Coronavirus, Monkeypox, and Other Contagious Diseases

[goldenvalley]

Damn I got my first vaccine over a year ago and I'm still not connected to the internet of things...can't even access my Ring doorbell from my cell phone, let alone through my body somehow!

[pnwguy]

Sept 23, 2022 0:18:47 GMT goldenvalley said:

Damn I got my first vaccine over a year ago and I'm still not connected to the internet of things...can't even access my Ring doorbell from my cell phone, let alone through my body somehow!

Important reception trick.  Next time you are taking a leak, hold your "antenna" and point it towards the nearest 5G tower.

[LFC]

Looks like Monekypox is here to stay.

A new report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offers some good and bad news about the country’s ongoing monkeypox outbreak. New cases are slowing down, likely thanks to a combination of vaccination and education efforts. But it’s also likely that the virus won’t be eradicated here and will continue to circulate locally at low levels.

[LFC]

Just ... awesome.

But hey, it's just like the flu, right?

[LFC]

Gee, why don't we believe the right-wing "doctors" about a host of topics?

Last month, Dr. Robert Honeyman lost their sister to Covid. They wrote about it on Twitter and received dozens of condolences, over 4,000 retweets and 43,000 likes.

Exactly one month later, on Dec. 12, Honeyman wrote that another tragedy had befallen their family.

“Sad to announce that my husband has entered a coma after being in hospital with Covid. The doctor is unsure if he will come out,” they tweeted. “This year has been the toughest of my life losing my sister to this virus. This is the first time in my life I don’t see light at the end of the tunnel.”

Again, the condolences and well-wishes rolled in. But there was a problem: Honeyman wasn’t real.

The transgender “Doctor of Sociology and Feminist studies” with a “keen interest in poetry” who used they/them pronouns was, in fact, a stock photo described on DepositPhotos, a royalty-free image site, as “Smiling happy, handsome latino man outside—headshot portrait.”

Their supposedly comatose husband, Dr. Patrick C. Honeyman, was also fake. His Twitter photo had been stolen from an insurance professional in Wayne, Indiana.

The two fake doctors, whose accounts urged extreme caution about Covid-19, were part of a network of at least four fake accounts that touted their ties to the LGBTQ+ community, vocally advocated for mask-wearing and social distancing, and dished out criticism to those they felt were not taking the pandemic seriously.

The Honeymans could not be reached for comment, as they do not exist. At publication time, Robert Honeyman’s account was no longer active.

The fake doctors were uncovered by Joshua Gutterman Tranen, a self-described “gay writer” pursuing a master’s of fine arts at Bennington College. He saw Robert Honeyman’s tweet about their husband being in a coma, noticed people he followed also followed them, and thought that they might be part of the LGBTQ+ academic community.

But after 10 minutes of googling, Gutterman Tranen concluded that Robert Honeyman’s photo was a stock image and their biography stretched boundaries of believability: an academic who left no traces on academic websites and had lost two family members to Covid in late 2022, despite masking and distancing.

The character looked like “liberal Mad Libs,” Gutterman Tranen said.

“I’m a self-identified leftist, and I understand that people have a lot of different identities, but it felt concocted in the lab about how many identities and horrible experiences can we put on one person,” he said.

[LFC]

Ron DeSatanist is quadrupling down on his anti-vaxxing for political gain strategy. Gawd, he is SUCH a piece of shit.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday asked his state’s Supreme Court to green-light an investigation of “any and all wrongdoing in Florida with respect to Covid-19 vaccines,” his latest move to cast doubt on the vaccines’ effectiveness and amplify fears about side effects.

In the petition filed with the Florida Supreme Court, the Republican governor requests the empaneling of a grand jury to investigate a broad group of entities associated with the development, distribution and promotion of the vaccines, including pharmaceutical manufacturers and their executive officers, as well as medical associations.

DeSantis also said Tuesday he was launching a public health integrity committee – a panel that would counter the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which DeSantis said “is not serving a useful function; it’s really serving to advance narratives rather than do evidence-based medicine.” The panel would assess guidance and actions from federal agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health, US Food and Drug Administration and the CDC.

DeSantis has made Covid-19 vaccine skepticism his calling card ahead of a potential run for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. The governor, who cruised to victory in his bid for a second term in November, is positioning himself to the right of former President Donald Trump, a potential rival who who was in office when the vaccine was developed.

The announcements Tuesday came at a roundtable focused on vaccines that DeSantis led. The Florida governor’s surgeon general, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, during the roundtable pointed to examples of the vaccine causing myocarditis, inflammation of the heart, and said pharmaceutical companies need to provide more data to independent researchers so they can further study the side effects from vaccines.

In case you don't remember Lapado is a barking at the moon utter nutter. He was involved with America's Frontline Doctors run by Dr. Stella "demon sperm" Immanuel, pushed hydroxychloroquine, pushed ivermectin , pushed herd immunity, spun up unspecified safety concerns about COVID vaccines, and went full on anti-mask. His old boss at UCLA recommended that Florida not hire him because he pushes personal opinions over science.

[LFC]

More data is coming out that even mild cases of COVID produced long COVID symptoms. In fact people who had mild cases make up the overwhelming majority of those suffering from long COVID.

Even mild COVID-19 cases can have major and long-lasting effects on people’s health. That is one of the key findings from our recent multicountry study on long COVID-19 — or long COVID — recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Long COVID is defined as the continuation or development of symptoms three months after the initial infection from SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. These symptoms last for at least two months after onset with no other explanation.

We found that a staggering 90% of people living with long COVID initially experienced only mild illness with COVID-19. After developing long COVID, however, the typical person experienced symptoms including fatigue, shortness of breath and cognitive problems such as brain fog — or a combination of these — that affected daily functioning. These symptoms had an impact on health as severe as the long-term effects of traumatic brain injury. Our study also found that women have twice the risk of men and four times the risk of children for developing long COVID.

We analyzed data from 54 studies reporting on over 1 million people from 22 countries who had experienced symptoms of COVID-19. We counted how many people with COVID-19 developed clusters of new long-COVID symptoms and determined how their risk of developing the disease varied based on their age, sex and whether they were hospitalized for COVID-19.

We found that patients who were hospitalized for COVID-19 had a greater risk of developing long COVID — and of having longer-lasting symptoms — compared with people who had not been hospitalized. However, because the vast majority of COVID-19 cases do not require hospitalization, many more cases of long COVID have arisen from these milder cases despite their lower risk. Among all people with long COVID, our study found that nearly one out of every seven were still experiencing these symptoms a year later, and researchers don’t yet know how many of these cases may become chronic. Long COVID can affect nearly any organ in the body.

[LFC]

May everyone involved first be jailed and then rot in hell.

A Utah plastic surgeon and three of his associates are facing federal charges for a year-long scheme in which they allegedly squirted around 2,000 vaccine doses down the drain, sold falsified vaccination cards for $50 each, and tricked kids into thinking they were vaccinated against COVID-19 by injecting them with saline, collectively, 391 times.

Federal prosecutors last week indicted Dr. Michael Kirk Moore Jr., who owns and operates Plastic Surgery Institute of Utah in Midvale, south of Salt Lake City, as well as the business' office manager, Kari Dee Burgoyne, its receptionist, Sandra Flores, and a neighbor of Moore's, Kristin Jackson Andersen. All four are charged with conspiracy to defraud the federal government, along with two counts related to improper disposal of government property.

According to the indictment, which was unsealed on January 17, Moore, Burgoyne, Flores, and Andersen set up a scheme in which the plastic surgery practice became a legitimate COVID-19 vaccine provider. Moore signed the government's COVID-19 Vaccination Program Provider Agreement in May 2021, allowing the site to receive bona fide, government-purchased COVID-19 doses. Between October 15, 2021, and September 6, 2022, the group ordered around 2,200 vaccine doses from the federal government.

Around October, the group began notifying people they knew were interested in fake COVID-19 vaccinations, whom federal prosecutors referred to as "Fraudulent Vax Card seekers." Burgoyne, the office manager, was put in charge of orchestrating the scheme, which worked like so: If a Fraudulent Vax Card seeker called the practice, Burgoyne would have them contact Andersen, Moore's neighbor. Andersen would then coyly screen contacts by asking them who referred them to the clinic, only accepting seekers who were referred by people who had already received a fraudulent vaccination card from the scheme. Andersen went through this screening process with two separate undercover agents.

[LFC]

Yet another health problem caused by COVID.

A person's odds of getting a new diabetes diagnosis were 58 percent higher in the months following a COVID-19 infection compared with prior to infection, even amid the era of omicron, researchers reported Wednesday in the journal JAMA Network Open.

The study is just the latest to link the development of diabetes to COVID-19, which pandemic data suggests increases the risk of a range of cardiometabolic conditions, including blood clots, myocarditis, stroke, and diabetes. A study published early last year in Nature Medicine tapped into the medical records of more than 11 million veterans and found that people who had recovered from COVID-19 had a 63 percent higher risk of developing any of 20 cardiovascular diseases, including a 55 percent higher risk of heart attack, stroke, and death.

The data on diabetes is equally worrying. In a systemic meta-analysis published in Scientific Reports last November, researchers compiled data from eight cohort studies involving more than 47 million people and found that COVID-19 infection was linked to a 66 percent increased risk of developing diabetes.

"Given the extraordinary number of COVID-19 survivors globally, the modest increase in diabetes risk could correspond to a drastic rise in the number of people diagnosed with the disease worldwide," the authors—researchers at Penn State College—wrote.

[LFC]

With my wife and I both being heavily immunosuppressed, we're still not willing to fly. This only enforces that decision.

In a small trial, aircraft wastewater proved easy and useful for monitoring the SARS-CoV-2 variants touching down in the US, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday.

The study found that the testing could be done cheaply and easily; it only added about three extra minutes to aircraft maintenance times at airports and didn't require hassling passengers with nose swabs or other sampling methods. Moreover, the testing could be easily scaled up as needed as the world largely abandons other SARS-CoV-2 testing and monitoring strategies, the CDC authors concluded.

"This investigation demonstrated the feasibility of aircraft wastewater surveillance as a low-resource approach compared with individual testing to monitor SARS-CoV-2 variants without direct traveler involvement or disruption to airport operations," the authors concluded.

The CDC conducted the study in collaboration with biotech company Ginkgo Bioworks. Together, they collected and tested wastewater samples from 80 flights into New York City's John F. Kennedy International Airport between August 1 and September 9, 2022. All the flights were international, originating from the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and France.

Overall, 65 airborne sewage samples from 80 flights (81 percent) were positive for SARS-CoV-2. The rate of positive samples was the same among the three countries: the Netherlands samples were 81 percent positive, with 22 of 27 samples positive; so was France, with 22 of 27 samples positive; as was the United Kingdom, with 21 of 26 samples positive.

The researchers were able to get 27 genome sequences from 25 of the samples. All of the genomes revealed omicron sublineages, mostly BA.5 as well as BA.4.6 and BA.2.75.

The study adds to other evidence that airport and aircraft wastewater surveillance can play a role in monitoring the spread of pathogens, such as SARS-CoV-2. And it dovetails into larger pandemic-era efforts by the CDC to blend wastewater sampling into its pathogen surveillance systems.

This has proven useful in various places around the country for monitoring early surges of COVID-19 as well as tracking the spread of polio in New York. In the case of SARS-CoV-2, viral shedding in feces can begin very early in an infection, potentially before a person has symptoms.

[LFC]

The idiots just aren't going to give up on their magical miracle dewormer.

First, the group of doctors championed ivermectin as a covid panacea. It failed to live up to the hype. Now, they’re promoting the anti-parasitic to prevent and treat the flu and RSV.

The Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance, formed in 2020 to “prevent and treat covid,” is touting ivermectin for common respiratory infections amid a dramatic drop in prescriptions for the drug as clinical trials undermined claims of its efficacy against covid.

There is no clinical data in humans to support using ivermectin for flu or RSV, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other medical experts.

And yet, the alliance publishes “treatment protocols” promoting the use of ivermectin for flu, RSV and covid that it says have been downloaded more than a million times. It also recommends a network of hundreds of medical providers and pharmacies that can provide prescriptions for ivermectin, often through virtual visits that can run hundreds of dollars.

“Profiting from bunk and nonsense has no place in ethical medicine,” said Arthur Caplan, head of the division of medical ethics at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine who called the alliance’s promotion of ivermectin for covid, flu and RSV “fraud during a pandemic on a significant scale.”

[goldenvalley]

Feb 27, 2023 18:34:08 GMT LFC said:

The idiots just aren't going to give up on their magical miracle dewormer.

First, the group of doctors championed ivermectin as a covid panacea. It failed to live up to the hype. Now, they’re promoting the anti-parasitic to prevent and treat the flu and RSV.

The Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance, formed in 2020 to “prevent and treat covid,” is touting ivermectin for common respiratory infections amid a dramatic drop in prescriptions for the drug as clinical trials undermined claims of its efficacy against covid.

There is no clinical data in humans to support using ivermectin for flu or RSV, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other medical experts.

And yet, the alliance publishes “treatment protocols” promoting the use of ivermectin for flu, RSV and covid that it says have been downloaded more than a million times. It also recommends a network of hundreds of medical providers and pharmacies that can provide prescriptions for ivermectin, often through virtual visits that can run hundreds of dollars.

“Profiting from bunk and nonsense has no place in ethical medicine,” said Arthur Caplan, head of the division of medical ethics at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine who called the alliance’s promotion of ivermectin for covid, flu and RSV “fraud during a pandemic on a significant scale.”

Who else besides this group of doctors is making money off of ivermectin?   I guess these folks who supported the use of hydroxychoriquin for Covid didn't make enough money on that one and so abandoned it.

[LFC]

Drug resistant diarrhea. Great. Just ... great.

Officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are sounding the alarm over a diarrhea-causing superbug. The CDC’s data shows a noticeable rise in extensively drug-resistant strains of Shigella bacteria over the past half-decade. Though these infections are typically not severe, antibiotics are needed to prevent and treat life-threatening cases, and the bacteria can pass on their resistance genes to other troublesome germs.

Shigella is one of the most common sources of diarrhea in the world, with an estimated 450,000 infections in the United States annually. Most cases are “mild” but still leave you suffering from about a week’s worth of diarrhea, fever, and cramps. Sometimes, the diarrhea becomes bloody, a condition known as dysentery. More rarely, the infection can cause complications such as severe dehydration, seizures, kidney damage and sepsis (often because the bacteria enter the bloodstream). Severe illness is more likely in the very young as well as people with weakened immune systems.

The bacteria rarely kills people in the U.S., though it’s still thought to hospitalize thousands every year. And it remains a major global health threat, especially in poorer areas of the world with inadequate healthcare and sanitation. According to the World Health Organization, Shigella kills around 200,000 people a year. Most cases resolve on their own, with the typical treatment only being fluids and rest. But when these infections become more serious or happen in people at higher risk for serious illness, antibiotics are used to shorten its length. Unfortunately, Shigella is one of the many bacterial diseases that are steadily gaining resistance to these once-reliable weapons.

Shigella bacteria in general have learned to resist many antibiotics previously used as frontline treatments. But some strains are considered extensively drug-resistant, meaning they show resistance to every drug commonly used to treat them. In 2015, virtually 0% of Shigella cases in the U.S. carried these strains, according to the CDC’s national surveillance system. But in a health advisory released over the weekend, the agency reported that 5% of cases in 2022 were extensively drug-resistant.

[LFC]

I ... just ... can't. I will never understand the staggering levels of simultaneous igorance, arrogance, and outright stupidity that would cause somebody to do this. They think it cures everything. Here's the start but the whole article, including cases with other Ivermectic eaters, is fascinating in a car crash kind of way.

Just before 7 am on March 3, Danny Lemoi posted an update in his hugely popular pro-ivermectin Telegram group, Dirt Road Discussions: “HAPPY FRIDAY ALL YOU POISONOUS HORSE PASTE EATING SURVIVORS !!!”

Hours later, Lemoi was dead.

For the last decade, Lemoi had taken a daily dose of veterinary ivermectin, a dewormer designed to be used on large animals like horses and cows. In 2021, as ivermectin became a popular alternative COVID-19 treatment among anti-vaxxers, he launched what became one of the largest Telegram channels dedicated to promoting the use of it, including instructions on how to administer ivermectin to children.

But despite Lemoi’s death, the administrators of his channel are pushing his misinformation—even as his followers share their own worrying possible side effects from taking ivermectin and some question the safety of the drug.

Lemoi, a heavy equipment operator who lived in Foster, Rhode Island, “passed away unexpectedly” on March 3, according to an online obituary post by his family last week. He was survived by his parents and brother. The obituary gave no details about the cause of his death.

In the Telegram channel, administrators broke the news of his death to his followers. “Though it was obvious that Danny had the biggest heart, it was unbeknownst to him that his heart was quite literally overworking and overgrowing beyond its capacity, nearly doubled in size from what it should have been,” the admins wrote, adding: “We understand that this is going to raise questions for those who were following him.”

The admins added that Lemoi had undergone testing on his heart last year, but the results had shown no cause for concern.

Lemoi began taking the version of ivermectin designed for animals on a daily basis in 2012, after he was diagnosed with Lyme disease, according to a detailed account of his medical history he gave on a podcast last November. He said then that five months after first taking the drug, he quit all other treatments and believed ivermectin had “regenerated” his heart muscle.

[goldenvalley]

Mar 13, 2023 18:45:40 GMT LFC said:

I ... just ... can't. I will never understand the staggering levels of simultaneous igorance, arrogance, and outright stupidity that would cause somebody to do this. They think it cures everything. Here's the start but the whole article, including cases with other Ivermectic eaters, is fascinating in a car crash kind of way

Lemoi began taking the version of ivermectin designed for animals on a daily basis in 2012, after he was diagnosed with Lyme disease, according to a detailed account of his medical history he gave on a podcast last November. He said then that five months after first taking the drug, he quit all other treatments and believed ivermectin had “regenerated” his heart muscle.

While the ivermectin might not have hurt his heart, if he was not taking whatever his actual doctors prescribed for him that's a more likely cause of death.  Senator Fetterman learned the hard way that he shouldn't ignore his cardiac condition...that stroke.  

[pnwguy]

If this turns out to be conclusive, this will disappoint a lot of Lab Leak enthusiasts that think we need to arrest Anthony Fauci.

www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2023/03/covid-origins-research-raccoon-dogs-wuhan-market-lab-leak/673390/

[LFC]

Mar 17, 2023 16:23:43 GMT pnwguy said:

If this turns out to be conclusive, this will disappoint a lot of Lab Leak enthusiasts that think we need to arrest Anthony Fauci.

It's like a friggin' badminton game. Recently the lab origin theory side sent one over the net, though through an appeal to authority rather than reviewable evidence ("the FBI said they think..."). The natural origin theory has just made a return with evidence that can be reviewed by others. I doubt we'll ever be 100% sure.

[goldenvalley]

Mar 17, 2023 17:02:35 GMT LFC said:

 I doubt we'll ever be 100% sure.

We won't and sadly that makes the subject perfect for the political football it's become.  As long as someone can spin a conspiracy tale out of it, we'll have to hear about this nonsense.  For example I noticed my mid 20s son has run across the old "World Trade Center went down because of an inside job" even now.  

[LFC]

Mar 17, 2023 18:52:23 GMT goldenvalley said:

As long as someone can spin a conspiracy tale out of it, we'll have to hear about this nonsense. 

I've actually been a bit deep in a less political but, within birding circles, very contentious issue. The Ivory-billed Woodpecker has not been unambiguously documented in over 80 years. A video from Arkansas back in 2004 purported to proved its existence and set off a major search lead by the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. The results was lots of bits and pieces, multiple sighting claims (almost all brief), and lots and lots and lots of spin. The initial video was interpreted, re-interpreted, and re-re-interpreted like crazy, with two of the most eminent field birders in the nation weighting in and calling bullshit.

The "controversy" continues today and it has become a big of a Bigfoot situation, only with universities getting in on the action. There have been major claims that have amounted to "meh" in Florida and Louisiana as well yet the fervor of the believers is incredible. The interpretations they claim as fact and the twisting of data into things they now "know" is insane and the absolute antithesis of science. It's only gotten worse now that USFW is looking to declare the bird as extinct.

[goldenvalley]

Mar 17, 2023 19:35:25 GMT LFC said:

Mar 17, 2023 18:52:23 GMT goldenvalley said:

As long as someone can spin a conspiracy tale out of it, we'll have to hear about this nonsense. 

I've actually been a bit deep in a less political but, within birding circles, very contentious issue. The Ivory-billed Woodpecker has not been unambiguously documented in over 80 years. A video from Arkansas back in 2004 purported to proved its existence and set off a major search lead by the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. The results was lots of bits and pieces, multiple sighting claims (almost all brief), and lots and lots and lots of spin. The initial video was interpreted, re-interpreted, and re-re-interpreted like crazy, with two of the most eminent field birders in the nation weighting in and calling bullshit.

The "controversy" continues today and it has become a big of a Bigfoot situation, only with universities getting in on the action. There have been major claims that have amounted to "meh" in Florida and Louisiana as well yet the fervor of the believers is incredible. The interpretations they claim as fact and the twisting of data into things they now "know" is insane and the absolute antithesis of science. It's only gotten worse now that USFW is looking to declare the bird as extinct.

I guess the human brain just can't handle knowledge that doesn't support one's closely held beliefs. 

[LFC]

Yes, Republicans really are that f***ing dumb.

In the latest efforts by Republican lawmakers to enshrine into law Americans' right to freely spread deadly infectious diseases to each other, the Missouri House this week advanced a bill that would bar governments, schools, and employers from mandating certain vaccines—as well as things like vaccine microchips, which do not exist.

The bill, HB 700 (PDF), was sponsored by Rep. Bill Hardwick, a Republican from Waynesville. Hardwick told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that he believed people "lost their minds" during the COVID-19 pandemic, and that legally barring officials and employers from requiring life-saving vaccination, even among health care workers, feels "like it's the right thing to do."

The bill specifically bars requirements for people to receive COVID-19 vaccines. But it doesn't stop there. It also bars any requirements for people to receive "a dose of messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA)," thus barring requirements for any future mRNA-based vaccines, should they be needed in upcoming pandemics or outbreaks. It also bars requirements for "any treatment or procedure intended or designed to edit or alter human deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) or the human genome," and "any mechanical or electronic device" that would be placed "under the skin."

Those last two stipulations reflect ridiculous yet widely spread conspiracy theories related to the COVID-19 vaccines—namely the entirely false ideas that mRNA vaccines alter people's DNA and that COVID-19 vaccines somehow contain microchips. These imaginary microchips are often said to be placed in vaccines by global elites, including Bill Gates, to track people's locations and "force compliance." The absurdly bogus idea ties to other, equally nonsensical conspiracy theories that the vaccines connect people to 5G networks and literally make human flesh magnetic. The latter hogwash led to a deeply disappointing number of online videos of people sticking metal objects to themselves.

Lastly, the bill would require all employers and public colleges and universities to allow exceptions to any vaccination requirement if the person "holds a sincerely held religious belief, which may include any deeply held nontheistic moral belief," that prevents them from being vaccinated.

[goldenvalley]

A deeply held non-theistic belief? I look at this anti vax stuff and then think about the current debates in California over ways to alleviate homelessness of mentally ill people who don't want treatment. I wonder if the good folks of Missouri would think that forcing mentally ill people into treatment that they don't want is analogous to requiring vaccination against Covid?

[LFC]

It's not an exact overlay but this sure does look a lot like a red/blue political map.

[AnBr]

Curious how many of the urban areas with the higher population densities have the lowest rates. Be interesting to see a distribution map of vaccination rates.

[Bact PhD]

For a moment, I thought about putting this latest idiocy in the “Florida Man” thread; it could also go under “Ron DeSatanist and the Florida Republicans” thread. Sigh.

people.com/florida-surgeon-general-goes-against-science-measles-outbreak-8600529

Florida's top public health official is bucking CDC guidelines amid a rise in measles cases at a Ft. Lauderdale school, telling parents in a letter that it's up to them whether or not their child gets vaccinated, or whether an unvaccinated child stays home from school after getting exposed.

“Freedom” only works in one direction in this lexicon.