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Infectious illness knowledgeable says Covid vaccine misinformation is ‘killing individuals’

Not prudent to deploy vaccine boosters at this point: Ex-FDA director

Dr. Nahid Bhadelia, founding director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases at Boston University, expressed concern about the spread of misinformation about Covid vaccines on social media.

“I think social media plays a huge role in amplifying misinformation that is leading people not to take the vaccine, which is killing them,” Bhadelia told CNBC on Friday. “It’s the honest truth. Covid is a vaccine-preventable disease at the moment.”

President Joe Biden said Friday that platforms like Facebook are killing people by allowing misinformation about Covid-19 vaccines through their services. He went back those comments on Monday, mainly accusing the platform’s users of sharing misinformation.

Bhadelia cited results from the Kaiser Family Fund poll, which found that 54% of Americans either believe or cannot tell whether a common Covid vaccine myth is fact or fiction.

The US is struggling with a drop in vaccination rates and an increase in infections. All 50 states have reported an increase in Covid cases over the past week, according to Johns Hopkins University. The US has an average of more than 26,000 new cases a day, and that’s the highest number in two months, according to Johns Hopkins.

Bhadelia told CNBC The News with Shepard Smith that she believes social media companies can do a lot more to stop the spread of disinformation.

“You have to invest a lot more resources and improve your balance to clear that information faster, invest more resources in changing your matrix, because right now what is on top of your page is not right, but what it is is popular, “said Bhadelia, a medical worker for NBC News.

She also suggested that social media companies should partner with public health officials more to get the right information out to the people.

Facebook spoke out against the White House claims.

“We will not be distracted by allegations that are not supported by the facts,” said a spokesman. “The fact is, more than 2 billion people have viewed authoritative information about COVID-19 and vaccines on Facebook, more than any other place on the internet. More than 3.3 million Americans have also used our vaccine finder tool to find out where and how to get a vaccine. The facts show that Facebook helps save lives. Point.”

Correction: This article has been updated to include Dr. Nahid Bhadelia’s view that “social media plays a huge role in amplifying misinformation” about Covid vaccines. An earlier version misinterpreted your quote.

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Dr. Barbara Murphy, Kidney Transplant Knowledgeable, Dies at 56

Dr. Barbara Murphy, Kidney Transplant Expert, Dies at 56

Dr. Barbara Murphy, a leading nephrologist who specialized in advanced research that focused on predicting and diagnosing the outcomes of kidney transplants, died on Wednesday at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, where she had worked since 1997. She was 56.

The cause was glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer, her husband, Peter Fogarty, said.

Dr. Murphy blended a passion for research into kidney transplant immunology with her role, since 2012, as the chairwoman of the department of medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (and its broader health system). She was the first woman named to run a department of medicine at an academic medical center in New York City.

“In baseball, they talk about five-tool players,” Dr. Dennis S. Charney, dean of the Icahn School, said by phone. “I don’t know how many tools she had, but she was a very strong administrator, a great researcher and a great mentor to many people.”

Dr. Murphy, who was from Ireland, developed her interest in kidney transplantation while attending medical school at the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin. She was drawn especially to how it transformed patients’ lives.

“I love seeing how well patients do afterward,” she told Irish America magazine in 2016. “For all the years that I’ve been in this profession, the interaction between a living donor and a recipient in the recovery room still makes me proud to be a physician and to play a part in such a life-affirming moment.”

After being recruited to Mount Sinai in 1997, she joined other researchers in examining the role of H.I.V. in kidney disease and helped establish the viability of kidney transplants for patients with H.I.V. In a speech at the Royal College in 2018, she recalled that there had been criticism of such transplants — as if there were a “moral hierarchy when it came to donor kidneys.”

She added, “Two weeks ago, we received an email from one of our patients, thanking us on his 15th renal transplant birthday.”

More recently, Dr. Murphy’s research at her laboratory at Mount Sinai focused on the genetics and genomics of predicting the results of transplants, and on why some kidneys are rejected.

In findings reported in The Lancet in 2016, she and her collaborators said they had identified a set of 13 genes that predicted which patients would subsequently develop fibrosis, a hallmark of chronic kidney disease, and, ultimately, irreversible damage to the transplanted organ. Being able to predict which patients were at risk, they wrote, would allow for treatment to prevent fibrosis.

Her research has been licensed to two companies. One, Verici DX, which is still in validation trials in advance of commercial sales, is developing RNA signature tests to determine how a patient is responding to, and will respond to, a transplant. The other company, Renalytix, uses an algorithm guided by artificial intelligence to identify a kidney disease risk score for patients. Dr. Murphy served on the boards of both companies.

“Barbara was foundational to Verici,” Sara Barrington, the company’s chief executive, said by phone. She added, “Her lab will continue to file new discoveries out of her base research.”

Barbara Therese Murphy was born on Oct. 15, 1964, in South Dublin. Her father, John, owned an airfreight company, and her mother, Anne (Duffy) Murphy, worked with him and also designed bridal wear.

At age 4, Dr. Murphy recalled in a speech at a health care awards dinner sponsored by Irish America in 2016, she had to overcome a harsh judgment by a teacher.

“My elementary school teacher told my mother I was a dunce and I would never be anything, and what’s more she shouldn’t even try,” she said. “Fortunately, my parents persevered.”

After earning her medical degree at the Royal College in 1989, Dr. Murphy completed her residency and a nephrology fellowship at Beaumont Hospital, also in Dublin. She was also a nephrology fellow in the renal division of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, where she trained in transplant immunology.

In 1997, she was recruited to Mount Sinai as director of transplant nephrology by Dr. Paul Klotman, then the chief of the division of nephrology, who promoted her to his former position in 2003 after he had become chairman of Icahn’s department of medicine.

“She showed a lot of promise in transplant nephrology, which was emerging at the time,” Dr. Klotman, now the president of the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, said by phone. “Over the years, she developed good leadership skills: She was very organized and task oriented.”

In the spring of 2020, Dr. Murphy, like other physicians, noticed with alarm that Covid-19 was much more than a respiratory disease. It was causing a surge in kidney failure that led to shortages of machines, supplies and personnel needed for emergency dialysis.

The number of patients needing dialysis “is orders of magnitude greater than the number of patients we normally dialyze,” she told The New York Times.

One of Mount Sinai’s responses to the pandemic that May was to open the Center for Post-Covid Care for patients recovering from the virus. At the time, Mount Sinai had treated more than 8,000 patients who had been diagnosed with Covid-19.

“Barbara was instrumental in forming the center,” Dr. Charney said, “and she was involved in the follow-up as it related to kidney disease caused by Covid.”

Dr. Murphy was given the Young Investigator Award in Basic Science from the American Society of Transplantation in 2003 and was named nephrologist of the year by the American Kidney Fund in 2011. At her death, she was president-elect of the American Society of Nephrology.

In addition to her husband, Dr. Murphy is survived by their son, Gavin; her sister, Dr. Celine Murphy, a cardiologist who works in occupational health; her brother, Dr. Kieran Murphy, an interventional neuroradiologist; and her parents.

Dr. Murphy said she had learned an indelible lesson about the need for a strong patient-doctor relationship while still in medical school.

“Scholarship alone was not enough,” she said at the Irish America award ceremony. “An example: If we had a patient with rheumatoid arthritis and we shook their hands and they winced, it didn’t matter how much we knew about the disease or how to treat it, we’d failed our exam because we hadn’t taken the patient’s overall well-being into consideration.”

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Health

Knowledgeable on U.S.-China competitors in vaccine diplomacy

Expert on U.S.-China competition in vaccine diplomacy

Workers unload boxes of the Sinopharm Covid-19 vaccine donated by China at Damascus International Airport in the Syrian capital on April 24, 2021.

Loua Beshara | AFP | Getty Images

The competition between the US and China could heat up on another front: Covid-19 vaccine diplomacy.

China has been a major supplier of Covid vaccines to much of the developing world, an effort some experts said could strengthen Beijing’s global influence and deepen its ties with other nations.

But a health policy and policy expert told CNBC on Thursday that the US is now catching up as the White House lays out plans to donate millions of doses of Covid vaccine overseas and President Joe Biden appears to want to do more.

“We will see China face a more formidable competitor,” Yanzhong Huang, Senior Fellow on Global Health at the Council on Foreign Relations, told CNBC’s Squawk Box Asia.

In recent months, China has been “almost the only major player” sending Covid vaccines to other countries, said Huang, who is also a professor at Seton Hall University’s School of Diplomacy and International Relations.

This is especially true if India has stopped exporting vaccines to prioritize its domestic needs and Russia’s supply abroad remains very limited, he said.

Several reports have indicated that the US is stepping up its efforts to exchange Covid vaccines around the world.

Biden will reportedly announce in a speech at the G-7 summit on Thursday that the US will buy 500 million more doses of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine to share with COVAX, a global vaccine exchange initiative .

CNBC also reported Wednesday that the government is negotiating with Moderna to secure additional doses of vaccine to supply the world.

Origins of Covid-19

Relations between the US and China got off to a bumpy start under the Biden administration. The two sides have clashed on several issues, including the origins of the coronavirus, which was first discovered in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

Biden said last month he ordered a closer look at the origins of the pandemic, including whether the virus escaped from a Chinese laboratory. In response, China accused the US of a political “guilt game”.

Huang said the issue of the origins of Covid-19 is so politicized that it is likely to fuel further tension between the US and China if additional evidence emerges to the possibility that Covid-19 stems from a laboratory incident.

Without China’s cooperation, such evidence of “smoking weapons” may not be found, Huang said. In the West, however, the theory that the virus came from a laboratory has become an increasingly “credible, if not mainstream,” explanation for the origin of the pandemic, he said.

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Dementia skilled says proof ‘wasn’t enough’ for approval

Dementia expert says evidence 'wasn’t sufficient' for approval

Dementia expert Dr. Jason Karlawish told CNBC he’s skeptical of the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of Biogen’s Alzheimer’s disease drug, Aduhelm, saying “the evidence to approve the drug wasn’t sufficient.”

“Another study is needed to establish whether this drug, in fact, is effective. Unfortunately, the FDA approved the drug for marketing, although they also do want another study,” the co-director of the Penn Memory Center at the University of Pennsylvania said on Monday following the agency’s formal OK.

The FDA’s approval marks the first new treatment for Alzheimer’s in nearly two decades. Alzheimer’s is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder that slowly destroys memory and thinking skills. More than 6 million Americans live with the disease, according to estimates by the Alzheimer’s Association. 

Karlawish told “The News with Shepard Smith” that there are a lot of promising Alzheimer’s drugs in the pipeline.  

“I’m optimistic about the coming future here, so I have hope. I just think this is not the drug upon which to pin our hopes,” he said. “Desperation should drive funding for Alzheimer’s research, it should not drive the interpretation of scientific evidence.”

Clinical trials found some patients who got the approved dose of Aduhelm experienced painful brain swelling.

“What you’re asking someone to do, is to take a chance at uncertain benefit, but known risk,” Karlawish said of prescribing the drug to patients.

The FDA said it will continue to monitor the drug as it reaches the U.S. market. The agency granted approval on the condition that Biogen conduct another clinical trial. 

Karlawish told host Shepard Smith that Biogen will face a challenge in “how to do that study when the drug is also available for clinical prescribing.” 

Representatives for Biogen and for the FDA did not immediately return requests for comment on Karlawish’s statements.

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World News

Biden’s technique on the Russia-to-Germany gasoline pipeline complicated and wishes rationalization, says international coverage professional

Biden’s strategy on the Russia-to-Germany gas pipeline confusing and needs explanation, says foreign policy expert

Michael O’Hanlon, a Brookings Institution senior fellow, said he thinks the Biden administration’s decision to waive sanctions on a Russian company overseeing the construction of a controversial Russia-to-Germany gas pipeline was about improving relations with Germany.

“I believe they’re essentially deferring to Chancellor [Angela] Merkel to figure out some kind of a strategy that she thinks may work, and maybe get Russia to behave better over Ukraine and other places… But if that’s the strategy, I’d like to hear it explained and defended, not just sort of swept under the rug,” said O’Hanlon.

The Russia-to-Germany gas pipeline, known as Nord Stream 2, would bring natural gas from Russia to Germany and run under the Baltic Sea. Critics from both sides of the political aisle expressed concern that Russia could use the pipeline to gain leverage over European nations. 

Republican Senator Rob Portman slammed the decision and has said it was “contrary to our national interests, and at an especially volatile period, helps Russia while hurting Ukraine and our European Union allies.”

New Hampshire Democrat Jeanne Shaheen said in a statement that “completion of this pipeline poses a threat to U.S. security interests and the stability of our partners in the region.”

The White House did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

O’Hanlon told CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith” that he agreed with the critics. 

“It’s confusing why you would give Russia more leeway, more leverage, and also the ability to bypass Ukraine in shipping gas into Europe,” said O’Hanlon. “It doesn’t smack me to be a good decision.”

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World News

Skilled calls on China, Japan to finish financing of abroad coal vegetation

Expert calls on China, Japan to end financing of overseas coal plants

Rich countries like China and Japan must stop funding coal-fired power plants in poorer countries in the fight against climate change, according to Rachel Kyte, who previously served as the UN Secretary-General’s special envoy and Sustainable Energy’s chief executive officer for All.

Kyte, who is now the dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University, said that “coal has no place in the race for zero carbon emissions by 2050”.

“We need those countries that have coal to manage their own energy transition. And we have to stop funding coal in countries, especially in low-income countries,” she told CNBC’s Street Signs Asia on Friday.

Kyte’s comments come after South Korea’s President Moon Jae announced at a climate summit convened by US President Joe Biden Thursday that the country would stop all new overseas coal-fired power plant financing.

“To become climate neutral, it is imperative for the world to downsize coal-fired power plants,” said Moon, adding that developing countries facing challenges due to their reliance on coal should be given due consideration and access to adequate support. “”

Kyte marked South Korea’s step in the right direction and urged China and Japan to do the same.

“That is good with Korea’s announcement that it will stop overseas funding,” she noted. “That leaves Japan and China, as the two countries are still saying they will fund coal overseas. It will take us this year for both of them to find a way to get out of this commitment.”

Both China and Japan are heavy coal consumers and have been criticized by environmental groups for failing to take stronger steps to end their reliance on coal and other fossil fuels.

Even if the US and Europe make significant commitments to reduce their carbon emissions, according to Kyte, western countries still lack efforts to help less developed countries make their transition from coal.

“Also important is that the rest of the world has some kind of big deal on the table to help countries that may have been coal-fired in the past transform renewable and green energy,” said Kyte.

“We haven’t fully seen these types of financial commitments at this summit, so there is a lot to be done at the G-7 in the UK and the G-20 in Italy later this year,” she added.

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World News

Skilled Panel to C.D.C. to Vote on Johnson & Johnson Vaccine Pause

Expert Panel to C.D.C. to Vote on Johnson & Johnson Vaccine Pause

An advisory committee from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention discussed the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccination break during a Wednesday afternoon meeting while investigating a possible association with a small number of rare blood clots.

The emergency meeting follows Tuesday’s announcement by the Food and Drug Administration to investigate six cases of rare and severe blood clots in women aged 18 to 48, one of whom died. All of the women had received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine before developing the clot, although it is unclear whether the vaccine was responsible. As of Tuesday, more than seven million people in the United States had received the shot, and another 10 million cans had been shipped to the states, according to CDC data.

Following the call from federal health officials, all 50 states, Washington, DC and Puerto Rico on Tuesday quickly paused or advised vendors to stop administering the vaccine. The U.S. military, government-run vaccination centers, and a variety of private companies, including CVS, Walgreens, Rite Aid, Walmart, and Publix, also paused the injections.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) is a panel of independent experts who advise the CDC on its vaccine policy. During the meeting, the experts will review and debate data from the rare blood clots, including a seventh case, and will later hear comments from the public before a possible vote on how to proceed. You could vote to recommend, for example, that the break continue, or to indicate that it should only apply to a specific age or gender.

Federal officials said Tuesday the hiatus could only last a few days, though it depends on what officials learned from the investigation. They said the break will give officials more time to alert doctors that patients with these rare blood clots should not be given the drug heparin, the standard treatment doctors give for typical blood clots, and that they also have time to to see if there are more cases.

The worrying coagulation disorder among vaccine recipients is different – and much less common – than the typical blood clots that occur in hundreds of thousands of people each year. In addition to having clots in the brain, the seven women also had remarkably low levels of platelets, parts of the blood that help make normal clots. The panel experts discussed the known background rates of each disease in the general population, but noted that insufficient data was available to accurately estimate how often they occur simultaneously.

“At the moment we believe these events are extremely rare, but we are also not sure we have heard of all possible cases as this syndrome may not be easily identified as being associated with the vaccine,” said Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, the CDC director said at a White House press conference about the pandemic on Wednesday.

The US surgeon general Dr. Vivek Murthy reiterated Wednesday that the break in Johnson & Johnson’s vaccinations gives public health officials a chance to investigate the cases and discuss them with health professionals. He added that breaks are common when new vaccines and drugs are introduced.

“We are only doing the necessary care to ensure that everything is safe so that we can continue our vaccination efforts,” said Dr. Murthy on “CBS This Morning”.

The committee’s assessment will be of vital importance at a time when the nation is trying to vaccinate as many people as possible to curb the steady buildup of cases, especially when worrying variants become more prominent. Some public health experts were disappointed with the FDA’s recommendation to suspend the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, arguing that preventing these extremely rare side effects was not worth the compromise of slowing the vaccination campaign and potentially increasing public confidence in vaccines Generally undermine.

What You Need To Know About The Johnson & Johnson Vaccine Break In The United States

    • On April 13, 2021, U.S. health officials called for an immediate halt to use of Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose Covid-19 vaccine after six recipients in the U.S. developed a rare blood clot disorder within one to three weeks of vaccination.
    • All 50 states, Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico have temporarily suspended use of the vaccine or suspended from recommended vendors. The U.S. military, government-run vaccination centers, and a variety of private companies, including CVS, Walgreens, Rite Aid, Walmart, and Publix, also paused the injections.
    • Fewer than one in a million Johnson & Johnson vaccinations are currently being studied. If there is indeed a risk of blood clots from the vaccine – which has yet to be determined – the risk is extremely small. The risk of contracting Covid-19 in the United States is much higher.
    • The hiatus could complicate the country’s vaccination efforts at a time when many states are facing spikes in new cases and are trying to address vaccine hesitation.
    • Johnson & Johnson has also decided to delay the launch of its vaccine in Europe amid concerns about rare blood clots, which is taking another blow to the vaccine surge in Europe. South Africa, devastated by a contagious variant of the virus found there, also stopped using the vaccine. Australia announced that it would not buy cans.

Speaking at the press conference, Jeffrey D. Zients, the White House pandemic coordinator, said the hiatus would not disrupt the momentum of the country’s vaccination campaign in general.

“In the short term, we expect some impact on the daily average as Johnson & Johnson locations and dates move to Moderna and Pfizer vaccines,” he said. “We have more than enough Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to continue or even accelerate the current rate of vaccination.”

Noah Weiland, Denise Grady and Madeleine Ngo contributed to the coverage.

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Meghan and Harry Interview: A Trauma Knowledgeable Weighs In

Meghan and Harry Interview: A Trauma Expert Weighs In

Being treated as irrelevant by family members – the attachment trauma or witnessing persistent patterns of abuse – creates a different type of psychological pattern. People’s identity is based on questions like “What did I do wrong?”. or “What could I have done differently?” That becomes the central preoccupation of her life.

The important factors are what these challenges are and at what age they arise. The character is formed in the first 10 to 14 years of life. These years are the most critical and the sooner a real trauma occurs, the more lasting it is usually. As people get older, they become more independent agents and can tolerate more rejection and more emotional pain.

Don’t most children experience at least one experience that they later consider traumatic or severely challenging?

Yes. Most people have very challenging lives, and major conflicts with family members are by no means uncommon. To be rejected by your in-laws – this is of course not uncommon, and it doesn’t matter how prominent you are or whether you live in a palace. Then a major problem in the couple’s relationships becomes whether the spouse chooses you or their family.

Could the same experience that changed one child’s life have less of an impact on another child’s life?

Yes. People have very different impulses, very different reactions to the same challenges. But your attachment system – who you belong to, who knows you, who loves you, who you play with – is more fundamental than trauma. As long as people feel safe with the people in their immediate vicinity, in their families, tribes or troops, they are amazingly resilient.

Risking or relinquishing these bonds, as Harry did, is a very profound step. The standard psychological position is to adapt your behavior and expectations to your family of origin. It takes tremendous courage to break these bonds and create new and more fruitful connections.

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F.D.A. Skilled Panel Endorses Johnson & Johnson’s Vaccine

F.D.A. Expert Panel Endorses Johnson & Johnson’s Vaccine

Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine was approved on Friday by a group of experts advising the Food and Drug Administration and cleared the final hurdle before formal approval expected on Saturday, according to two people familiar with the agency’s plans are. The nation’s first shipments will run out in the days thereafter.

It will be the third shot made available to the United States in the year since the first wave of coronavirus cases washed across the country, and it will be the first vaccine to require just one dose instead of two.

The Johnson & Johnson formulation worked well in clinical trials, especially against serious illness and hospitalization, although it did not match the sky-high efficacy rates of the first two vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.

The panel, made up of independent infectious disease experts, statisticians and epidemiologists, voted unanimously to approve the vaccine.

“We are dealing with a pandemic right now,” said Dr. Jay Portnoy, an allergist at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, MO, and a board member. “It’s great that we have this vaccine.”

During Johnson & Johnson’s presentation to the panel, Dr. Gregory Poland, a virologist at Mayo Clinic and the company’s paid external consultant, noted the vaccine’s effectiveness, ease of use and low side effect rate. It “checks almost all the boxes,” he said. “It is clear to me that the known benefits far outweigh the known risks.”

The vaccine had an overall effectiveness rate of 72 percent in the US and 64 percent in South Africa, where a worrying variant emerged in the fall. The shot showed an effectiveness of 86 percent against severe forms of Covid-19 in the US and 82 percent against serious illnesses in South Africa.

These are strong numbers, but they are below the efficacy rates of Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna’s vaccines against mild, moderate, and severe cases of Covid of around 95 percent.

The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is a single dose and uses a different technology from the approved vaccines. The scope and size of the Johnson & Johnson trial was huge, spanning eight countries, three continents, and nearly 45,000 participants.

Although the vaccine works with one shot, studies are currently being carried out to see if a second dose would increase the level of protection.

Dr. Paul Offit, a pediatrician at Philadelphia Children’s Hospital and one of the panellists, pointed out Friday that Johnson & Johnson found in early clinical trials that took place over the summer that a second dose resulted in levels of coronavirus antibodies that were almost three times higher than those produced by one dose alone.

The results of the Johnson & Johnson late-stage two-dose clinical trial are not expected until July at the earliest. If these results are found to be better than a single dose, Dr. Offit: “Will this be a two-dose vaccine?”

Dr. Johan Van Hoof, the global director of vaccine research and development at Janssen Pharmaceuticals, the drug development arm of Johnson & Johnson, said the company decided to pursue the one-shot strategy after its studies on monkeys last spring showed that a single dose was sufficient to provide strong protection against the disease.

“It is clear that in a situation of an outbreak, in a raging epidemic, the big challenge is getting the epidemic under control,” he said. “The regime is very well positioned to be used in outbreak situations.”

Dr. However, Van Hoof also noted that it will be important to track volunteers who have received a single dose to see if their immunity changes over the coming months. Firing a booster shot may be required for long-term protection. “The big question mark is still how long does the protection last?” he said.

Following the vote, the FDA told Johnson & Johnson that it “will work quickly towards completion and emergency clearance,” a statement said. The FDA also said it had notified other government agencies “so they can implement their plans for timely vaccine distribution”.

Sharon LaFraniere contributed to the coverage.

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Business

Extremism within the navy ‘a difficulty for fairly a while,’ says knowledgeable

Capitol rioter charged with threatening to assassinate AOC

Leo Shane III, associate editor of the Military Times, warned CNBC that extremism in the US military “has been an issue for some time” as concerns grow after a number of former and current service members last participated in the Capitol uprising last month.

“We know that especially white nationalist groups, extremist groups, like to recruit military because of their skills,” Shane said. “These are desirable things when you have these crazy ideas about making a revolution … we’ve seen them target social media for years and provide false information.”

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin ordered that all units “step down” within the next 60 days to allow military leaders to speak to their troops about extremism in the ranks. Shane told The News with Shepard Smith that in the next two months it will be important for senior military leaders not only to discuss extremism with one another, but also to speak to the lower echelons.

“Are they going to go to the individual units … where we hear from people … see signs of tattoos, see things on social media that indicate that in some cases people are associated with these violent groups, there are even Nazis -Symbolism, Nazi flags or Nazi paraphernalia that people display, but that’s not always seen by commanders? “Shane said.

The FBI produced a report warning of the infiltration of white nationalists into local law enforcement agencies in 2006. A Department of Homeland Security and an FBI assessment from last year showed that racist terrorist groups have shown unprecedented activity in modern times. Shane noted that the US military “has not yet done a really good poll to find out how many people have been linked to extremism”.

The Military Times has surveyed its readers on the subject of extremism for the past four years and found that “a third of all active troops and more than half of minority service members said they had personally seen examples of white nationalism or ideologically motivated racism in the ranks . “

Shane told host Shepard Smith that the military thinks the third number is high, but they don’t have the date to disprove it either way.

“They haven’t looked at the numbers yet, so these 60 days should be an opportunity for them to really gauge this and get a feel for whether we are right, who we think we are, or whether they are or not.” I’m right and it’s a very small problem, “Shane said.