Newsweek reported: Senator Rand Paul promised “bombshell revelations” against Dr Anthony Fauci, vowing to take down the former chief medical adviser to the White House.

“We now have emails that show [Fauci] saying that he knows it was gain-of-function, that the virus looked manipulated, and that he was worried that this came from the Wuhan lab,” the Kentucky Republican said during an interview with Fox Business.

“February 1, 2020, then he spent the last three years saying ‘nothing to see here.’ We also know that there was a safety committee that should have reviewed this and we know that Anthony Fauci went around the safety committee,” he said, and added:

“This is a bombshell revelation, and this will eventually bring down Anthony Fauci,” Paul said. The comments by Paul this week come as he has continued to criticise Fauci over concerns that the Covid-19 pandemic originated from a lab in Wuhan, China. In February, The Wall Street Journal published a report from the United States Department of Energy (DOE) which determined with a “low confidence” rating that Covid-19 originated from a lab in China.

In 2021, the FBI made a similar determination of where the novel coronavirus came from with a “moderate confidence” rating.

News.com.au reported: The mother of an 11-year-old boy who suffered such a severe reaction to his Covid vaccine that he was sent home from hospital with highly addictive painkillers including oxycodone has slammed the “disgusting” treatment of her family by the government.

Alex, who asked not to use her real name to protect her son’s identity, says she was left “alone and isolated” caring for him for 18 months after he developed excruciating pain all over his body – which grew so intense he could barely walk or sleep and sometimes had to be carried to bed “screaming” – following his Pfizer vaccination in January last year.

Alex, who was ineligible for compensation under the federal government’s Covid Vaccine Claims Scheme, conceded, “I haven’t got a letter that says this was caused by the vaccine.”

But she has no doubt it was linked. “He had the injection at 2.30 pm,” she said. “I’ve got two other kids, they were both fine. By 5.30pm he had chest pain, headache, said he was dizzy and felt kind of sick. We’d been told that was kind of normal, to give him some Panadol and Nurofen.

By the time he woke up the next day, he was in a lot more pain, his joints were hurting, he was struggling to be physically upright because he felt so dizzy and nauseated, and his chest pain was unbearable.”

Reuters reported: Kangaroo court. Star chamber. Potemkin village. That’s how plaintiffs’ lawyers in a federal lawsuit filed on Tuesday describe the obscure US government tribunal charged with adjudicating claims for compensation by thousands of people who say they suffered serious injuries from Covid-19 vaccines.

The lawsuit, filed in Louisiana federal court, alleges that the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP) violates the 5th and 7th Amendments of the US Constitution by failing to provide “basic due process protections, transparency, and judicial oversight.”

The forum “is the equivalent of a black hole,” plaintiffs’ lawyer Aaron Siri, a name partner at New York-founded Siri & Glimstad, told me.

The plaintiffs – eight people who say they experienced debilitating side effects from the Covid-19 vaccine, as well as React 19, a nonprofit organisation for people who claim vaccine-related injuries, want to stop the government from forcing their claims into the CICP until due process safeguards are added. Those include the right to review evidence, obtain discovery, present expert witnesses and appeal adverse decisions.

The plaintiffs blame the Covid vaccine for causing a wide range of ailments including Bell’s palsy, blood clots in the brain, vertigo, vascular inflammation, chronic fatigue syndrome, small fiber neuropathy, heart palpitations and more.

Forbes reported: New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers challenged Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce to a debate on Tuesday on the topic of vaccine safety, with Rodgers saying presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and former top infectious disease official Anthony Fauci should also be involved after the two football stars spent the past week exchanging jabs over their positions on Covid vaccines.

While appearing on the ESPN-broadcasted podcast, The Pat McAfee Show, Rodgers said the debate would bring “big ratings” and could mirror the film John Wick: Chapter 4 where both opponents have a second person on their side, with Rodgers suggesting Kelce choose Fauci or some other “pharmacrat” and selecting Kennedy, an outspoken Covid vaccine skeptic, for himself.

The back-and-forth began last week when Rodgers was asked about the Chief’s win over the Jets – Rodgers did not play in the game as he is recovering from a season-ending Achilles tear – and Rodgers responded by calling Kelce “Mr. Pfizer,” a reference to Kelce appearing in Pfizer’s commercials advertising the company’s Covid vaccine.

Kelce previously said Rodgers’ “Mr. Pfizer” comment was “pretty good” and added that he didn’t think he’d be in a vaccine war with Rodgers, and Rodgers countered those comments Tuesday saying it wasn’t a war, just a conversation.

US News & World Report reported: New research points to the potential of a Covid-19 vaccine delivered through the nose. The phase 1 clinical trial showed that the product, administered nasally in two doses, delivered a significant immune response to multiple Covid variants.

Called CoviLiv, the vaccine was tested as a primary vaccination series on healthy adults before the development of the mRNA vaccines that are now approved to treat Covid.

Instead, CoviLiv is a live-attenuated vaccine, meaning it is made from weakened virus. The genetic material of the virus was reordered to convert it from a disease-causing pathogen into a stable and safe vaccine, according to its developer, Codagenix Inc.

New York Post reported: The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic is weighing a subpoena of former Gov Andrew Cuomo if he snubs their final request for records about his decision to place Covid-infected patients in nursing homes and long-term care facilities at the onset of the outbreak.

Chairman Brad Wenstrup (Republican-Ohio) threatened in a Tuesday letter to “evaluate” compulsory measures if Cuomo failed to produce documents about his administration’s Covid policies by October 17, according to a copy of the missive exclusively obtained by The Post.

“To date, we have not received a single document from you. The Select Subcommittee is comprised of physicians from both sides of the aisle and members who take our responsibilities seriously,” Wenstrup wrote to the former governor.

WFLA reported: The Florida Department of Health must release three years of detailed Covid-19 data as part of a settlement, a government watchdog group announced Monday.

The Florida Center for Government Accountability (FLCGA) and former Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith agreed to a settlement that requires the Florida Department of Health to publish Covid data on its website for the next three years.

The state must also pay $152,250 to cover legal fees, FLCGA wrote in a news release.

Lower Microbiome Diversity May Indicate Severe Covid Infection — Patients Admitted to the ICU Had Significant Increases in Certain Bacteria, Study Shows

MedPage Today reported: Patients with severe COVID-19 infection had lower microbiome diversity, indicating a potential biomarker of disease progression and severity, researchers said here.

Stool samples taken from patients who were admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) with severe COVID showed significant increases in Parasutterella, Odoribacter, Staphylococcus, and Sellimonas bacteria, reported Irina Timofte, MD, of UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, during the CHEST annual meeting hosted by the American College of Chest Physicians.

These bacteria have been implicated in gastrointestinal dysbiotic conditions, such as inflammatory bowel disease and irritable bowel syndrome, Timofte noted. In addition, patients with COVID pneumonia who required supplemental oxygen had significantly lower community biodiversity in both the GI tract and oral cavity.

“This is not new. Manipulating the gut-lung axis was previously proposed as a treatment for lung diseases,” she said. “And previous studies have demonstrated changes in the composition of gut microbiota in Covid-19 patients. Therefore, our study is trying to find the relationship that could be responsible for varying severity of Covid-19.”

CNN Health reported: With a November cutoff looming, the United States Drug Enforcement Administration has for a second time extended temporary rules allowing the prescription of controlled medications via telehealth.

These rules, established during the Covid-19 pandemic, are an exception to the conditions of a law known as the Ryan Haight Act, which requires at least one in-person medical examination before a doctor can prescribe a controlled medicine, including stimulant medications for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, benzodiazepines for anxiety, and drugs for opioid use disorder, sleep or pain, said Dr. Shabana Khan, chair of the American Psychiatric Association’s Committee on Telepsychiatry, in a previous interview with CNN.

Now, after holding two days of public listening sessions on the rules in September, the DEA and HHS have further extended the flexibilities through December 31, 2024.

• The Defender report