Pasta News Network - New Zealand

Former NPDC chief executive Craig Stevenson had a remuneration package of $406,490 for the 2021/2022 financial year, while New Plymouth mayor Neil Holdom was on $147,413.

In comparison, the chief executive of the Christchurch City Council earned more than $500,000 and the boss of the Auckland City Council had a remuneration package in excess of $600,000.

Via RNZ on 2022/12/18:

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is paid $471,049 a year and the deputy prime minister gets $334,734, while the leader of the opposition is on $296,007.

Awkward.

Respected Māori cultural adviser and community advocate Rangi McLean - who last year had his own issues with a German artist who used his image without permission - said it was a big positive for Aotearoa for Bezos to take a Māori name for his boat.

“I believe Bezos has taken on our way of life and is taking on board all those aspects. From what I have read, he understands what the koru means and stands for.”

Two Things:

• Did anyone ask Bezos if this is fact?
• Did it cost him anything? Since all the usual gatekeepers are awfully enthousiastic.

Some 5,000-plus soldiers from the Swiss army are deployed to welcome attendees to the luxury ski resort and protect participants from any harassment, protests or dissenting voices.

In a statement released Friday, January 6th, the Swiss Defense Department (VBS) said the Federal Assembly, the country’s parliament, had approved the deployment of the mass Swiss army contingent, the Swiss German-language newspaper Blick reports.

Anti-WEF protests are reportedly expected to take place all next week after the conference opening on Monday.

One way to keep "opinions" out of the room.

One way to keep un-elected decision makers un-accountable.

In response to the U.S. government’s weaponization of the dollar through such measures as sanctions and trade wars, China, along with Russia and other nations, are making efforts to dethrone the dollar as the world’s international reserve currency. For example, Russia and China are now using the Chinese yuan, rather than the dollar, for payment for Russian oil. Saudi Arabia is now talking about doing the same thing.

One of the interesting aspects of this process involves gold. According to an article at Forexlive, China has purchased 62 tons of gold in the last two months. China’s gold reserves now total 2,010 tons.

There is sound money and then there's currency. Russia and China know what's up.

Potatoes New Zealand chief executive Chris Claridge told NewstalkZB in a live interview that “potatoes aren’t particularly good swimmers and don’t like being submerged in water for long periods.” Claridge said access to the fields to harvest the crops is also hampered in the wet weather.

Gerhard Uys reports for Stuff.co.nz that record amounts of rainfall before Christmas are expected to lead to an early season potato shortage and higher prices.

What a great name for a factual website, that alone makes it worth a link.

The scientific publication from Corman et al., with Christian Drosten as the corresponding author, set out principles concerning the PCR testing procedure and is therefore considered critically. An international consortium of experts & scientists have critically analysed this mentioned publication and have found several serious flaws. These flaws, however, are mainly but not entirely of contentual nature. Unfortunately, until now, 30 months later, the Journal and the involved authors failed to come up with counterarguments and explanations. In addition to substantive and conceptual weaknesses, what worries me the most is how fundamental scientific principles have been compromised by the Journal “Eurosurveillance”.

The one paper that made PCR testing the "gold standard" for detecting Covid was approved within days in a process that normally takes months.

Every peer-review process leads to anonymous review reports. When demanding Eurosurveillance to at least release these reports, they said they could not do so due to privacy concerns. However, all peer-review reports are anonymous, so they lied there – most likely to cover up scientific fraud.

And no questions must be asked about it.

As a physician who cares for people with Alzheimer’s disease, Thambisetty spoke about the harms of the drug. “These patients can experience headaches, falls, confusion, vision disturbances and it’s unclear if patients will be able to see obvious benefits on a day-to-day basis,” he said.

The data showed an increased risk of brain bleeds and swelling, i.e. amyloid-related imaging abnormalities (ARIA) occurred in 126 (14.0%) of subjects in the lecanemab group and only 69 (7.7%) of subjects in the placebo group.

This prompted the FDA to include a warning on the drug about the risk of swelling and bleeding in the brain.

Researching a compound properly takes time. An "accelerated approval process" is a bad idea.

There is no substitute for time.

From 2019:

Question:Is the use of N95 respirators or medical masks more effective in preventing influenza infection among outpatient health care personnel in close contact with patients with suspected respiratory illness?

Findings:In this pragmatic, cluster randomized clinical trial involving 2862 health care personnel, there was no significant difference in the incidence of laboratory-confirmed influenza among health care personnel with the use of N95 respirators (8.2%) vs medical masks (7.2%).

Meaning:As worn by health care personnel in this trial, use of N95 respirators, compared with medical masks, in the outpatient setting resulted in no significant difference in the rates of laboratory-confirmed influenza.

Conclusions and Relevance:Among outpatient health care personnel, N95 respirators vs medical masks as worn by participants in this trial resulted in no significant difference in the incidence of laboratory-confirmed influenza.

Influenza and Covid share similar rules in regards to their particle size if I remember correctly, so make of this what you will.

Realistically to avoid both you need a P100 mask / ventilator.

From 2020:

Results: The workflow reliably detects 2019-nCoV, and further discriminates 2019-nCoV from SARS-CoV. Through coordination between academic and public laboratories, we confirmed assay exclusivity based on 297 original clinical specimens containing a full spectrum of human respiratory viruses. Control material is made available through European Virus Archive – Global (EVAg), a European Union infrastructure project.

Conclusion: The present study demonstrates the enormous response capacity achieved through coordination of academic and public laboratories in national and European research networks.

Consensus, based on copy shown on various lab websites, appears to be that a normal PCR process is anywhere from 20 - 30 cycles. Going past 35 risks false positives. The workflow recommends a PCR process with 45 cycles.

If you want a casedemic, this is one way to do it.

From 2011:

Fibrin is the main structural component of the thrombus. The conversion of fibrinogen to fibrin by thrombin leads to one of the most remarkable processes in biology in which fibrin spontaneously forms a gel by producing fibers that grow longitudinally as well as laterally, with branch points forming and interconnecting the fibers leading to the formation of a 3-dimensional network that binds platelets and traps other blood cells. Even after the gel point, the architecture of the fibrin network can change quite dramatically.

Something to keep in mind as some papers have discussed how spike protein may dis-regulate fibrin behaviour as well as causing damage to the endothelium.