Biology Digest

 

HOUSTON —  Dr. Peter Hotez  is a vaccine expert with the  Baylor College of Medicine  who has spent countless hours doing interviews to help guide the country through the pandemic. However, members of what he calls the anti-science and anti-vaccine movement made him a target late last week. Hotez tweeted examples of the hateful, threatening messages that were flooding his inbox. “It was filled with all sorts of Nazi imagery, Nuremberg hangings and terrible, terrible stuff. It was pretty upsetting,” Hotez said. Hotez has always been a vocal advocate for vaccines. Because of it, he says he’s been harassed by anti-vaxxers before. This time, he said he’s concerned about the damage that is being done by the movement. “They’re doing a lot of damage in terms of successfully convincing people not to get vaccinated against COVID-19. To be defiant of masks and social distancing. Let’s face it. The reason we lost almost 600,000 Americans to COVID-19 is partly due to the SARS-CoV-2, but as much it

A  CNN  analyst called on  Fox News  host  Tucker Carlson  to reveal whether or not he has been vaccinated after using his platform to spread misinformation about  coronavirus vaccines . Medical analyst Dr Jonathan Reiner called Carlson a "saboteur" for his comments, saying he was "sick of his nonsense." During the programme, host  Jim Acosta  introduced a clip of Carlson claiming that unless people "resist" they will be forced to get the vaccine. “Tucker Carlson received blowback and rightly so over this anti-vaccine rhetoric he’s been engaging in,” he said. “I honestly don’t know what the hell he’s talking about, but is this part of the problem, in terms of getting people vaccinated?” Thus far there has been no push for legislation making the vaccine mandatory. “Yeah, so I think he’s really a saboteur,” Dr Reiner said. “That’s what I think of Tucker Carlson.” He pointed out that Carlson often justifies his skepticism as him "just asking questions,&q

  Article 1 Montana HELENA — Montana’s ongoing debate over  prohibiting vaccination requirements  took several twists Wednesday after Gov. Greg Gianforte sent  House Bill 702  back to the Legislature with proposed changes of his own. Hours later, the House voted 65-35 to accept those changes.  The Senate approved the amended bill Thursday on a party-line vote. The  amendment submitted by Gianforte  appears to address a number of concerns expressed this week about the bill’s potential impacts on  health care facilities . Specifically, Gianforte’s changes would allow such facilities to ask employees to volunteer information about their vaccination status, to consider employees who don’t volunteer that information to be unvaccinated, and to implement policies specific to unvaccinated staff, patients and visitors that are designed to protect against the spread of communicable diseases. The amendment would also exempt nursing homes and assisted-living and long-term care facilities that woul

  South Carolina State Representative Bill Chumley was feeling vindicated. His many suspicions about COVID-19 vaccines, he told VICE News, appeared to have been justified.  “I called my doctor early this morning,” Chumley said, after the news broke that the FDA has paused use of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine over reports of six patients developing rare and serious blood clots two weeks after getting the vaccine. “His comment was that he’s more convinced than ever.” So is Chumley. That’s why, on March 2, he was one of the sponsors of South Carolina’s “Vaccine Bill of Rights,” a resolution stuffed with misinformation and conspiratorial language based on model legislation from a medical fringe group that’s become notorious in recent months.  Legislators in at least five states, VICE News has found, have introduced a so-called “Vaccine Bill of Rights.” The text of these bills is strikingly similar for a reason: They’re all based on a document released in January by a group called America