Sheba Medical Center found a 65% decrease in the hospitalization of severe asthma patients and a 45% drop in the number of urgent visits to the hospital’s emergency room by asthma sufferers in 2020 versus 2019. Prof. Nancy Agmon-Levin, who conducted the study, told The Jerusalem Post that she believes “masks blocked infectious agents and definitely pollen.” Agmon-Levin is the head of Sheba’s Clinical Immunology, Angioedema and Allergy Unit. She said that she and her team were hearing comments from patients that they had a lot less allergies this year compared to previous years. “We thought this is probably because of wearing masks, but thought about how we could prove the idea,” she explained. “We checked the referrals to the emergency department due to asthma, of which 80% to 90% of all asthma patients are due to allergies.” While there were such large decreases in asthma referrals, there was only around a 10% decrease in overall emergency department referrals during the same period.
Arye ben-Shaoul
The robot rotorcraft was carried to the red planet strapped to the belly of NASA’s Mars rover Perseverance, a mobile astrobiology lab that touched down in February.
Article Source: jpost.com
The encounter took place on a cool winter morning in 2012, in the coastal Indian city of Visakhapatnam. A gentle breeze nipped at the air as Murthy Kantimahanti stood transfixed, staring at a metal trap set up on a dirt trail leading to dense bushes and towering neem trees. Inside the trap was a cat – but no ordinary cat. It was bigger than a house cat, but not as big as a leopard or a tiger. It had a squarish face, relatively small ears for the size of its head, a short tail and curiously webbed feet, like an aquatic animal.
Article Source: bbc.com
A spokesperson for Premier Doug Ford says he has begun contacting consulates in a bid to get more COVID-19 vaccines for Ontario. Ivana Yelich said Sunday that Ford began reaching out to international allies after news of cuts to upcoming Moderna shipments, and as the province awaits a possible recommendation on lowering the age limit for the AstraZeneca shot. “Ontario has the capacity to vaccinate more people, but we are lacking the supply to do it,” Yelich said in a statement. “Vaccines are our only way out of this pandemic and the premier will exhaust every avenue he has in order to get more needles into arms of Ontarians sooner.” Procuring vaccines is normally the responsibility of the federal government. Ford has repeatedly said that Ontario has the capacity to administer more vaccines than it is currently receiving from the feds, and in late March, lashed out at the federal government’s procurement process calling it “a joke.”
Article Source: globalnews.ca
1st budget in 2 years to focus on shoring up pandemic supports, laying groundwork for sustainable growth Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland will deliver the Liberal government’s first budget in two years on Monday, laying out more than $2 billion for a national child-care program while keeping the federal deficit for the past year under the $400 billion mark, CBC News has learned. A senior government source who spoke to CBC News Sunday — on the condition they not be named because they are not authorized to speak publicly about the subject — said unlike the way some programs have been announced in past budgets, the forthcoming child-care announcement will not be about striking expert panels, undertaking further study or be entirely subject to negotiations with the provinces.
Article Source: cbc.ca
The puzzle over climate change is not scientific but political — or religious or ideological. Science shows clearly that mankind is not changing the climate in a dangerous way. The puzzle is why so many people are determined to believe that we are. Why do they love the idea of impending climate catastrophe? Why are they so horrified by the vast improvements in human welfare over the last decade? Why are they so determined to believe the blatant nonsense of “97% of scientists” or the Hockey Stick graph (showing temperatures steady from 1000 AD to 1900 AD and then shooting up to unprecedented highs in the 20th Century)? Why do they hurl such curses against “denialists”? There are two reasons: money and ideology.
Article Source: dailyfriend.co.za