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Are your groceries dangerous? Facts from a Food Microbiologist

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Don Schaffner is a professor of food microbiology at Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences.  He hosts two podcasts called Food Safety Talk and Risky or Not?  Here he refutes a widely seen video which urges everyone to go to great lengths to wash their groceries.

 

Unless you are living under a rock or have already perished from COVID-19, you’ve likely seen a YouTube video making the rounds where a medical doctor (wearing scrubs!) purports to give COVID-19 advice.

I’m not going link to the video, because if you haven’t seen it, consider yourself lucky. First of all, scrubs? Aren’t those meant for being around sick people? Why would you wear something like that in your house. It seems very irresponsible.

I’m a food microbiologist. Would you like me to give you advice on how to care for your sick kids? I don’t think so. Don’t take food safety or microbiology advice from MDs that don’t understand food, science or very much about microbiology.

There are a few things that he gets right, but I’m not going to focus on those. I’m going to spend my time here focusing on the things that he gets partly or completely wrong.

He completely misrepresented the 17 days figure from CDC. This was based on finding viral RNA, not infectious viral particles. The CDC report also does not give the methods used but cites personal communication… impossible to peer review.

Should I keep my groceries in the garage or on the porch for 3 days? This is patently ridiculous. Are you really going to keep your milk, your ice cream, your deli meats outside for three days?

This also has very important food safety implications. This sounds like a recipe for disaster, or at the very least spoiled food.

There is a tiny nugget of truth in this advice, because we know that the virus is slowly inactivated at room temperature, with a half-life of about eight hours.

But this advice presumes that all groceries are contaminated, and the simply touching the groceries will make you sick, neither of which are true.

Do I really need to disinfect all of the individual boxes & baggies everything came in? I also think that this is also advice that does not make scientific sense.

If you are concerned about the outside of food packages being contaminated, I suggest that you wash your hands and or sanitize your hands before you sit down to eat any food that you might’ve taken out of those containers.

And guess what, washing your hands before you eat is a best practice even when we’re not in a pandemic!

Do I really need to scrub all your fruits and veggies with soap before eating? This is the worst advice being given by this irresponsible MD. Soap should *absolutely* not be used to wash food. See my earlier comments: https://twitter.com/bugcounter/status/1242956925525995521…

Soap is not designed for food. As mentioned in the linked thread, soap can cause nausea, vomiting and diarrhea if ingested. Current recommendations by scientific experts including the FDA, say to wash fresh fruits and vegetables in cold water.

 

He also seems to have a belief that I find surprisingly common (including among food safety professionals). That is the belief that I referred to as “handwashing is magic”.

Hand washing is not magic, nor does it “sterilize” your hands as claimed in the video. The only way to sterilize your hands would be to plunge them into boiling water, which I don’t recommend for obvious reasons.

We’ve done research on handwashing in my lab. You can count on a hand wash (depending upon your technique), to likely give you somewhere between a 90 a 99% reduction in transient microorganisms on your hands.

A microbiologist would call this a 1-2 logarithm reduction. Let’s contrast that with the sterilization process used for canned foods. That would give you a 99.9999999999 percent reduction. In case you’re counting, there’s 12 nines in that number.

Is washing your hands good? Of course it is. Is it going to sterilize your hands? Absolutely not. But it is a good risk reduction technique. As is the use of hand sanitizer. So do both of those things.

If your hands are getting dry from too much handwashing, be sure to use some moisturizer.

Also re: washing produce, people may wonder about “veggie wash” products. Many of these have not been evaluated for their effect on bacteria and none have been evaluated for their affect on SARS-CoV-2, the causative agent for COVID-19.

Many of veggie washes are likely no more effective than water. On the other hand, if it makes you feel better, and you don’t mind throwing money to the veggie wash company, I say go for it.

Some people are also asking about vinegar for washing fresh produce. Again the research says it’s not much better than plain water. Save the vinegar for oil and vinegar dressing on your salad.

Are reusable bags risky? Many people use reusable bags as a responsible choice. We do this in my family as well. It’s a best practice (even before the times of pandemic) to wash your reusable bags on a regular basis.

While it is theoretically possible that a reusable bag may pick up germs, including coronavirus while in the grocery store, the biggest threat that anyone faces is someone else in the store who has COVID-19.

I would suggest that you keep your grocery bags in the car, so you have them handy the next time you go shopping. If you’re concerned that your bags might have coronavirus on them you can wash them.

You should also wash your hands after you have finished putting all your groceries away. This was also a good advice even before pandemic.

But Dr. Don, what I can do to reduce risk when grocery shopping? Many grocery stores are offering hand sanitizers at the entrance, and are offering to sanitize grocery carts. Both great ideas, and customers should take advantage if available.

My other advice is to make a list, and know what you want, and move quickly and efficiently through the store picking out the items on your list. Practice appropriate social distancing, trying your best to keep 6 feet away from other shoppers.

If there is hand sanitizer available, I also use it when I’m exiting the store, and then I’ll use it again at home once I finished putting all my groceries away and returning my reusable shopping bags to the car.

I’m going to ask you to share this tweet thread. As the video MD said it’s not about popularity. In my case it’s about combating harmful misinformation that overestimates risk, or recommends risky practices to mitigate an already very small risk.

This has been Dr. Don… now signing off. Remember as always, stay home if you can, wash your hands and use hand sanitizer, and take care of those who need it most.

PS, thank to everyone for the Twitter/Facebook love. I’ll do my best to answer questions you have, but right now my days are filled with talking with reporters, and trying to achieve a one log reduction on the concentration of email messages in my inbox.

Keep an eye out for the kids!

After 15 years as a TV reporter with Global and CBC and as news director of RDTV in Red Deer, Duane set out on his own 2008 as a visual storyteller. During this period, he became fascinated with a burgeoning online world and how it could better serve local communities. This fascination led to Todayville, launched in 2016.

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COVID-19

New film ‘Epidemic of Fraud’ exposes massive COVID corruption

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From LifeSiteNews

By Frank Wright

‘Epidemic of Fraud’ exposes the suppression of hydroxychloroquine, a potential solution to the COVID crisis, orchestrated by government entities including the FDA.

This month sees the release of a new film documenting the COVID regime. What is different about “Epidemic of Fraud” is the scope of corruption it exposes, reaching beyond the prohibition of genuinely safe and effective medicine, to massive financial and political motives to promote lockdowns and the dangerous “vaccines” instead.

John Davidson’s film begins with the scandalous campaign against hydroxychloroquine, a derivative of quinine, the naturally occurring wonder drug whose control has always been a matter of U.S. national security.

“This was the answer. This would have halted the pandemic.” So said Steven Hatfill – COVID adviser to President Donald Trump – in a segment in the film. He noted that “within a week or so, we had 62 million doses” of hydroxychloroquine.

He continued: “52 other countries have used it successfully to keep their pandemic – their hospital admissions under control”

So who decided to halt the Trump administration’s early treatment plan to administer a proven cure? As Davidson shows, “The idea to halt hydroxychloroquine came from the FDA.”

Davidson is far from alone in showing precisely who was responsible.

Dr. Robert Malone – ‘cause unknown’

Davidson, a committed Christian, began as a radio journalist, eventually moving to television and film production. He admits early in the film that he, too, promoted COVID measures, thinking he was providing a public service. It was the restrictions on hydroxychloroquine, he told LifeSiteNews, that “red-pilled” him.

Beginning in 2020, he spent the intervening years in piecing together a story which amounted to a massive fraud conducted on, and at the expense of, the American people.

Rick Bright was demoted from his position as director of BARDA, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, for smearing Trump’s recommendation of hydroxychloroquine as “dangerous.”

As to why the hydroxychloroquine restriction mattered, the truth of the claim against Bright, Malone went on:

Rick Bright in videotaped testimony has explicitly spoken about how they conspired to cook up a strategy to make it so that hydroxychloroquine could only be administered in the hospital – which by the way is too late for when [it] should be used.

Rogan asked Malone the obvious question – why did they do that?

“That is what is the unknown” replied Malone. “There are so many whys and hows – I like to say – there’s a stack of stuff that doesn’t make sense.”

Yet Davidson’s film makes a lot of sense of this seemingly senseless decision. Bright was championed as a heroic “whistleblower” for his leading role in the plan to deprive Americans of a safe and affordable remedy for COVID-19.

Bright’s ambitions are now global. He moved on to work as CEO of the Pandemic Prevention Institute at the Rockefeller Foundation in 2021, celebrating a new World Health Organization “Pandemic Intelligence Centre.” He also spoke at the 2024 World Economic Forum on a panel discussing the role of artificial intelligence in “future cures” and “rebuilding trust in a better tomorrow.”

Bright’s LinkedIn profile reads: “Exponential Transformation of Global Health & Healthcare (Changing the World).” His record leaves no doubt as to the nature of this better world he envisions for us all.

Bureaucrats v. The People

The film shows how Davidson contacted the FDA to submit a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request, to see communications between the two major decision makers – Rick Bright and Janet Woodcock.

In a phone call with the Food and Drug Administration, Davidson was told he would have to wait two years to see the data, due to a backlog of 1100 similar requests.

Davidson used his time to investigate the two decision makers whose actions led to a campaign of suppression of hydroxychloroquine that was so successful, that doctors could be ruined if they continued to prescribe it.

“If you use these drugs [in the U.S.] you probably will be fired” said one doctor, as the film documented how doctors in Australia’s Queensland faced imprisonment for prescribing “HCQ,” as hydroxychloroquine is known. As Congressman Jim Jordan points out later in the film, “Something has happened to prevent early treatment.”

The film shows Rep. Jordan speaking at a November 2020 hearing, saying these “logjams” have been created by officials to deny Americans and their elected officials access to the truth.

We should have the right to access this without the interference of bureaucrats at the FDA and CDC.

I can’t get it. Millions of Americans can’t get it because of the logjam created by bureaucrats.

Sen. Ron Johnson was accused the next month of “elevating fringe theories” to “question virus science” by the New York Times, who nonetheless quoted him as saying, “There’s a blackout on good information in social media and media. So people are being denied information to make intelligent choices themselves.”

This blackout was spearheaded by Dr. Antony Fauci, who said at the time that there was a “distinct anti-science flavor” to those questioning his promotion of “vaccines,” lockdowns, masks, and social distancing. Fauci said he effectively was “the science,” and the media played along.

“[T]hey get up and criticize science… but if they criticize me they are criticizing science – cause I represent science,” Fauci had stated.

It became “anti-science” to question anything about this epidemic of fraud. It also became nigh impossible to get any answers. Asking why led Davidson to a darker dimension which had a bearing on another widely censored subject – the 2020 presidential election.

Political pressure

Davidson points out that if the COVID pandemic continued, then the use of mail-in ballots in the presidential election would be permitted under lockdown conditions.

Secondly, he says there was considerable pressure to deprive Donald Trump of a “win,” with a coordinated media campaign caricaturizing the president as insane for recommending hydroxychloroquine. He was linked to the death of a man who drank fish tank cleaner, as the promotion of the “100% safe and effective” mRNA injections began to intensify.

With people locked indoors before their screens, this was the message many received about Trump, and the centuries-old remedy he had endorsed – months before they would vote for their new president.

Canada’s CBC published a news alert on their X (formerly Twitter) account in March 2020, reading, “Arizona man dead, woman in critical condition after ingesting chemical touted by U.S. President Donald Trump as potential COVID-19 treatment. ‘Don’t believe anything that the president says,’ woman tells NBC. ‘Call your doctor.’”

As Davidson shows, the information war against Trump and the proven safety of hydroxychloroquine was undertaken amid enormous pressures, both political and financial. If Trump won again, would he return to promoting a $20 per dose drug, against the novel “vaccines” and the deadly Remdesivir, which was $3000 per treatment? Davidson asks his audience:

With 11 trillion dollars on the line, and the risk of Trump being right – could you have said hydroxychloroquine works?

If Davidson’s cost estimate sounds fantastical, consider that in 2020 Harvard University estimated that the cost to the U.S. from COVID-19 might run to $16 trillion.

This appraisal was revisited in a study in May 2023. Undertaken by the University of Southern California, it showed that by the end of 2023, the total cost of the pandemic to the U.S. would already amount to $14 trillion.

Consider now that these costs, most of which arose from lockdown restrictions, could have been avoided. Now factor in the many vaccine injured and those who have “died suddenly,” along with care home deaths, ventilator deaths, and other iatrogenic fatalities arising from the use of drugs such as midazolam. This is where following the science has led us.

An out-of-patent medicine, cheaply available and known to be safe for centuries could have stopped it all.

John Wilkes Booth and quinine

The film covers the remarkable history of the naturally occurring antimalarial compound quinine, including the fascinating detail that John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln’s would-be assassin, had been “smuggling quinine to desperate families” across the rebel South. Lincoln had aimed to “create as many sick and dead Southern soldiers as possible” by blockading the distribution of quinine.

Davidson shows Lincoln’s northern blockade was just one example of the military dimension to the deliberate restriction of access to quinine, of which hydroxychloroquine is a modern derivative.

It is this which gives tonic water its distinctive tang, and for this reason the gin and tonic was widely consumed by the British in the tropics. Quinine has long been safe and effective in treating a variety of sicknesses, and is so vital that its stockpiling was ordered again by the U.S. government in 1946 – as Davidson shows. The military significance of the drug which could have saved America has a long heritage. Its restriction was described by Davidson as an arguable case of “biological warfare.” This is one further disturbing dimension to the true pandemic which blighted nations under Fauci’s lockdowns.

Epidemic fraud

The message of Davidson’s film is that something is seriously wrong with our world. This wrong is not restricted to the media, whose smear campaigns “gaslit” the public into compliance, leading them to take novel treatments whose manufacturers were indemnified from liability.

It extends beyond the intimidation of doctors and the reputational ruin those brave enough to speak out have suffered. Davidson’s film, a remarkable cinematic achievement for a man who made it largely alone in his garage, is a document which will embolden anyone who sees it against the corruption that has replaced public service at the highest levels.

The film can be understood as an insight into one of the most dedicated and successful acts of self-harm that a nation has ever undertaken. The United States government, its health officials, its captive media, and its trusted public health officials have destroyed public trust along with risking the health, lives, and livelihoods of millions of its citizens.

Davidson’s film deserves the widest possible audience, as it speaks beyond partisan antagonisms to reveal a systematic betrayal of the American public, coordinated through the channels of guidance and information that Americans expected to serve them – and not the powerful political and financial interests he exposes here.

The sickness he documents is not a lab-created virus. It is the capture of the free world by dark forces whose hunger for power and for profit will see them poison their own well.

Speaking to Davidson in an interview, LifeSiteNews asked what he thought the future might hold, as public awareness of the magnitude of the epidemic of fraud around COVID grows. His answer was inspirational.

People are coming together over this. I have met lawyers fighting for the vaccine-injured, brave doctors speaking out, and there is a real movement growing.

He finished with a striking image.

I think about David and Goliath a lot.

My film is like the stone that David fired from his sling. I have released the stone. It is up to God now where it finds its mark.

You can watch “Epidemic of Fraud” by completing an email registration on Davidson’s site “Broken Truth.

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Major personnel losses force Canadian military to consider ending COVID vaccine mandate

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From LifeSiteNews

By Clare Marie Merkowsky

Defence Minister Bill Blair called for ‘outdated medical requirements’ to be abolished as the Canadian Armed Forces have lost more members than it has gained since vax mandates were enforced in 2021.

The Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) may drop its vaccine mandate after losing more personnel than it gained since COVID-19 outbreak.

At the annual Ottawa Conference on Security and Defence on March 7, Defence Minister Bill Blair called for “outdated medical requirements” to be abolished as the CAF has lost more members than it has gained since COVID vaccine mandates were enforced in 2021.

“I really see no point in us spending a lot of time trying to find out how we got to this state,” Blair addressed the conference. “We must focus on what needs to be done, and we must get to work.”

“Because the bottom line is the Canadian Armed Forces must grow,” he declared, revealing that the CAF is short nearly 16,000 people in both regular forces and reserves.

“We must change the way in which we recruit and retain the people of our forces,” he declared.

“And therefore, I’ve asked our military leaders to take a hard look at expanding eligibility for recruitment, to abolish outdated medical requirements where they are not meaningful and relevant,” Blair said, perhaps alluding to COVID vaccine mandates.

Indeed, the CAF has seen a drastic decline in numbers since COVID vaccines were mandated in 2021. According to information obtained last month by Blacklock’s Reporteronly 12,793 Canadians have joined the CAF in the past three years and 15,176 were released.

Beginning in November 2021, the Liberal government under the leadership of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau mandated that 275,983 employees from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, military and main federal departments provide proof of vaccination.

Those who failed to do so risked dismissal or suspension without pay. While there were provisions for medical and religious exemptions, these were rarely granted.

However, the vaccine is mandated for members supporting “operational readiness,” including members assigned “to units/elements expected to perform core functions/critical capabilities with short notice-to-move, such as SOF High Readiness Forces/Task Forces, (Standby) Ready-Duty Ships, DART, NEO, and contributions to NATO, the UN, or other partners.”

The shots are also required for members “placed on less than 45 days-notice-to-move with a potential to be deployed at a location with limited/no access to medical care, or locations or nations where vaccination is a prerequisite for entry/operations.”

Additionally, in November, Blair revealed that more soldiers are leaving CAF than can be replaced by recruits, a trend that started after COVID vaccines were mandated for all military members.

Also in November, a CAF member who spoke to LifeSiteNews under the condition of anonymity revealed that there is no “one root cause” for the army’s decreasing numbers but rather a number of factors that have caused military members to lose trust. He added that COVID vaccine mandates were likely the tipping point that put soldiers over the edge.

He explained that the military lost hundreds of soldiers for “no good reason” over COVID vaccine mandates. The military member further revealed that the military had no deaths from COVID despite working at the front lines in nursing homes.

“And when you think of those hundreds and hundreds of people, you have to think in the corporate knowledge we lost, the trainers, the institutional knowledge, the corporate knowledge,” the source lamented. “We’re talking about hundreds and hundreds of years of collective corporate knowledge has gone in months.”

He further explained that the military “rewrote the rulebook” when it came to COVID vaccines, allowing for very few religious exemptions and forcing the vaccine on all members.

He revealed that while army veterans have “given 20 years of their lives to the military,” “served in combat,” and have “a chest for medals,” the Canadians military considers them “a piece of garbage overnight because you refuse it (COVID vaccine).”

According to the military member, another reason for many leaving the military is “radical agendas that are being pushed left, right and center.”

“And it’s not stopping with the gender ideology, it’s going to include medical assistance in dying,” he added. “There’s something fundamentally changing. And for most people, it doesn’t sit well with them.”

He explained that the new ideologies are driving away new recruits. The primary source of recruitment for the military is Saskatchewan farm boys who want to serve Canada and not radical ideologies.

“That farm boy looks at the army and with the blue hair and the face, piercings and ideologies and all that stuff,” he said. “And it doesn’t have the same pull because it doesn’t represent the farm boy’s values.”

“This is not the Canada that we signed up to defend. It’s an alien ideology that people don’t resonate with,” he continued. “These are not Canadian values of freedom and democracy. These are cancel-culture values of censorship, of authoritarianism, of radical ideologies that are alien to our culture.”

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