If you are HIV-positive, you’re more likely to also have the viral liver infection hepatitis than people who don’t have HIV. You’re also more likely to get hepatitis in the future. That’s because HIV and the two most serious types of hepatitis can spread the same way, including through sex without a condom or by sharing needles used for drugs.

One out of 10 people with HIV are estimated to also have hepatitis B (HBV). About 1 in 4 HIV-positive people have hepatitis C (HCV). But if you have HIV and also inject drugs, you have a 75% chance of being hepatitis C-positive.

https://www.webmd.com/hiv-aids/hiv-hepatitis-link

In the period from 1978 till 1981, the Centers for Disease Control conducted a hepatitis B vaccine experiment on homosexuals living in New York City, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

HIV/AIDS was first detected among the participants in the CDC hepatitis B vaccine trial and quickly spread throughout the gay community in those cities. A body of evidence, including a detailed statistical analysis of the documented timeline of when HIV infection was detected in the men’s blood and reported to the CDC.

Dissidents who have studied the available published data are convinced that this ill-conceived experiment precipitated the devastating AIDS epidemic in America’s homosexual community.

The gay men in the experiment were injected with a vaccine that had been made using human hepatitis B infected blood which was injected into chimpanzees known to be infected with the cancer-causing simian virus 40 (SV40); the virus that had contaminated the polio vaccine.

Before these CDC experiments, there were no reported cases of HIV or AIDS in America. The AIDS epidemic was officially declared by CDC in 1981, at the conclusion of the experiment.

Yet, in the New England Journal of Medicine published report researchers proclaimed the vaccine “safe and incidence of side effects low,” and claimed a 96% success rate.

https://www.modernghana.com/news/858627/hepatitis-b-vaccine-experiment-on-american-gays.html

SAN FRANCISCO – Automobile airbags use a chemical compound that is so toxic that even small amounts can kill. Yet trucks loaded with hundreds of pounds of sodium azide routinely travel the nation's highways, and discarded airbags sit like environmental time bombs in the nation's auto junkyards, a University of Arizona scientist said today.

Scientists really don't know where or how all this sodium azide will wreak greatest environmental havoc, UA atmospheric scientist Eric A. Betterton said this morning at a national meeting of the American Chemical Society in San Francisco.

He and his undergraduate students for the past few years have been doing laboratory experiments to find out.

Although sodium azide has long been used in many industrial products such as broad-spectrum biocides, explosives detonators, anti-corrosion solutions, and airline safety chutes, a much larger threat emerged with the advent of the automobile airbag, Betterton said.

"As the demand for air bags increases, and as vehicle fleets age over the next few decades, the amount of sodium azide that could potentially be released to the environment will greatly exceed the approximately 5 million kilograms (11 million pounds) that has already been incorporated into inflators in the United States alone," Betterton said. "Given the huge surge in production, there exists a greatly increased potential for significant accidental spills and subsequent human exposure to this material."

https://news.arizona.edu/story/sodium-azide-in-car-airbags-poses-growing-environmental-hazard-ua-scientist-says

>>15240705

>>15240716

https://emergency.cdc.gov/agent/sodiumazide/basics/facts.asp

Bogen said there have been no lab-confirmed cases of omicron in Allegheny County, but it has been detected in the county’s wastewater.

More than 400 people have died in Allegheny County covid-related deaths in the past three months, including 97 in December, county Health Director Dr. Debra Bogen said Wednesday.

Covid-19 case counts remain at a daily average of 600 per day, while “hospitalizations remain high, as do deaths,” Bogen said.

“I don’t see these numbers improving anytime soon,” she said.

In the last quarter of the year, 413 people have died from the virus, including 177 in October, 139 in November and 97 so far in December, Bogen said. Eighteen of those December deaths were in the 30 to 59 age group, and all were unvaccinated.

“These deaths are as tragic as they are unnecessary and premature,” Bogen said.

The grim numbers come as the omicron variant spreads across the country – it is now the dominant variant nationwide – and millions plan to travel and gather during the coming holidays.

Bogen said there have been no lab-confirmed cases of omicron in Allegheny County, but it has been detected in the county’s wastewater.

Not every covid-19 test undergoes sequencing, meaning most samples aren’t broken down by variant. Bogen said it is “just a matter of days” until one of the tests sequenced in Allegheny County is found to be the omicron variant.

In other areas, once omicron has been found in the community, it’s become the predominant strain “very, very quickly,” she said. “We don’t think it will be any different here.”

The mutations and variants, Bogen said, are just “virology in action” and “no one is to blame.”

“Variants are naturally occurring changes in viruses,” she said, pointing to the flu and the need for new flu vaccines each year.

“As long as covid-19 spreads, we can expect new changes and new variants,” she said.

She urged the continued use of masks, which she said can cut transmission of the virus by up to 50%. A new mandate is not on the horizon, she said.

“You don’t need a mask mandate to do the right thing,” she said.

County health officials also announced a change to the format in which county-level covid data will be released. The Pennsylvania Department of Health recently switched to a weekly release of information, and Allegheny County will follow suit.

The daily updates, Bogen said, show spikes and variations but do not offer insight into trends. The new reports, set to be released every Tuesday starting next week, also will include information on breakthrough cases and deaths broken down by vaccination status. The county’s online data dashboard will be updated each business day.

https://triblive.com/local/allegheny-health-director-more-than-400-covid-deaths-since-october/

Poop sleuths?

Scientists have detected traces of omicron in wastewater in Houston, Boulder, Colo., and two cities in Northern California.

It's a signal that indicates the coronavirus variant is present in those cities, and it highlights the useful data produced by wastewater surveillance research as omicron looms.

Gathering this data requires careful collaboration among wastewater facilities, engineers, epidemiologists and labs. Scientists and public health officials say the data derived from samples of feces can help fill in the gaps from other forms of surveillance and help them see the big picture of the coronavirus pandemic, especially as a new variant emerges.

In San Jose, Calif., it all starts in a tunnel under the San José-Santa Clara Regional Wastewater Facility, which processes sewage from about 1.4 million people and 22,000 businesses.

Chances are that in many parts of Silicon Valley, what goes down the toilet ends up at this large plant at the south end of the San Francisco Bay.

"Every time you flush, think of us," said Deputy Director Amit Mutsuddy as he gave a tour and cursed the seagulls that feed on the fat floating on top of raw sewage settling in long tanks.

Staff members here retrieve samples daily as part of their regular lab work. They send additional test tubes by courier to get tested for the coronavirus at an outside lab that partners with Stanford University and the Sewer Coronavirus Alert Network (SCAN).

The SCAN project tests wastewater from plants around Northern California. It's only one of many on the hunt for the coronavirus, including omicron, in wastewater across the U.S. and around the world.

If there are strands of omicron RNA in that gunk, researchers can identify omicron at concentrations as small as one or two infections out of 100,000 people.

"As you can imagine, thousands of different kinds of diseases exist in the sewer. We work with them safely," Mutsuddy said. "It has not been anything new for us. It's just another coronavirus."

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/12/09/1062493635/testing-omicron-in-sewage?ft=nprml&f=1062493635