PANDA Threads Vol. 13

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PANDA THREADS VOL. 13 | 3 MARCH 2021

Dear Reader,

It has been a particularly turbulent few days in what we have already understood to be an unabatingly turbulent year. While the bad news appears relentless, there is an equally relentless trickle of good news: harder to find, no doubt, but important gains are being made globally in the fight against the destruction of our humanity through social distancing, mask mandates and the threat of a two-class society that immunity passports would bring.

Yesterday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced that Texas is now completely open and the statewide mask mandate is a thing of the past. On Sunday, without a televised announcement or any fanfare whatsoever, South Africa's lockdown was eased from Level 3 to Level 1 because it is no longer feasible to pretend the country is in the midst of a public health crisis. However, the mask mandate and the State of Disaster (with its incursion into civil liberties) remain, so the easing of levels is mere lip-service to an ending of the crisis.

PANDA has seen a doubling down in efforts to silence us in the South African press - an effort that leads us to add the defence of free speech to our list of items requiring urgent attention.


Speaking of attention, we'd like to sincerely thank you for yours. We would not still be banging this drum without your support and the energy that we get from you that keeps us going.

~ The PANDAs


P R E S S   R E L E A S E

Pandemics Data & Analytics (PANDA) hosts its first Online Open Science Media Briefing

PANDA conducted its first Online Open Science media briefing on February 23, 2021. This initiative reflects PANDA’s commitment to fill the urgent need for open scientific debate and prominent British media figures were in attendance. The topic was SARS-CoV-2 variants and the speakers at the event belong to the most renowned international scientific minds currently researching Covid-19.

Click to read the article

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I N   T H E   N E W S

Reply to 'Kung Flu Panda' by the Daily Maverick

After Daily Maverick disabled comments on their hit piece on PANDA and refused PANDA a right to reply, Biznews offered to carry the reply.

Click to read the article

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A Conversation With John Church

PANDA's Peter Castleden in conversation with John Church who developed a simple IFR model to examine the Covid-19 pandemic worldwide.

Read John Church's paper

abir

Tweet from @abirballan

COVID deaths are inflated. Too many deaths are being counted wrongly as COVID death. This gives the impression that COVID is more lethal than it actually is which sustains the fear that is hijacking people’s minds.

https://twitter.com/nickhudsonct/status/1365550090572746754


>Retweeting @NickHudsonCT

Covid Tunnel Vision is a widespread condition. Whistleblowers emerge daily recounting instances of malpractice. When the dust settles, it will become clear just how massive iatrogenic deaths and misattributions have been.

https://mol.im/a/9305405

Read the thread

R E L E V A N T   R E S E A R C H

Negligible impact of SARS-CoV-2 variants on CD4+ and CD8+ T cell reactivity in COVID-19 exposed donors and vaccinees

The emergence of SARS-CoV-2 variants highlighted the need to better understand adaptive immune responses to this virus. It is important to address whether also CD4+ and CD8+ T cell responses are affected, because of the role they play in disease resolution and modulation of COVID-19 disease severity. Here we performed a comprehensive analysis of SARS-CoV-2-specific CD4+ and CD8+ T cell responses from COVID-19 convalescent subjects recognizing the ancestral strain, compared to variant lineages B.1.1.7, B.1.351, P.1, and CAL.20C as well as recipients of the Moderna (mRNA-1273) or Pfizer/BioNTech (BNT162b2) COVID-19 vaccines.

Click to read the paper

S H A R E D   S T O R I E S

Michael Miles writes from Canada

On November 07, 2020, my mother passed away at the grand age of 90. To say that the last 9 months of her life were anything but torturous is not exaggerating. Not only do I believe the lockdowns and other restrictions hastened her death, but I also believe they severely degraded the quality of her last few months of life.

My mother suffered from mild vascular dementia prior to March of 2020. She was a resident of a retirement home. When the restrictions came into effect in March, her mental health deteriorated. No longer able to socialize normally, dine communally and confronted daily by (unrecognizable masked, gloved and gowned) staff telling her to wear a mask and stay in her room; or, see her family, except via window or virtual visits, she became convinced that she was a prisoner. Which, in fact, she was a prisoner!

Read the full story
Photo by Cristian Newman on Unsplash
S U B S C R I B E
U N S U B S C R I B E

OPEN SCIENCE. HUMAN AGENCY.

© Copyright, , Pandemics - Data & Analytics • Cape Town, South Africa
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