Connect with us

Government

Netanyahu Tells Gaza Residents To Clear Out, Says IDF “Will Use All Its Strength” To “Destroy” Hamas

Netanyahu Tells Gaza Residents To Clear Out, Says IDF "Will Use All Its Strength" To "Destroy" Hamas

Update (1835ET): Israel’s Prime Minister…

Published

5 months ago

on

Netanyahu Tells Gaza Residents To Clear Out, Says IDF "Will Use All Its Strength" To "Destroy" Hamas

Update (1835ET): Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned residents of Gaza to "leave now, because we will operate forcefully everywhere."

Continued...

Hamas wants to murder us all. This is an enemy that murders children and mothers in their homes, in their beds, an enemy that abducts the elderly, children and young women, that slaughters and massacres our citizens, including children, who simply went out to enjoy the holiday.

What happened today is unprecedented in Israel – and I will see to it that it does not happen again. The entire government is behind this decision.

The IDF will immediately use all its strength to destroy Hamas's capabilities. We will destroy them and will forcefully avenge this dark day that they have forced on Israel and its citizens. As Bialik wrote: 'Revenge for the blood of a little child has yet been devised by Satan'.

All of the places which Hamas is deployed, hiding and operating in, that wicked city, we will turn them into rubble.

I say to the residents of Gaza: Leave now because we will operate forcefully everywhere.

At this hour, the IDF is clearing the terrorists out of the last communities. They are going community by community, house by house, and are restoring our control.

I embrace and send heartfelt condolences to the bereaved families whose loved ones were murdered today in cold blood and endless brutality.

We are all praying for the well-being of the wounded and all those who are being held hostage. I say to Hamas: You are responsible for their well-being. Israel will settle accounts with anyone who harms one hair on their heads.

I appeal to the residents of the south: We all stand alongside you. We are all proud of your heroism and your fighting.

To our beloved IDF soldiers, police officers and security forces personnel, remember that you are the continuation of the heroes of the Jewish people, of Joshua, Judah Maccabee and the heroes of 1948 and of all of Israel's wars.

You are now fighting for the home and future of us all. We are all with you. We all love you. We all salute you.

To the medical and rescue teams, and the many volunteers in a long list of places, the people of Israel salute you. With your spirit, we will overcome our enemies.

*  *  *

Update(1430ET): Former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) international spokesperson Jonathan Conricus has summed up what this day means for Israel, calling in the country's "Pearl Harbor" moment.

"The entire system failed. It's not just one component. It's the entire defense architecture that evidently failed to provide the necessary defense for Israeli civilians," he told CNN of the surprise invasion from Gaza militants. "This is a Pearl Harbor type of moment for Israel, where there was reality up until today, and then there will be reality after today."

Via AP: "Palestinians terrorists transport an abducted Israeli civilian [covered in a sheet] from Kibbutz Kfar Azza into the Gaza Strip."

Town-by-town and farm-by-farm fighting is still underway given Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) reportedly control swathes of southern territory and even military outposts in Israel.

Netanyahu and his cabinet now must be contemplating what will surely be a high-risk rescue operation and potential ground incursion.

Every hour results in even more incredible, shocking footage being released of dead Israeli soldiers and civilians. The Times of Israel is reporting that over 200 Israelis have been killed, and at least 1,000 injured. The death toll is also mounting into the hundreds on the Gaza side as Israel retaliates.

In some instances, there are what look like Israeli soccer moms and their families being escorted barefoot across the border.

Video footage suggests at least dozens of Israelis have been taken captive, possibly even hundreds.

Grandmothers, men, women, children - the young and old - are being paraded in front of Hamas and PIJ cameras...

At the same time, the expected Israeli aerial assault has begun. In some instances entire apartment housing blocks have been leveled. 

There are reports saying that the IDF has taken back some of the bases seized by small teams of Palestinian militants earlier in the day.

...all of this after what was clearly a well-coordinated attack long in planning:

But what the world woke up to at the start of Saturday were unprecedented scenes of Israelis in retreat...

Rockets have continued to reach Tel Aviv from Gaza, and air raid sirens are active across many parts of the country.

Gaza apartments flattened by Israeli strikes...

* * * 

Palestinian militants on Saturday morning launched an "unprecedented" infultration attack on Israel, the biggest in years, sending fighters over the border from Gaza, firing thousands of rockets and killing dozens of Israelis. In response, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered a call-up of reservists and said "we are at war.” 

Here are the latest highlights from the rapidly changing situation:

  • Militant group Hamas launched a sustained barrage of more than 5,000 rockets in a coordinated attack by land, sea and air. According to the NYT, the Hamas assault from Gaza on southern Israel has had few precedents in its complexity and scale, invading several Israeli towns and firing thousands of rockets toward cities as far away as Jerusalem.
  • The Israeli military said that at least 2,200 rockets had been fired into Israel by 11 a.m. on Saturday and that armed gunmen had crossed the border fence in several locations along Israel’s perimeter with Gaza, a poor coastal enclave that has been under blockade by Israel and neighboring Egypt for 16 years.
  • In addition to land, the militants also crossed into Israel by sea and air, according to the Israeli military. By late morning, at least 22 Israelis had been killed in the surprise attacks from Gaza and hundred more injured according to Israel’s main ambulance service, and Israel had retaliated with massive strikes on Gazan cities, killing at least one Palestinian, according to local reports.
  • Palestinian militants infiltrated at least seven Israeli communities and army bases this morning, according to the Israeli military spokesman, Lt. Col. Richard Hecht. He said militants had reached the city of Sderot; the small towns of Kfar Azza, Nahal Oz, Magen, Beeri; the military bases of Reim and Zikim, which are close to towns of the same name; and the militarized border checkpoint at Erez. Fighting was ongoing at or near the at least three of those places, he said.
  • Israel's emergency services said 22 people have been killed in the surprise attacks from Gaza and hundred more injured.
  • Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country was now "at war" and that he had convened the heads of the security forces and instructed them to first clear all Israeli villages of Palestinian militants who had entered from Gaza.
  • Al Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, said that there was a military operation “in defense of the Aqsa mosque,” the hotly contested holy site in Jerusalem that thousands of Jews have visited in recent weeks, and against the Israeli blockade.
  • Israeli hospitals said they had received hundreds of wounded. Soroka Medical Center in the southern city of Beersheba had admitted more than 80 people, with some “in very difficult condition,” a hospital spokeswoman said. The ambulance service, Magen David Adom, issued an urgent call for blood.
  • Israel Defense Forces said they were carrying out strikes on Hamas targets in Gaza in response to the attacks on Israel.
  • Air-raid sirens sounded in Jerusalem, while explosions were heard in Tel Aviv

More details:

The ruling Hamas militant group in the Gaza Strip carried out an unprecedented attack on Israel at daybreak Saturday, firing thousands of rockets as dozens of fighters infiltrated the heavily fortified border in several locations by air, land and sea, catching the country off guard on a major holiday.

Several hours after the invasion began, Hamas militants were still fighting gunbattles inside several Israeli communities in a surprising show of strength that shook the country. Israel’s national rescue service said at least 22 people have been killed, dozens of Israelis taken hostage, and hundreds wounded, making it the deadliest attack in Israel in years. 

At least 561 wounded people were being treated in Israeli hospitals, including at least 77 who were in critical condition, according to an Associated Press count based on public statements and calls to hospitals.

There was no official comment on casualties in Gaza, but Associated Press reporters said they witnessed the funerals of 15 people who were killed and saw another eight bodies arrive at a local hospital. It was not immediately clear if they were fighters or civilians.

As the AP also reports, social media was replete with videos of Hamas fighters parading what appeared to be stolen Israeli military vehicles through the streets and at least one dead Israeli soldier within Gaza being dragged and trampled by an angry crowd of Palestinians shouting “Allahu Akbar.”

Hamas has invaded towns in southern Israel and is shooting people (warning: disturbing)...

Videos released by Hamas appeared to show at least three Israelis captured alive. The military declined to give details about casualties or kidnappings as it continued to battle the infiltrators.

“We are at war,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a televised address, declaring a mass army mobilization. “Not an ‘operation,’ not a ‘round,’ but at war.” “The enemy will pay an unprecedented price,” he added, promising that Israel would “return fire of a magnitude that the enemy has not known.”

At a meeting of top security officials later on Saturday, Netanyahu said the first priority was to “cleanse the area” of enemy infiltrators, then to “exact a huge price from the enemy,” and to fortify other areas so that no other militant groups join the war.

The serious invasion on Simchat Torah, a normally joyous day when Jews complete the annual cycle of reading the Torah scroll, revived painful memories of the 1973 Mideast war practically 50 years to the day, in which Israel’s enemies launched a surprise attack on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar.

Comparisons to one of the most traumatic moments in Israeli history sharpened criticism of Netanyahu and his far-right allies, who had campaigned on more aggressive action against threats from Gaza. Political commentators lambasted the government over its failure to anticipate what appeared to be a Hamas attack unseen in its level of planning and coordination.

The Israeli military struck targets in Gaza in response for some 2,500 rockets that sent air raid sirens wailing constantly as far north as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, some 80 kilometers (50 miles) away. It said its forces were engaged in gunfights with Hamas militants who had infiltrated Israel in at least seven locations. The fighters had sneaked across the separation fence and even invaded Israel through the air with paragliders, the army said.

Israeli TV broadcast footage of explosions tearing through the Gaza-Israel border fence, followed by what appeared to be Palestinian gunmen riding into Israel on motorcycles. Gunmen also reportedly entered on pickup trucks.

It was not immediately clear what prompted Hamas to launch the attacks, which would have likely required months of planning. But over the past year Israel’s far-right government has ramped up settlement construction in the occupied West Bank, Israeli settler violence has displaced hundreds of Palestinians there, and tensions have flared around a flashpoint Jerusalem holy site.

The shadowy leader of Hamas’ military wing, Mohammed Deif, announced the start of what he called “Operation Al-Aqsa Storm.” The Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem is the third holiest site in Islam, and is located on the holiest site for Jews, who refer to it as the Temple Mount.

“Enough is enough,” Deif, who does not appear in public, said in the recorded message, as he called on Palestinians from east Jerusalem to northern Israel to join the fight. “Today the people are regaining their revolution.”

In a televised address, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant warned that Hamas had made “a grave mistake” and promised that “the state of Israel will win this war.”

The infiltration of fighters into southern Israel marked a major escalation by Hamas that forced millions of Israelis to hunker down in safe rooms. Cities and towns emptied as the military closed roads near Gaza. Israel’s rescue service and the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza appealed to the public to donate blood.

“We understand that this is something big,” Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, an Israeli army spokesman, told reporters. He said the Israeli military had called up the army reserves.

Hecht declined to comment on how Hamas had managed to catch the army off guard. “That’s a good question,” he said.

Ismail Haniyeh, the exiled leader of Hamas, said that Palestinian fighters were “engaged in these historic moments in a heroic operation” to defend the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and the thousands of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

Israel has built a massive fence along the Gaza border meant to prevent infiltrations. It goes deep underground and is equipped with cameras, high-tech sensors and sensitive listening technology. Israel has maintained a blockade over Gaza since Hamas seized control of the territory in 2007. The bitter enemies have fought four wars since then. There have also been numerous rounds of smaller fighting between Israel and Hamas and other smaller militant groups based in Gaza.

The blockade, which restricts the movement of people and goods in and out of Gaza, has devastated the territory’s economy. Israel says the blockade is needed to keep militant groups from building up their arsenals. The Palestinians say the closure amounts to collective punishment.

The escalation comes after weeks of heightened tensions along Israel’s volatile border with Gaza, and heavy fighting in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Saturday’s wide-ranging assault threatened to undermine Netanyahu’s reputation as a security expert who would do anything to protect Israel. It also raised questions about the cohesion of a security apparatus crucial to the stability of a country locked in low-intensity conflicts on multiple fronts and facing threats from Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah congratulated Hamas on Friday, praising the attack as a response to “Israeli crimes” and saying the militants had “divine backing.” The group said its command in Lebanon was in contact with Hamas about the operation.

 

* * *

The timing of the assault was striking, hitting Israel at one of the lowest moments in its history. It followed months of profound anxiety about the cohesion of Israeli society and the readiness of its military, a crisis set off by the government’s efforts to reduce the power of the judiciary. And the violence came 50 years and a day after the Yom Kippur War of 1973, when Israel was also surprised by a complex Arab attack, leading to huge Israeli losses and soul-searching about the state of the country.

Muhammad Deif, the leader of the military wing of Hamas, the Islamic militant organization that controls Gaza, said in a recorded message that the group had decided to launch an “operation” so that “the enemy will understand that the time of their rampaging without accountability has ended.”

In response to the Hamas attack, the Israeli military said it launched strikes against 17 military compounds and locations connected to Hamas’s leadership in Gaza. The army released videos of strikes on cars, Palestinian militants and other targets. Dozens of air force jet fighters launched the attacks, the Israeli military said.

The Israel Defense Force has 169,000 active-duty troops and 465,000 reservists and remains the Middle East’s most formidable force, supplied with some of the most advanced drones and other weapons from Israel’s technology sector and from the U.S., which provides Israel with $3.8 billion in annual military assistance.

The Israeli military has conducted frequent raids in Palestinian cities and refugee camps, with bloody confrontations ensuing with well-armed militants. The army also flooded southern Israel with ground troops to manage the incursion, it said.

The IDF said it had named the counter offensive against Hamas operation swords of iron.

Meanwhile, as the WSJ details, the declaration of war by Israel against Hamas comes at a time of turmoil in Israeli politics.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has faced a backlash against legislation introduced to limit the power of the Supreme Court. His coalition passed the first part of the law in July, prompting mass protests and raising fears about Israel's national security.

Thousands of military reservists said at the time they would quit as a result of the change to the law, and union leaders and medical professionals threatened mass work stoppages. Military officials have warned that the legislation was undermining unity within the military.

The law takes away the Supreme Court’s ability to nullify government decisions it finds “unreasonable in the extreme”—a concept that lawmakers in Netanyahu’s coalition said was nebulous and allowed liberal judges to overturn the will of an increasingly right-wing electorate.

The effort to overhaul the judiciary has been the governing coalition’s priority since Netanyahu was re-elected last year. Coalition members have said the government plans to move ahead with the next part of the overhaul, which would aim to change the way judges are appointed, after the Israeli parliament, or Knesset, reconvenes in mid-October. The law is being challenged in Israel's Supreme Court.

* * *

Western nations condemned the incursion and reiterated their support for Israel, while others called for restraint on both sides.

“The U.S. unequivocally condemns the unprovoked attacks by Hamas terrorists against Israeli civilians,” said Adrienne Watson, spokeswoman for the U.S. National Security Council. “We stand firmly with the government and people of Israel and extend our condolences for the Israeli lives lost in these attacks.”

Watson said Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, has spoken with his Israeli counterpart, Tzachi Hanegbi.

Saudi Arabia, which has been in talks with the U.S. about normalizing relations with Israel, released a statement calling on both sides to exercise restraint. The kingdom said it had repeatedly warned about “ the dangers of the situation exploding as a result of the continued occupation (and) the Palestinian people being deprived of their legitimate rights.”

* * *

Finally, there is some speculation that Iran may get dragged into what is rapidly emerging as the worst Middle-Eastern crisis in years, with various pro-Israeli hawks claiming that the Hamas attack would have only occurred with explicit Iranian backing. If Israel does indeed attack Iran, as it has hinted it would do for years, may we suggest you fill up your gas tank.

Tyler Durden Sat, 10/07/2023 - 18:35

Read More

Related Topics:
Continue Reading

Government

Are Voters Recoiling Against Disorder?

Are Voters Recoiling Against Disorder?

Authored by Michael Barone via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The headlines coming out of the Super…

Published

7 hours ago

on

March 9, 2024

By

Are Voters Recoiling Against Disorder?

Authored by Michael Barone via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The headlines coming out of the Super Tuesday primaries have got it right. Barring cataclysmic changes, Donald Trump and Joe Biden will be the Republican and Democratic nominees for president in 2024.

(Left) President Joe Biden delivers remarks on canceling student debt at Culver City Julian Dixon Library in Culver City, Calif., on Feb. 21, 2024. (Right) Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump stands on stage during a campaign event at Big League Dreams Las Vegas in Las Vegas, Nev., on Jan. 27, 2024. (Mario Tama/Getty Images; David Becker/Getty Images)

With Nikki Haley’s withdrawal, there will be no more significantly contested primaries or caucuses—the earliest both parties’ races have been over since something like the current primary-dominated system was put in place in 1972.

The primary results have spotlighted some of both nominees’ weaknesses.

Donald Trump lost high-income, high-educated constituencies, including the entire metro area—aka the Swamp. Many but by no means all Haley votes there were cast by Biden Democrats. Mr. Trump can’t afford to lose too many of the others in target states like Pennsylvania and Michigan.

Majorities and large minorities of voters in overwhelmingly Latino counties in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley and some in Houston voted against Joe Biden, and even more against Senate nominee Rep. Colin Allred (D-Texas).

Returns from Hispanic precincts in New Hampshire and Massachusetts show the same thing. Mr. Biden can’t afford to lose too many Latino votes in target states like Arizona and Georgia.

When Mr. Trump rode down that escalator in 2015, commentators assumed he’d repel Latinos. Instead, Latino voters nationally, and especially the closest eyewitnesses of Biden’s open-border policy, have been trending heavily Republican.

High-income liberal Democrats may sport lawn signs proclaiming, “In this house, we believe ... no human is illegal.” The logical consequence of that belief is an open border. But modest-income folks in border counties know that flows of illegal immigrants result in disorder, disease, and crime.

There is plenty of impatience with increased disorder in election returns below the presidential level. Consider Los Angeles County, America’s largest county, with nearly 10 million people, more people than 40 of the 50 states. It voted 71 percent for Mr. Biden in 2020.

Current returns show county District Attorney George Gascon winning only 21 percent of the vote in the nonpartisan primary. He’ll apparently face Republican Nathan Hochman, a critic of his liberal policies, in November.

Gascon, elected after the May 2020 death of counterfeit-passing suspect George Floyd in Minneapolis, is one of many county prosecutors supported by billionaire George Soros. His policies include not charging juveniles as adults, not seeking higher penalties for gang membership or use of firearms, and bringing fewer misdemeanor cases.

The predictable result has been increased car thefts, burglaries, and personal robberies. Some 120 assistant district attorneys have left the office, and there’s a backlog of 10,000 unprosecuted cases.

More than a dozen other Soros-backed and similarly liberal prosecutors have faced strong opposition or have left office.

St. Louis prosecutor Kim Gardner resigned last May amid lawsuits seeking her removal, Milwaukee’s John Chisholm retired in January, and Baltimore’s Marilyn Mosby was defeated in July 2022 and convicted of perjury in September 2023. Last November, Loudoun County, Virginia, voters (62 percent Biden) ousted liberal Buta Biberaj, who declined to prosecute a transgender student for assault, and in June 2022 voters in San Francisco (85 percent Biden) recalled famed radical Chesa Boudin.

Similarly, this Tuesday, voters in San Francisco passed ballot measures strengthening police powers and requiring treatment of drug-addicted welfare recipients.

In retrospect, it appears the Floyd video, appearing after three months of COVID-19 confinement, sparked a frenzied, even crazed reaction, especially among the highly educated and articulate. One fatal incident was seen as proof that America’s “systemic racism” was worse than ever and that police forces should be defunded and perhaps abolished.

2020 was “the year America went crazy,” I wrote in January 2021, a year in which police funding was actually cut by Democrats in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and Denver. A year in which young New York Times (NYT) staffers claimed they were endangered by the publication of Sen. Tom Cotton’s (R-Ark.) opinion article advocating calling in military forces if necessary to stop rioting, as had been done in Detroit in 1967 and Los Angeles in 1992. A craven NYT publisher even fired the editorial page editor for running the article.

Evidence of visible and tangible discontent with increasing violence and its consequences—barren and locked shelves in Manhattan chain drugstores, skyrocketing carjackings in Washington, D.C.—is as unmistakable in polls and election results as it is in daily life in large metropolitan areas. Maybe 2024 will turn out to be the year even liberal America stopped acting crazy.

Chaos and disorder work against incumbents, as they did in 1968 when Democrats saw their party’s popular vote fall from 61 percent to 43 percent.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

Tyler Durden Sat, 03/09/2024 - 23:20

Read More

Continue Reading

Government

Veterans Affairs Kept COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate In Place Without Evidence

Veterans Affairs Kept COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate In Place Without Evidence

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The…

Published

7 hours ago

on

March 9, 2024

By

Veterans Affairs Kept COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate In Place Without Evidence

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) reviewed no data when deciding in 2023 to keep its COVID-19 vaccine mandate in place.

Doses of a COVID-19 vaccine in Washington in a file image. (Jacquelyn Martin/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

VA Secretary Denis McDonough said on May 1, 2023, that the end of many other federal mandates “will not impact current policies at the Department of Veterans Affairs.”

He said the mandate was remaining for VA health care personnel “to ensure the safety of veterans and our colleagues.”

Mr. McDonough did not cite any studies or other data. A VA spokesperson declined to provide any data that was reviewed when deciding not to rescind the mandate. The Epoch Times submitted a Freedom of Information Act for “all documents outlining which data was relied upon when establishing the mandate when deciding to keep the mandate in place.”

The agency searched for such data and did not find any.

“The VA does not even attempt to justify its policies with science, because it can’t,” Leslie Manookian, president and founder of the Health Freedom Defense Fund, told The Epoch Times.

“The VA just trusts that the process and cost of challenging its unfounded policies is so onerous, most people are dissuaded from even trying,” she added.

The VA’s mandate remains in place to this day.

The VA’s website claims that vaccines “help protect you from getting severe illness” and “offer good protection against most COVID-19 variants,” pointing in part to observational data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that estimate the vaccines provide poor protection against symptomatic infection and transient shielding against hospitalization.

There have also been increasing concerns among outside scientists about confirmed side effects like heart inflammation—the VA hid a safety signal it detected for the inflammation—and possible side effects such as tinnitus, which shift the benefit-risk calculus.

President Joe Biden imposed a slate of COVID-19 vaccine mandates in 2021. The VA was the first federal agency to implement a mandate.

President Biden rescinded the mandates in May 2023, citing a drop in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations. His administration maintains the choice to require vaccines was the right one and saved lives.

“Our administration’s vaccination requirements helped ensure the safety of workers in critical workforces including those in the healthcare and education sectors, protecting themselves and the populations they serve, and strengthening their ability to provide services without disruptions to operations,” the White House said.

Some experts said requiring vaccination meant many younger people were forced to get a vaccine despite the risks potentially outweighing the benefits, leaving fewer doses for older adults.

“By mandating the vaccines to younger people and those with natural immunity from having had COVID, older people in the U.S. and other countries did not have access to them, and many people might have died because of that,” Martin Kulldorff, a professor of medicine on leave from Harvard Medical School, told The Epoch Times previously.

The VA was one of just a handful of agencies to keep its mandate in place following the removal of many federal mandates.

“At this time, the vaccine requirement will remain in effect for VA health care personnel, including VA psychologists, pharmacists, social workers, nursing assistants, physical therapists, respiratory therapists, peer specialists, medical support assistants, engineers, housekeepers, and other clinical, administrative, and infrastructure support employees,” Mr. McDonough wrote to VA employees at the time.

“This also includes VA volunteers and contractors. Effectively, this means that any Veterans Health Administration (VHA) employee, volunteer, or contractor who works in VHA facilities, visits VHA facilities, or provides direct care to those we serve will still be subject to the vaccine requirement at this time,” he said. “We continue to monitor and discuss this requirement, and we will provide more information about the vaccination requirements for VA health care employees soon. As always, we will process requests for vaccination exceptions in accordance with applicable laws, regulations, and policies.”

The version of the shots cleared in the fall of 2022, and available through the fall of 2023, did not have any clinical trial data supporting them.

A new version was approved in the fall of 2023 because there were indications that the shots not only offered temporary protection but also that the level of protection was lower than what was observed during earlier stages of the pandemic.

Ms. Manookian, whose group has challenged several of the federal mandates, said that the mandate “illustrates the dangers of the administrative state and how these federal agencies have become a law unto themselves.”

Tyler Durden Sat, 03/09/2024 - 22:10

Read More

Continue Reading

Government

Low Iron Levels In Blood Could Trigger Long COVID: Study

Low Iron Levels In Blood Could Trigger Long COVID: Study

Authored by Amie Dahnke via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

People with inadequate…

Published

18 hours ago

on

March 9, 2024

By

Low Iron Levels In Blood Could Trigger Long COVID: Study

Authored by Amie Dahnke via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

People with inadequate iron levels in their blood due to a COVID-19 infection could be at greater risk of long COVID.

(Shutterstock)

A new study indicates that problems with iron levels in the bloodstream likely trigger chronic inflammation and other conditions associated with the post-COVID phenomenon. The findings, published on March 1 in Nature Immunology, could offer new ways to treat or prevent the condition.

Long COVID Patients Have Low Iron Levels

Researchers at the University of Cambridge pinpointed low iron as a potential link to long-COVID symptoms thanks to a study they initiated shortly after the start of the pandemic. They recruited people who tested positive for the virus to provide blood samples for analysis over a year, which allowed the researchers to look for post-infection changes in the blood. The researchers looked at 214 samples and found that 45 percent of patients reported symptoms of long COVID that lasted between three and 10 months.

In analyzing the blood samples, the research team noticed that people experiencing long COVID had low iron levels, contributing to anemia and low red blood cell production, just two weeks after they were diagnosed with COVID-19. This was true for patients regardless of age, sex, or the initial severity of their infection.

According to one of the study co-authors, the removal of iron from the bloodstream is a natural process and defense mechanism of the body.

But it can jeopardize a person’s recovery.

“When the body has an infection, it responds by removing iron from the bloodstream. This protects us from potentially lethal bacteria that capture the iron in the bloodstream and grow rapidly. It’s an evolutionary response that redistributes iron in the body, and the blood plasma becomes an iron desert,” University of Oxford professor Hal Drakesmith said in a press release. “However, if this goes on for a long time, there is less iron for red blood cells, so oxygen is transported less efficiently affecting metabolism and energy production, and for white blood cells, which need iron to work properly. The protective mechanism ends up becoming a problem.”

The research team believes that consistently low iron levels could explain why individuals with long COVID continue to experience fatigue and difficulty exercising. As such, the researchers suggested iron supplementation to help regulate and prevent the often debilitating symptoms associated with long COVID.

“It isn’t necessarily the case that individuals don’t have enough iron in their body, it’s just that it’s trapped in the wrong place,” Aimee Hanson, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge who worked on the study, said in the press release. “What we need is a way to remobilize the iron and pull it back into the bloodstream, where it becomes more useful to the red blood cells.”

The research team pointed out that iron supplementation isn’t always straightforward. Achieving the right level of iron varies from person to person. Too much iron can cause stomach issues, ranging from constipation, nausea, and abdominal pain to gastritis and gastric lesions.

1 in 5 Still Affected by Long COVID

COVID-19 has affected nearly 40 percent of Americans, with one in five of those still suffering from symptoms of long COVID, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Long COVID is marked by health issues that continue at least four weeks after an individual was initially diagnosed with COVID-19. Symptoms can last for days, weeks, months, or years and may include fatigue, cough or chest pain, headache, brain fog, depression or anxiety, digestive issues, and joint or muscle pain.

Tyler Durden Sat, 03/09/2024 - 12:50

Read More

Continue Reading

Trending