The DG's statement references deaths in the last 8 weeks. However, another WHO report states that about 73K deaths reported by China over the last 6 weeks are not included in the current counts.

WHO, Covid-19, Weekly sit-rep: https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/situation-reports

>Speaking at the opening of WHO’s annual executive board meeting, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said “there is no doubt that we’re in a far better situation now” than a year ago — when the highly transmissible Omicron variant was at its peak.
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>But Tedros warned that in the last eight weeks, at least 170,000 people have died around the world in connection with the coronavirus. He called for at-risk groups to be fully vaccinated, an increase in testing and early use of antivirals, an expansion of lab networks, and a fight against “misinformation” about the pandemic.
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>“We remain hopeful that in the coming year, the world will transition to a new phase in which we reduce hospitalizations and deaths to the lowest possible level,” he said.
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>Tedros’ comments came moments after WHO released findings of its emergency committee on the pandemic which reported that some 13.1 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered — with nearly 90% of health workers and more than four in five people over 60 years of age having completed the first series of jabs.

Aren't the studies with mice supposed to be done before the humans ingest it?

>...despite Beijing's loosening of Covid restrictions at the beginning of the month

A possible reason: "China Covid: experts estimate 9,000 deaths a day" https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/30/china-covid-experts-estimate-9000-deaths-a-day-as-us-says-it-may-sample-wastewater-from-planes

>UK-based health data firm Airfinity said about 9,000 people in China were probably dying each day from Covid, nearly doubling its estimate from a week ago.
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>Cumulative deaths in China since 1 December likely reached 100,000, with infections totalling 18.6m, Airfinity said in a statement on Thursday. It used modelling based on data from Chinese provinces before the recent changes to reporting cases were implemented, it said.
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>Airfinity expects deaths to peak on 23 January with about 25,000 a day, with cumulative deaths reaching 584,000 since December. Since 7 December, when China made its abrupt policy U-turn, authorities have officially reported just 10 Covid deaths.

Due to the fear of new variants coming from China to other countries (only the same variants are being found so far), the US is considering testing aircraft wastewater:

>The United States is considering sampling wastewater taken from international aircraft to track any emerging new Covid-19 variants as infections surge in China.
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>Airplane wastewater analysis is among several options the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is considering to help slow the introduction of new variants into the US from other countries, a spokesperson for the agency, Kristen Nordlund, said.

>Scientists have developed a blood test to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease without the need for expensive brain imaging or a painful lumbar puncture, where a sample of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) is drawn from the lower back.
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>Although current blood tests can accurately detect abnormalities in amyloid and tau proteins, detecting markers of nerve cell damage that are specific to the brain has been harder. Karikari and his colleagues around the world focused on developing an antibody-based blood test that would detect a particular form of tau protein called brain-derived tau, which is specific to Alzheimer’s disease.
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>If validated, the test could enable faster diagnosis of the disease, meaning therapies could be initiated earlier.

Article: Brain-derived tau: a novel blood-based biomarker for Alzheimer’s disease-type neurodegeneration https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awac407

No animal on Earth is more lethal to humans, killing over 600,000 people a year from malaria alone and up to a million when including other diseases like dengue fever and yellow fever: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35408835

From article:

>The effort is one of several focused on addressing the mosquito-borne disease that kills over 600,000 each year, most of them children in Africa. The complicated structure and lifecycle of the malaria parasite has long stymied efforts to develop vaccines.
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>After decades of work, the only approved malaria vaccine, Mosquirix, made by British drugmaker GSK (GSK.L), was this year endorsed by the World Health Organization (WHO), but a lack of funding and commercial potential has thwarted GSK's capacity to produce as many doses as needed.

Related news release from George Washington University: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/972703

>A research team led by George Washington University has developed two mRNA vaccine candidates that are highly effective in reducing both malaria infection and transmission.
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>“These vaccines were highly effective at preventing infection and they wiped out transmission potential almost entirely,” said Nirbhay Kumar, a professor of global health at the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health.
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>To see how the mRNA vaccines stacked up against other nucleic acid -based vaccine platforms, Kumar and the team repeated the experiment using DNA plasmids. The mRNA vaccines were far superior in inducing an immune response compared to the DNA-based vaccines, they found.

You could always look up 'rewilding' and educate yourself. Or, just go up against the conservation officer at Wildwood Trust and pretend you know more.

Article is about restoring wild habitat in UK, not another species in USA.

>Populations of the UK’s most important wildlife have plummeted by an average of 60% since 1970 and Britain is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world. The project [assesses] how bison act as “ecosystem engineers” to restore wild habitat.
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>Bison’s taste for bark kills some trees and their bulk opens up trails, letting light spill on to the forest floor, while their love of rolling around in dust baths creates more open ground for new plants, invertebrates and birds. The Wilder Blean project aims to naturally regenerate a former pine wood plantation.
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>The process has been surprisingly speedy, said Gibbs, who has seen slow worms basking and heard more birdsong. “We had not seen dung beetles on the site but all of a sudden, they are just thriving,” he added.
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>Vicki Breakell, conservation officer at the Wildwood Trust, said: “They’ve created tracks and pathways, which has opened up the canopy already, and they’ve been munching on the bark, which over time is going to create the standing dead wood which is so valuable for a whole host of different species.”

>The bison are currently in a five-hectare (12-acre) enclosure, as they adapt to their new lives and their health is closely monitored. They will be moved to an area of 50-hectare (124 acres) next and then, next summer, the full 200-hectare site (494 acres).

Ehm, rewilding is the goal.

Probably not, but biologists do give a special name to the first shit a baby bison takes because it stinks so much: a worsel.

Most of them only rate 111 to 222 on the stinkometer but this one came out at a 555.

>...the new mother and another young female came from a park in Ireland, where the calf will have been conceived.

Bison Ranger Gibbs (the job title to get):

>“There were a couple of days when we didn’t see female 2 and that was sort of an alarm bell, because she’s normally very confident and the one up at the front. I hoped she was OK,” said Gibbs.
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>“I went off to try and to find her and after about an hour, I could hear some rustling in the tree line. I didn’t want to get too close, so I used my binoculars, and I could see her tail swishing."
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>“Then, lo and behold, this little face popped out from behind the female, and that was the eureka moment. It was just unbelievable to think this is the first wild born bison here in England. It was just a monumental moment.”

>All 9,000 bison now living in Europe are descended from just 12 zoo animals, which saved the species from extinction in the early 20th century, so maximising genetic diversity is important.