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Showing posts from June, 2021

COVID RESILIENCE RANKING: WHERE DOES YOUR COUNTRY STAND?

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BLOOMBERG – Almost a year and a half into the pandemic, the best and worst places to be in the Covid-19 era are increasingly defined by one thing: normalization. The biggest vaccination drive in history is enabling parts of the globe to abolish mask mandates, relax restrictions and dismantle border curbs, making the magnitude of reopening key to quality of life. Taming cases and deaths was once paramount, along with ensuring a robust health-care system. Now, the ability to essentially turn back the clock and return to pre-pandemic times is taking on an even greater significance. Central to that is an economy’s openness to the world, and that’s why we’ve introduced a new element – Reopening Progress – to Bloomberg’s Covid Resilience Ranking. Two new metrics capture the ease of moving in and out of a place and how much air travel has recovered, alongside our 10 other measures tracking mortality rates to infection counts, freedom of movement to economic growth. This pivot has ushered in d

THE ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE OF A POLITICAL LEADER

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By Akin Ojumu Alzheimer’s disease of a political leader is an irreversible, progressive brain disorder that slowly destroys memory and thinking skills, and, eventually, the ability to carry out the simplest tasks of governance. In most individuals with Alzheimer’s disease of a political leader, symptoms first appear in their mid-60s. Estimates vary, but experts suggest that more than 6 million Nigerian politicians, most of them age 65 or older, may have political dementia caused by Alzheimer’s of a political leader. Mild Alzheimer’s of a Political Leader In mild Alzheimer’s disease of a political leader, a person may seem to be healthy but has more and more trouble making sense of the world around him. The realization that something is wrong often comes gradually to the person and the citizens who rely on him for their daily survival and hope for the future. Problems can include: Memory loss of the past history of the nation Poor judgment leading to bad decisions that is bad for the co

PFIZER AND MODERNA VACCINES CONFER LASTING IMMUNITY

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MarketWatch – The vaccines developed by Pfizer with German partner BioNTech and Moderna using mRNA technology may offer protection against the coronavirus-borne illness COVID-19 for years, according to a new study published Monday. The study, conducted by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis, and to be published in Nature, suggests that people vaccinated with those shots may not need boosters, as long as the virus does not mutate or give rise to new vaccine-resistant variants. It also found that people who have recovered from COVID before being vaccinated “produced the most robust serologic responses,” showing they enjoy a strong immune response. Separately, an Oxford University study found that a third dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine administered more than six months after the second could boost protection against COVID-19. The researchers found that a third dose leads to a substantial increase in antibodies and induces a strong boost to immune response against the virus,

DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT LOVE IS?

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By Akin Ojumu You’ve got to give it to the Greeks, they sure have a way with words. Unlike the English language, which is the most common language spoken all over the world today – and I don’t for the life of me understand why – the Greek language is rich, robust, fulsome, and wholesome.  When it comes to precision and exactness of words, the Greek language ranks at the very top. It is a language with a large vocabulary of nautical terms which are highly nuanced and descriptive. Compared to the Greeks, the English language is somewhat of a lazy man’s language. Whereas in the English language a single word may mean many things, in Greek it is quite different. The Greeks have a distinct word for almost everything and every word in the Greek language has its own unique meaning. The Hellenics, unlike the Anglo-Saxons, are in a one word one meaning generational affair. In an exemplary display of linguistic monogamy, the Greek language is an exceptional showcase of a faithful commitment to c

THE BOOK I’M READING THIS WEEKEND

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By Akin Ojumu “If you want to hide something from a negro, put it in a book.” In his now famous quote, Frederick Douglass succinctly described the literary paucity among black people. Douglass understood very well that his fellow black Americans do not like to read. Because they don’t read, they remain perpetually ignorant and ill-informed about their deplorable conditions. Nigerians have a notoriously short-term memory. They are so quick to forget the pain of their affliction in the hands of past bad leaders and they don’t seem to remember the men and women who brought unimaginable ruins to their nation. The reason for Nigerians retrograde amnesia can be attributed to the fact that the people do not read. Because they don’t read, Nigerians are mostly ignorant and generally ill-informed just like their kinsmen in America. This failure to read about the past is the bane of Nigerians existence. The Nigeria political class, understanding very well this weakness among their fellow Nigerian

OUR PRESIDENT HAS FAILED AND HE KNOWS IT

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By Akin Ojumu Once again, the president of Nigeria, General Muhammadu Buhari (Rtd.), is planning to travel to the United Kingdom for medical treatment. It would be his second trip in 2021. By the time you are reading this commentary, our president will probably be on an examination bed in a London hospital having his orifices poked by English doctors. Like the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, aka Naval Medical Center, in Bethesda, Maryland, where US presidents go for their medical care, the Aso Rock Presidential villa, the official residence of the Nigeria President, has a hospital for Nigeria presidents. The Aso Rock clinic is supposed to be a state-of-the-art hospital, one that sets an example for all hospitals in Nigeria of what a quality hospital should aspire to become. Sadly, the presidential clinic in Aso Rock is anything but state-of-the-art; it is a dumb-as-rock hospital that is better compared to a state-of-the-junk and a bottom-of-the-barrel antiquated healthcar

HIS LOVE IS STEADFAST AND NEW EVERY MORNING

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By Akin Ojumu It is a typical Saturday evening. I’m well along in the “kick back and relax” mode that is typical for me on most weekends. So, here I am on my lazy-boy recliner, enjoying one of the greatest movie hits of all time. It is one of those epic movies that you watch over and over again, and each time you see them it is as though you are watching them for the very first time. This is like the umpteenth time I have watched this particular one, although I have not seen it in a long while.  As I watch the movie, the levee of my heart breaks, and tears begin to wash over my soul like a torrent. Then, in my mind, I begin to flip through the pages of the chronicle of the legacy of the Lord Jesus – the Holy Scriptures. From Genesis through Lamentations to Revelation, His lamp guides my feet and illuminates my path leading me through the field of His goodness and the meadow of His loving kindness through all generations. Transported through the pages of Scriptures, suddenly I find myse

JUNETEENTH BECOMES A US NATIONAL HOLIDAY

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  June 17, 2021 - President Joe Biden signed the legislation passed by US Congress to enshrine June 19 as a national holiday to commemorate the end of slavery in the US. Juneteenth (officially Juneteenth National Independence Day and also known as Jubilee Day, Liberation Day, and Emancipation Day) is the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States.  On June 19, 1865, a Union General rode into Galveston, Texas to announce that the Civil War had ended, and slaves had been freed.

GOD MUST REALLY CARE ABOUT OBAMACARE

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By Akin Ojumu Yet again, the Republican Party failed. This morning, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruled 7 to 2 in favor of upholding Obamacare. There is no way to explain it. God must really care about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, that was passed in its finality on March 21, 2010, and signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010. For more than 11 years, the God Own Party's (GOP) attacks after attacks have failed again and again to achieve the evil purpose of overturning the law. In the years leading up the passage of the Act and before it actually became the law of the land, the Republican Party – with all its weight, prestige, and resources – embarked on an all-out war against the legislation that would provide health insurance coverage and health care access to more than 25 million Americans. The scheme hatched by the members of the GOP was to abort the health insurance legislation prematurely before

COVID-19 VACCINES NOT LINKED TO BLOOD CLOT: MAYO STUDY FINDS

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Objective To assess the association of COVID-19 vaccines and non-COVID-19 vaccines with cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST). Materials and method Retrospective analysis a cohort of 771,805 vaccination events across 266,094 patients in the Mayo Clinic Health System between 01/01/2017 and 03/15/2021.  The primary outcome was a positive diagnosis of CVST, identified either by the presence of a corresponding ICD code or by an NLP algorithm which detected positive diagnosis of CVST within free-text clinical notes.  For each vaccine  the relative risk was calculated by dividing the incidence of CVST in the 30 days following vaccination to that in the 30 days preceding vaccination. Results Vaccination events were identified for all FDA-approved COVID-19 vaccines including Pfizer-BioNTech (n = 94,818 doses), Moderna (n = 36,350 doses) and Johnson & Johnson - J&J (n = 1,745 doses). Also identified were the vaccinations events for 10 common FDA-approved non-COVID-19 vaccines (n = 771

THE MORNING AFTER BIRTHDAY HANGOVER

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By Akin Ojumu In the piece I wrote yesterday about birthdays titled, “Blow the Candle and Make a Wish”, I described the origins of birthday celebrations. I also chronicled the debauchery, decadence, and death that characterized the only two birthday celebrations mentioned in the Bible.    There’s another thing about birthday celebrations that I deliberately left out of that write-up. It is the feeling I usually get the morning after every birthday. You can call it the morning after effect of birthday celebrations. I omitted it from yesterday’s write-up as a sort of self-experiment, to see if I’ll still feel the same way this morning. There’s a lot of similarities between birthday celebrations and binge drinking, and I’ll explain.  You see, birthdays can be likened to a teetotaler who, totally out of character, decides to embark on an alcohol binge and he goes off and drinks himself to stupor. He wakes up the next morning with severe hangover. He is confused, his head feels like a ton o

BLOW THE CANDLE AND MAKE A WISH

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By Akin Ojumu Today, as I face undue pressure coming from all directions, albeit from well-meaning folks who want to know what I want to do on my birthday, the question suddenly popped into my mind. Why do we celebrate birthdays and from where did the celebration of the day of one’s birth originate? As a Christian, the Bible is my first, and the primary, source of answer for such questions about human customs. Straight unto the pages of the Holy Scriptures, I always turn whenever I seek the unvarnished truth about the common practices in our daily lives. And the Word of God never disappoints. You’d always find the truth in the Book of life. Unsurprisingly, the idea of celebrating birthdays is rooted in heathen traditions characterized by pagan debauchery and idolatrous wantonness. Two instances of birthday celebrations are specifically mentioned in the Bible. In each of them someone lost their head. And I mean, literarily. The birthday celebrations recorded in the Bible were all charac

SAFETY IS A PRIORITY IN VACCINE DEVELOPMENT AND APPROVAL

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Before vaccines are licensed by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), they are tested extensively in the laboratory and with human subjects to ensure their safety. First, researchers use computers to predict how the vaccine will interact with the human immune system. Then researchers test the vaccine on animals including mice, guinea pigs, rabbits, and monkeys. Vaccine development and approval follows the same general pathway as for drugs and other biologics. A sponsor who wishes to begin clinical trials with a vaccine must submit an Investigational New Drug application (IND) to FDA. The IND describes the vaccine, its method of manufacture, and quality control tests for release. Also included are information about the vaccine’s safety and ability to elicit a protective immune response (immunogenicity) in animal testing, as well as a proposed plan for testing the drug on humans. FDA reviews the IND to ensure a vaccine’s use in clinical studies does not place human subjec

SHA'ALU SHALOM, YERUSHALAYIM

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By Akin Ojumu After 12 years of bloodshed, divisiveness, graft, cronyism, and nepotism, Benjamin Netanyahu – the most corrupt politician in the history of Israel – has been ousted from power. Leitraot, Bibi. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.  Israel's Parliament, the Knesset, voted in a new coalition government today headed by Naftali Bennet; who will become the first Prime Minister in 12 years. Baruch haba, Naftali Bennet! Mazel tov! If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land. Sha'alu shalom, Israel! May the peace of God, that passeth all understanding, fill your land. Our Father in Heaven, Rock and Redeemer of Israel, bless the State of Israel, the first manifestation of the approach of our redemption.  Shield it with Your lovingkindness, envelop it in Your peace, and bestow Your light and truth upon its leaders, mi