Taco Bell releases statement after being reportedly identified as a possible source of parasite causing 'explosive' diarrhea



Thousands of Americans are getting infected with the cyclospora parasite, and health officials are looking at Taco Bell as one possible source of the uncomfortable outbreak.

The Mexican fast-food chain reportedly stopped serving some fresh ingredients at some of its locations, and the Washington Post reported that federal and state health officials are now probing the chain.

'FDA certainly is continuing its traceback investigation on multiple produce items, also including locations that are reported by the case patients.'

The parasite can infect hosts who eat contaminated produce and may cause weeks of watery diarrhea and "frequent and sometimes explosive bowel movements," according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

On Tuesday, Taco Bell issued a statement saying that it had "voluntarily and temporarily removed limited ingredients" at some restaurants "as a precautionary measure."

The chain added that it would continue to monitor the situation and "follow the guidance of public health authorities."

Donald Prater, the acting deputy commissioner for food at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, would not confirm if Taco Bell is being investigated.

"FDA certainly is continuing its traceback investigation on multiple produce items, also including locations that are reported by the case patients before they became sick," he said.

Officials outlined several steps people can take to avoid the discomforting parasite:

  • Heating food to 158 degrees F or above to kill the parasite;
  • Peeling produce to reduce the chance of infection from the parasite being present on the surface; and
  • Washing all fresh produce under clean running water, even if you plan on peeling it, and whether or not it was pre-washed.
More than 1,000 cases of cyclosporiasis have been confirmed by health officials in more than half of U.S. states, and up to 7,000 cases are suspected.

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Those who believe they may be coming down with the sickness are advised to contact health officials and specifically ask for the cyclospora test.

Cyclospora infections can be treated with antibiotics, rest, and plenty of hydration.

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New York’s home-care fraud scandal exposes Medicaid’s rotten incentives



Medicaid is federally funded and state-run, but the program’s beneficiaries often have the least say in who provides their care and what that care costs.

That’s a built-in flaw. States have every incentive to maximize federal matching funds while federal taxpayers bear much of the cost. The result pits state bureaucrats against Washington’s need to control Medicaid spending — and against taxpayers’ interest in stopping providers, insurers, and contractors from cashing in on weak oversight.

New York’s home-care scandal is not merely a contracting failure. It is a warning about Medicaid’s overall design.

That is why cosmetic Medicaid reforms so often produce more spending, more inefficiency, and more fraud.

Just look at New York.

Democrat Governor Kathy Hochul’s administration botched the reform of its roughly $11 billion Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program, a Medicaid-financed home-care benefit, so badly that federal prosecutors came knocking.

The U.S. Justice Department recently sued the New York State Department of Health and Public Partnerships LLC, the program’s sole fiscal intermediary since 2025. Prosecutors allege that New York’s CDPAP reform, supposedly designed to reduce waste in a billion-dollar program, instead created conditions for an ongoing Medicaid fraud scheme.

Personal care — nonmedical long-term care provided in the homes of elderly and disabled patients — is especially vulnerable to waste and abuse. The reason? It’s difficult to verify that caregivers worked the hours billed or provided the services claimed.

“The service is delivered by unlicensed caregivers in private residences, usually with no on-site supervision,” Bill Hammond of the Empire Center has explained. “The risk is heightened when the aide is a friend or family member of the patient, which is allowed under the popular and rapidly growing [CDPAP].”

New York’s numbers show the scale of the problem.

In 2021, the state employed 138 home-health and personal care aides per 1,000 residents age 65 or older — more than double the national average. New York City employed 236 aides per 1,000 older residents. By 2024, the statewide rate had climbed to 171 aides per 1,000 older residents.

Home care was supposed to reduce New Yorkers’ reliance on nursing homes. Yet the share of elderly New Yorkers living in nursing homes declined more slowly than in almost every other state, while New York’s per capita Medicaid spending on nursing homes remained the highest in the nation and more than double the U.S. average.

RELATED: Medicare red tape turned insurers into villains

NoDerog/Getty Images

Over the decade leading up to 2025, hundreds of fiscal intermediaries emerged to process payroll for CDPAP lay caregivers and perform other administrative duties. These intermediaries eagerly tapped loosely supervised Medicaid dollars.

Many aggressively advertised the opportunity to become a CDPAP caregiver and get paid by Medicaid to care for a family member — eventually at the same legally mandated minimum pay as professionally trained home-care aides.

That helped fuel what Hammond described as “seemingly bottomless and unchecked demand for a costly Medicaid benefit, which has been rising almost 10 times faster than the growth of the state’s elderly population.”

In 2024, New York passed legislation consolidating CDPAP management under a single statewide contractor. The state awarded that role to PPL.

By then, CDPAP relied on nearly 600 intermediary firms, and enrollment had exploded from roughly 12,000 to more than 250,000 between 2015 and 2023.

By shrinking the bureaucracy, New York lawmakers claimed they would restrain CDPAP’s soaring costs. Once again, they promised greater accountability and hundreds of millions of dollars in savings.

They did not deliver.

According to the Justice Department, the procurement process for “one of the most lucrative contracts for administering a Medicaid program in the nation” was compromised from the beginning. Prosecutors allege that “PPL was preselected as the winner through a sham bid process.”

The transition from hundreds of intermediaries to PPL was also disorderly. An unrealistic timeline, evident to both PPL and the Department of Health, disrupted patient care.

Most important, prosecutors allege that “PPL and New York, without explanation, have disregarded key limits the contract imposed on the revenues and profits PPL was entitled to.” Those limits were “central to the goal of saving hundreds of millions of dollars through the CDPAP transition.”

PPL allegedly “siphoned millions of dollars of Medicaid funding,” with the state Department of Health complicit in the ongoing scheme.

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Pete Kiehart/Bloomberg/Getty Images

PPL can be replaced. But another company eager to rent-seek will inevitably take its place unless the incentive structure changes.

As long as federal taxpayers contribute anywhere from $1 to $9 for every $1 New York contributes to fund Medicaid for New Yorkers, state administrations and health officials will remain too complacent about the misuse of taxpayer money.

Any money recovered from this alleged scheme would be dwarfed by Medicaid’s broader improper spending crisis, which may have exceeded $1 trillion over the past decade.

New York’s home-care scandal is not merely a contracting failure. It is a warning about Medicaid’s overall design.

The program rewards states for spending more, obscures responsibility for waste, and leaves taxpayers chasing fraud after the money is gone. Overhauling Medicaid to restore accountability is long overdue.

Report: Biden Admin ‘Downplayed’ And ‘Delayed’ Warnings About Covid Shot Risks

'The full extent of the Biden administration’s failure to immediately warn the public about all COVID-19 vaccine adverse events must be completely exposed.'

A Federal ‘Clawback Clause’ Would Ensure We Never Get Another Fauci, Collins, Or Walensky

Officials who lie to Americans and cause significant damage should return at least part of their pay or retirement benefits funded by taxpayers.

Biden administration declares monkeypox a public health emergency



The Biden administration on Thursday declared monkeypox a public health emergency in order to speed up delivery of the vaccine.

Politico first reported that the Department of Health and Human Services would make a public emergency declaration that will grant the government additional powers as more than 6,600 monkeypox infections have been reported in the United States. HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra held a press briefing announcing the decision Thursday afternoon.

"I will be declaring a public health emergency on monkeypox," Becerra said.

"We're prepared to take our response to the next level in addressing this virus," he added. "We urge every American to take monkeypox seriously and to take responsibility to help us tackle this virus."

\u201cJUST IN - HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra declares #monkeypox a public health emergency in the United States.\u201d
— Disclose.tv (@Disclose.tv) 1659638390

A public emergency declaration could permit the government to access emergency funds to fight the virus, enable health authorities to collect more data about cases and vaccinations, and ramp up vaccine distribution.

The World Health Organization declared monkeypox a public health emergency of international concern on July 23 — after WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus overruled an expert committee that recommended against an emergency declaration. Since then, New York state, California, and Illinois have issued their own emergency declarations, with New York being the epicenter of the U.S. outbreak.

The Biden administration's decision comes as the virus has spread rapidly in the United States, with more than 1,200 cases reported in just the last three days. Most of the cases internationally have been reported among men who have sex with men, and public health officials have advised gay and bisexual men to limit their sexual partners to mitigate spread of the disease.

Though monkeypox is not a disease that solely infects homosexual males, health officials have raised concerns that festivals or pride parades where gay men gather and are likely to be in close personal contact could become super-spreader events.

In the U.S., 99% of monkeypox cases were reported among men, according to HHS. The average patient is about 35 years old, but people of all ages can be infected. There have been five cases found in children, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Symptoms of the virus include a painful rash, fever, and swollen lymph nodes. Some patients may also experience chills, headache, and muscle pain.

Monkeypox is a disease that is native to parts of central and west Africa, where people may be exposed to the virus through bites or scratches from animals. The virus does not spread easily between people, but transmission can occur through contact with body fluids, monkeypox sores, or through respiratory droplets following prolonged face-to-face contact, according to health officials.

HHS said last week that 338,000 monkeypox vaccine doses have been distributed as of July 28. The federal government has ordered another 5.5 million doses, which the agency said will be available by May 2023.

The Raiders' vax requirements highlight the power of comedian Steve Hughes' years-old warning about 'health regulations': It's about control



Those Las Vegas Raiders this week really showed the NFL and its millions of fans this week how much they are truly concerned about the well-being of Raider Nation.

Mark "Son-of-Al" Davis declared this week that only fans who can prove they have been vaccinated will be permitted to attend home games.

They had to fall in line with Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak's command that large events can be mask-free if all attendees are vaccinated against COVID-19.

Davis, a man clearly concerned about health, said in a statement, "Health and safety has always been our number one priority."

Las Vegas Raiders owner Mark Davis (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

In fact, Davis and his team are so concerned about fan safety that, well, they're allowing anyone who isn't vaxxed but really wants to come to the game to get the jab in the parking lot, throw on a mask, and ... head into Allegiant Stadium.

Yeah, you read that right.

Please to be noting: They did not bother to explain how a just-vaxxed-minutes-ago person with a mask is less dangerous than a non-vaxxed person with a mask.

Maybe — just maybe — it's not about their health.

The entire episode is reminiscent of the brilliant Steve Hughes' "I'm offended" clip that went viral several years ago.

Though the video of Hughes' "Comedy Roadshow" performance burned up the internet for his willingness to lambaste the Church of the Perpetually Offended, the Raiders' "for your health" vaccine mandate lined up nicely with the comedian's warning that governmental health and safety regulations are about control, not health.

Take cigarette bans, for example.

No smoking allowed, the regulators say. It's for your health.

Well, can we still buy cigarettes? Of course.

Where's the heath protection there?

You can't come to the game if you're not vaxxed, the regulators say. It's for your health.

Well, can we come if we get vaxxed at the game? Of course.

Where's the health protection there?

Steve Hughes - Health and Safety & Offended Comedy Routines (HQ) youtu.be

Horowitz: WV officials to test immunity of nursing home patients in preparation for yet another shot



The government plans to double down on risking the lives of seniors in nursing homes — exposing them to the risk of endless experimental booster shots without any benefit. By pushing booster shots, they are now admitting that the shots have failed, at least in the long term. Thus, why are we not further studying the side effects of these shots, and instead risking more injections that they are admitting might only last for a few months with an ever-mutating virus? Moreover, why are we not working on boosting the immune system of senior care residents and having effective early treatments in place?

NBC News reported last week that West Virginia health officials plan to conduct antibody tests of their nursing home patients to determine whether their levels have waned and whether they need yet another shot.

"In West Virginia, we were very aggressive in vaccinating our long-term care population, but we now worry and are paying more attention about whether we have sufficient immunity in those fully vaccinated," said Dr. Clay Marsh, the state's ad hoc coronavirus czar.

They will also allow anyone over 60 to access these antibody tests if they had the shot more than six months ago. The program is being dubbed, "Booster Battlefield Assessment."

This is a stunning admission that is appalling and self-contradictory at the same time. They claim this process is voluntary and that the data will be shared with the federal government to determine the need for a third shot. Presumably, if they discover waning antibodies, the third dose will become the new standard across all nursing homes, and likely in the general population thereafter.

However, if the vaccine works so much, and is practically forced upon senior care residents, then why would they need a third shot? And if they need a third shot, isn't that a recognition that the first ones didn't work and weren't worth the risk of side effects? Remember, this is not a new shot that has been perfected over the original ones, it's merely another dose of the original shot. With an ever-mutating virus, it's akin to giving another booster of the flu shot from the previous season against the new season's strain.

Even if one is strongly in support of the vaccine in general, the facts on the ground should dictate a complete course correction in strategy with nursing home patients for a variety of reasons:

Risk-benefit-analysis

While we all agree that nursing home patients are very vulnerable to the virus, and that the experimental shots would be warranted for them, that was all predicated on the shots actually working. But if they will continuously need boosters every few months, are the risks really worth it?

Remember, seniors, especially at the end of their lives, are likely very vulnerable to side effects from the shots. However, because of their health status, vaccine-related deaths and severe injury are likely underreported relative to the healthy population in which sudden death and illness are hard to overlook. Given our society's lack of regard for nursing home patients in general, and lack of oversight of the vaccine safety in particular, very few scientists have even studied the effect of the vaccines in the frail population.

However, one study conducted by the Norwegian Medicines Agency, which examined the first 100 nursing home patients to subsequently die after having gotten the Pfizer shots, gives us some reason for concern. They found a causal link between the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and death to be "likely" in 10 of the 100 cases, "possible" in 26 cases, and "unlikely" in 59 cases. The remaining five were deemed "unclassifiable." That's 10% of the first 100 presumed natural deaths in nursing homes likely due to the vaccine.

"Frail patients can benefit from vaccination because they are at great risk of serious illness and even death if they become infected with the COVID-19 virus," said Sigurd Hortemo, senior medical consultant at the Norwegian Medicines Agency. "Nevertheless, the expert group believes that, for some of these frail patients, common adverse reactions may have contributed to a more serious course of their disease."

Now, several months later, consider the fact that this antibody test they are conducting in West Virginia demonstrate the shots might not even work beyond a few months. We are still figuring out whether the shots wane with time or whether they are much less effective against new variants (or both).

But if one of those two problems are proven, it will mean that seniors must either get shots every six months or perhaps they are no longer effective at all even in the short term with new mutations. To simply vaccinate senior care residents without any evidence just because they are very vulnerable to the virus is indefensible.

What about prior infection?

One of the most egregious aspects of the push for mass vaccination without any degree of nuance or circumspection is that they are ignoring the fact that half the population already had the infection, and therefore have much more robust immunity than the vaccine can convey without taking on the risk of side effects. This is doubly true with the nursing home population, which likely has a massive degree of herd immunity.

As painful as the cost was, most senior care facilities residents already got the virus. It is simply unacceptable to shove a vaccine on people who already have greater immunity. And if for some reason they feel that the very frail will not be protected by natural infection, they most certainly won't be protected by a vaccine which has proven to be less effective than natural immunity for the general population.

As such, if they are going to embark on a third dose strategy, they should at least test people with a T-detect test, which can identify whether the patient has broad T-cell immunity, likely from natural infection. Anyone who has T-cell immunity should not be given any more shots.

What about vitamin D and other ways to boost the immune system?

If we are going through the pain to test the blood levels of nursing home patients, why not at least test their vitamin D and zinc levels. To begin with, seniors are almost always deficient, especially a population of people who were locked indoors for months. Rather than risking another experimental shot that, by their own admission, might not work, why not boost their immune system with high doses of vitamin D and other natural supplements.

As a recent analysis of 13 vitamin D studies concluded, "Low serum vitamin D levels are statistically significantly associated with the risk of COVID-19 infection" and "supplementation of vitamin D especially in the deficiency risk groups is indicated." Seventeen months into this virus, it's unconscionable that this hasn't been suggested for nursing home patients, especially if we are willing to give them endless experimental shots.

The risk of spiking infections and vulnerability

Even for people without immunity from natural infection, there is a real concern about vaccinating them in large numbers while a wave of the virus is percolating. A very large Swedish observational study found that those within 14 days of receiving the first shot were actually more vulnerable to infection than even those completely unvaccinated. It also found that natural infection worked better than even both doses of the shot before it wears off! Another study from the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Prevention, Statens Serum Institut, in Copenhagen, Denmark, found that health care workers within seven days of the first shot were more than twice as likely to get infected than those unvaccinated.

Thus, vaccinating more people during a wave is completely counterproductive. Testing people for vaccine antibodies without testing for prior infection makes no sense. Why wouldn't our government instead give everyone a free T-cell test to ensure they don't already have prior infection, before injecting them with yet another shot? Why won't they offer free blood panels to test vitamin D and zinc levels and offer free supplements, at a fraction of the cost of what they are spending on failed policies?

Well, it's not their money, so they don't care, so long as Big Pharma gets its slice of the pie. That's the only science that matters.

Trump administration considers ordering regular mandatory reviews of public health officials



The Trump administration is reportedly considering imposing regular performance reviews on federal health officials in the waning days of President Trump's term in office.

The move, which would certainly rankle some of he president's most prominent critics regarding his pandemic response, was first reported by Politico, based on the word of three anonymous senior health officials within the administration.

According to the news outlet, the regulation could be implemented within days by the Department of Health and Human Services and would enact mandatory job reviews every five years for government scientists who serve as directors of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and various other health agencies.

The news outlet added that the mandatory reviews could lead to "renewal — or reassignment."

Critics reportedly slammed the move, arguing it would unnecessarily infuse politics into federal health agencies.

"It's been a step-by-step escalation in retaliation by HHS against career scientists throughout the pandemic," they said. "It's a clear abuse of power by [HHS Secretary Alex Azar]."

But proponents within the administration shot back, telling Politico it's just good government policy.

"This is intended to be a good governance action," the senior administration official said. "Congress did this through the 21st Century Cures Act with [National Institutes of Health]. I think NIH was largely supportive because it would increase diversity or opportunity for certain positions at the agency."

It's worth noting that perhaps the president's most prominent adversary within public health ranks — Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease — is already subject to such reviews. In 2016, Congress passed legislation enacting five-year mandatory reviews for center directors at the NIH, of which the NIAID is a part.

"Most Americans have performance reviews every year, Congress faces election every two years, and presidents every four, requesting performance reviews of agency leaders twice a decade is common sense management," HHS chief of staff Brian Harrison said in a statement.