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The Sky Is Not Falling: Why The Bitcoin Price Doesn’t Matter

The Sky Is Not Falling: Why The Bitcoin Price Doesn’t Matter

Authored by Nico Antuna Cooper via BitcoinMagazine.com,

The recent bitcoin price…

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The Sky Is Not Falling: Why The Bitcoin Price Doesn't Matter

Authored by Nico Antuna Cooper via BitcoinMagazine.com,

The recent bitcoin price action demonstrates that it’s time for a more grown-up culture of building, development and adoption around Bitcoin.

“Bear markets are the best time to be alive and in the sector. It’s depressing for those that don’t know what they’re doing, it’s awesome for those that have a longer-term view.”

– Simon Dixon

The difference between Bitcoin and everything else is that the price of bitcoin doesn’t matter. Over the long term the price of bitcoin has gone up, yes, but the value proposition of bitcoin as hard, non-confiscatable and truly decentralized money is really what matters. Not the price hype and not the pump. This is why traders and speculators have lost interest in Bitcoin, and continue to flock to the newest pumping decentralized finance (DeFi) or non-fungible token (NFT) project at the drop of a hat. This loss of interest from the speculators is viewed by many as a negative development for Bitcoin, but it is actually a very positive one. What we are seeing now represented in the lower bitcoin price is the value of its actual functional utility and the absence of retail speculation capital that was there before. This article will describe why that’s a good thing.

Since its inception, misguided analysts have described Bitcoin as a Ponzi scheme dependent on continued artificial speculation pumping into the space. As anybody with experience can tell you, speculators are shiny-object chasers by nature and pull out of any position the minute something shinier comes along. Well, the bitcoin “bear market” has arrived and all the speculators are gone. They got bored and took their toys home with them. Even with them gone, bitcoin is still valued at far higher than its 2020 and 2021 lows and is increasing adoption on an institutional (and sovereign) level. This adoption represents real value.

The stock market sugar rush caused by Federal Reserve Board money printing and negative real interest rates is ending, and the roller coaster is now going down from the top. This has had an impact not only on bitcoin, but on the stock market and the other altcoins as well. Put simply, everything is going down and after the chaos subsides we will see what assets, stocks and projects actually offer tangible, objective value. That’s what investment was always supposed to be about. Despite the confused dichotomy between “growth stocks” and “value stocks,” investing is by definition supposed to be about your long-term belief in the value of something, not in its short-term growth projections. Retail investors have struggled to comprehend this because of the get-rich-quick, everyone’s-a-genius market culture of the past few years. Indeed, if an asset like bitcoin isn’t constantly appreciating on a double- or triple-digit basis, then it’s a “failing” asset to these people. The market is on its head. As a result, the meme-stock crowd is out of bitcoin now, just like they are out of the stock market as a whole. Turns out the memers had paper hands all along.

This article by Bloomberg, titled “Day Trader Army Loses All The Money It Made In Meme-Stock Era,” details how many of the new traders that entered the space have “never seen a market that wasn’t supported by the Fed.” Retail traders lost all the gains they made in the Dogecoin, AMC and GameStop rallies, and are exactly back at square one.

Source: Morgan Stanley, Bloomberg

The entire market is falling right now and we need to rethink what a “good investment” is. Like the above chart from Morgan Stanley shows, the overall movements of retail trading have canceled out to zero since January 2020 despite their temporarily outsized gains in 2021. If we compare today’s bitcoin price to the January 2020 price, we still see a gain of 331% for bitcoin, outdoing the S&P 500’s return by a large margin and beating the overall retail trading profit of absolutely nothing by a margin of infinity. Do we need any more proof that HODLing is a superior strategy?

Source: Coindesk. January 1, 2020, BTC price: $7,175.50. May 9, 2022, BTC price: $30,943

Yes, bitcoin is down from its all-time high by half, but factoring in the incredible market distortions caused by unprecedented money printing, memestock manipulations and post-COVID-19 interest rates since early 2020, bitcoin still blows anything else out of the water. We just need to zoom out to a more “honest” market window in order to see this. Everybody is acting like the sky is falling, but again, that is only because most retail investors only entered the market in 2020 or 2021 and have never seen a market that wasn’t supported by the Fed.

There is a culture in the Bitcoin community these days of “low (i.e., long-term) time preference,” which fundamentally counters the Ponzi scheme-minded speculators that need quick gains all of the time. High (short-term) time preference fuels the perpetual “passive income” lie that newbies always fall for. In contrast, the “modest” two-year gain of 331% in bitcoin is more than enough for HODLers that have been buying since before the feeding frenzy of the past two years. Long-term time preference works for bitcoin because its fundamental value proposition has held true since its inception, and it will continue to hold true in the future for those who wait. Those who cannot wait are washed out by the market over a long enough time period in any market, just like we have seen with the 0% net gain for novice retail traders that pull in and out too much. The gains caused by hype, stimulus and cultural madness were fleeting, but the gains in Bitcoin utility and adoption have been real all along.

Detractors have been criticizing Bitcoin for needing meme-stock speculators to make it work, but now that the meme-stock speculators are gone, the detractors are criticizing Bitcoin for the speculators not being there. This is simply illogical, and proof that Bitcoin is not actually a Ponzi scheme. The same can not be said for other cryptocurrencies. Ponzi schemes by definition cannot exist for decades and the honesty in current bitcoin price attests to the honesty of its fundamental value proposition. Yes, it goes down sometimes. This is an indicator of health and transparency. Something that just goes up and up and up forever? That’s a Ponzi scheme and the bottom will always fall out eventually.

No one’s singing “Pump It Up” anymore, and despite how fun and euphoric the 2021 rally was for a while, the space is really better off without the memers around. It’s time for a more grown-up culture of development and adoption around Bitcoin, and time for a more grown-up price conversation as well.

Tyler Durden Wed, 05/11/2022 - 19:40

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Fauci Deputy Warned Him Against Vaccine Mandates: Email

Fauci Deputy Warned Him Against Vaccine Mandates: Email

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

Mandating COVID-19…

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Fauci Deputy Warned Him Against Vaccine Mandates: Email

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

Mandating COVID-19 vaccination was a mistake due to ethical and other concerns, a top government doctor warned Dr. Anthony Fauci after Dr. Fauci promoted mass vaccination.

Coercing or forcing people to take a vaccine can have negative consequences from a biological, sociological, psychological, economical, and ethical standpoint and is not worth the cost even if the vaccine is 100% safe,” Dr. Matthew Memoli, director of the Laboratory of Infectious Diseases clinical studies unit at the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), told Dr. Fauci in an email.

“A more prudent approach that considers these issues would be to focus our efforts on those at high risk of severe disease and death, such as the elderly and obese, and do not push vaccination on the young and healthy any further.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci, ex-director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID. in Washington on Jan. 8, 2024. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

Employing that strategy would help prevent loss of public trust and political capital, Dr. Memoli said.

The email was sent on July 30, 2021, after Dr. Fauci, director of the NIAID, claimed that communities would be safer if more people received one of the COVID-19 vaccines and that mass vaccination would lead to the end of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We’re on a really good track now to really crush this outbreak, and the more people we get vaccinated, the more assuredness that we’re going to have that we’re going to be able to do that,” Dr. Fauci said on CNN the month prior.

Dr. Memoli, who has studied influenza vaccination for years, disagreed, telling Dr. Fauci that research in the field has indicated yearly shots sometimes drive the evolution of influenza.

Vaccinating people who have not been infected with COVID-19, he said, could potentially impact the evolution of the virus that causes COVID-19 in unexpected ways.

“At best what we are doing with mandated mass vaccination does nothing and the variants emerge evading immunity anyway as they would have without the vaccine,” Dr. Memoli wrote. “At worst it drives evolution of the virus in a way that is different from nature and possibly detrimental, prolonging the pandemic or causing more morbidity and mortality than it should.”

The vaccination strategy was flawed because it relied on a single antigen, introducing immunity that only lasted for a certain period of time, Dr. Memoli said. When the immunity weakened, the virus was given an opportunity to evolve.

Some other experts, including virologist Geert Vanden Bossche, have offered similar views. Others in the scientific community, such as U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scientists, say vaccination prevents virus evolution, though the agency has acknowledged it doesn’t have records supporting its position.

Other Messages

Dr. Memoli sent the email to Dr. Fauci and two other top NIAID officials, Drs. Hugh Auchincloss and Clifford Lane. The message was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, though the publication did not publish the message. The Epoch Times obtained the email and 199 other pages of Dr. Memoli’s emails through a Freedom of Information Act request. There were no indications that Dr. Fauci ever responded to Dr. Memoli.

Later in 2021, the NIAID’s parent agency, the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), and all other federal government agencies began requiring COVID-19 vaccination, under direction from President Joe Biden.

In other messages, Dr. Memoli said the mandates were unethical and that he was hopeful legal cases brought against the mandates would ultimately let people “make their own healthcare decisions.”

“I am certainly doing everything in my power to influence that,” he wrote on Nov. 2, 2021, to an unknown recipient. Dr. Memoli also disclosed that both he and his wife had applied for exemptions from the mandates imposed by the NIH and his wife’s employer. While her request had been granted, his had not as of yet, Dr. Memoli said. It’s not clear if it ever was.

According to Dr. Memoli, officials had not gone over the bioethics of the mandates. He wrote to the NIH’s Department of Bioethics, pointing out that the protection from the vaccines waned over time, that the shots can cause serious health issues such as myocarditis, or heart inflammation, and that vaccinated people were just as likely to spread COVID-19 as unvaccinated people.

He cited multiple studies in his emails, including one that found a resurgence of COVID-19 cases in a California health care system despite a high rate of vaccination and another that showed transmission rates were similar among the vaccinated and unvaccinated.

Dr. Memoli said he was “particularly interested in the bioethics of a mandate when the vaccine doesn’t have the ability to stop spread of the disease, which is the purpose of the mandate.”

The message led to Dr. Memoli speaking during an NIH event in December 2021, several weeks after he went public with his concerns about mandating vaccines.

“Vaccine mandates should be rare and considered only with a strong justification,” Dr. Memoli said in the debate. He suggested that the justification was not there for COVID-19 vaccines, given their fleeting effectiveness.

Julie Ledgerwood, another NIAID official who also spoke at the event, said that the vaccines were highly effective and that the side effects that had been detected were not significant. She did acknowledge that vaccinated people needed boosters after a period of time.

The NIH, and many other government agencies, removed their mandates in 2023 with the end of the COVID-19 public health emergency.

A request for comment from Dr. Fauci was not returned. Dr. Memoli told The Epoch Times in an email he was “happy to answer any questions you have” but that he needed clearance from the NIAID’s media office. That office then refused to give clearance.

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of health policy at Stanford University, said that Dr. Memoli showed bravery when he warned Dr. Fauci against mandates.

“Those mandates have done more to demolish public trust in public health than any single action by public health officials in my professional career, including diminishing public trust in all vaccines.” Dr. Bhattacharya, a frequent critic of the U.S. response to COVID-19, told The Epoch Times via email. “It was risky for Dr. Memoli to speak publicly since he works at the NIH, and the culture of the NIH punishes those who cross powerful scientific bureaucrats like Dr. Fauci or his former boss, Dr. Francis Collins.”

Tyler Durden Mon, 03/11/2024 - 17:40

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Trump “Clearly Hasn’t Learned From His COVID-Era Mistakes”, RFK Jr. Says

Trump "Clearly Hasn’t Learned From His COVID-Era Mistakes", RFK Jr. Says

Authored by Jeff Louderback via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

President…

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Trump "Clearly Hasn't Learned From His COVID-Era Mistakes", RFK Jr. Says

Authored by Jeff Louderback via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

President Joe Biden claimed that COVID vaccines are now helping cancer patients during his State of the Union address on March 7, but it was a response on Truth Social from former President Donald Trump that drew the ire of independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. holds a voter rally in Grand Rapids, Mich., on Feb. 10, 2024. (Mitch Ranger for The Epoch Times)

During the address, President Biden said: “The pandemic no longer controls our lives. The vaccines that saved us from COVID are now being used to help beat cancer, turning setback into comeback. That’s what America does.”

President Trump wrote: “The Pandemic no longer controls our lives. The VACCINES that saved us from COVID are now being used to help beat cancer—turning setback into comeback. YOU’RE WELCOME JOE. NINE-MONTH APPROVAL TIME VS. 12 YEARS THAT IT WOULD HAVE TAKEN YOU.”

An outspoken critic of President Trump’s COVID response, and the Operation Warp Speed program that escalated the availability of COVID vaccines, Mr. Kennedy said on X, formerly known as Twitter, that “Donald Trump clearly hasn’t learned from his COVID-era mistakes.”

“He fails to recognize how ineffective his warp speed vaccine is as the ninth shot is being recommended to seniors. Even more troubling is the documented harm being caused by the shot to so many innocent children and adults who are suffering myocarditis, pericarditis, and brain inflammation,” Mr. Kennedy remarked.

“This has been confirmed by a CDC-funded study of 99 million people. Instead of bragging about its speedy approval, we should be honestly and transparently debating the abundant evidence that this vaccine may have caused more harm than good.

“I look forward to debating both Trump and Biden on Sept. 16 in San Marcos, Texas.”

Mr. Kennedy announced in April 2023 that he would challenge President Biden for the 2024 Democratic Party presidential nomination before declaring his run as an independent last October, claiming that the Democrat National Committee was “rigging the primary.”

Since the early stages of his campaign, Mr. Kennedy has generated more support than pundits expected from conservatives, moderates, and independents resulting in speculation that he could take votes away from President Trump.

Many Republicans continue to seek a reckoning over the government-imposed pandemic lockdowns and vaccine mandates.

President Trump’s defense of Operation Warp Speed, the program he rolled out in May 2020 to spur the development and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines amid the pandemic, remains a sticking point for some of his supporters.

Vice President Mike Pence (L) and President Donald Trump deliver an update on Operation Warp Speed in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington on Nov. 13, 2020. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

Operation Warp Speed featured a partnership between the government, the military, and the private sector, with the government paying for millions of vaccine doses to be produced.

President Trump released a statement in March 2021 saying: “I hope everyone remembers when they’re getting the COVID-19 Vaccine, that if I wasn’t President, you wouldn’t be getting that beautiful ‘shot’ for 5 years, at best, and probably wouldn’t be getting it at all. I hope everyone remembers!”

President Trump said about the COVID-19 vaccine in an interview on Fox News in March 2021: “It works incredibly well. Ninety-five percent, maybe even more than that. I would recommend it, and I would recommend it to a lot of people that don’t want to get it and a lot of those people voted for me, frankly.

“But again, we have our freedoms and we have to live by that and I agree with that also. But it’s a great vaccine, it’s a safe vaccine, and it’s something that works.”

On many occasions, President Trump has said that he is not in favor of vaccine mandates.

An environmental attorney, Mr. Kennedy founded Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit that aims to end childhood health epidemics by promoting vaccine safeguards, among other initiatives.

Last year, Mr. Kennedy told podcaster Joe Rogan that ivermectin was suppressed by the FDA so that the COVID-19 vaccines could be granted emergency use authorization.

He has criticized Big Pharma, vaccine safety, and government mandates for years.

Since launching his presidential campaign, Mr. Kennedy has made his stances on the COVID-19 vaccines, and vaccines in general, a frequent talking point.

“I would argue that the science is very clear right now that they [vaccines] caused a lot more problems than they averted,” Mr. Kennedy said on Piers Morgan Uncensored last April.

“And if you look at the countries that did not vaccinate, they had the lowest death rates, they had the lowest COVID and infection rates.”

Additional data show a “direct correlation” between excess deaths and high vaccination rates in developed countries, he said.

President Trump and Mr. Kennedy have similar views on topics like protecting the U.S.-Mexico border and ending the Russia-Ukraine war.

COVID-19 is the topic where Mr. Kennedy and President Trump seem to differ the most.

Former President Donald Trump intended to “drain the swamp” when he took office in 2017, but he was “intimidated by bureaucrats” at federal agencies and did not accomplish that objective, Mr. Kennedy said on Feb. 5.

Speaking at a voter rally in Tucson, where he collected signatures to get on the Arizona ballot, the independent presidential candidate said President Trump was “earnest” when he vowed to “drain the swamp,” but it was “business as usual” during his term.

John Bolton, who President Trump appointed as a national security adviser, is “the template for a swamp creature,” Mr. Kennedy said.

Scott Gottlieb, who President Trump named to run the FDA, “was Pfizer’s business partner” and eventually returned to Pfizer, Mr. Kennedy said.

Mr. Kennedy said that President Trump had more lobbyists running federal agencies than any president in U.S. history.

“You can’t reform them when you’ve got the swamp creatures running them, and I’m not going to do that. I’m going to do something different,” Mr. Kennedy said.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, President Trump “did not ask the questions that he should have,” he believes.

President Trump “knew that lockdowns were wrong” and then “agreed to lockdowns,” Mr. Kennedy said.

He also “knew that hydroxychloroquine worked, he said it,” Mr. Kennedy explained, adding that he was eventually “rolled over” by Dr. Anthony Fauci and his advisers.

President Donald Trump greets the crowd before he leaves at the Operation Warp Speed Vaccine Summit in Washington on Dec. 8, 2020. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

MaryJo Perry, a longtime advocate for vaccine choice and a Trump supporter, thinks votes will be at a premium come Election Day, particularly because the independent and third-party field is becoming more competitive.

Ms. Perry, president of Mississippi Parents for Vaccine Rights, believes advocates for medical freedom could determine who is ultimately president.

She believes that Mr. Kennedy is “pulling votes from Trump” because of the former president’s stance on the vaccines.

“People care about medical freedom. It’s an important issue here in Mississippi, and across the country,” Ms. Perry told The Epoch Times.

“Trump should admit he was wrong about Operation Warp Speed and that COVID vaccines have been dangerous. That would make a difference among people he has offended.”

President Trump won’t lose enough votes to Mr. Kennedy about Operation Warp Speed and COVID vaccines to have a significant impact on the election, Ohio Republican strategist Wes Farno told The Epoch Times.

President Trump won in Ohio by eight percentage points in both 2016 and 2020. The Ohio Republican Party endorsed President Trump for the nomination in 2024.

“The positives of a Trump presidency far outweigh the negatives,” Mr. Farno said. “People are more concerned about their wallet and the economy.

“They are asking themselves if they were better off during President Trump’s term compared to since President Biden took office. The answer to that question is obvious because many Americans are struggling to afford groceries, gas, mortgages, and rent payments.

“America needs President Trump.”

Multiple national polls back Mr. Farno’s view.

As of March 6, the RealClearPolitics average of polls indicates that President Trump has 41.8 percent support in a five-way race that includes President Biden (38.4 percent), Mr. Kennedy (12.7 percent), independent Cornel West (2.6 percent), and Green Party nominee Jill Stein (1.7 percent).

A Pew Research Center study conducted among 10,133 U.S. adults from Feb. 7 to Feb. 11 showed that Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents (42 percent) are more likely than Republicans and GOP-leaning independents (15 percent) to say they have received an updated COVID vaccine.

The poll also reported that just 28 percent of adults say they have received the updated COVID inoculation.

The peer-reviewed multinational study of more than 99 million vaccinated people that Mr. Kennedy referenced in his X post on March 7 was published in the Vaccine journal on Feb. 12.

It aimed to evaluate the risk of 13 adverse events of special interest (AESI) following COVID-19 vaccination. The AESIs spanned three categories—neurological, hematologic (blood), and cardiovascular.

The study reviewed data collected from more than 99 million vaccinated people from eight nations—Argentina, Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, New Zealand, and Scotland—looking at risks up to 42 days after getting the shots.

Three vaccines—Pfizer and Moderna’s mRNA vaccines as well as AstraZeneca’s viral vector jab—were examined in the study.

Researchers found higher-than-expected cases that they deemed met the threshold to be potential safety signals for multiple AESIs, including for Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS), cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST), myocarditis, and pericarditis.

A safety signal refers to information that could suggest a potential risk or harm that may be associated with a medical product.

The study identified higher incidences of neurological, cardiovascular, and blood disorder complications than what the researchers expected.

President Trump’s role in Operation Warp Speed, and his continued praise of the COVID vaccine, remains a concern for some voters, including those who still support him.

Krista Cobb is a 40-year-old mother in western Ohio. She voted for President Trump in 2020 and said she would cast her vote for him this November, but she was stunned when she saw his response to President Biden about the COVID-19 vaccine during the State of the Union address.

I love President Trump and support his policies, but at this point, he has to know they [advisers and health officials] lied about the shot,” Ms. Cobb told The Epoch Times.

“If he continues to promote it, especially after all of the hearings they’ve had about it in Congress, the side effects, and cover-ups on Capitol Hill, at what point does he become the same as the people who have lied?” Ms. Cobb added.

“I think he should distance himself from talk about Operation Warp Speed and even admit that he was wrong—that the vaccines have not had the impact he was told they would have. If he did that, people would respect him even more.”

Tyler Durden Mon, 03/11/2024 - 17:00

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Aging at AACR Annual Meeting 2024

BUFFALO, NY- March 11, 2024 – Impact Journals publishes scholarly journals in the biomedical sciences with a focus on all areas of cancer and aging…

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BUFFALO, NY- March 11, 2024 – Impact Journals publishes scholarly journals in the biomedical sciences with a focus on all areas of cancer and aging research. Aging is one of the most prominent journals published by Impact Journals

Credit: Impact Journals

BUFFALO, NY- March 11, 2024 – Impact Journals publishes scholarly journals in the biomedical sciences with a focus on all areas of cancer and aging research. Aging is one of the most prominent journals published by Impact Journals

Impact Journals will be participating as an exhibitor at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2024 from April 5-10 at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, California. This year, the AACR meeting theme is “Inspiring Science • Fueling Progress • Revolutionizing Care.”

Visit booth #4159 at the AACR Annual Meeting 2024 to connect with members of the Aging team.

About Aging-US:

Aging publishes research papers in all fields of aging research including but not limited, aging from yeast to mammals, cellular senescence, age-related diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer’s diseases and their prevention and treatment, anti-aging strategies and drug development and especially the role of signal transduction pathways such as mTOR in aging and potential approaches to modulate these signaling pathways to extend lifespan. The journal aims to promote treatment of age-related diseases by slowing down aging, validation of anti-aging drugs by treating age-related diseases, prevention of cancer by inhibiting aging. Cancer and COVID-19 are age-related diseases.

Aging is indexed and archived by PubMed/Medline (abbreviated as “Aging (Albany NY)”), PubMed CentralWeb of Science: Science Citation Index Expanded (abbreviated as “Aging‐US” and listed in the Cell Biology and Geriatrics & Gerontology categories), Scopus (abbreviated as “Aging” and listed in the Cell Biology and Aging categories), Biological Abstracts, BIOSIS Previews, EMBASE, META (Chan Zuckerberg Initiative) (2018-2022), and Dimensions (Digital Science).

Please visit our website at www.Aging-US.com​​ and connect with us:

  • Aging X
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  • Aging YouTube
  • Aging LinkedIn
  • Aging SoundCloud
  • Aging Pinterest
  • Aging Reddit

Click here to subscribe to Aging publication updates.

For media inquiries, please contact media@impactjournals.com.


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