just as she was thinking of conducting research on the topic as part of her doctoral studies, the Covid-19 pandemic hit, and it turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
It was really a great opportunity to capitalise on, she said.
Everyone in the world was getting the same immune stimulus: the Covid-19 vaccination.Prior to that, older and younger adults went through different vaccination regimens. The pandemic presented us with the best opportunity to study if pre- and post-vaccinated older and younger adults respond the same way.
Pfizer has been accused by the UKs pharmaceutical watchdog of bringing discredit on the industry after senior executives used social media to promote an unlicensed Covid vaccine.
The company has been found to have breached the regulatory code five times, which also includes making misleading claims, failing to maintain high standards and promoting unlicensed medicines.
A ruling by the pharmaceutical watchdog, the Prescription Medicines Code of Practice Authority (PMCPA), relates to a complaint about a message posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, in November 2020 by senior Pfizer employees.
The complaint raised concern about Pfizers misuse of social media to misleadingly and illegally promote their Covid vaccine, according to the ruling.
They claimed that such misbehaviour on social media was even more widespread than they had thought and extended right to the top of their UK operation.
The complaint centred on a social media post on X by Dr Berkeley Phillips, the medical director of Pfizer UK. He shared a post from an employee of Pfizer in the US which said: Our vaccine candidate is 95 per cent effective in preventing Covid-19, and 94 per cent effective in people over 65 years old. We will file all of our data with health authorities within days. Thank you to every volunteer in our trial, and to all who are tirelessly fighting this pandemic.
Four other Pfizer employees, including one senior colleague, published the same message
The PMCPA ruling noted that this message contained limited information about the vaccines efficacy, no safety information and no reference to adverse events.
It went on to say that the social media post resulted in an unlicensed medicine being proactively disseminated on Twitter to health professions and members of the public in the UK.
A Pfizer UK spokesman said that the company fully recognises and accepts the issues highlighted by this PMCPA ruling, adding that it is deeply sorry.
They said: Pfizer UK has a comprehensive policy on personal use of social media in relation to Pfizers business which prohibits colleagues from interacting with any social media related to Pfizers medicines and vaccines backed by staff briefings and training.
The personal use of social media by UK pharmaceutical industry employees in relation to company business is a challenging area for pharmaceutical companies, in which we continue to take all of the appropriate steps that are reasonably expected of a pharmaceutical company.
As part of their response to the ruling, Pfizer said it had launched a review into its employees use of social media platforms to ensure compliance with their own rules as well as the regulatory code.
It is the sixth time Pfizer has been reprimanded by the regulator over its promotion of the Covid-19 vaccine.
One ruling by the watchdog, from November 2022, found that Pfizers chief executive made misleading statements about childrens vaccines.
Following a complaint from the campaign group UsForThem, the PMCPA found that Pfizer had misled the public, made unsubstantiated claims and failed to present information in a balanced way.
Three of the other Pfizer cases related to LinkedIn posts, one related one was about claims made in a press release and one was about posts on X.
For the most recent series of breaches, Pfizer was charged administrative costs of 34,800.
Ben Kingsley, the head of legal affairs at UsForThem, said: Its astonishing how many times Pfizers senior executives have been found guilty of serious regulatory offences in this case including the most serious offence of all under the UK Code of Practice.
Yet the consequences for Pfizer and the individuals concerned continue to be derisory. This hopeless system of regulation for a multi-billion dollar life and death industry has become a sham, in dire need of reform.
Dr Phillips, the UK country medical director for Pfizer, said the social media post was accidental and unintentional adding: That said, we immediately accepted the case ruling and do everything we can to ensure that our employees adhere to our strict social media policy and the industry Code of Practice when using their personal social media.
David Watson of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) said that the code of practice, which is overseen by the PMCPA, sets high standards for companies that reflect and go beyond UK law.
He added that cases that are found to have brought discredit on the industry are advertised in the medical, pharmaceutical, and nursing press.
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A new study looking at the replication stage of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 reveals important mechanisms in its replication that could be the foundation for new antiviral therapies.
The study, which set out to investigate how the SARS-CoV-2 virus replicates once it enters the cells, has made surprising discoveries that could be the foundation for future antiviral therapies. It also has important theoretical implications as the replication of the SARS-CoV-2 virus has, so far, received less attention from researchers.
"These findings show what an exquisite cell biologist the SARS-CoV-2 virus is, and shed new light onto how infection with SARS-CoV-2 can disrupt the function of essential intracellular compartments, otherwise known as organelles," says Dr. Jeremy Carlton, reader in molecular and cellular biology.
The viral life cycle can be broken down into two main stages: the first stage is where the virus enters the cell. The second stage is replication where the virus uses the molecular machinery of the cell it has infected to replicate itself by building its parts, assembling them into new viruses that can then exit to infect other cells.
The majority of research into SARS-CoV-2the causative agent of COVID-19has focused on the Spike protein that allows viral entry. This has led to a lack of understanding of how the virus replicates once it has entered the cell.
A new paper led by Dr. Jeremy Carlton in collaboration with Dr. David Bauer at the Francis Crick Institute, focuses on how the Envelope protein of SARS-CoV-2 controls late stages of viral replication.
Publishing in Science Advances, the authors marked the Envelope protein with fluorescent tags to track its movement within cells and used proteomics to identify key pathways that allow SARS-CoV-2 to take over the internal compartments of the infected cellknown as organellesfor its replication.
The authors identified a surprising aspect of its replication in its use of a compartment called the lysosome during viral release. Lysosomes are acidic, degradative organelles, but SARS-CoV-2 uses its Envelope protein as an ion-channel to neutralize their acidity and so enhance viral release.
As well as broadening our theoretical understanding of the viral life cycle, such insights on replication could eventually be applied to create new antiviral therapeutics that inhibit the channel activity of the Envelope protein. These could apply not only to SARS-CoV-2, but to the -coronavirus family and any other virus that replicates with the same mechanisms.
More information: Guy J. Pearson et al, ER-export and ARFRP1/AP-1dependent delivery of SARS-CoV-2 Envelope to lysosomes controls late stages of viral replication, Science Advances (2024). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adl5012
Journal information: Science Advances
Investing
Published: April 6, 2024 2:07 pm
The Covid-19 Pandemic and subsequent global lockdowns impacted billions of people, and its repercussions are still being felt. Within the financial industry, the S&P 500 took a hit from 3,337.75 in February, 2020 to 2,304.92 by March 20: a thousand point crash in only 30 days.
Since that time, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has climbed to new heights, largely on the back of The Magnificent Seven, which are: Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), Meta Platforms (Facebook) (NASDAQ: META), Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG), Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA), and Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA).
Nvidia has been one of the leaders of this post-pandemic surge, so lets take a look as to why Nvidia stock, which has gained over 13X since that time roughly four years ago, was able to accomplish so much.
Nvidias beginnings were filled with struggles. Within its first three years of operation, founder and CEO Jensen Huang had to fire half of his employees trying to get the RIVA 128 graphic accelerator for 3D graphics completed and out to market. Having burned through $20 million in Venture Capital funding down to being a month away from bankruptcy, Nvidia finally succeeded, and the RIVA 128s sales fueled Nvidias fortunes enough for it to go public in 1999.
Nvidia soon after released its first Graphics Processing Unit, the GeForce 256, which was crucial for accelerating 3D consumer hardware for video content, leading to landmark graphics hardware design contracts for Microsoft XBOX and Sony (NYSE: SONY) PlayStation 3s RSX graphics processor. By 2012, the companys GPUs would be crucial to powering the AlexNet neural network, which set the stage for commercialized Artificial Intelligence (AI).
As Nvidia continued to grow, it expanded its product line, including their RTX series GPUs in 2018, which pioneered real-time ray tracing, This graphic rendering method mimics the actual physical behavior of light, which creates the hyper-realism key to the success of virtual reality in video graphics for video gaming and AI.
High profile deals with Toyota (NYSE: TM), Baidu (NASDAQ: BIDU), and Alphabet (still Google in 2018) would follow.
Unlike thousands of other companies that were negatively impacted by the local government mandated lockdowns during the Covid-19 outbreak, Nvidia was not one of them.
AI would prove to be the winning horse in Nvidias race to the top. Nvidia continued to improve its GPU offerings and created new partnerships for expanding the applications for AI. In October 2020, Nvidia announced the plans to design the Cambridge-1 supercomputer. In collaboration with AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, Kings College London, the Guys and St. Thomas NHS Foundation, and other organizations, the Nvidia Cambridge-1 is the UKs largest supercomputer, and was specifically created for British healthcare research since its launch in 2021.
Nvidia also announced plans to acquire UK chipmaker Arm from Softbank, for $32 billion, but would be forced to withdraw after the European Commission launched an antitrust investigation. Nevertheless, Nvidia apparently still owns a $147.3 million stake in Arm as of February 2024, according to Forbes.
According to The Harvard Business Review, AI adoption skyrocketed because of the pandemic lockdown. As the pandemic lockdowns ended, the use of AI continued to grow, with ChatGPT and other platforms rapidly gaining popularity. Nvidias H100 GPU has since become so in demand from all of the top tech hardware companies that Larry Ellison of Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) told The Wall Street Journal that he and Elon Musk both had dinner with Jensen Huang, and the two tech titans literally spent an hour of sushi and begging with Huang for more H100s.
Nvidias GPUs became ubiquitous with AI, and Jensen Huangs following would rapidly expand to arguably become as loyal and eager for his latest updates as those from the late Steve Jobs. The Taiwan-born tech entrepreneur who faced bankruptcy less than 30 years ago is now one of the top AI leaders on the planet.
Nvidia, which was roughly trading at$63 per share on March 23, 2020, has risen to$880.08.That is an amazing run of 1,560%.
In fact if you invested $10,000 during the Covid crash and held it to today, you would have $165,510.
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What is Disease X?
Dont panic! Disease X doesnt exist yet but it might one day. Disease X is the label that the World Health Organization uses to refer to some currently unknown infectious condition that is capable of causing an epidemic or if it spreads across multiple countries a pandemic. The term, coined in 2017, can be used to mean a newly discovered pathogen or any known pathogen with newly acquired pandemic potential. By the latter definition, covid-19 was the first Disease X. But there could be another in the future.
The World Health Organization has been warning global leaders about the risks of future pandemics at the World Economic Forums annual meeting. Some people say this may create panic, says WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. No. Its better to anticipate something that may happen because it has happened in our history many times and prepare for it.
We dont know that is why it is called Disease X. The coronaviruses, a large group of viruses, were long seen as a prime contender for producing a new pandemic, even before the covid-19 outbreak. That is because the novel coronavirus wasnt the first dangerous pathogen from this group. In 2002, a different coronavirus started spreading in China. It caused a form of pneumonia called SARS that killed around 1 in 10 of those it infected, before it was stopped by strict infection control measures. Another, even deadlier coronavirus called MERS occasionally breaks out, causing a pneumonia that kills 1 in 3 of those infected. However, recent work suggests SARS and MERS would have a harder time triggering a fresh pandemic because almost everyone in the world now has antibodies to the virus that causes covid-19 and these seem to give partial protection against most other pathogens in the coronavirus family.
Plenty of diseases, some well known and others less familiar, could pose a global threat. Flu strains have caused global pandemics several times in the past, including one of the deadliest disease outbreaks ever, the Spanish flu of 1918. A virulent strain of bird flu is currently sweeping the world, and it occasionally spreads from birds to mammals, causing mass die-offs. Just this week, it was named as the culprit in the deaths of 17,000 baby elephant seals in Argentina last October. Then there are other contenders, such as Ebola, which causes severe bleeding, and the mosquito-borne Zika, which can cause babies to born with smaller heads if the infection occurs during pregnancy. The WHO updated its list of pathogens with the most pandemic potential in 2022.
There is some good news: the covid-19 pandemic may have made it easier to stop any future Disease X. Covid-19 spurred the development of novel vaccine designs, including ones that can be quickly repurposed to target new pathogens. It led, for instance, to the advent of vaccines based on mRNA. This formula contains a short piece of genetic material that makes the bodys immune cells produce the coronavirus spike protein but it could be updated to make cells churn out a different protein, simply by rewriting the mRNA sequence.
Countries need better early warning systems for new diseases, and health services need to become more resilient to unexpected surges in demand, says Tedros. When hospitals were stretched beyond their capacity [with covid], we lost many people because we could not manage them. There was not enough space, there was not enough oxygen. To prevent the same thing from happening when Disease X strikes, Tedros says health services must be able to expand their capacity on demand. Luckily, they can make those preparations without knowing exactly what Disease X will be. Disease X is a placeholder, he says. Whatever the disease is, you can prepare for it.
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